The wooden sword in the little Daoist boy’s hand fell into the water. He turned around and hugged the wooden basin to his chest.

The golden dragon’s scales rubbed against the mist, sparking countless heavenly fires, and the stream began to burn.

Just then, a middle-aged Daoist appeared by the stream.

The middle-aged Daoist gazed at the golden dragon on the water, his expression calm.

The heavenly fire on the surface of the stream suddenly went out.

The golden dragon looked at the middle-aged Daoist and let out a dragon’s roar!

The roar was extremely long, as if it would never end. It was made up of extremely complex syllables, sounding like the most intricate music, yet also like the terrifying howl of a hurricane in nature, carrying unimaginable power!

The middle-aged Daoist looked at the golden dragon and uttered a single word.

It was a monosyllabic word, with a pronunciation so strange and difficult that it hardly seemed like human language at all. Yet within that fragment seemed to be infinite information, brimming with ancient meaning!

The golden dragon understood, but it did not agree.

So the mist above the stream surged violently.

Dragon breath spewed everywhere, and the damp grass and woods by the stream instantly turned into a terrifying sea of fire.

The little Daoist boy, with his back to the stream, had no idea what was happening. Terrified, he lowered his head, closed his eyes, and just hugged the wooden basin in his arms even tighter.

……

……

No one knew how much time passed before the streamside finally quieted down.

The little Daoist boy mustered his courage and looked back, only to see the stream was clear, the fires on both banks had been extinguished, and only the charred trees and cracked stones told of the terror of the previous battle.

From deep within the clouds and mist came a dragon’s wail. The cry was full of pain, unwillingness, and regret, telling the entire world and its five continents what a deep and bitter regret its earlier hesitation had brought.

The little Daoist boy was startled. Hugging the wooden basin with one hand, he limped out of the stream and up onto the bank, walking to the side of the middle-aged Daoist, timidly looking toward the depths of the clouds and mist.

The middle-aged Daoist reached out and brushed the flames off his shoulder.

The little Daoist boy seemed to remember something and, with some difficulty, lifted the wooden basin.

The middle-aged Daoist took the basin and gently lifted the baby inside. With his right fingertip, through the coarse cloth, he touched the baby’s body. The next moment, his brows furrowed.

“Your fate... is truly unfortunate.” He looked at the baby wrapped in coarse cloth and spoke with pity.

……

……

To the east of the Eastern Land continent, there was a small town called Xining. Outside the town was a small stream, beside the stream a mountain, and in the mountain a temple. But there were no monks in the temple—only a middle-aged Daoist and his two disciples cultivating and seeking enlightenment there.

The mountain was an unnamed green hill, the temple an abandoned Buddhist monastery. The elder disciple’s Daoist name was Logan Clark, the younger was called Ethan Brooks.

Xining Town was within the borders of the Zhou Kingdom. The Great Zhou Dynasty had established Daoism as the state religion eight hundred years ago, and to this day, in the Zheng Tong era, the state religion unified the land and was held in the highest esteem. By rights, the master and his two disciples should have lived in luxury, but Xining Town was too remote, and the ruined temple even more so. People were rarely seen, so they could only live on plain tea and simple food.

A Daoist, naturally, must cultivate the Dao. There were countless cultivation methods in the world, but the Daoist arts taught by the middle-aged Daoist were completely different from those of other sects. He did not emphasize cultivation insight, paid no attention to fate stars, nor cared for the tempering of the soul. It could be summed up in one word: memorization.

Logan Clark had begun reciting Daoist scriptures since childhood. Ethan Brooks had to stare at those yellowed old books as soon as he opened his eyes. The first things he recognized were the Daoist scriptures filling the room. After learning to speak, he began to learn characters, and then started memorizing the words in those Daoist texts.

Reciting and reviewing until they could recite fluently from memory—this was the life of the two little Daoist boys in the ruined temple.

When they woke at dawn, they recited. Under the blazing sun, they recited. As the evening bell rasped, they recited. In spring’s warmth and blooming flowers, in summer’s rumbling thunder, in autumn’s bleak winds, in winter’s bitter snow—they stood on the ridges, by the stream, under the trees, beside the plum blossoms, holding Daoist scriptures, reading and memorizing, unaware of the passage of time.

There was an entire room in the ruined temple filled with Daoist scrolls. When Logan Clark was seven, he once counted them out of boredom—there were exactly three thousand scrolls. Three thousand scrolls of the Great Dao: some a few hundred words, some over a thousand. The shortest, the Divine Scripture, was only three hundred and fourteen words; the longest, the Longevity Scripture, had over twenty thousand. These were what they had to memorize.

The two brothers recited endlessly, seeking only to remember, not to understand. They knew well that their master would never answer any questions about the Daoist canon, only saying, “Remember, and you will naturally understand.”

For those playful children just starting their studies, such a life was unimaginable. Fortunately, the green hills were remote and sparsely populated, with nothing to distract them, so they could focus. The two little Daoist boys were of unusual temperament and did not find it dull or tedious. Thus, day after day, they recited, and before they knew it, several years had passed.

One day, after years of unbroken recitation, the reading stopped. The two children sat shoulder to shoulder on a rock, a book resting across their knees. They glanced at the book, then at each other, both with a look of confusion.