This was nothing like what they had imagined, leaving Fang Chen and the others struggling to adjust.
Fang Chen frowned slightly and asked the Moon Saint, "Senior Mingyue, what's going on with the Ten-Thousand-Year Peach Garden? Why do all these peach trees look half-dead?"
The Moon Saint smiled. "I don't know why they've ended up like this either. Every tree you see here is over five hundred thousand years old, and peach trees have their limits too. Many Peach Trees in the Ten-Thousand-Year Peach Garden have already died of old age. Come, let's go farther in. The trees bearing fruit are inside!"
With that, the Moon Saint headed deeper into the valley.
Fang Chen and the others hurried after her.
As they ventured deeper into the valley, the peach trees grew leafier and seemed younger and younger.
At last, they reached the deepest part of the Ten-Thousand-Year Peach Garden. Here, Fang Chen saw even taller peach trees, some rising over a hundred zhang. Their bark was pitch-black, swallowing the light around them.
Fang Chen walked beneath the tree with the fullest canopy and looked up. It bore many peaches, each as large as a washbasin. Their tips had already turned red; they looked as though they would ripen before long.
"Those are Ten-Thousand-Year Peaches!"
The myna bird could not help marveling at the fruit.
The Moon Saint looked at the tree and told them, "This is the mother tree of our Peach Garden—the very first tree planted here. It's over a million years old now. The Token I used earlier was made from one of its dead branches! Its peaches take thirty thousand years to flower, thirty thousand years to bear fruit, and another thirty thousand years to ripen. If all goes well, the fruit you see now will still