It is believed that his long life came from picking and eating peaches at the stream of Seo Wang-mo (서왕모, 西王母), the goddess of immortality. For this, he became blessed with unnaturally long life. Some say, however, that his living 3,000 lifetimes was an exaggeration caused by the slip of a brushstroke and that he may have actually only lived 30 lifetimes. At one point, the Chinese characters for thirty (三十) may have accidentally come to be read as three thousand (三千), by someone adding one extra stroke to the top of ten.