Dusk was dim. Su Ming dragged two legs heavy as if filled with lead, chilled to the bone, as he shuffled back into the small courtyard behind the County School. The clatter of carts and horses on the official road faded away, and the courtyard wall stood like a blurred boundary, completely severing him from that eerie, ruined temple he’d been at during the day.

He pushed open the courtyard gate, then quickly shut it and set the latch. The wooden latch clicked softly, its sound startlingly clear in the silence. Only now, after taut nerves all day, did he allow himself a little loosening—like that latch could truly lock something away, lock in the temple’s piercing cold, its endless strangeness, and that damp, metallic stench of rot.

The old well in the yard steamed a faint, almost imperceptible white vapor. The surroundings were excessively quiet. This kind of quiet was different from the deathly stillness of a few hours earlier; it carried a human presence, a familiar safety—exactly the sanctuary Su Ming wanted most right now.

He walked to the well but didn’t rush to draw water. He simply stood there, breathing deep, cold, clear air. He seemed intent on exhaling every bit of the nauseating smell left in his lungs, replacing it with the breath of the living.

The oil lamp was lit, banishing the darkness inside. He carefully placed the few things he had risked his life to retrieve on the table. They lay there quietly, yet weighed heavy—these were hope, or at least what he had convinced himself were.

A palm-sized cloth pouch, riddled with cracks, gray and dull without any sheen.

A similarly dull jade slip, its surface webbed with cracks.

And three dingy gray stones, ordinary enough to be picked up by the roadside.

This was the “immortal fate” he had fought to carry out of the ruined temple.

Su Ming first picked up the cloth pouch. In his hand it felt like weathered wood centuries old, coarse enough to prick; tiny fibers came away under his fingertips. He tried to draw the faint thread of energy from his dantian and slowly direct it toward the pouch’s mouth.

But that strand of energy sank away like a cow into the sea; not the slightest response. The places on the pouch’s mouth that should have held rune seals were now only vague, dim carvings, utterly devoid of spiritual essence, as if time and some force had ground them smooth. He could even see a warped mark on it—something like a flame, something like drifting cloud—and it had long since lost its spark, leaving only a broken outline.

“Tsk.” Lin Yu’s voice sounded faintly, “Don’t waste your effort, disciple. This thing is just a lowest-grade storage pouch. Its spiritual power is exhausted, the seals ruined. It would leak even copper coins now, let alone spirit elixirs or artifacts.”

Su Ming’s mouth twitched. He set the “leaky purse” gently at the corner of the table; whatever remaining hope he had sank along with it.

He picked up one of the gray-white stones. It was cold and rough in his palm, lacking any jade-like warmth—more like a stubborn pebble plucked from a riverbed. He channeled his qi again, focusing his intent, trying to draw any trace of spiritual energy out of it.

The stone remained just a stone: no light, no heat. His qi wandered boredly through the meridians, then sulkily returned to his dantian, yielding nothing.

“Yep, standard worthless spirit stone. All the spiritual energy’s dispersed clean as a dish after a dog’s lick.” Lin Yu’s voice dripped disdain, as if looking at something filthy. “Disciple, this is even more useless than a roadside rock. At least a plain stone doesn’t lie to you. These three broken stones are utterly useless.”

Silently, Su Ming pushed the three stones to the table corner to join the ruined cloth pouch.

His gaze finally settled on the jade slip, cracked everywhere. When his fingertip touched it, it felt neither metal nor jade, slightly cool. The cracks varied in depth, silently speaking of its long, damaged history.

“Careful! Don’t touch it with that half-baked spiritual sense of yours!” Lin Yu’s voice suddenly turned grave, steeped in an unusual tension. “This thing’s as fragile as puff pastry now! If your spiritual sense grips it wrong, you could completely shatter whatever remnants of information are inside! Keep it safe, absolutely keep it safe! Wait until I recover some soul power, then we’ll nibble at this bone slowly!”

“Yes, Master.” Su Ming nodded respectfully, a chill running through him. He knew his master wasn’t joking about this. He found the softest scrap of fine cotton and wrapped the jade slip layer upon layer until he felt certain it was secure, then tucked it close to his chest.

Only after he finished did an overwhelming fatigue seep from every bone, as if a thousand pounds had been lifted. He sat on the bench at the table, watched the lamp flame flicker, hearing his own heavy, slow breaths, and did not move for a long time.

Disappointed?

Of course he was, to some extent. When those “immortal fortunes” he’d pinned hopes on turned into a pile of trash, the letdown was undeniable.

But heavier than disappointment was a dense gratitude. Gratitude that he was still alive, still sitting here feeling the lamp’s warmth and his tired body. Surviving the brink of death gave the word “alive” a deeper meaning, a new reverence.

“Disciple.” Lin Yu’s voice came again, with a trace of subtle concern.

“Present.” Su Ming answered softly.

“Scared?”

Su Ming was silent a moment. The decayed corpse in the temple, the eerie blue light, the ghastly grimace of a dying spirit flashed through his mind. He nodded slowly: “Scared.”

“Good. You should be.” Lin Yu’s tone recovered some vitality, heavy and grave. “Fear keeps you aware. Life is hard; cultivating immortality is harder. Remember the feeling today, remember that helplessness when your life wasn’t under your control. That will be your greatest motivation to train like your life depends on it. And it’ll be the alarm that keeps you clear-headed when tempted.”

Su Ming drew in a deep breath, like he intended to breathe the fear into himself and turn it into resolve—a silent force to push him forward. He rose and walked to the well. Tonight he would use the bone-piercing well water to wash the darkness out of his skin, to scrub away the blood and the terror, to wash away the discomfort of the day.

In the days that followed, everything outwardly returned to how it had been.

Su Ming still moved between the school and the library, reading, practicing calligraphy, meditating. He became more diligent and composed than ever, like a sponge greedily soaking up books. He knew that until his master figured out the jade slip, his job was to strengthen his foundations—scholarship and that faint sense of qi—both would be capital for his later cultivation.

Lin Yu inside the ring fell into a deep “closed-door” state. Most of the time he stayed unnaturally quiet; only when Su Ming called occasionally did a tired, irritated reply come—an obvious sign the jade slip had consumed too much soul power.

All of Lin Yu’s attention poured into that damaged jade slip.

He tried to read it directly, but every time his spiritual sense probed inside, it was assaulted by fragmented, scrambled, illogical technique information that left him dizzy. It felt like deciphering an alien manuscript that had been ripped to bits and haphazardly glued back together: each character was recognizable, but the sequence made no sense.

“Damn it! Which half-baked cultivator who graduated from some chicken-coop immortal academy wrote this gibberish? Nonsense! No beginning matches the end! Running the routine like this, if it doesn’t lead to deviating and going berserk, I’d be surprised!” Lin Yu’s soul trembled with anger inside the ring; he couldn’t help but curse.

After several failed brute-force attempts, he changed strategy. He began comparing the fragments with the Greenwood Longevity Art, trying to side-by-side the basic operational principles of both techniques in hopes of finding commonality or a way to patch things. It was a colossal task: reconstruct damaged knowledge from memory fragments and hunt for faint connections.

“Earth’s settling, wood’s generation… they seem opposed but actually generate each other? No, no… this still doesn’t match… damn it, which acupoint does this crucial instruction refer to? ‘Three cun below the dantian, qi goes to Xuanji’—what the hell is that?”

Lin Yu spun in circles inside the ring, his soul flickering, lost in immense confusion. He realized his greatest obstacle wasn’t the technique’s fragmentation so much as his lack of precise knowledge of this world’s cultivation system, especially the body’s meridians and acupoints.

Time slipped away in that bitter training and bitter pondering.

The north wind grew colder day by day. The old pagoda tree in the courtyard had shed all its leaves, its knotted branches swaying in the chill. Winter approached, the year-end smelled faintly in the air.

One day, Su Ming received a letter from home. It had been brought by his second brother, Su Yang. The letter said everything at home was fine; since the paper-making workshop put up the County School plaque, no one dared to bother them, and business was stable.

At the letter’s end, Su Yang’s tilted handwriting said that when Su Ming passed as a xiucai the family was too poor to celebrate properly, and they felt they had wronged him. Now that the family was better off, they intended to use the New Year to give him and Zhao Rui a proper xiucai banquet and urged him to return home early.

Warmth flooded Su Ming’s heart after reading it.

He and Zhao Rui asked the school for leave and set off for home.

The two left the County School together. On the road, Zhao Rui talked a lot, rattling off the New Year goods his family had prepared, what his mother had sewn for him—boasting about their wealth as if afraid Su Ming wouldn’t know his family’s status.

Su Ming mostly listened quietly, occasionally nodding in response, saying little.

Just as they reached the village entrance, the festive New Year energy hit them. Smoke rose from every rooftop, red spring couplets were pasted on doors, the air smelled of fried peanuts and meatballs. Children, wearing possibly not-new but clean cotton jackets, chased each other with sugared melon sticks and scattered little firecrackers, laughing and shouting without pause.

“Su Ming’s back! Zhao Rui’s back too!” an eagle-eyed villager called out, voice full of joy.

People quickly clustered around, greeting warmly and asking about the school. The villagers’ looks at Su Ming were especially admiring and envious, as if he carried a glow.

“The Su top scorer is back!”

“The xiucai has returned!”

Su Ming greeted them politely with a gentle smile. Zhao Rui puffed out his chest, savoring the attention, smiling broadly.

Back in his familiar fenced courtyard, Su Ming found things tidier than before; the pile of firewood in the corner was fuller—clearly his family had prepared things for his return.

“Ming’er!” Mrs. Chen spotted him first, cried out in joy, hurried out of the kitchen wiping her hands on her apron, grabbed his arm and inspected him from head to toe; her eyes reddened with worry and tenderness.

“You’re thinner—that’s from studying too much and not eating properly!” She felt him over with worry, her voice full of concern.

“No, mother, the food at the school is good. I eat two big bowls every meal.” Su Ming smiled to reassure her. His heart warmed; the home comfort instantly drove away the cold.

Su Shan came out from the house with a pipe in hand, his face still composed sternly, but his eyes paused on him and he gave a barely perceptible nod. “Hm, good you’re back.” Su Ming was used to that taciturn kind of care.

Eldest brother Su Feng and second brother Su Yang were in the yard arranging New Year goods. Seeing him home, Su Yang dropped what he was doing and strode over, slapping his shoulder hard with a grin: “Kid! Finally back! Mother and father mention you every day!”

Su Feng smiled in his simple way, his eyes bright with brotherly joy.

Wang Chuntao poked her head out of the kitchen and called out in a loud voice: “Young master’s back? Perfect timing! We’ll stew big bones tonight! Your mother’s been wanting to make you something nourishing! Give you a proper warming up!”

That familiar, earthy clamor of care made the tension he’d held for months dissolve. Home’s warmth—so tangible and precious—was the harbor he would always long for.

Dinner that night was noticeably more abundant than previous years: meat and even a small pot of wine. Mrs. Chen kept dishing for him, chattering about village news and the paper workshop’s improvements; with the family’s increased comfort, they wanted to celebrate properly and make up for the xiucai feast he’d missed.

“You and Zhao Rui will be celebrated together. Your Uncle Zhao has arranged it, right in front of the ancestral hall; we’ll invite the whole village!” Su Shan took a sip of wine, then set his cup down with a tone that left no argument. “Our family isn’t short on money now. We must put on the proper face, can’t let people look down on us.”

Su Ming felt his family’s newfound financial ease straighten his parents’ backs and give them more confidence in their words.

The make-up xiucai banquet was grand indeed. In the open ground before the ancestral hall, over a dozen large tables were set; nearly the whole village came. The air smelled of roasted meat and wine, voices rose in chaotic cheer; the atmosphere was exuberant.

Village Chief Zhao Dequan, cheeks flushed, wearing a neat satin jacket, held a wine cup and moved among the tables with a loud voice—clearly the evening’s center, basking in the adulation.

“Fellow villagers, today is a joyous day for Su Family Village! Two of our own have become literary stars at once! Come, let us drink!”

The villagers roared approval, clinking cups amid the warm atmosphere.

Su Ming and Zhao Rui stood side by side as the guests paid their respects and offered congratulatory toasts.

Zhao Rui wore a brand-new brocade robe and a smug grin. He drank in the attention. But as more and more praise lavished on Su Ming, the hand holding his cup tightened involuntarily.

“Still, the Su top scorer is impressive! That’s someone from the county!”

“Yes, yes. Su top scorer will surely become a provincial graduate, then a jinshi, a high official!”

“Su family, your ancestral grave must be smoking green—that’s how you raise such a fine son!”

Su Ming smiled modestly, returning each greeting with calm courtesy.

Zhao Rui’s smile stiffened. He leaned toward Su Ming and whispered, “Look at them, so… vulgar.” Su Ming glanced at him but said nothing.

Instead he tapped cups lightly with Zhao Rui and said softly, “Everyone’s goodwill is genuine—simple, kind.” Then he drained his cup.

In the ring, Lin Yu’s bored voice chimed in with a teasing tone, “Tsk tsk, disciple, your little friend’s heart is about as narrow as a needle’s eye. This banquet isn’t about food—it’s about vinegar and sourness. Human jealousy and vanity are really harder to see through than many training obstacles. Take heed.”

Su Ming replied inwardly, “Master, aren’t you studying the technique?”

“Tired of studying, so I’m airing out a bit and catching the human comedy,” Lin Yu said mockingly. “Tsk, that roasted chicken looks good. It’s a pity—I can smell it but cannot eat; that’s the cruellest torture under heaven.”

Suppressing a smile, Su Ming lifted his cup and finished it in one swallow for a table of villagers offering toasts.

Midway through the banquet, a cloth shop owner who had come from the town to congratulate them brought his cup to Zhao Dequan and loudly praised him: “Village Chief Zhao, congratulations! The paper from your Su Family Village in our Qingshi Town is—” He thumped his thumb up, grinning broadly, “—delicate and even. As for price… it’s a bit bolder than the paper from the south! Makes people love and hate it in equal measure! Haha!”

Zhao Dequan kept his smile and laughed skillfully: “Shopkeeper Liu, you overpraise, you overpraise! All thanks to the County School, and thanks to everyone! Small profits with big sales, small profits with big sales!” He deftly steered the conversation elsewhere, yet Su Ming noted the fleeting glint that passed through his eyes.

The raucous banquet didn’t wind down until the moon climbed high, ending amid scattered plates and the guests’ warm intoxication.

A few days after the New Year, Su Ming and Zhao Rui rode the ox cart back to the County School.

The small courtyard was as quiet as ever; the pagoda tree’s branches swayed softly in the cold breeze, making a rustling sound.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep