Immortality Starts With Face

Lin Furen's (that is a title translating roughly to Madam Lin or Lady of Lin – her maiden name is actually Chen Shu-Lian, which translates to "Virtuous Lotus")* POV

The tropical sun was a tyrant, beating down on my shoulders as I knelt in the soil. The scent of Ironbone Grass, sharp and metallic, filled my nostrils, a familiar perfume that spoke of our family's livelihood, of long days and aching backs that translated into survival.

My fingers, though no longer delicate as a maiden's, the skin calloused and stained with earth, moved with an expert swiftness born of thirty years' practice, weeding around the base of the tough, wire-like stalks. This was surprisingly delicate work, not to be trusted to just anyone – training or no. Each plant was incredibly precious, another handful of silver coins in the coffer that kept our estate running.

That paid the wages of the field hands and the guards who walked the perimeter walls.

That bought the pretty silk dresses for my little Mei.

I was Lin Furen, wife of the head of the Lin household, a title that carried weight in our small circle – but here, in the dirt, under the uncaring sky, I was, once again, just Shu-Lian: a simple gardener tending to her crop.

A sigh escaped my lips, mingling with the humid, heavy air.

I thought of my children, the three pillars of my heart.

My son, Jie – so full of fire and frustration, his ambition a constant, simmering pot of stew threatening to boil over into bitterness. He felt trapped by this land, by his own modest talent, and I watched with sadness how that bitterness was starting to curdle the innate sweetness of his youth. He saw only the nearly-insurmountable wall – but not the strength it took to stand before it each day.

And my little Mei – my mortal flower, so full of laughter and effortless joy, blessedly untouched by the heavy burdens of Qi and the desperate, all-consuming climb for power. I prayed daily to the ancestors that her spirit would never be dimmed by the ambitions that so tormented the rest of us.

And then, there was Ruolan.

My eldest.

My pride and my constant, aching worry.

Two years.

Two long years since she had followed the young, disgraced Jiang Master to that gods-forsaken latrine of Qingshan Town.

It was the correct path, of course. The only path. We all knew it.

The Jiang family is our patron, and her service is the only way she could acquire the resources to truly advance, to become the cultivator our family had dreamed of producing for over four generations.

She remains our best and only hope, a hope we had placed squarely upon her slender shoulders.

But, by all the blessed ancestral spirits… Qingshan? A poor, sweaty, provincial backwater known mostly for its nearby foul swamps, hostile Qi, and spirit beast attacks?

A land of even worse quality than ours?

Every day I burned incense and prayed for her safety, and every night – when the house was quiet – I missed her gentle presence, her steady calm, her quiet laughter that used to fill these halls. The thought of her, so far away in such a harsh, desolate place, was a constant, dull ache deep in my heart; a mother's phantom pain for a child far from home.

A shadow fell over me, sudden and vast, plunging my small patch of earth into an unnatural twilight.

I looked up, shielding my eyes with a dirt-stained hand, expecting a passing cloud… but the sky was a brilliant, unforgiving blue, a flawless cerulean canvas. And the source of the shadow was moving.

Growing.

Resolving itself.

My heart hammered against my ribs, a frantic bird trapped in a cage.

A flying spirit beast?

Some rogue demonic bird from the Frontier, come to hunt for easy food?

It was an uncommon danger this close to the Regional Capital… but, unfortunately, far from an unprecedented one.

I scrambled to my feet, my mind racing through the alarm protocols my husband had drilled into all of us, my hand reaching for the signal talisman at my waist, the smooth, cool jade a small comfort against my rising panic.

And then I saw it fully – and the fear of being eaten alive by a predator was replaced by a kind of stunned, breathless wonder that bordered on terror.

For it was no mere beast I was seeing.

It was a flying ship, descending from the heavens like a shiny shard of polished night sky!

My breath caught in my throat, a knot of disbelief tightening in my chest. I had seen the Jiang family's flying barges before, of course—great, sturdy, slow-moving things that lumbered through the sky like celestial oxen, loud and unapologetically powerful, designed to carry the most goods at the least possible cost.

Whatever this thing was, however, it was nothing like them.

This was sleek, beautiful, and utterly unfamiliar, shaped similarly to a bird of prey in a dive or the head of a perfectly crafted arrow, cutting through the air with a silent, predatory grace that spoke of a power I could not comprehend.

This was no cargo ship.

It was a personal flying transport – one that radiated an aura of wealth so profound, it could only belong to someone of a very high rank. Someone powerful, and not only in terms of wealth alone.

I stared, my mouth agape, my mind refusing to process what my eyes were seeing.

Was the heat of the sun finally addling my wits?

I blinked: once, twice, the harsh light making my eyes water.

But it was still there, growing ever larger in my field of view while its shadow shrank. From the corner of my eye, I saw the other workers in the fields, their tools falling from nerveless fingers, their faces growing pale with a mixture of awe and raw fear as they pointed at the sky.

The vessel settled down with a whisper-soft sigh in a cleared field near our main compound, a sound so gentle it belied its intimidating presence. By the time I had gathered my wits and rushed to the courtyard, my husband Tao was already there, his face a mask of confusion and shock, his hand resting on the hilt of the sword at his side -- for all the good such a primitive weapon would do us in this situation.

Nearly the entire household, from the cooks to the guards, had assembled, drawn by the impossible sight, their frightened whispers a low hum in the sudden silence.

The ramp lowered, a smooth, silent extension of dark, slightly luminescent spirit wood that looked like it probably cost more than our entire estate.

My heart pounded a frantic rhythm against my ribs, each beat a question. Just who was this? What could they possibly want with our humble family?

The first person to emerge was a young woman in the simple, grey attire of a senior servant, her posture immaculate, her face calm and beautiful, radiating a quiet power.

And my breath hitched.

The rest of the world seemed to fade away, the sounds of the wind and the frightened whispers of our servants dissolving into a dull roar in my ears.

It was her!

My daughter.

My Ruolan!

"Ruolan," I breathed, the name a prayer on my lips, relief so potent it made my knees weak.

A wave of relieved murmurs went through our assembled household as they recognized her. But their relief turned back to tense awe as she was soon followed by a young man of extraordinary presence. I recognized him instantly, though he was transformed from when I saw him last.

Young Master Jiang Li.

The sickly, pale youth I had glimpsed from a distance years ago was gone… and this young man that had replaced him? His complexion was flawless, he was taller, his shoulders broader, and he moved with a languid, confident, almost predatory grace that was – to be honest – utterly captivating to behold.

But it was his eyes that held me—deep, filled with a calm, observant intelligence that seemed to see right through you, to weigh your soul in a single glance.

It seems that he was the Master of the ship, and my daughter – my Ruolan – stood by his side, a position of honor and peril.

Following the Young Master were two others, who seemed even more dangerous: a woman whose entire being screamed 'warrior,' a dangerous black spear strapped to her back that seemed to pull at the very light around it, and another man whose fine robes and self-important bearing marked him immediately as a person of high status.

I recognized the insignia of Qingshan Town upon his sash.

The Qingshan City Lord himself?! Here?

What could these people possibly want with us?

The formality of the moment, the gaping awe of our servants, was shattered as I rushed forward, heedless of decorum. I clasped Ruolan's hands into my own, my touch a desperate, loving caress, checking her for any signs of hardship, for thinness in her face or weariness in her eyes.

"Are you well?" I whispered, my voice thick.

"I am well, Mother," she said, her voice rich with an emotion that mirrored my own.

Her hands were strong and steady in mine, and her skin glowed with a healthy, vibrant energy that I could feel humming against my touch.

She was more than "well."

She was healthy. Happy.

Powerful.

Little Lin Mei, my sweet summer child, practically launched herself past me and into her older sister's arms, hugging her tightly around the waist.

"Jiějie! You came back! I missed you!"

Ruolan crouched down, burying her face in Mei's hair, her composure finally breaking for a moment as she held her little sister – and she was just my daughter again, not the attendant of a powerful Young Master.

Lin Tao, my husband, maintained his dignity with a visible effort, though his eyes were suspiciously bright as he looked upon our reunited daughter. He was a man in his late middle years, his posture strong and upright from a lifetime of hard work, but his careworn eyes betrayed the ceaseless weight of our family's eighty-year ambition.

"Ruolan, daughter" he said, his voice thick with emotion. "Welcome home."

He then turned to the Young Master, his composure reasserting itself as he performed a deep, formal bow from the waist.

"Lord Zhang. Young Master Jiang. Honored guests. Our humble home is greatly honored by your presence."

Our son, Lin Jie, stood behind him, a tall, wiry youth of seventeen whose restless energy was barely contained. His face was a mask of sullen pride as he performed the requisite bow, but his eyes, dark and stormy, darted between his radiant sister and her powerful Master, alight with a complex fire of envy, resentment, and a desperate, gnawing ambition.

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He had frequently lamented the fact that his talent wasn't as good as his Sister's. That he was passed over by the Jiang family. That he was never able to receive the cultivation resources our Ruolan had so obviously enjoyed.

The perimeter of the flying ship was promptly secured by the guards, and our esteemed guests were escorted into the main hall for tea.

It was a fine hall, well-decorated with our family's mortal wealth: hand-woven silk hangings depicting pastoral scenes, polished darkwood furniture from the eastern trade routes, well-made pottery in elegant, simple designs.

…But, under the gaze of these powerful cultivators, I felt only a familiar pang of shame rather than pride. My eyes strayed to the formal display shelf where our proudest possession rested on a crimson silk cushion.

A single, low-grade spirit stone.

It was completely milky-white, almost fully depleted of its spiritual energy, a mere husk of what it had once been.

It had been a gift from Madam Jiang to my husband's grandfather more than forty years ago. We had tried to use the power within in spirit crop experiments, then displayed it: polishing that husk of a rock until it shone, a pathetic symbol of our family's desperate reach for a world that seemed to ever remain just beyond our grasp.

After the tea ceremony, my husband, as was customary, offered a tour of the compound and surrounding lands.

He led our honored guests first through the sprawling fields of martial herbs: our cash crops. He spoke with a craftsman's pride of the Ironbone Grass and the Tiger-Stripe Fungus, of their robust yields and the contracts we held with the merchant caravans that plied the great trade routes. This was his success, his domain, the fruit of his mortal labors, and for a moment, as he explained the finer points of crop rotation and pest control, I saw the proud, confident man I had married.

Then, he led them to the walled-off garden area, the air within thick with the bitter scent of failure.

Our would-be spirit herb garden.

Our "Garden of Lost Hope."

Our great shame, he murmured, his earlier pride vanishing like mist, his shoulders slumping as if under a physical weight. He pointed to the row of worn-out, enchanted farming tools leaning against a wall, the substandard spirit runes on their metal surfaces faded and weak, the metal itself thin from countless sharpenings. With a heavy sigh, he gestured to a single, sickly stalk of the famous Azure Cloud Spirit Rice, its leaves yellowed and drooping, clinging precariously to life in a patch of imported, expensive – and, unfortunately, utterly useless – spirit soil.

"This," he said, his voice strained with the effort of holding back his despair, his words laced with the pride of a man celebrating a meager victory in a losing war, "is the only plant we managed to keep alive for a full season this year. The Frontier's Breath… the Qi in this region is simply too chaotic, too hostile. It rejects most common forms of spiritual plant life – at least, those spirit plants that have been domesticated and are subject to conventional farming practices."

I watched the Young Master as he knelt, picking up a pinch of the soil, letting it run through his fingers. His expression was unreadable, his deep eyes taking in every detail of our failure without judgment, only a quiet, unnerving observation.

+++

Later that evening, a formal dinner was held to honor our guests.

My hands trembled slightly as I oversaw the final plating arrangements with a nervous fluttering in my stomach that had nothing to do with hunger.

By rights, I should have been proud of the food being served.

The roasted fowl glistened with savory juices: the skin a perfect, crispy brown.

The steamed river fish was fragrant with fresh ginger and herbs from my own garden.

A dozen vibrant vegetable dishes, each prepared with meticulous care, adorned the table.

Even expensive spices, like salt and pepper, were available as seasonings!

It was a feast fit for a minor noble, a testament to our mortal prosperity.

But, as our esteemed guests took their seats, as I saw the polite, almost clinical appreciation in their eyes, a hot flush of shame washed over me.

To them, these powerful beings who probably no longer even needed to eat, who subsisted on the very essence of the world, this was merely rustic fare. It looked wholesome, yes; it was even well-prepared; but… it was conspicuously devoid of the very spiritual energy that truly sustained them.

There was no fragrant spirit beast meat whose aroma alone could invigorate one's blood.

There were no bowls of steaming spirit rice that could replenish a cultivator's energy.

No jade cups of warming spirit wine to soothe the meridians and aid in comprehension of the Dao.

This was the very best we could offer… and it was an utter failure: a glaring, undeniable testament to our poverty in the currency that truly mattered in this world.

The meal began in a state of tense, formal politeness.

I watched my children, my heart a tangle of emotions. My little Mei, who had insisted on sitting beside Ruolan, was a bundle of unrestrained energy. My heart practically leaped into my throat when she, with all the fearless curiosity of a twelve-year-old, turned her bright eyes to the Young Master himself.

"Young Master Jiang," she chirped, her voice clear as a bell in the quiet hall, "is your flying boat made of moonlight? Because it's shiny and doesn't make any noise!"

"Mei!" I hissed, my hand starting to rise to pull her back, to silence her before her impertinence could draw the legendary wrath of a cultivator lord. The rumors about Young Master Jiang spoke of a cold, arrogant, and easily provoked young man.

For someone like that to be pestered by a mere mortal child…

But, before my apology could even form, the Young Master turned his head to my daughter… and he wasn't angry. He wasn't even irritated! A faint, almost imperceptible, but – apparently – genuine smile touched the corners of his lips.

"Something like that," he said, his voice surprisingly gentle. "It runs on powdered light, you could say."

Little Mei gasped in delight.

"Wow! And did you fight a giant serpent, too? Ruolan-jiejie said she saw it! Was it really bigger than our house?"

I froze, my blood turning to ice.

My husband shot me a panicked look.

But the Young Master simply took a slow sip of his tea, still smiling in indulging amusement.

"Oh, it was indeed quite large," he admitted calmly. "But I didn't need to fight it. It was actually very nice and very well-behaved. Maybe you can even see it sometime! You see…"

He answered every one of her childish, improbable questions with that same unnerving patience, that same gentle tone. He spoke to her not as an annoyance, but as an equal, a curious mind to be indulged.

And I watched, stunned into silence, my prepared apologies dying on my lips.

Just who was this man?

This was not the arrogant monster of the rumors.

This was not a cold, volatile drunk of a master who was ready for a confrontation at any perceived slight.

Ruolan had told me the truth… he really was a good man.

And that realization – somehow – was even more frightening than if he had been a tyrant. For, in this brutal world of ours, a tyrant's actions are almost always self-centered – and therefore predictable.

The intentions of a seemingly kind man, on the other hand, are often a dangerous mystery too deep to contemplate.

+++

After the meal, when the servants had cleared away the last of the dishes and only the core family and the Young Master's retinue remained, his demeanor shifted.

The gentle indulgence he had shown my daughter vanished, replaced by a quiet, focused intensity that seemed to suck the very warmth from the room.

"Honored Lin, Lin Furen," he began, his tone now serious, drawing all eyes to him.

"You have my thanks; your hospitality has been most gracious. Now, if I may, I would like to discuss a matter of business. A proposition of some import for the future of the Lin family."

My heart began to pound again, a slow, heavy drumbeat of premonition. I felt my husband Tao's hand find mine under the table, his grip like iron.

The Young Master let the silence settle, then laid out his proposal, his voice calm and even.

"I wish for the Lin family to relocate its entire enterprise — all of your workshops, your expertise, your people — to my domain in Qingshan Town, where you shall pioneer a new form of subterranean agriculture."

The words struck me like a physical blow. It was as if a bucket of ice water had been thrown over me – so cold and shocking I couldn't breathe.

Qingshan.

He was commanding us to march our family – our entire eighty-year legacy – into that barren grave. It was a sentence of death, delivered with the casual air of ordering more tea.

My husband's face went pale with shock.

"Y-Y-Young Master," he stammered, his voice cracking as he half-rose from his seat before collapsing back into a deep bow, his forehead nearly touching the polished wood of the table.

"F-Forgive this humble servant's insolence, but… Qingshan? The Qi there is poison to spirit plants! The soil is chaotic! The spirit beast threat beyond the walls is at least ten times what it is here! W-With the greatest respect, you ask us to move from this difficult land to one that is truly cursed. We would be utterly ruined within a single season!"

I clutched my husband's arm, my own body trembling, my mind screaming in panicked agreement.

But, before the Young Master could speak, a new voice cut in, sharp and desperate.

"Father, you should at least hear him out!"

It was my son, Jie, his sullen silence broken, his eyes burning with a feverish light, the light of a drowning man seeing a piece of driftwood.

"What future do we have here? Another eighty years of failure? Of watching our best efforts wither and die? Any alternative to this slow doom is worth exploring!"

"Jie!?" Tao snapped, his face flushing with equal parts anger, dismay, and deep shame at our son's public outburst… but the damage had been done.

Then, Ruolan's chair scraped against the stone floor as she stood, the sound sharp and jarring in the tense hall. Her hands were clenched into white-knuckled fists at her sides, her face alight with an almost fanatical conviction that bordered on madness.

"Father, Mother," she began, her voice trembling not with fear, but with a passionate, pleading frustration, as if she were trying to describe the color of the sky to a man born blind. "Listen to the Young Master. Let me tell you of what I saw!"

Her eyes, wide and earnest, sought mine.

"He is not speaking of farming upon the surface, of the cursed earth we know! There is a world beneath Qingshan, a world beneath the world… It is a place where the rules are different…"

Her words – each more fanciful and unbelievable than the last – began to tumble out in a desperate, breathless, increasingly incoherent rush, her hands gesturing wildly as if to paint the impossible scene in the air before us.

"…. and then, we fell… in that silent red-metal contraption, at least nine li into the earth – faster than a diving hawk, but with no wind, no sound, only the darkness pressing in until I thought my heart would stop! And then… then the light came…"

She took a ragged breath, her gaze becoming distant, her mind clearly replaying the memory.

"A sky without a sun, Mother. A ceiling so high it was lost in a shimmering mist, all of it glowing with a soft, gentle light, like a hundred gentle dawns, everywhere, at once—purple and indigo and emerald green. The air… it didn't have that bite, that Frontier's Breath that sours everything here. It was so pure! It smelled of clean, ancient earth and sweet, untainted Qi that made my very soul weep with relief just by breathing it in!"

Her voice rose in pitch, filled with the memory of overwhelming wonder.

"And there were spirit stones, Father – and not just spirit stones! The walls were glittering with all kinds of spirit ores! And… and there were veins of pure elemental jade, thicker than my body, twisting all through the rock like rivers of fire and ice! And…and huge pools of spiritual water shimmering like liquid light, all over the ground! It is a magical realm! A treasure beyond your wildest dreams!"

She stepped forward, her eyes pleading with us to understand.

"And that was not the end of it! We went deeper, into a hidden grotto – one of many, no doubt – it was a cavern of perfect, glowing azure jade where the very air was a cold that would have frozen us all solid if we didn't take special pills beforehand. There was a pond that was home to Foundation Establishment Frost Serpents…"

She shuddered, a tremor of remembered terror and awe running through her.

"Father, one of them came out to greet us. Its head was larger than this house! Its eyes were like glowing stars! I swear I saw it! I saw it all! Master fed it from his own hand as if it were a pet!"

My heart broke as she spoke.

I looked at Tao, and I saw my own terror reflected in his eyes.

They had broken her.

This Jiang Li, with his fancy flying ships and his gentle lies to little girls, had driven my sensible, steady Ruolan mad with his beautiful, dangerous fantasies!

Seeing our pained expressions, the Young Master intervened.

He turned his calm, unreadable gaze to the City Lord.

"Your Lordship," he said, his voice cutting through the tense, emotional atmosphere.

"You are a pragmatic man, a leader of a city and dutiful servant of the Emperor. If I may impose… could you please describe for our esteemed hosts what you witnessed in the cavern beneath Qingshan?"

Lord Zhang Wei, who had been listening with a grim, serious expression, straightened up. He cleared his throat, his gaze steady and direct.

"Lin Furen," he began, addressing me first with a deep respect that was almost painful, "Elder Lin. I know how all of this must sound. Like a tale from a fanciful storyteller who's had a few too many cups of cheap rice wine. But, I swear upon my honor as a City Lord and a Foundation Establishment cultivator that every word your daughter has spoken is the unvarnished truth. Although…"

He paused contemplatively.

"…she may have, perhaps, told that story a little more… delicately. But yes. I, too, saw that Frost Serpent. I, too, had seen the expansive cavern, with its conspicuous deposits of spirit stones and Heavens-only-know what else. I, too, had felt the pure, calm, unpoisoned qi within. I, too, had experienced the cold aura of the secret grotto that could freeze a man's soul. Such a place… it indeed exists."

The City Lord's confident, detailed confirmation was the blow that shattered my reality.

The words struck me with a physical force, driving the air from my lungs for the second time.

It wasn't my daughter's sanity that was the problem.

It was that the entire world, my entire understanding of what was possible, was not as I knew it to be.

My husband, too, sagged beside me, his face slack with disbelief.

We didn't know what to do.

With our family reeling, pale and silent with shock, the Young Master placed a storage ring onto the polished wooden table between us. Its dark, unassuming surface seemed utterly ordinary in the lamplight.

The silence was absolute, so profound I could hear the frantic, panicked beating of my own heart.

He let us stare at it for a long moment before he spoke, his voice low but carrying an undeniable weight that filled the hall, pressing down on us.

"Three hundred thousand taels of silver. Fifty thousand taels of gold. And… one thousand mid-grade spirit stones."

I looked directly at my husband, whose jaw had dropped, his eyes wide with incomprehension.

"Do not misunderstand me. This is no gift."

He stated calmly, letting the words land like thunderstones.

"It is the first investment of resources from the place I have described, to help fund and expand the enterprise that we will all build there. Together."

And, just like that, we no longer had a choice.

Both my husband and I had rudimentary spirit roots, and had cultivated to Stage 1 of Qi Gathering. We were able to see inside the ring, to access its contents.

The fortune before us was a tangible fact.

A physical force.

A miracle we couldn't comprehend.

A thousand mid-grade spirit stones.

A thousand mid-grade spirit stones!

The numbers were an absurdity. Not even a wildest fever dream could be this insane!

This was a fortune that could found a minor sect.

Buy fleets of mundane cargo ships – or, likely, one of those slow flying barges the Jiangs use for spirit ore transport.

Hire a private army.

And Young Master Jiang called it a "first investment?"

My poor husband, Tao, sank back into his chair, a physical shudder running through him, utterly overwhelmed.

I clutched his arm, my mind a blank slate of terror and awe.

And my son… my son Jie stared at the simple, dark ring on the table with a feverish, almost manic gleam in his eyes: his knuckles white where he gripped the edge of the table, his whole body trembling with a barely suppressed, manic excitement.

Our worldview had been forcibly, irrevocably rewritten. Our choice had been made for us by the sheer fortune upon that table. By wealth that defied imagination. Regardless of what we thought of the matter, we were now bound – body and soul – to my daughter's impossible master and his impossible future.

May the Heavens have mercy upon our souls.