Immortality Starts With Face

After the elders finally departed, their minds buzzing with new prospects and their bodies thrumming with new power, I retired for the night.

But sleep did not come easily.

My mind was too active, the events of the day replaying themselves. The air in my opulent suite felt stale, confining. I needed a walk.

I needed space.

I stepped out onto the private balcony. The night was cool and clear, the air of the Golden Mandate Quarter clean and sweet with the scent of night-blooming spirit flowers, a delicate perfume that seemed to wash away the day's fatigue. Above me, a full, silver moon hung in a sky of deepest indigo, a celestial lantern amidst a glittering, diamond-like dust of stars so dense and brilliant they seemed almost close enough to touch.

The world slowed down in my perception as I stepped over the polished stone railing and willed my Xue Qi to respond. A platform of nearly invisible, solidified vital energy formed beneath my feet — firm as stone, but lasting only for half a second.

But half a second felt like an eternity to me now.

I boldly pushed off — a silent, weightless leap into the cool night air. The sensation was exhilarating, a feeling of absolute freedom. As the first platform dissolved into nothingness, another formed precisely where my foot would land.

Then, another after that.

I ascended in a series of nearly silent, impossibly rapid bounds, climbing a kind of invisible staircase of solidified air, the wind whispering secrets past my ears, the world falling away below.

I rose high above the swooping, tiled rooftops of the Jiang estate, until the entire city block of our compound was laid out beneath me like a master architect's mock-up table.

From this vantage point, my senses, both physical and spiritual, opened up to a world of breathtaking beauty — and complexity. My enhanced eyes saw not just darkness and light, but a tapestry of profound detail, rendered in rich and vivid colors despite the dim light. My vision was far, far better than that of any mundane Eagle or Owl.

From up here, I could see everything.

The individual, dew-kissed petals of the night-blooming lotuses in the central pond.

The golden scales of the slumbering carp just beneath the surface.

The precise, geometric patterns of the raked sand in the meditation gardens.

The soft, golden light spilling from the windows of the main hall, where the Elders and my parents were — most likely — still discussing the day's earth-shattering events.

But it was my other sense, the one informed by the vast, impossible knowledge of a Grade 9 Talisman Grandmaster, that revealed the truelandscape.

I could readily perceive the flows of Qi.

The entire Jiang compound was encased in a shimmering, multi-layered dome of defensive formations, a lattice of pale-blue energy that was utterly invisible to the naked eye. I could clearly see the nodes where the energy was strongest — the faint, almost imperceptible seams where different arrays were woven together. The Qi of the Golden Mandate Quarter itself was a calm, deep, orderly pool of shimmering gold and white light against my senses; a stark contrast to the chaotic, stormy sea of grey, angry red, and poisonous green I could feel on the distant horizon—the untamed Frontier's Breath, ever-pervasive in this region.

I soared higher still, a silent phantom in the night sky, admiring the moon and the slow, majestic drift of the white clouds, which seemed to glow with a soft, ethereal silver light where they caught the moonbeams. The entirety of Yuhang City spread out beneath me, a living constellation against the dark earth. The Golden Mandate Quarter was a sea of pure, steady light from the thousands of spirit-stone powered lamps that illuminated its opulent palaces and gardens, a beacon of power in the vast darkness of the province…

And it was from this serene, detached height — a god's-eye view of my family's home town — that I saw him.

Jiang Feng's personal training courtyard was a scene of desolate destruction under the stark, silvery light of the full moon. The heavy training dummies, woven from iron-thread reeds and stuffed with hardened sand, were smashed to splinters, their contents spilled across the packed earth like pale, gritty entrails. Ornamental boulders, placed with careful aesthetic consideration, were shattered into jagged shards, their smooth surfaces now a ruin of sharp angles. Deep gouges, carved by a potent spirit blade swung with more fury than skill, scarred the ground like angry wounds.

He was standing there, panting and gasping amidst the wreckage, holding one of the lower mid-grade spiritual swords from the ring I had gifted to him (an Earth Element-aligned one, I noted absently, matching his Spirit Root's affinity). He seemed to be visibly trembling — not from cold, of course, but with a violent, suppressed storm of internal rage, frustration, and a volatile mix of other unnamable emotions.

…

I decided it was time for a talk.

Still floating up there in mid-air from pushing off one of the platforms, seemingly suspended between moments, I used a perfected Sacred Void Step: a large upgrade over the purely-physical Shadowless Step first introduced during the Qingshan exhibition match, and a technique that now felt as natural as breathing.

I did not move downwards through the air.

Instead, I simply… ceased to exist in one place and began to exist in another.

I reappeared silently at the edge of the moonlit courtyard, leaning casually against the trunk of a spirit-plum tree, the shadows outlining my silhouette in a suitably dramatic fashion.

I let the silence stretch for a long moment — a silence broken only by my brother's ragged, hitching breaths. Then I spoke, my voice quiet but cutting easily through the still night air.

"Those poor, poor training dummies! What did they ever do to you to deserve such vehement hatred?"

Feng flinched as if struck, whirling around, his sword coming up in a defensive posture. His face was pale in the moonlight, his eyes wide and wild.

"You!" he hissed out. He looked around, his gaze frantic, trying to understand how I had gotten so close without him noticing.

Yet, he wasn't off balance for long. "I am surprised you even know the way to a training field, big brother! I would have thought you'd be making yourself more at home in the city's wine dens and whorehouses by now."

It was a weak jab, a ghost of his old arrogance, the words lacking their usual venom. He seemed to realize it too, his expression shifting from anger to a kind of… semi-resigned unease.

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"I see," I nodded, while stroking my non-existent beard in what I thought was a rather sage-like manner.

"But tell me, little brother… while you were out here diligently cultivating and practicing your forms, and while I was… enjoying myself in those wine dens and brothels for the last several years… why is it that, now that we have finally been reunited, you are the one who is afraid?"

My words struck him like a physical blow.

"Afraid? Of you? I'm not afraid of you!" he spat, though the tremor in his hands betrayed the lie. "You... you're different, I'll give you that much! The servants... they say you went and found some hidden Master in Qingshan. That your cultivation has finally advanced after years of stagnation. But so what? Some wandering expert took pity on the family trash and — what, gave you a few pills? taught you a trick or two? — and now, you suddenly think you can be arrogant in front of me? That you're somehow better than me?" He was all but shouting into the night now, his voice cracking.

"Perhaps." I replied enigmatically, pushing myself off the tree and calmly taking a slow step into the moonlight. "I see that you have recently broken through to Stage 7, little bro. Why don't you show me just how much you've grown?"

That finally tipped him over the edge.

He roared, a sound of pure, cathartic rage, and attacked. His new sword, a fine mid-grade artifact, flashed in the moonlight as he unleashed a furious assault.

To do my brother justice, the assault was not the work of a clumsy amateur. Far from it! My System-downloaded knowledge base made me recognize the form he was using instantly—it was the Swift River Sword Style of the renowned Sword Master Yan, the most respected (and expensive) weapons tutor in all of Yuhang City. Father must have parted with a small fortune for him to teach young Feng personally!

I had to admit that the technique was excellent for his age. His footwork was fairly precise, his thrusts fast and fluid, and he wove a series of deceptive angles designed to confuse and overwhelm an opponent.

Against any other Qi Gathering-level cultivator in the City, even one near the Peak, this would have been a potentially deadly assault that had to be taken seriously.

But to my current eyes? It was like watching a toddler splash in a puddle.

Every attempt at a 'deceptive' angle was a glaringly obvious telegraph. Every 'fast' thrust moved with the ponderous speed of a crawling snail. The so-called 'flow' of his technique was full of openings, a thousand moments where a skilled enough opponent could intervene — and end this attack before his next breath.

I sighed, shaking my head in half-feigned disappointment. Placing one hand behind my back, I calmly stepped into his attack range.

The fight, if one could call it that, was a one-sided spar where I was in complete, almost bored, control. I mostly dodged, and occasionally deflected Feng's furious slashes with a single, outstretched finger, the impacts — dull thuds of heavily-enchanted Earth Qi metal against flesh that should have shaken my very bones — feeling pleasantly tingly on my Diamond Body.

I sidestepped his telegraphed lunges with an almost lazy grace, occasionally offering quiet pointers as if instructing a new disciple.

"Your footwork is sloppy."

"You are over-committing here."

"Mind your balance!"

"Lead with your Intent, not your anger!"

As we moved, as his shouts of increasingly impotent rage echoed in the ruined courtyard, flashes of the original Jiang Li's memories surfaced in my mind, triggered by familiar sights and sounds.

A younger Feng, perhaps eleven years old, deliberately trips Li in a corridor. A precious Supreme-Grade Qi Gathering Pill, a gift from mother, skitters across the polished floor. Feng laughs, a high, cruel sound, as the older — but far weaker — Li scrambles on his hands and knees to retrieve the pill from the dust, his face burning with shame.

I absently parried a downward slash with the back of my hand, the force of the blow barely registering. A gnat striking a mountain.

Feng, thirteen years old now, having just achieved a breakthrough to the Fifth level, showing off to the other clan children in this very courtyard. He is "trading pointers" with the fifteen-year-old Li, easily overpowering his older, less talented brother; repeatedly pushing him into the dirt and basking in the adoring praise of the guests, his chest puffed out with a borrowed pride.

I sidestepped a wild swing, letting my brother's momentum carry him past me, causing him to stumble and fall to one knee. I stood in place serenely, waiting patiently for him to get back up.

Our father, Jiang Hongji, his face a mask of weary disappointment after Li failed yet another breakthrough attempt. He sighs, a sound of profound finality, turning away from his eldest son without another word. He places a heavy hand on Feng's small, ten-year-old shoulder. "You," he says, his voice low and heavy with the weight of expectation, "you are this family's only hope now. Do not fail me as your brother has."

These memories, understood from Leo Maxwell's perspective, have made one thing clear in my mind: Feng was not a simple, malicious bully, but a product of a toxic, high-pressure environment. At the end of the day, he was just a child — a boy who had been told, implicitly and explicitly, that he had to be the son his father had always wanted. That he had to "replace" his "failed" older brother. As for his arrogance and cruelty—all of it was a kind of a defense mechanism. A mental shield. A clumsy, boyish, misguided attempt to build himself up by tearing me down — all in order to handle the impossible burdens that had been placed upon him.

To hold a grudge against the boy he had been, I realized with a strange sense of detachment, would be like a mountain holding a grudge against a single pebble that had rolled down its side. Such rivalries were simply beneath me now — and I thought this not out of arrogance, but out of a genuine shift in scale and perspective.

I simply… forgave him.

Our "spar" ended with me jabbing a couple rather painful — but not lethal or dangerous — pressure points, then effortlessly removing the sword from Feng's grasp and, with a gentle push, sending him sprawling to the ground.

My brother lay there, in the dirt. Defeated. The fight completely gone from him.

Tears of rage and shame streamed down his face, cutting clean paths through the grime on his cheeks, glistening in the moonlight.

"Ha. Hahahahahaha..." he began to laugh, a broken, hysterical sound that was half a sob. "So you win after all, big bro! I'm not good enough. It seems…. I never was."

"Whatever gave you that idea, little brother?" I asked, my voice soft as I stepped closer. I stood over him then, not as a conqueror, but as an observer — and, in his broken, sobbing form, I saw not an arrogant rival but only a lost and terrified young boy. The weight of his entire life, the pressure to be "the hope" of the family, had been built upon the foundation of my weakness.

And now, that foundation was gone — and his entire world had collapsed around him.

My voice was gentle, warm, and devoid of contempt.

"You reached Stage 7 at just seventeen, all while cultivating in the hostile environment of this half-poisoned province. Do you have anyidea what an achievement that is? A talent like yours, placed in one of the central provinces, would be considered a once-in-a-hundred year, heaven-sent genius! Your struggle was not with your own talent, but with the very earth and air around you! That is no failure, little brother! You should be proud of what you've been able to achieve."

I gently crouched down in front of him, bringing myself to his level, and made eye contact. His gaze was a chaotic storm of shame and confusion, and he tried to look away, but I held it anyway.

"Come, you have a bright future ahead of you! And, now that I, your Great and Terrible older brother, am here: I shall give you every resource you need to advance. I will even personally teach you techniques — and you should know that not even the Imperial Palace itself has access to the kinds of manuals that now adorn my library. Your future will be limitless and legendary!"

He stared up at me, his eyes wide with a profound, disbelieving shock.

The tears of shame turned into tears of confusion.

Little Feng realized that he was unexpectedly hearing praise — analytical, and seemingly genuine — from the person he had spent much of his life ridiculing and tormenting.

The cognitive dissonance visibly left him speechless.

"You'd... do all of that… for me?" he finally whispered, his voice raw. "After everything? After the way I've treated you when we were growing up?"

I sighed — a real sigh this time — filled with a strange, complex mix of pity and affection.

"Of course I will. You're still my foolish little brother, after all. Yes, you will need to work on not being such a mean little shit — but you are, after all, still just a kid. Your blood ran hot, and you thought you had the weight of the world on your shoulders. But don't worry, brother. You will no longer have to bear that weight alone."

I then let a smirk touch my lips — a flash of our old dynamic, but this time without the poison.

"Besides, I'm sure a few more spars like this one will beat some manners and sense into you! You'll learn to treat others with respect in no time at all!"

A small, watery, but genuine smile appeared on his face. "I… think I liked you better before, when you were less wise and couldn't fight back."

"Pfft. You cheeky brat!"

I extended my hand.

After a moment's hesitation — a flicker of the old pride warring with a new, uncertain hope — Jiang Feng took it and allowed me to pull him to his feet.

Our reconciliation was tentative — fragile as a new spring leaf — but it was real.