My Journey to Immortality Begins with Hunting

"How mysterious..." The madam exhaled.

Her brothel might fly the flag of the Tang Sect, but real patrons were scarce, and the jianghu in Cloudpeak Province was complex. West of Sword Mountain, the Tang Sect and old clans jostled; east toward the Central Plains lay patchwork powers, each hiding its own masters.

Whyso many powers had crept in, the madam couldn't say, perhaps tied to the chaos brewing back in the Jade Capital.

True giants from the Central Plains disdained this poor frontier, yet plenty of veterans looking for a quiet retirement drifted here instead, seized a mountain, and played local lord.

Come to think of it, the Tang Sect itself had risen only five years ago. Rumor said its enigmatic matriarch hailed from the Central Plains. Her connections were sky-high, methods unfathomable, and a legion of elites stood behind her. That was how she carved out half the realm in one sweep.

The madam had already made up her mind. Thischefwas almost certainly another of Tang Sect's hidden experts—come in name to cook, in truth to enjoy an easy life. Offending him would be suicide, while winning his favor might well turn the Springcharm Palace into the safest haven in town.

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Upstairs, Siqin drifted in on the sweep of her long skirt, a jar of wine balanced at the curve of her hip. She wasn't being wanton; she had simply read the signs. The youth in front of her was handsome, capable, and clearly of high standing. And she was simply trying to climb.

Li Yuan simply sat down and drew White Serpent from his sleeve. He pressed his ancestral seal to his heart and channeled heavenly thunder through his veins, pushing through into early fourth rank. Then he set the zither on the table and began to carve. It was clearly an antique, but merely adequate in his eyes.

His whole mind was focused on the blade.

When learning the blade, the first thing you learned was simply exerting force. Then came drawing force from the whole body—muscle, tendon, every shred of strength flowing as one, merging thewhippingforce with thethroughforce.[1]

After that was utilizing the blood, channeling shadow blood with your will. This was theheartforce. A spirit artifact was forged through a connection of source blood, and blood answered thought.

Most people proclaimed that a divine blade could summon thunder and shatter earth with a single swing, but what did that blade look like when the domain slipped into the microscopic? What would you callthatforce?

The answer was forming in Li Yuan's chest. It was arestrainedforce, world shattering power contained inside perfect stillness. That was how he accidentally created blade qi the night before.

Back on the bookshelves in Earth, blade qi was a dime a dozen in wuxia novels. Every master could hack out 30-meter range crescent moons like it was nothing. In truth, hurling a slash that far and hard was about as simple as bare-handing ball lightning.

Blade qi embodied the concept of an inner storm and outer calm.

The storm originated from motion, violent and concentrated.

The calm demanded all that violence fold inward, finding a single point of balance.

Shkk!

Blade met wood. The zither's lacquer turned to dust, but only exactly where steel touched. The rest lay pristine.

Li Yuan had never studied sculpting. Yet it wasn't necessarily needed. Ever since breaking through sixth rank, he'd gained perfect muscle control and an eidetic sense of form. That gap in skill was easily filled. Petal after layered petal blossomed beneath the blade.

Siqin's plan to tease him melted away. She knelt on a floor cushion, wordless, watching. He was utterly still, yet under that calm she felt something vast and dangerous, like the bronze visage of a temple god towering over mortals.

All thought of seduction fled; in its place bloomed awe.

Time slid by.

Li Yuan sheathed the blade, released his ancestral seal, and blew a single breath. The dust lifted, revealing nine peonies so vivid they might have been alive.

"Done," he exhaled, still tasting the strange joy of compressing ruin into a fingertip.Will anyone else ever learn this way of the blade?

Siqin accepted the zither with both hands, trembling.A human did this?

"Decent work?" he asked.

"More than decent! It's so beautiful I'm afraid to touch the strings."

"Then play a piece worthy of the instrument."

A tune fit for the zither...She suddenly thought of the endless hours she'd once spent practicing, hoping some young gentleman beyond the wall might pause, entranced by her music.

She had been a young lady of a good house...until that house collapsed. Dreams had shattered; the zither was no longer a confidante, just a tool to raise her price in the brothel marketplace.

Yet at this moment, the memory of those dreams stirred again.

Siqin lowered her eyes. "I'm not worthy of a zither like this."

Li Yuan glanced around the room, found a bamboo flute on the wall, and reached for it. "How about I play the flute and you accompany me on the zither? Let's tryAlone Up the Western Tower."

"You can play the flute as well?" she blurted.

"A little. Shall we?"

Siqin nodded and settled behind the peony-carved strings; Li Yuan raised the flute. As he drew breath, memories of the Holy Tree Temple flickered through his mind, as if it were only yesterday.

A mellow, wandering melody flowed out. The young man in white faced the courtesan across the low table, and her own fingers, nudged alive by his music, finally began to dance.

When the last note faded, she was still lost in it.

Li Yuan had already put away the flute, picked up his blade, and strolled back to the kitchen.

After a while, the madam slipped into the private room. "Well? Did he tumble for your charms?"

Siqin blinked, then pointed at the zither's nine lifelike peonies.

"Madam, you're right. He's a bigshot. So high above us we should pretend we never saw him." Then she let out a wistful sigh. "I've wasted 18 years and never met anyone like that. Better we honor him and keep our distance."

The madam stared, then merely nodded. "I see..."

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Li Yuan'schefdays became wonderfully simple. He sliced ingredients—and, when the whim struck, carved them. Tofu transformed into delicate blossoms; vegetables into jade-like scrollwork.

The Springcharm Palace's name spread like wildfire. Fine fareandfine flesh, how could it not?

Two months slipped by, and July brought the furnace of midsummer.

Li Yuan still manned the brothel's chopping block while dispatching scouts westward.

Truthfully, the returns were meager. Beyond a tangled belt of mountain hills, the land turned frigid and dim; farther still, an eternal night yawned like a star-speckled maw.

Even seventh rank martial artists balked at stepping in. A few dared and never returned.

To a martial artist, the eternal night of theEvernightwas what the desert was to a commoner. Lose your way and death was all that awaited.

In the Central Plains, a deceptive calm held sway.

The Lotus Cult was churning out troops, and the Five Elements Alliance knew it. Li Yuan had written down everything he learned and, through Xu Sheng, passed the letter to Gu Xuejian. Open war had yet to ignite, but the assassinations beneath the surface were already vicious.

In the meantime, Sheng'er's loneliness had begun to thaw. Veil and straw hat in place, she traveled in a curtained palanquin with the Tang Nian's personal disciples, turning up at every incident worth noting.

The jianghu soon nicknamed her theLittle Saintess. Rumors spread like wildfire. Some claimed she was the sect master's own granddaughter; others, she was a sixth rank monster in disguise; and still others, she was the cherished daughter of some great clan.

Caught in the swirl, Sheng'er found each outing a marvel and yearned for the next.

Seeing that sparkle in her eyes, Li Yuan and Yan Yu both let out a quiet breath of relief.

1. In traditional Chinese martial arts, you start out by learning to simply exert force. Then you learn to developwhippingforce to add speed and snap to your strikes, andthroughforce to utilize the whole body in generating power. ☜