My Journey to Immortality Begins with Hunting

Li Yuan vanished into the drifts and soon returned hauling a hibernating black bear. He cleaned, gutted, and strung it up. Then a single breath of flame roared from his lungs, setting the meat sizzling while the Wolfmother sat beneath a white sky, waiting for the single splash of red she had never seen.

The bear began to roast at once, Li Yuan's flame licking evenly across the carcass until both sides gleamed a perfect brown.

Three days and nights passed.

At dusk of the fourth day, the snow broke at last. Like a miracle wrung from the heavens, a band of sunset flared on the far rim of the sky.

Crimson light flooded the newly stilled world.

The Wolfmother tipped back her head, rapt.

Li Yuan glanced at her, then looked away. They would never be true friends, much less anything more. He had granted this request out of measured sympathy, and because it bought him a promise. Nothing beyond that.

So he let her watch.

What was commonplace to him was an unspeakable wonder to her. It was like a blind woman suddenly given sight, like a wanderer who briefly remembered the half-forgotten streets of home. The memory would sink back into fog soon enough; the moment itself was all that mattered.

She was the Wolfmother, aloft among the nine tribes, and also a hapless girl singled out by the gods. Fate set the lines; neither could cross them.

"More meat?" Li Yuan waved a grease-stained wrapper and patted the wine jar he had bought yesterday in the nearby township of Splinterholt.

She didn't move. The sunset washed her face, and two bright tears kindled in its glow, sliding down like twin tongues of flame. She stared, unblinking, at the only evening sky she would ever see.

Not until the last ember died and darkness returned did she speak. "Take me back… I'll keep my word."

The two parted upon the permafrost.

When Li Yuan returned to the Trueflame Tribe, the cries of newborns split the air, surrounded by startled voices.

"A white-skinned, red-eyed child, just like us!"

"Born beside the sacred flame, he belongs to our blood."

"The Everflame has blessed him. The Sun has blessed him!"

Inside, the exhausted mother begged to hold her child. The midwife set the boy in her arms; awe chased bewilderment over her face. The coloring was wrong, yet he was unmistakably hers.

Thoughts of the invasion of the Ice Folk and the pain they had brought to Cloudpeak Province flickered and died beneath the primal, fiercer instinct of a mother. A child was never at fault.

Li Yuan watched in silence. The Wolfmother's words were proving true. The Everflame linked to the land's Yang, and the Yang came from the Sun. The Sun reshaped the flesh.

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A month later, Snow felt a draining weakness.

After three more months, her belly showed a gentle rise, the life inside kicking hard.

"It's a strong, healthy child," she whispered, stroking the swell.

Li Yuan thought he would stay until the birth, but Snow pushed him to the Trueflame Tribe's entrance, tears bright in her eyes.

"Do what you must. Your world is larger than me."

No one but Yan Yu knew he was ageless, and Snow, reasoning on her own, had come to a different conclusion. If embracing the Sun burned one's years, then a man who was living flame could not live long.

"Go, my darling. I'll raise our child and wait for you here, but you shouldn't linger."

The wider world was sliding into chaos; Li Yuan truly did need to look beyond the frozen tundra.

Still, he first led Snow back into the settlement, entrusted the Khagan's Axe to Suljagar, and charged him to act as regent. He tasked the chieftain with guarding his wife and child and keeping the Trueflame Tribe bound in friendship with Cloudpeak Province.

Suljagar accepted with solemn respect.

Soon after Li Yuan's departure, more than 20 direwolves padded out of a storm and ringed Snow's tent in silent circles. The gesture, unmistakable, bore the Wolfmother's seal. This child would be extraordinary, fated to rule the permafrost.

Li Yuan stepped out onto the frozen tundra, tugged the thousand-mile thread, and reappeared near the Tang Sect's restricted grounds.

From there, he flew to Xue Ning's manor. A round of quiet inquiries informed him of the current state of the Central Plains.

Then a heavy silence followed.

The hush felt like the lull before a hurricane, so heavy it was hard to breathe.

Everyone sensed an unprecedented storm on the horizon, yet no one knew when the first lightning-bolt would split the sky.

The Lotus Cult and Son of Heaven had built a frightening war machine.

The Bladeseekers was mass producing sixth rank disciples. The memories of the disciples were stripped. The memories were refined into fifth rank exotic beasts and the empty vessels forged into Green Lotus fearless soldiers.

The Lotus Cult was also equipped with unknown treasures taken out from the Great Zhou Treasury.

Given time, these things could brew a force of terrifying scale.

Li Yuan decided to slip back to Gemhill County. A tug on the thousand-mile thread and he was gone.

Luck favored him. Theanchorhe had tied the thread to five years ago was still alive. He haunted the ground between The Bladeseekers and Valley of Beasts, moving with patient caution, waiting for the perfect moment to harvest ancestral seal seeds.

After a little more than two months, Li Yuan secured 15 seeds. It was a modest haul, but he could see the future graph clearly.

Within a few years, the numbers would spike.

The Lotus Cult had only founded The Bladeseekers 11 years ago, and even in ideal conditions a sixth rank martial artist needed more than a decade to mature. Unless something upset the schedule, a flood of exotic beasts was coming.

A blanket of snow had already started to fall over Cloudpeak Province when Li Yuan returned. He pressed the 15 shards one by one into his ancestral seed. The single 10-petaledlotus of bladesbloomed into 25 petals, each an etched weapon, wicked and beautiful.

His power band climbed from 3,600~51,341 to 3,600~54,442.

The ceiling only increased by a little. Clearly, the ancestral seal granted smaller gains after a certain threshold. But progress was progress.

Now Li Yuan turned to the experiment he had long envisioned. That was wedding the explosive force of Yang energy to the vibrational force of his shadow blood. His new child was due in five months; he wanted the new art battle-ready before he set off again.

With another tug of the thousand-mile thread, Li Yuan returned from Gemhill County to the Tang Sect's restricted grounds to train.

The moment he arrived, every disciple bowed before him as if he were the patriarch.

Tang Nian explained that her direct disciples now knew that he was her godfather, and there were rumors going around that he was some sort of ancient monster. Fortunately, she hadn't revealed that he was the Nine Flames Khagan.

Those few who had seen the fiery inhuman figure in Cloudpeak Province could never connect that mighty being to the mild mannered man in gray robes.

This arrangement suited Li Yuan. At least he no longer had to bother Tang Nian for every small favor.

Li Yuan slipped back into the little lodge he had used five winters ago. A pretty young woman rose at once, flustered, hands clasped.

"M-mister Li," she stammered.

He studied Tang Pang. Five years ago she had been a girl; now her hair was wound in a married woman's knot.

"Married already, Chubby?" He sat, helping himself to a handful of peanuts.

"Only recently, my clan's arrangement," she said, still too nervous to sit. "My husband thinks I run errands for the clan; he doesn't know I belong to the Tang Sect."

"Sounds tough." Li Yuan chuckled, waving her into the other chair. When she still didn't sit, he rose himself. "What? Are you going to make me stand with you too?"

Flustered, she finally obeyed. Snowflakes drifted past the window; they shared wine and idle talk, the way they once had.

Relaxation crept in with each cup.

After a while, Li Yuan asked, "Has your Tang Sect's little saintess found herself a suitor yet?"

Tang Pang's cheeks were rosy with drink. "Two brilliant young nobles tried. They even sent their clan elders to sound out our attitudes. Though, the strangest thing happened. Each household suddenly found themselves haunted. Then the matters ended there."

"I see…" Li Yuan rubbed his brow. It appeared Tang Nian and Yan Yu had evidently handled the problem in their own…efficient fashion.