Immortality

Chapter 1 Sixty Years of Disappointment

Thirty years of Qianning.

Yue State, Wuxian County.

The streets of the city were deserted, and men, women, young and old, dressed in various clothes crowded the long streets, with endless crowds of people.

Fang Sheng sat in the carriage, his gray hair trembling as the carriage moved. His old body was like a dead tree, and he leaned weakly against the window.

"Father, we have arrived at the tower."

A young man's voice was heard outside, and the son adopted from his younger brother opened the car door, got in the car respectfully and helped.

Fang Sheng raised his hand to stop his movements, then slowly stood up using the crane wood cane.

at the same time.

Outside the lacquered door, the noisy voices of the people on the street continued to be heard.

"The Immortal Master will arrive today. Please, our ancestors, bless my child and make him a seedling of immortal with spiritual roots."

"Sixty years ago, five people from our city traveled thousands of miles and successfully became immortals. After that, this place was renamed Five Immortals City, and every once in a while, an immortal master would come here to accept disciples..."

Fang Sheng had just got off the carriage. After hearing these words, he stood there for a long time, with a trace of sadness appearing on his wrinkled face.

He looked down at his hands, which had dark spots and loose skin, and suddenly realized that he was already in his twilight years.

I couldn't help but sigh in my heart:
“It turned out to be sixty years ago.”

According to everyone, he was the one who initiated the thousand-mile journey to seek immortality.

However, the young man whose soul traveled to another world and excitedly took more than a dozen childhood friends to seek a master and immortality has disappeared.

Now he is just an old, frail and lost man.

All this is because cultivating immortals requires spiritual roots and the rhythm of the Tao, but he is a mortal without spiritual roots and cannot cultivate immortals at all.

Among those who went to seek immortality that year, five of them had spiritual roots and became the five immortals in the memory of the people in the county.

There are only ten mortals who have no chance to cultivate immortality.

He is among these ten people.

The people around were still repeating over and over again how the five immortals had traveled thousands of miles to join the world of immortal cultivation.

Fang Sheng, who looked old, coughed heavily and walked up to the city wall of Wuxian City with the help of crutches.

Many celebrities from the State of Yue gathered on the city wall, from officials to big merchants, all of them were gazing at the clouds in the sky.

The scene was quiet and solemn.

Fang Sheng also waited quietly.

At noon, a ray of light suddenly broke through the clouds.

Without waiting for the crowd to exclaim, it suddenly flew over them, and then a cold voice came from above their heads:

"Above six years old and below fifteen, come forward to check your spiritual roots."

At this moment, a red iron flying boat was seen hanging in the air.

Two figures, a man and a woman, flew down on swords and landed on an arch bridge in the city.

The people in the city cried out in surprise and rushed towards the arch bridge with their children as if there was a landslide or tsunami.

On the city wall, the dignitaries tried every possible means to send their own children to the bridge first...

Fang Sheng looked at it in a daze.

Suddenly, an old, trembling voice sounded beside me:

"Brother Fang, look at that male immortal master. Does he look like the Niu Danzi who used to follow us around?"

Fang Sheng turned his head and looked.

The person who spoke was Li Changsheng, one of his childhood friends who had followed him in the search for immortality sixty years ago. He also had no spiritual roots, but in recent years he had become increasingly obsessed with becoming an immortal.

Li Changsheng was wearing a shabby green Taoist robe. He was skinny, but his cloudy eyes were like glowing pearls.

He stared at the monk on the bridge as if possessed by a demon.

"Yes, it's Niu Danzi. I remember he had a birthmark next to his eyebrow... And that fairy girl, does she look like the girl Yun who used to follow you around asking for candy all day?"

"They must have come back from the Immortal Cultivation World to visit us!"

Li Changsheng became more and more excited as he spoke, and his expression was almost crazy.

Fang Sheng patted his shoulder and looked in the direction he was looking.

One could only vaguely see two ethereal figures standing proudly on the bridge.

How can I recognize who it is?
Moreover, he knew it clearly in his heart.

The five immortals haven't returned for decades, and their friendship has long faded. How could they possibly come back to visit them?
Just at this moment, the two monks on the bridge cast their eyes over here, as if staring.

After a few breaths, the gaze over there was withdrawn.

A hand grabbed Fang Sheng's shoulder tightly.

It’s Li Changsheng!
"Niu Danzi saw us!"

Li Changsheng looked excited, staring at the two monks on the bridge with envious eyes:

"I'm sure they succeeded. Sixty years have passed, and they're still so young. They haven't aged at all... No, no, I want to go ask them how they've been doing these years!"

Li Changsheng muttered to himself and let go of his hand.

The skinny body squeezed down the wall in a blink of an eye and merged into the crowd below. The inexplicable words never stopped along the way...

The adopted son followed beside him and asked hesitantly:
"Father, do you want to stop Uncle Changsheng?"

"..."

Fang Sheng remained silent, watching Li Changsheng's figure floating in the crowd, appearing and disappearing from time to time.

It's like a small boat crossing the vast ocean of suffering, eager to reach the other side.

There is no hope at all...

No matter how hoarsely the aging body roared, it could not attract the slightest attention from afar.

After a long time.

"Go back."

Fang Sheng couldn't bear to watch any longer. His old body could no longer stand after standing for a long time, so he could only let his adopted son help him back to the carriage.

The driver whipped his horse and drove towards the large mansion outside the city.

Amid the constant calls of "Master" from the many servants in the mansion, Fang Sheng returned to his bedroom in a depressed mood.

Outside the window is the beautiful backyard of the Fang family, which is surrounded by a lotus lake.

He half-lying on a rosewood lounge chair, looking at the green lotus swaying in the lake.

Before he knew it, his extremely weak body fell into a deep sleep.

When I opened my eyes again, the stars were twinkling outside the window.

A ray of moonlight like silver frost happened to fall into his arms. "Father."

The cheap son quietly served beside him:

"Uncle Changsheng was exhausted and passed away at dusk. Before he died, he kept mumbling that he saw something like a cow egg..."

Fang Sheng was stunned for a moment.

With blurry eyes, he seemed to see again the young man in hemp clothes who used to follow him with a look of determination and excitement on his face.

In the blink of an eye, it turned into a skinny, mad and terrifying face.

That was sixty years ago.

He closed his eyes weakly and recalled some past events:
"Changsheng... He wasn't called this name before. It was me who made him want to seek immortality."

"You can go and help deal with the aftermath tomorrow."

"My child knows, there is another thing. The two immortal masters landed on the arch bridge in the city during the day, and the people wanted to rename the bridge, so they called it..."

"It's just a small matter, please go down."

"……it is good."

Silence returned to the house.

Fang Sheng opened his eyes again.

The visionary face still remained.

It just gradually twisted and turned into a hazy young figure with its back to him in the moonlight.

For a moment Fang Sheng couldn't tell whether it was the recently deceased Li Changsheng or his younger self.

As I thought about it, my consciousness gradually became blurred and past events began to resurface before my eyes.

When he awakened his memory sixty years ago, he was already a young boy, and he once sought the truth and immortality with many of his childhood friends.
Fifty years ago, he was doing business and doing charity, and he made friends with a wild Taoist practitioner, who wanted to take him as his disciple.

Forty years ago, he helped the people in disaster relief and was appreciated by the monks, who wanted to recommend him to the sect...

He missed three chances to become an immortal in his life because he had no spiritual roots.

The newly planted bamboo forest outside the window swayed in the evening breeze, stirring up the gauze-like moonlight.

As light and shadow intertwined, Fang Sheng raised his hand with great effort and opened his palm.

There, a green lotus that only he could see was floating in his palm.

The blue lotus has nine petals, which together form one grade.

There is a lotus platform in the middle of the petals, engraved with three mysterious lotus patterns, and at the end of each pattern grows a juicy green fruit.

Next to him was an old soul sitting cross-legged with eyes closed. He looked like Fang Sheng and held a blood lotus cup in his hand.

Reincarnation Green Lotus.

It was this rare treasure that brought him through time and space.

As time goes by, the Green Lotus will accumulate spiritual energy on its own.

After the death of the Lotus Master, the fully charged Green Lotus can protect the Lotus Master's true soul and memory for reincarnation.

In addition, you can also inject various kinds of essence and blood, engrave lotus patterns, condense Taoist fruits, and evolve your own blood and spiritual roots.

"For sixty years, I have been injecting my own mortal blood into the Blood Lotus Lamp, and yesterday I condensed the third Dao Fruit.

Theoretically, as long as I can take the Dao fruit, I can immediately obtain spiritual roots..."

Fang Sheng forced himself to hold on and stared at the lotus platform.

The three green Taoist fruits grew around his soul.

With just a light push of the soul, the three Tao fruits can be held in the hand.

Unfortunately, this soul has been like a stone statue for many years and cannot be controlled at all.

A moment later, another attempt failed.

Fang Sheng sighed deeply in his heart.

"The treasure is extraordinary. I'm afraid only cultivators can control it. Mortals are completely helpless!"

Over the past sixty years, he has tried countless times but has never been able to find the right solution.

Now I have completely given up.

If he wanted to control his soul and take the Dao fruit, he had to become a cultivator first; to become a cultivator, he had to have spiritual roots; but if he wanted to have spiritual roots, he had to take the Dao fruit first...

"There is only one hope now."

“Fifty years ago, the Green Lotus of Samsara had been fully charged and could continue to protect me in my next reincarnation.

When reincarnated, the Dao Fruit will fall off and merge into the True Spirit. My next life should be one that is born with spiritual roots..."

Fang Sheng felt complicated.

It was this heaven-sent opportunity that made the young boy think that he was the man of destiny, so he gathered everyone to travel thousands of miles in search of immortality.

In the blink of an eye, sixty years of hard work have been wasted, and a whole life has been squandered.

"A mere mortal can never cross the chasm between immortals and mortals."

"Spiritual roots, spiritual roots..."

Fang Sheng sighed deeply and closed his eyes.

The bamboo forest outside the window was swaying again, and the cool breeze blew in. The old body felt even weaker and colder under the moonlight.

I fell asleep again without realizing it.

……

……

When I woke up again, it was already dawn outside.

The people around me were crying and noisy, and it was extremely sad.

My increasingly blurry vision made it impossible to see clearly, let alone hear.

"It's time for this life."

In an instant, Fang Sheng understood.

He raised his eyes tremblingly, in a trance with neither sadness nor joy. He just used up the last of his strength to look out the window at the vast world outside the window that was shining brightly.

He seemed to see——

Beyond the boundless sky, a red sun is rising.

Purple air stretches for thousands of miles, and a green lotus quietly blooms in the lotus lake, exuding fragrance.

In the pavilion by the lake, a single chess piece landed on the chessboard, casting a long shadow in the morning light...

　New author, new book, please collect and read (actually, it’s an old flop that has been written for almost 5 million words in obscurity, alas)

　　
　
(End of this chapter)