Immortality Starts With Generosity

The temple Xie Ling resided in was both the spiritual and material heart of the village. It was where their major ceremonies were observed and where the collected archives of the village were housed. It was the seat of the shamans and was where they distributed tasks and provided healing to the sick and injured. It was also where the foodstuffs and products the village produced were stored for times of need. Chen Haoran only knew all that from being told. Despite his friendship with the tribe’s shamans, the temple was the one place he never spent much time in. Today was only his second time entering it.

Now he was going beneath it.

Walking behind Xie Ling’s seat and into a doorway of beaded curtains that Chen Haoran could swear wasn’t there before, there was an abyss. Or maybe it wasn’t? Chen Haoran couldn’t tell. Whatever was behind the door was so dark that even as a Liquid Meridian, he was left blind. Not even the light from the temple behind him seemed to want to enter the space, as if whatever was there said ‘Do Not Enter,’ and the light took the hint and didn’t. Chen Haoran cast his sense out, and it was swallowed up as soon as it entered. Right. He’d seen horror movies and came away wiser from them. Being the first one to walk into a scarily dark place was never a good place to be.

Fortunately, Xie Ling was here to lead the way, casually stepping into the void and finding purchase rather than falling down. Purple qi sparked where his feet landed and spread to outline the first step of a long stair down. By the time he descended to the second step, Chen Haoran calculated who between Xie Jin and Bao Si he was going to force to go next, decided he couldn’t choose, then entered the stairway himself following the purple qi Xie Ling left behind as he walked. He reached out a hand to the wall to balance himself and was both relieved and not when his hand actually met a cool, oily surface. It was a good thing he wasn’t claustrophobic. He still hated every second of this, though.

Xie Jin’s hand clasped his shoulder and steadied him. “This thing’s a pain in the ass, isn’t it? Always hated coming down here.”

“Is it supposed to be accommodating?” Xie Ling’s voice sounded ahead of them, sarcasm lacing every word. He hadn’t gone that far ahead, but even with the light the purple qi provided, he was barely more than a silhouette. “Perhaps I should hang some candles? Lay out a carpet? Put in a banister? Let’s make it more inviting, why don’t we? It’s not like it leads anywhere important.”

“A banister would be nice,” Xie Jin mused.

Chen Haoran descended, purple qi licking his heels. “Is this the same stone the houses are made of? It feels similar.”

“Similar,” Xie Ling said. “The stones are all quarried from Stake Mountain, the one impaling the Screaming Giant. The ordinary stones are used to build our homes. The ones you see here are richer in qi and have a more exaggerated effect on light and a cultivator’s sense.”

Exaggerated was putting it lightly. Chen Haoran tried reaching out with his sense again and had to pull it back when it told him he was floating in a void even as he was walking on the stairs. He didn’t even know how long they’d been walking until he almost ran straight into Xie Ling’s back. Unfortunately, Xie Jin didn’t give him the same courtesy and barreled into his back. Chen Haoran instinctively flexed his qi to steady himself. It was probably unnecessary with his enhanced strength, but he wouldn’t take any chances. That meant that when Xie Jin’s chin slammed onto his shoulder, he was hitting the equivalent of a steel statute.

Xie Jin hissed in pain, and his arms wrapped around Chen Haoran for support. “Fuck! Bao Si!”

A far too innocent giggle followed in reply.

“Stop playing around you brats,” Xie Ling said.

“She pushed me down the fucking stairs!”

“Push?” Bao Si said. “I only gave you a little nudge.”contemporary romance

“Oh, I’ll give you a little nudge when I break my foot off in your ass.”

“Watch your language in front of our fucking guest,” Xie Ling barked. “You two used to have such a good relationship. Where did that go?”

The sudden groaning of stone sliding across stone filled the stairway, and the space in front of Xie Ling bloomed with green light. They spilled out into a large cavern. The rough stone walls were covered in glowing green script. The real source of the cavern’s light came from the massive Mourning Pool of green liquid qi dominating the center. More green script circled its edge. Chen Haoran released his freed sense toward the pool and…

Could this be called a Mourning Pool? The pool he saw was shallow but with his sense, he could feel the hole in the middle of it, feel how dramatically the space expanded underneath them, how it was completely filled with liquid qi. It was far bigger than either of the Mourning Pools he’d used before. Far bigger than him. How many of himself would he need to create a Mourning Pool this size? A hundred? A thousand?

“This is a Mourning Pool, right?” he hesitatingly said. “Not a lake?”

Xie Ling chuckled. “Impressive isn’t it? What you see before you is the accumulation of centuries of our tribe’s Liquid Meridians. For those lucky enough to be in the village for their final moments, they come here and leave their qi behind for the future generations”

“I thought Mourning Pools could only be formed by chance?”

“Natural Mourning Pools, yes, their creation is a miracle.” Xie Ling pointed toward the glowing green script. “With the power of formations, however, natural miracles become a commonplace man-made craft.”

Xie Jin and Bao Si, still bickering, walked over to a storeroom and pulled out baskets of plants and animal parts that they began emptying into the pool. Phelps, curious as ever, wanted to get nearer to explore the pool only for Chen Haoran to quickly pull him back.

“Have you ever used a Mourning Pool before?” Xie Ling asked.

“Yes, twice.”

Xie Ling paused. He coughed into his hand. “Well, there won’t be many impurities to expel then. That’s not the real benefit of our Mourning Pool, however. By mixing in various poisons and venoms, those who bathe in our pool can gain immunity to a hundred poisons.”

Chen Haoran watched Xie Jin drop a bright blue frog into the pool. It bobbed up once, flailing for its life, then sank and disappeared. “This… is safe, right?”

“Of course,” Xie Ling said. “I will be presiding over it myself.”

Bao Si brought over a set of clean white robes. Chen Haoran hesitated before taking them. “Is it okay for me to be using this? This is a grave, after all, and I’m not from the tribe.”

Xie Ling looked surprised before kindly smiling. “Do not worry. The Heaven-Rank technique you’ve given us will be a treasure of our tribe for generations to come. You’re more than worthy of using this pool. I’m sure the ancestors will take no issue with it.”

Well, if the head honcho was telling him it was okay, then how could Chen Haoran refuse? He handed Phelps over to Bao Si and took the robes. A quick glance revealed nowhere in the cavern to change. He looked at Bao Si, who made no move to look away.

He raised an eyebrow. Not going to turn around?

Bao Si’s small smile spoke volumes. Do you want me to?

Whatever. Chen Haoran shrugged off his robes, and Bao Si’s wandering eyes, and put on the prepared ones. Still silk. The tribe really used it everywhere. He stepped to the edge of the pool, where Xie Jin gave him a dull green pill and a reassuring clap on the arm.

“For processing the poison, otherwise you’d just die,” Xie Jin explained. “It would be excruciating too.”

His grandfather slapped his head. “The only thing in Zumulu more poisonous than Gu is your mouth.”

“Yeah yeah,” Xie Jin said, rubbing his head. “I was just trying to help him relax.”

“Slap him again, please?” Chen Haoran politely asked.

Xie Ling slapped him without hesitation and shooed his grandson away. Xie Jin shot Chen Haoran a betrayed look as he went to stand beside a giggling Bao Si.

“This will be a long process, and there will be some discomfort,” Xie Ling said. “Are you prepared?”

Chen Haoran exhaled. “As ready as I’ll ever be.”

“Let’s begin then.” Xie Ling placed a hand on his shoulder, and a ray of purple and green qi covered him with a thin film and entered his body.

The Yellow Dragon was none too pleased and made its displeasure vocal.

Curiosity flashed across Xie Ling’s face. “Oh?”

Chen Haoran calmed the Yellow Dragon with a pulse of qi and, under Xie Ling’s guidance, swallowed the pill and entered the pool. Xie Ling made him sit down, letting the liquid qi cover him up to his waist. The entire lower half of his body was immediately enveloped with a feeling of pins and needles, as if everything below his waist had fallen asleep. This was with a Crystal Transformation Realm protecting him, Chen Haoran couldn’t imagine what would happen if he tried relying on his own power to protect him.

“Breathe,” Xie Ling ordered.

Chen Haoran did, and the stinging sensation immediately began spreading through his entire body as he began absorbing the liquid qi. If someone took the moment, a doctor administered a shot, multiplied it a thousand times, distilled it into a drink, and downed it in one go, then that would be approximately what Chen Haoran was feeling seep through his arteries and meridians. If that was all, then Chen Haoran could bear with it. Syringes came with injections, however, and with the liquid qi came a war crime worth of poison. He couldn’t even begin to count the amount of promised death and contained within the pool’s liquid qi. All the various ways to kill a man acted all at once such that they blended into one feeling of impending doom.

The Yellow Dragon roared, and the antidote pill he swallowed shattered. Medicinal energy flooded out and was carried through his meridians by the roar. When the energy met the poisonous liquid qi, it mixed into it, and the feeling of sudden death immediately subsided. Xie Ling took that moment to seize control of the liquid qi and directed its flow out of his meridians and into his body. Chen Haoran’s directed his own qi to follow Xie Ling’s and help the best he could. Under both of their urging, Chen Haoran’s muscles and organs were washed with the poisonous qi. It was a process that painfully reminded him of the Stygian Lotus’s enhancement. In fact, he could even feel his cells being tempered a bit, due to the poison. It was minuscule, barely worth mentioning even, thanks to the prior tempering his body had gone through. If Chen Haoran had to guess, it would normally be much more effective if it were anyone else.

The Yellow Dragon roared. While he and Xie Ling were guiding the liquid qi, it sped up its revolutions around his body and drew in more liquid qi to devour. This qi proved tougher than its usual fare, however. Every chunk it bit into saw the Yellow Dragon chew the qi like it was stringy meat, forcefully swallowing it down before it was completely refined. Xie Ling made a noise of interest and brought his qi over to the Yellow Dragon. The Yellow Dragon eyed the foreign qi with disdain an accelerated again. Xie Ling’s qi raced after it, and Chen Haoran was left with the uncomfortable sensation of falling behind in his own body among the other uncomfortable sensations he was dealing with at the moment.

“Come on now. Work with me,” Xie Ling coaxed.

Work with him, please? Chen Haoran begged.

The Yellow Dragon bared its teeth and shook off the purple qi a few more times but eventually relented. Xie Ling’s qi quickly wrapped around its body like armor. The next time the Yellow Dragon plunged into the poisonous liquid qi, all resistance it faced before vanished, and it devoured the qi like water. Chen Haoran quickly merged with the Yellow Dragon and brought their cycling in tune.

The Mourning Pool stirred.

Chen Haoran’s rate of absorbing qi doubled. Xie Jin’s and Bao Si’s quiet exclamations of shock rang loud in his ears as the liquid qi in the Mourning Pool began to swirl in a vortex with him as the center. Within his body, another vortex was being formed. In one cycle, the Yellow Dragon danced, and Xie Ling pulled a wave of poisonous qi to crash through his body. In the next cycle, that same qi was dispersed with a roar, refined, then replaced with another wave. This happened for five cycles, ten, twenty, and on the thirtieth cycle, a change finally occurred. Chen Haoran hit the ceiling.

Xie Ling exuberantly laughed, and his other hand slapped Chen Haoran’s back. “Boy, what do you say? Do you dare advance?”

What sort of question was that?

The Yellow Dragon roared. It fell down to his core and coiled upon itself nine times as it condensed qi.

Go.

The Yellow Dragon soared from his core to his head. Then it soared even higher. Yellow liquid qi flooded from Chen Haoran and shot into the air. It doubled over on itself and thinned into a snake-like body. Golden scales were pressed out of liquid qi. Two thin tendrils grew and became three-clawed arms. The head of the raging liquid qi split open and revealed rows of sharp teeth. Two antler-like horns burst from a newly defined skull, and just below them, two golden eyes blinked open and looked down upon the world with pride. Xie Jin, Bao Si, and Xie Ling all watched as a Yellow Dragon of liquid qi roared dominance above their heads, shaking the green formation script with its force.

Chen Haoran advanced to the Second-Layer under a dragon’s roar.

done.co