Where Immortals Once Walked

Invisible currents pushed the lotus lantern onward, slowly carrying it away.

In the distance, the lake narrowed and froze into a river of ice.

Sun Fuling tugged his sleeve and pulled him toward the nearest arched bridge. Many others stood there as well, leaning over the railings.

From here, they could look down over the dim surface of the lake. The world was already gripped by evening gloom. Only the ice lotus’ crystalline petals reflected the candle’s warm, trembling light floating in the darkness.

People walking along the shore would pause, fall silent for a moment, and whisper a prayer when they saw the drifting lantern.

He Lingchuan turned his head and saw three or four other lotus lanterns scattered across the water. Each lonely flame carried the weight of someone’s emotions for the departed.

Sun Fuling pressed her hands together at her chest and murmured her own prayer, pious and focused, no different from the others standing along the bridge.

These lotus lanterns would burn only until they drifted beyond Panlong City’s bounds. After that, they were left to the myriad peaks and waters of the Chipa Highland.

“Once you’ve set the lantern afloat, you should set the matter down as well,” Sun Fuling said quietly. Her words were plain, but they struck home. “The dead are already gone. However, the living must keep going.”

In the future, they would surely come here many more times to release lotus lanterns.

It was better to learn early how to let go. It hurt less.

After the lantern had drifted far away, dwindling to a faint speck of fire in the distance, He Lingchuan once again said softly to Sun Fuling, “Let’s go home.”

“Mm.”

* * *

When he opened his eyes, He Lingchuan stared blankly at the top of his tent for a long moment.

This time, he had spent even longer in the dream, spending seven full days inside. He had even gone to sleep twice inside the dream, fully expecting that doing so would eject him back into the waking world those two times, only to find himself still in Panlong City when he woke.

Those seven days had been peaceful yet full. He studied the secret tome for the golden-armored copper man, grinded out some archery practice until his arms ached, and talked with Sun Fuling.

Once the lady had grown more familiar with him, she stopped bothering with the front door altogether. She would lean over the courtyard wall to chat with him, or simply plant a hand on the top of the low wall and vault over it in a fluid motion whenever she came to check on the sparrowhawk. Her movements were as light and sure as a cat’s.

Meals, however, became a serious problem. True to her word, Sun Fuling really did not know how to cook, and neither did he. Both of them had mouths used to food being brought to them. In the end, they had to go out and hunt for meals together every day.

On the surface, it sounded like some tender, intimate arrangement, a steady deepening of feelings.

However, He Lingchuan felt no such sweetness.

This was because Ms. Sun, for all her gentleness, took absolutely no pity on his so-called winter vacation. She regularly dragged him into an act that would cause gods and men alike to gnash their teeth: supplementary lessons!

His progress in learning the language of the ancient immortals was far too slow. Teacher Sun expressed strong disapproval and even began giving him pop quizzes.

By the end of each test, the words were hopping around in his head like tadpoles, swimming circles until his skull buzzed.

His dislike of studying was carved into his subconscious. Switching bodies and transmigrating into this new world had not changed a thing.

So when Liu Tong came to inform him of a mission, He Lingchuan felt as though he had just received a royal pardon.

Back in the waking world, he had a hard time telling dream from reality for a while. But the clatter of hooves, the shouts of soldiers, and the clank of metal from outside his tent reminded him that he was in the military camp now.

Why is my time in the dreapscape growing longer? Could it be because Fleeting Life has finally been fully repaired?

He Lingchuan sat up and scrubbed his face with both hands. At that moment, a guard’s voice sounded outside the tent flap, “Elder Liang is here.”

He Lingchuan was stunned. Elder Liang of the Cloud-Piercing Pavilion had always treated him with formal politeness and distant coolness. On top of that, the man practiced the Sealed-Mouth Art, so he never spoke a word. At most, he glared. Thus, He Lingchuan could not help but wonder why he was visiting him.

He had barely finished putting his clothes in order when Elder Liang entered the tent.

They exchanged the proper courtesies, and then it was Elder Liang’s disciple who stepped forward as his voice. “Young Master He, my master wishes to discuss a matter with you.”

A guard left to boil water. Still somewhat bleary from the long sleep, He Lingchuan nodded. “Please, go ahead.”

But instead of speaking, the disciple produced a folded letter and offered it with both hands. “It’s not something that can be explained in a sentence or two. My master has written it out for you. Please take a look.”

Oh? A whole letter?

Intrigued, He Lingchuan accepted the letter and unfolded it.

A few lines in, his drowsiness vanished.

Elder Liang would never come knocking without good reason. Today, he had come for a single purpose, and that was the strange red medicine in He Lingchuan’s possession.

The day before, the medicine ape Ling Guang had used just a single drop of the liquid in an experiment. It had forced a mutant phoenix tree to grow in an instant, nearly triggering a full-on clash between the camps on both sides of the river.

Elder Liang had remained silent through it all, but he had seen everything. Naturally, he had taken a deep interest in the medicine and now hoped to secure a few drops for his own research.

As it happened, he had recently crossed blades with Dong Rui’s monster puppets and been impressed by the ghost ape. Coupled with last night’s emergency, his thoughts had turned in a particular direction. In his letter, he mentioned that Dong Rui’s monster puppet closely resembled a type of creature recorded in an ancient secret text.

Those creatures were called ghost beasts[1].

The Cloud-Piercing Pavilion’s history reached back into deep antiquity. Its roots lay in the ancient Azure Cloud Sect, which had once been a genuine immortal sect. The Azure Cloud Sect was an immortal faction of the old world, with many heaven-shaking powerhouses to its name. After the Great Catastrophe of Heaven and Earth, the immortal sects weakened and dwindled, and the Azure Cloud Sect was no exception. In time, it fractured into several smaller Daoist lineages, and the Cloud-Piercing Pavilion was one such offshoot.

In other words, though the pavilion now kept to Xia Province, quietly tending its patch of earth, its ancestry was that of a grand, storied sect with history, tradition, and roots going back to the age of immortals. The world’s thinning spirit qi had corroded most of the sect’s heirloom treasures, but oddly enough, several texts from the Ancient Era and the Middle Era had survived almost intact.

And if the original scrolls were too damaged, one could always copy them, meticulously, again and again.

The secret Middle Era-text Elder Liang referenced was titled the Mount Lan Records of Strange Beasts, written by an elder of the Azure Cloud Sect before the sect fractured. It was now some 2,700 years old. That elder had recorded several brutal battles he had personally fought in. The two most important had taken place near Mount Lan, which was within what was now the borders of the State of Xianyou. The period between the great catastrophe and the time when immortals vanished completely from the mortal realm was known as the Middle Era.

After the Heavenly Demon departed from the mortal realm, the world had enjoyed two centuries of peace.

However, peace never lasted. New monsters and demons appeared, rampaging across the land. They did not just devour commoners; they ambushed and slaughtered those from immortal sects as well. Many powerful bloodlines lost their juniors in tragic, bloody incidents.

The immortal sects were furious. They rallied their forces and launched counterattacks against the monster race.

The monster race, battered and bloodied, cried injustice. Those monstrous things wreaking havoc everywhere were not their people, they insisted. They claimed that they had not sent them.

The immortal sects refused to believe them.

Few among monsters were soft-tempered. If they took enough blows, they were bound to strike back. And so the comrades-in-arms who had once stood shoulder to shoulder against the Heavenly Demon in the Ancient Era turned on each other without hesitation.

In time, however, the cultivators began to sense that something did not add up. The strange beasts they had slain—strange in form and power—were ferocious, yes, but they did not feel like native monster kind.

At the very least, their intelligence lagged far behind. There was almost no way to communicate with them.

That kind of creature was not truly a monster, at least not in the usual sense of the word.

As investigations continued, the differences became increasingly stark. Eventually, people gave these beings a new name, and that name was ghost beasts.

Unfortunately, by then, the relationship between the immortals and the monsters was beyond repair. Competition over the world’s dwindling spirit qi only deepened their rift. Old grudges hardened into hatred, and fresh blood debts piled atop the old.

The author of the Mount Lan Records had personally fought ghost beasts multiple times and dissected over a hundred of them. Building on centuries of previous study, he came to a startling conclusion: these creatures were once ordinary monsters that had been mutated. And the crucial element in that transformation was a certain medicine that came from the Heavenly Demon.

It was the Heavenly Demon’s leftover secret medicine that had triggered wild, uncontrollable mutations in the bodies of monsters.

The Azure Cloud Sect had also captured several of the ghost beasts’ creators. Every one of them was a devout follower acting under the Heavenly Demon’s orders.

In other words, though the Heavenly Demon had supposedly departed from the mortal realm, its shadow still hung over the world.

Later, as immortal and monster forces joined in hunting them down, and as time smoothed over the scars of the past, ghost beasts grew fewer and fewer, until they all but disappeared into the river of time.

By the time He Lingchuan reached this point in the letter, he raised his head to look at Elder Liang and asked, “So you want five drops of the medicine?”

“Exactly,” the disciple replied. “And Governor-General He has already approved the request.”

He Lingchuan smiled faintly and said, “It’s my spoils of war. My old man doesn’t have the right to allocate it. But if Elder Liang is willing to help me find a beast soul and answer a few of my questions, I’d be very happy to share.”

Elder Liang agreed almost instantly, with barely any hesitation at all.

“Then let me ask this first.” He Lingchuan tapped the letter. “You believe the medicine in Dong Rui’s hands to be the Heavenly Demon’s secret medicine?”

Elder Liang nodded.

“However, the monster puppets he’s made can’t compare to the ghost beasts of the Middle Era, can they? At most, they’re a weakened version.” Even though He Lingchuan had never seen a Middle Era ghost beast in person, back then, immortals had still been walking the earth. Anything that could fight immortals to a standstill had to be far more terrifying than Dong Rui’s ghost ape.

Elder Liang gestured with his hands, and his disciple translated faithfully, “Even if the medicine came from the Heavenly Demon, with it having been left sitting around for over two thousand years, it may have lost much of its potency.”

In other words, the medicine was long past its expiration date.

It made sense. It was almost... scientific.

Elder Liang continued, fingers moving, and his disciple translated, “And bear in mind that the decline of spirit qi during the Middle Era weakened ghost beasts as well.”

“So why did the Heavenly Demon not create ghost beasts as helpers when they were still in the mortal realm? Why only have them stir up trouble after leaving?”

This Young Master He sure has a lot of questions. Still, Elder Liang patiently gestured, and his disciple dutifully translated, “That’s unknown. Perhaps just as the secret medicine was created, the Heavenly Demon was forced out of the world.”

“I see...” He Lingchuan thought for a moment, then asked the question that had lingered in his mind for a long time, “Elder Liang, did the Heavenly Demon of the Ancient Era become the gods of later generations?”

When the Heavenly Demon vanished, the gods appeared. They could not descend in person, yet throughout the history of humanity, they flickered just beyond sight, giving oracles, accepting offerings, and interfering from afar.

It was hard not to connect the two.

And yet, curiously enough, He Lingchuan had never been able to find a definitive answer, not even in the archives of Panlong City.

Something about this topic was always hazy, wrapped in a veil that no one quite dared to tear away.

Elder Liang looked at him steadily for a long time before, through his disciple, he finally replied, “The sect teachings and ancestral records of Azure Cloud Sect repeatedly warn us never to forget the Heavenly Demon’s treachery or the cruelty of the great catastrophe. We, as successors of Azure Cloud Sect’s lineage, firmly believe that the Heavenly Demon never truly left. They merely changed their skin and became the lofty gods worshiped today. Yet now, no one remembers the wounds the Heavenly Demon left on this world. Many don’t even believe the great catastrophe from the Ancient Era truly happened, much less accept that the gods are just forms of the Heavenly Demon.”

He let out a heavy sigh. “Even many Daoist sects and monster clans now kneel and worship the gods along with the common folk. They have truly forgotten their own history, forgetting their forebears and boasting in their ignorance.”

“Why?” He Lingchuan could not help but ask. How did it come to that? Is the Heavenly Demon just that much better than the cultivators at propaganda? Even with a whole dimension separating them from everyone?

“Those events lie far too deep in the past, and humans are too short-lived.” Elder Liang’s hands moved faster now, and his disciple was stumbling slightly to keep up. “Young Master He should understand that memory passed down through generations can be tampered with. Ultimately, we must admit that we who cultivate today are far weaker than our predecessors. We lack the power to split mountains and cleave the earth. We don’t have the strength to command the people’s belief.”

In the era when immortals and demons were both present, ordinary humans had only needed to lift their heads and worship.

1. The original word for this is 鬾兽, with 鬾 being an archaic character that isn’t even in modern dictionaries and 兽 simply meaning beast. I’ve decided to translate 鬾 as ghost because of the connotations it carries from its composition and a reference I found in the Guangyun (廣韻), a rhyme dictionary from the Song dynasty. ☜