Chapter Forty-Nine: The Seed of Immortality

On the second day of the Lunar New Year, Peach Blossom Land was a scene of harmonious yet bustling activity.

The weather was clear.

Chen Xuan rose earlier than usual. After slowly practicing his martial forms in the courtyard, he ate some porridge and rice before stepping outside.

In the quiet morning alleys, charred remnants of bamboo from the previous day’s firecrackers lay scattered before each household.

Yesterday was the first day of the new year, and in Peach Blossom Land, firecrackers were set off before each home to ward off mountain spirits and evil ghosts, to dispel plagues and banish malevolent forces. The fated ones, known as the Immortal Seed lineage, led the ancient rites to honor the old mountain gods, seeking blessings and safety. As a result, there was no time to receive visitors from the future.

Chen Xuan had just arrived yesterday. His first act was to scout and plan an escape route. After a night’s rest, his cautious nature compelled him to measure the ancient village again with his footsteps.

To outsiders, he would appear merely as a traveler enchanted by the village’s scenery.

Many others from the future behaved similarly.

“Fellow Daoist Ye!”

At a fork in the road, Chen Xuan spotted Ye Kui, who carried a waist-mounted sword and knife, also wandering and surveying the village. Chen Xuan’s heart leapt with joy.

“Hm?”

Ye Kui glanced back at Chen Xuan’s enthusiastic wave, his eyelid twitching. Without hesitation, he turned into another alley and quickly disappeared.

That person again!

Every time their eyes met, the other’s gaze was fervent, almost too eager… Yet Ye Kui was one of this world’s protagonists; encountering a mere passerby’s admiration was inevitable.

But Ye Kui’s pride and aloof nature made him ill-suited to such interactions. The other’s friendly approach only made it harder for him to react, so his only choice was to avoid him outright.

“Uh…”

Chen Xuan smiled awkwardly, lowering his raised arm.

In the early morning of the ancient village, Yan Yushu pushed open the window of a two-story building, leaning out gracefully to breathe in the fresh air… Chen Xuan, Ye Kui, the figure in the black robe, the young swordsman in white, the imposing tiger demon wielding a monstrous blade, the crimson fox… one by one, these figures converged toward the fated ones.

When the morning mist dispersed, practitioners and spirits gathered before the village’s ancestral hall.

Chen Xuan arrived and quietly stood in a corner, unnoticed.

From the Red Crow City, the Southern Wasteland, and a few other regions, over a thousand practitioners and spirits flooded into Peach Blossom Land. In the end, only thirty or forty succeeded in entering the village.

Both humans and spirits formed their own circles.

First was Red Crow City, led by Yan Yushu, the highest-ranking figure. Around him gathered more than a dozen orthodox disciples from established cultivation families, their conversations the most harmonious.

Next came the Southern Wasteland spirits: various chimeras and monsters, numerous and diverse in form. Many were hostile to each other, fighting alone; each clan was small, and its members preferred solitude.

Around one tiger demon stood six or seven spirits. The tiger demon was about three meters tall, broad-chested, with explosive muscles, carrying a great sword on his back. A red fox perched on his shoulder, pulling a whisker and pointing repeatedly at Chen Xuan’s location as it chattered.

Apart from these two forces, the other practitioners gathered in small groups or stood alone.

“Ah, it’s you?”

A round-faced girl suddenly approached Chen Xuan, hands clasped behind her back, her large eyes sparkling like flames.

Wang Linger.

A junior to Wang Zhenyang, the Great Cultivator of the Dao Treasury in Red Crow City.

Whether by the legacy of her predecessors or her own innate talent, she had the right to be here. But aside from her, none of the families affiliated with hers—the Chu, Li, Wu clans—were so fortunate.

The Great Dao was cold and merciless; many were left behind. Such cruelty was unavoidable.

“Hm.”

Chen Xuan replied briefly.

They had only met once before; after greeting each other, Wang Linger walked toward Yan Yushu’s group. As a daughter of a great family from Red Crow City, that was where she belonged.

“Click!”

Soon, the ancestral hall’s great doors opened, and a procession of imposing ancient figures, armed and stern, emerged, eyeing the practitioners sharply.

Then, the ancient scholar from yesterday stepped forward and declared loudly:

“Ancestor Liu Jiao is ready. Everyone may enter.”

He paused, his expression growing serious as he warned:

“The items inside the ancestral hall are precious, many relics once used by ancient cultivators. Without permission, do not touch anything. Otherwise, bloodshed will be inevitable. Consider this your solemn warning!”

Everyone exchanged glances before obediently following the ancient scholar inside.

Soon, Chen Xuan saw with his own eyes the legendary ancestor Liu Jiao—the fated immortal seed.

Liu Jiao wore a simple hemp garment and straw sandals, his appearance ordinary, the kind no one would give a second glance.

He looked very young… like an ordinary man in his twenties.

“Time and years have eternally frozen upon him,” Chen Xuan thought. According to the information he had, the world described Liu Jiao thus:

“There is nothing older than him, not even the assembled immortals and sages.”

Time’s relentless river erases all. Mountains crumble, ancient mountain gods decay to dust, venerable sages vanish into obscurity; all once-great things are eventually worn away by wind and rain…

Only Liu Jiao remains eternal.

He was one of the few recorded fated ones who met a peaceful end.

“At the dawn of antiquity, who passed on the Way?” Liu Jiao’s calm gaze rested on the crowd as he sat on the steps and continued:

“In ancient times, a phoenix fell to earth, fiery flames scorched the sky and land for a thousand miles. A great drought followed; no crops could grow for years, and countless ancient people starved. The phoenix was the food of the ancient mountain god here; humans were forbidden to touch it. But without eating, they would perish. One ancient man rose, leading his tribe, the first to consume the blood and flesh of the phoenix…”

“That year, I, Liu Jiao, was eighteen and married my first wife…”

Chen Xuan listened to Liu Jiao’s soliloquy, recalling the ancient records of the Mountain and Sea Era. After some thought, he understood whom the ancestor referred to.

Jiang, the Jiang clan.

One of the primordial ancient cultivators.

An ancient sage born bathed in phoenix blood.

The fiery virtue of the twelve qi of Mountain and Sea arose from his established lineage; his “burning mountains and boiling seas” consumed the hundred thousand ancient mountains and seas.

Of course, the fiery qi later produced countless immortals and sages who each shone in their eras, but without doubt, the most famous was this ancient sage who conquered the mountain gods and leveled countless ancient mountains and seas.

“Legend has it the eternal Fire Emperor of the ancient Chu kingdom bore a trace of Jiang’s bloodline.”

Chen Xuan mused silently and continued listening to Liu Jiao’s recounting. In fact, these stories were old news, repeated every twenty years by Liu Jiao and widely known outside.

Liu Jiao was a survivor from the Mountain and Sea era.

Yet this immortal seed, eternal in the world, could not cultivate. Immortal energy was beyond his reach.

Perhaps due to his constitution, or the price of immortality, Liu Jiao could only be a spectator in this vast, turbulent world—not a master of fate.

He had tried many methods but could not even produce offspring with cultivation potential.

Through countless millennia, Liu Jiao’s comrades had fallen like autumn leaves in the wind, one by one drifting away. The ancient people in Peach Blossom Land—descendants of some unknown generation—he could only watch helplessly, cold and indifferent, unable to intervene…

Was this fortune or cruelty?

No one knew.

“How to make Liu Jiao wield the power of the immortal seed? Even the Heart Meditation must improve,” Chen Xuan murmured, fingering the letter hidden in his sleeve amidst the crowd.

“Should I fight him?”