Chapter 1: Immortality
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Chapter 1: Immortality
The Hun Dynasty.
The twenty-fourth year of the Chonghui Era.
The Left Historians’ Office.
In a room thick with the musty odor of books, Qin Yuan sat stiffly behind an old pearwood desk.
His expression was blank, like the dim-witted son of a wealthy landowner.
He had… actually crossed into another world.
The Hun Dynasty.
A dynasty with a rather peculiar name.
But that was not the most important thing.
His current position was quite interesting: a recorder, or rather, a court historian.
There were six kinds of court historians. The Grand Historian oversaw the kingdom’s six great registers; the Lesser Historian recorded the affairs of the realm; the Inner Historian documented the sovereign’s commands; the Outer Historian recorded the missions sent to the four quarters; the Left Historian recorded words; and the Right Historian recorded deeds.
By this classification, a recorder belonged to the Left Historians.
But that was not the most important thing either.
Qin Yuan knocked on his head, forcing his thoughts to stop racing.
The current Hun Dynasty—how should he put it?—had run into a minor problem.
It was on the verge of collapse.
Outside, a host of powerful enemies from across the seas, relying on the fact that every one of them practiced martial arts, repeatedly invaded. Within the realm, rebellions had erupted everywhere as conflicts grew ever more intense.
A sweeping reform from top to bottom had just been abolished.
How could an utterly ordinary recorder like him survive?
That was the most important question.
A thought stirred in his mind.
“System.”
“Big Brother System.”
“Daddy System.”
“Grandpa System.”
“System.”
“Go to hell.”
Qin Yuan frowned.
It seemed he could only rely on himself.
He had relied on himself for his entire previous life, and even after crossing into another world, he still had to rely on himself.
He might as well not have crossed over at all.
His body suddenly shuddered.
Ah.
What was this?
Two lines of prompts appeared in his mind.
“Immortality.”
“Persist in practicing techniques for eight full hours every day. Once the body has been developed to its limits, one hundred days’ worth of internal energy can be awakened from the Foundation of Immortality. Ordinary martial arts may also be called techniques. If you fail to do so, you gain nothing. After embarking upon the path of cultivation, any awakened magical power will be calculated separately.”
An option?
That was Qin Yuan’s first thought.
The next instant, a vast force surged from his lower abdomen, filling his entire body with warmth.
Unfortunately, it was far too brief.
Shorter-lived than a middle-aged man.
Wait. Was this internal energy?
Had it chosen automatically for him?
What was this nonsense?
He would obviously have chosen immortality!
No.
These were his two cheat abilities.
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One allowed him to awaken one hundred days’ worth of internal energy from the Foundation of Immortality each day through torturous, high-intensity practice.
The other was immortality itself.
Qin Yuan finally understood.
Hahahaha!
What was cultivation for, in the end? Immortality.
Yet lifespan was like a carrot dangling before a donkey, driving cultivators to climb ever higher—to the Golden Core realm, the Golden Immortal realm, sainthood.
But he had it the other way around.
He had obtained immortality from the very beginning.
In other words, so long as he hid himself away like the shameless old tortoise Sima Yi or Tokugawa Ieyasu, he could claim the final victory.
How did that saying go?
That was it.
As long as he outlived all of you, victory would belong to me.
Calm down. Calm down…
After more than two minutes, Qin Yuan managed to settle his nerves.
Before long, he was agitated again.
As an ordinary person, possessing the possibility of acquiring overwhelming power made it impossible not to imagine how he would reshape the world in the future.
After turning the matter over in his mind—
Qin Yuan became thoroughly calm.
Reshape the world, my foot.
Keeping his head down and quietly surviving, pursuing eternal freedom—that was the proper path.
He patted his cheeks and began examining the muddled memories belonging to this body.
He should never have looked.
It turned out that he had an important assignment today:
He was to go to the Imperial Prison and record the testimony of a ringleader arrested after the failure of the reforms.
After making a few simple preparations, Qin Yuan mounted his beloved little donkey and left the Inner Historians’ Office.
As he traveled, he continued sorting through his memories.
The founder of the Hun Dynasty was named Qi Jin. He had been a general of the previous dynasty and, in its final years, commanded the Qi Family Army.
There was a legend about him that made Qin Yuan extremely wary.
It was said that Qi Jin had died in a great battle known as the Bloody Battle of the Hun River.
Then a mysterious powerhouse named Ancestor Shen had appeared and revived Qi Jin with a single drop of ginseng essence.
From that moment onward, Qi Jin had been invincible. In less than three years, he unified the world and established the Hun Dynasty through abdication.
Many later citizens of the Hun Dynasty believed the legend to be false, much like the founders of earlier dynasties who claimed to be descended from the sun, dragons, or dark phoenixes after their mothers had supposedly been visited by divine beings and cuckolded their fathers.
Qin Yuan did not think so.
For one thing, the Hun Dynasty prohibited the consumption of ginseng.
For another, caution never hurt.
“Hmm. We’re here.”
Qin Yuan raised his head.
Before him stood a gate bearing the words Imperial Prison.
A chill, sinister aura rushed toward him.
No wonder it was the Imperial Prison.
He dismounted and handed his credentials to the chief jailer.
Only then was he allowed inside.
Led by the chief jailer, Qin Yuan wound through passage after passage. Everywhere he looked, the place was lifeless and oppressive. Even the patrolling jailers seemed like walking corpses wandering through the underworld.
Just as Qin Yuan was about to succumb to the suffocating atmosphere, the chief jailer stopped before a filthy cell.
Inside, a pale young man in his twenties, dressed in prison clothes, was writing on the wall with a piece of coal.
According to his memories, the man was named Tan Zhuangfei, the son of a governor in the south.
Qin Yuan cleared his throat softly.
Tan Zhuangfei turned around. He was even younger than Qin Yuan had imagined. His eyes were bloodshot, yet he showed none of the dejection one might expect from a man imprisoned.
After glancing at Qin Yuan’s insignia, he asked uncertainly, “A recorder?”
“Yes.”
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The jailer opened the cell, interrupting their exchange.
With a heavy thud, he set down a table and two chairs. Then, expressionless, he locked the door again and left.
“Please.”
Qin Yuan gestured toward the chairs.
After they had taken their seats, Qin Yuan asked in a conversational tone, “You had the chance to escape like the others. Why didn’t you leave?”
“Since ancient times, only failed reforms have avoided bloodshed. No one has bled for this reform yet. I shall be the first.”
Sunlight happened to stream in through the window, falling across Tan Zhuangfei’s bloodless face.
He looked almost exactly like a martyr.
“And what do you think of the other two who escaped?” Qin Yuan asked again.
There had been three leaders of the reform movement in all, and Tan Zhuangfei ranked third.
“Those who stayed and those who left are all heroes. Without sacrifice, there is no way to inspire the people. Without those who leave, there can be no future.”
Tan Zhuangfei answered without the slightest hesitation.
Qin Yuan asked several more questions.
Tan Zhuangfei answered each one.
According to procedure, Qin Yuan should leave.
His gaze fell upon the poem written on the wall, and he read it aloud:
“I cast aside the foreign blade and laugh up at the sky;
Those who leave or stay possess hearts as vast as Kunlun.”
The two lines answered his earlier question perfectly.
“Open the door.”
With a clatter, the rust-covered cell door swung open.
Qin Yuan walked five or six steps before turning back for one last look.
Tan Zhuangfei stood with his back toward him, bathed in the orange sunlight.
It seemed as though he was not the one imprisoned in the cell.
It was everyone else.
When Qin Yuan returned to the Left Historians’ Office, he transcribed Tan Zhuangfei’s words and submitted the record.
With that, the assignment was considered complete.
Whew!
Qin Yuan exhaled a breath of stale air and collapsed into his chair.
This work, part historian and part intelligence agent, was truly exhausting.
At present, he did not even want to move a finger.
“Mahjong! Big Four Joys! Pay up, pay up!”
“Damn it all!”
“I’m furious!”
“Can’t be helped. Heaven itself wants me to get rich.”
The noisy clatter of mahjong tiles drifted in from next door.
Those fellows played cards as soon as their shift ended.
Life was so short, yet they wasted it on such pointless things.
A while later, Qin Yuan found himself seated at the mahjong table.
Pointless things were precisely what someone with an endless life ought to do.
Mahjong was not only an immensely entertaining pastime; it was also a bridge for bringing people closer together.
After several rounds, Qin Yuan no longer felt estranged from this other world.
One had to admit, mahjong was truly miraculous.
Since the protagonist did not practice this world’s methods of cultivation, he was not constrained by Heaven’s will.
End of Chapter