A lean young boy, appearing no more than seven or eight years old, lay upon a thatched roof, staring up at the sky.
Hearing his mother call out, he started to rise, but slipped in his haste. Losing his balance, he tumbled straight off the roof.
Fortunately, he landed square upon the haystack below and escaped unhurt.
Seemingly accustomed to this, Goudan patted himself off, straightened his clothes, and trotted briskly toward home.
At the dinner table, his mother scooped vegetables into his bowl while scolding him, "Playing at the east end of the village again? Haven't I told you to stay away from that madman?"
Goudan wolfed down his food and said nonchalantly, "I think Mad Uncle is pretty nice. He's not scary like you all say at all."
Goudan's father, a man of few words who had not spoken a syllable since the meal began, set his chopsticks down upon hearing this and slapped Goudan upside the head.
"What the hell do you know?! How many people in this village refused to believe in bad omens? Do you know what happened to them in the end? When we tell you to stay away from him, you stay away from him!"
Under his father's iron fist, Goudan dared not argue back. Yet he remained thoroughly unconvinced in his heart, merely burying his head in his bowl to eat.
After that, Goudan outwardly stopped going to Mad Uncle's place.
Yet whenever an opportunity presented itself, he would quietly bring along some tasty food to visit him.
Mad Uncle was Goudan's own name for him. The rest of the villagers simply called him "the Madman."
He was also a native of the village, orphaned in early childhood and raised on meals from across the neighborhood. In his youth, he had been relatively normal. But as he gradually approached middle age, he began losing his wits.
He would often mutter strange phrases under his breath.
Things like, "I saw so many of myself," and "I am not me at all." Sometimes he would even point at a villager, crying out in sheer terror, "Aren't you already dead?"
And nine times out of ten, the villagers he seemed to curse would indeed drop dead without warning shortly thereafter.
In this world, immortals and gods truly existed. The villagers were convinced that the madman was certainly tied to those profound and elusive mystic forces. To avoid bringing disaster upon themselves, they resolved to band together and drive him away.
Yet there seemed to be something in the village that the madman cared about deeply. Sensing the villagers' hostility, he suddenly flew into a violent frenzy, striking out at them.
Goudan did not know exactly how many died that day. But from then on, the villagers went out of their way to avoid the madman, keeping as far away from him as possible.
Only a newborn calf like Goudan dared approach him.
Year-round, the madman remained inside his dilapidated ancestral house. It was pitch-black, shut off from the light of day. He would curl up in a corner, endlessly repeating quiet whispers.
At first, Goudan had only stumbled inside by accident while playing hide-and-seek with his friends, and the eerie, horrifying atmosphere of the house had startled him.
Yet when he heard the madman's muttered whispers, though he could not understand what those syllables meant, Goudan found himself irresistibly drawn to them.
Only when the shouts of his playmates rose repeatedly outside did Goudan tear himself away with great reluctance. From then on, whenever his mind drifted, the madman's whispers would echo in his ears.
Eventually, one day, Goudan could no longer resist the urge. He returned to the madman's dark little house once more.
Politely, he had even brought along a roast duck.
The aroma of the food seemed to briefly awaken the madman's senses. He stopped his chanting and snatched the roast duck without ceremony, devouring it hungrily.
After finishing his meal, the now-lucid madman merely warned Goudan to stay far away from him.
Having been swindled out of a roast duck, how could Goudan let the matter drop so easily? Naturally, he refused to leave. He even asked the madman about the phrases he was always chanting.
The madman was silent at first.
Then, from the rubble of the ruined house, he raked out a pile of wooden tablets, saying they were ancestral spirit tablets.
He claimed he did not know what he was saying during his bouts of madness either. It was simply an odd illness that had plagued their Xuanyuan clan since ancient times.
Fortunately, only one person in each generation would suffer from this strange malady. As the Xuanyuan clan branched out over time, few clansmen even remembered this hereditary affliction.
"Let this curse end here." The madman arranged the tablets on the ground in sequence. When it came to his own turn, he set down only a blank wooden tablet.
Then, before Goudan's shocked eyes, all the tablets caught fire without any wind. Within the cramped wooden hut, they were reduced to ash in an instant.
Goudan asked him about the mysterious deaths among the villagers.
Mad Uncle showed a pale, bloodless smile. "What does their fated death have to do with me? The rooster crows and the world turns light. Does the sun in the sky rise just because the rooster calls?"
"Goudan, you must understand, everything in this world has already happened countless times. What is happening now is merely another rehearsal. Just like you..."
Mad Uncle stared intently at Goudan, and a look of profound terror gradually crept over his face. Following the fear, he fell back into madness. Before completely losing his sanity, he casually threw Goudan out the door.
From that day on, Goudan faintly believed that this mad uncle of his harbored some tremendous secret.
Though young Goudan could not understand his words, he was convinced that the secret Mad Uncle carried was very likely tied to the legendary immortals!
To that end, Goudan went to great lengths to wheedle the mad uncle's real name out of his father.
Xuanyuan Sheng.
Even though everyone in the village bore the surname Xuanyuan, Goudan felt that Mad Uncle's name sounded exceptionally wonderful.
In the days that followed, Mad Uncle's illness grew increasingly severe. Even Goudan's tactic of consoling him with food no longer worked.
Goudan could only climb onto Mad Uncle's roof, closing his eyes to listen to the increasingly bizarre sounds coming from below.
Every time he listened to that tone, which others found hair-raising, Goudan would sleep soundly and sweetly.
Days passed like this until Goudan turned nine.
One night, an earth-shattering roar erupted in the village. When the villagers woke with a start, they discovered the explosion had come straight from Xuanyuan Sheng's house.
By the time the crowd rushed over, they found the site had been leveled to the ground for reasons unknown.
Mad Uncle's death caused little stir. In the eyes of most Xuanyuan clansmen, the disappearance of a scourge like Xuanyuan Sheng was a blessing in disguise.
Only Goudan felt immensely sorrowful over his death. Taking advantage of a moment when no one was around, he searched the site of the incident thoroughly. Regrettably, apart from a single charred spirit tablet, he found nothing.
The wooden tablet had been burned until only its final corner remained. Goudan was illiterate; he took it to literate adults in the village to inquire, only to learn that the character was "Hong."
"Xuanyuan Hong."
Goudan had an exceptional memory. He vaguely recalled that when Mad Uncle had arranged the tablets in order on the ground, he had solemnly placed this tablet in the very first position.
Knowing it was an ancestral tablet, Goudan dared not keep it for himself.
After bowing and kneeling with utmost reverence, Goudan set fire to the remaining wood, burning it to ash.
Xuanyuan Village had lived at peace with the world since antiquity.
After Xuanyuan Sheng died, the village returned to its former tranquil life. Goudan gradually grew up, and the villagers no longer addressed him as Goudan.
Instead, they called him by his given name, Xuanyuan Tuo.
Xuanyuan Tuo's path in life was no different from that of any other villager.
Sowing, plowing, harvesting. Marrying, taking a wife, fathering a child.
Only in his moments of leisure would Xuanyuan Tuo's mind drift, faintly recalling Mad Uncle's murmurs from the past.
No matter how time flowed, that profound, wondrous cadence remained lodged within his mind, never fading.
As Xuanyuan Tuo grew older, his life seemed set in stone.
Until the year he turned fifty.
Xuanyuan Tuo's son died of illness. Unable to bear the agony of outliving her child, his wife passed away shortly thereafter.
Losing two of his closest kin in under half a year left Xuanyuan Tuo overwhelmed with grief.
Feeling he had nothing left to live for, he contemplated ending his own life time and again.
Yet at the critical moments, the wondrous cadence that had accompanied his growth would sound once more, dispersing the dark thoughts in his head.
Xuanyuan Tuo sat in a daze for several days as the sorrow in his heart slowly settled.
He had no desire to remarry or father another child.
Instead, a thought flickered in his heart like a spark, then spread like a wildfire that could not be quenched.
Having witnessed the demise of his closest loved ones with his own eyes, Xuanyuan Tuo had gained a profound understanding of life's fragility.
Realizing he was already past fifty and might soon follow in the footsteps of the deceased, an intense dread gripped his heart.
After sitting motionless for two more days without food or water, Xuanyuan Tuo finally made up his mind: he would cultivate immortality and seek longevity!
For an old farmer approaching fifty, seeking the Dao of the immortals seemed an utter joke.
Xuanyuan Tuo knew full well how absurd his decision was.
Thus, he made no commotion. He quietly packed his bags, left Xuanyuan Village, and set out alone upon the road of seeking immortality.
Fortunately, the Dao of immortality flourished in this world, and the immortals did not hide away from mortal eyes. In nearly every major city, one could occasionally glimpse immortals soaring through the empty air.
After enduring all manner of ridicule, Xuanyuan Tuo finally discovered the location of the nearest cultivation sect.
Guiyuan Sect!
After enduring untold hardships on the road, Xuanyuan Tuo finally arrived outside Guiyuan Sect.
To his astonishment, he found several hundred people gathered there just like him. Most, however, were young children accompanied by attendants. An old man with half a foot in the grave who still dreamed of cultivation was the sole exception.
Upon inquiring, Xuanyuan Tuo learned why the crowd had assembled outside the mountain gates. It was not yet time for Guiyuan Sect to recruit disciples, and its defensive mountain array enveloped the peaks; mortals could not step foot inside the immortal domain.
Xuanyuan Tuo asked when the next disciple-recruitment ceremony would take place, only to hear that it would be three years later.
He had originally intended to wait patiently outside the mountain gates like the others. Yet for some reason, looking at the sect's protective array that everyone else feared like a tiger, he did not feel it was particularly terrifying.
Stirred by an impulse, the naturally bold Xuanyuan Tuo decided to take a gamble.
The outcome was just as he had expected. He encountered no danger along the way, stumbling forward until he reached Guiyuan Sect's main gates!
Meeting an immortal elder, Xuanyuan Tuo was overjoyed. He sought to join the sect, only to be mocked mercilessly.
Fortunately, just as he was about to be forcibly expelled, an immortal elder surnamed Xu took pity on him and handed him an introductory cultivation technique, promising that if he could produce spiritual energy within a year, he could return to seek him out.
Though he had not been officially accepted into the sect, he had obtained an immortal method.
Xuanyuan Tuo kept the manual close to his chest and skirted past the crowd still waiting outside the mountain gates. For the sake of safety, he made a long journey to an even more distant mortal town.
Xuanyuan Tuo could not read. To practice the technique, he seized every opportunity along the way to consult others and learn.
Though old, his mind remained sharp. By the time he reached his destination safely, he had learned most of the words in the introductory manual.
With no immortal master to instruct him, Xuanyuan Tuo pondered the technique alone.
Immortal methods were abstruse. Even an introductory manual was not something an unsophisticated mountain farmer could master on his own.
Moreover, Xuanyuan Tuo was already fifty years old, having long passed the optimal age for cultivation.
Furthermore, he had to earn a living during the day to sustain himself...
In the blink of an eye, the one-year deadline was fast approaching, yet despite holding an immortal method, Xuanyuan Tuo had achieved nothing.
"Even if I manage to cultivate spiritual energy, I won't make it back in time."
Despair filled his heart.
"Cultivation is simply too difficult for ordinary people like us."
He suddenly recalled the youthful immortal master he had seen in the city days before, looking up at him flying freely with the wind at barely twenty years of age.
How unfair was the Heavenly Dao!
Despair, jealousy, terror...
Xuanyuan Tuo slumped onto the ground, staring up into the sky.
"Why can't everyone in this world cultivate?"
"Why must Heaven and Earth impose such restrictions?"
"Damn you, ruthless Heaven!"
Curses like this were all too common, played out across the world day and night without end.
Yet as Xuanyuan Tuo cursed in his heart, the familiar chanting of his mad uncle, Xuanyuan Sheng, echoed in his ears once more.
Only this time, it did not quickly fade.
Instead, it looped again and again, until it completely flooded his mind!
In a daze, Xuanyuan Tuo seemed to return to his childhood.
In that gloomy, dark room, Mad Uncle stood amidst a room full of Xuanyuan ancestral tablets, his expression ferocious.
"It has appeared again! Inextinguishable, lingering like a ghost!"
"Then let us die together!"
Raging flames suddenly erupted from Xuanyuan Sheng's body.
He lunged forward toward the towering rows of spirit tablets.
The somber flames spread from Xuanyuan Sheng onto the tablets.
Amidst Xuanyuan Sheng's maniacal laughter, the fire gradually engulfed everything.
In the end, only the tablet bearing the name Xuanyuan Hong had a corner spared.
And then, it was picked up by Xuanyuan Tuo!
"Xuanyuan Hong"!
The three characters appeared in his mind like a phantom. From a gilt gold, blood began to seep through drop by drop.
Then, it detonated with a roar!
Xuanyuan Tuo fainted dead away.
When he woke, he stared blankly at the heavens, then looked at himself in the mirror.
Something seemed to have changed.
Looking back at the introductory immortal method bestowed by the Guiyuan Sect elder, Xuanyuan Tuo found it remarkably simple and easy to understand.
In fact...
It was almost excessively crude.
Xuanyuan Tuo was no longer in a hurry to succeed in his cultivation and return to join Guiyuan Sect.
Instead, he began pondering the question he had asked before.
"Why can't everyone in this world cultivate?"
Xuanyuan Tuo naturally understood that Heaven birthed myriad things and each person differed.
Yet what method could allow people to ignore differences in talent so that everyone could cultivate?
The constant whispers by his ear no longer sounded, leaving Xuanyuan Tuo unaccustomed to the quiet for a moment.
At the same time, numerous images began surfacing endlessly in his mind.
Among them were visions of countless plants and beasts.
There were faces that felt both familiar and alien.
And there were scenes of dialogue whose meaning was unclear.
"How confident are you in this journey?"
"I will do all that is humanly possible and leave the rest to fate."
"That does not sound like something you would say."
"The disparity in strength is too vast; all I can do is risk my life in a desperate gamble."
"So be it. Go then. Whether it brings fortune or calamity, who can tell?"
...
Xuanyuan Tuo pressed a hand to his brow.
He seemed to have forgotten some exceptionally vital mission.
The chaotic memories could not shake his resolve.
Instead, drawing upon the countless memory fragments that had suddenly surged into his mind, Xuanyuan Tuo delved deeper into that earlier question.
How can everyone cultivate?
More and more scenes surfaced in his mind, growing increasingly complex.
Gradually, they pieced together the life of another powerful cultivator named the Heavenly Physician.
Yet clinging to his obsession, Xuanyuan Tuo forcibly suppressed everything for the time being.
He continued thinking mechanically.
He sat motionless in the courtyard for thirty-three days.
On that day, Xuanyuan Tuo—now emaciated to the extreme, with only a thin layer of skin hanging over his bones like a skeleton—suddenly stood up.
His eyes were as brilliant and dazzling as the stars in the night sky.
He looked up at the heavens, murmuring softly under his breath:
"If I wish to become an immortal, why must I plead with Heaven? If Heaven will not grant it, I shall take it myself!"
"Yielding to Heaven makes a mortal; defying Heaven..."
"Makes an immortal!"
Xuanyuan Tuo's stooped chest straightened in an instant.
In a mortal body, he met the gaze of the firmament.
Though he carried no special aura, he seemed not to yield an inch.
He continued to murmur:
"Therefore, the path of immortality is..."
"Absorb the spirit of Heaven and Earth to govern its Qi;
Borrow the marvels of Heaven and Earth to build the Dao Foundation;
Pry into the laws of Heaven and Earth to refine the Golden Core;
Seize the essence of Heaven and Earth to form the Nascent Soul;
Extract the marrow of Heaven and Earth to attain Divinity;
Sacrifice to the anima of Heaven and Earth to integrate with the Dao;
Defy the principles of Heaven and Earth to prove Longevity!"
Xuanyuan Tuo spoke faster and faster until, with the final phrase, he collapsed weakly to the ground in disarray.
Yet he did not stand back up, simply lying there and laughing uproariously.
Exhausted to the point of utter collapse after attaining the Dao he sought, Xuanyuan Tuo fell into a deep slumber.
The spiritual energy of Heaven and Earth was drawn toward him spontaneously. Surging in like rolling waves, it formed a whirlwind that lifted Xuanyuan Tuo into the air, holding him aloft.
After a long while, the phenomenon of spiritual energy pouring into his body finally subsided.
Xuanyuan Tuo descended slowly to the ground. His fifty-year-old frame had regained all its vitality. Though he still appeared aged on the outside, his interior teemed with boundless vigor.
After who knew how long...
The face of the slumbering Xuanyuan Tuo suddenly twitched violently.
He snapped his eyes open.
Yet there were no pupils—only an eerie field of white.
His voice also turned much older and deeper.
"The Xuanhuang Heavenly Dao is even harder to deal with than I expected."
"I nearly lost myself entirely, almost unable to restore my original consciousness."
"*Cough, cough*... a slight miscalculation."
Chapter 1408