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The Immortal World Stirs
In the Immortal World, bells tolled across floating continents as jade pavilions opened to the sky. Immortal officials gathered beneath a canopy of starlight, their robes billowing like clouds, their gazes fixed upon a single artifact hovering above the dais: a tablet of translucent crystal, its surface fracturing into numbers and sigils.
The Heavenly Ledger of Calamities was rarely wrong.
"Whole-planet annihilation," an Immortal Registrar whispered, knuckles white around his brush. "No reverberation of Dao-Weapon. No karmic trail to the Divine Realm. The signature is… blank."
"Impossible." An Immortal Monarch's aura crackled, bending sunlight. "A world does not vanish without Heaven's writ. This is the Divine Realm's doing."
A cold hum descended, silencing the hall. A thin old man in ash-grey stepped from nothing, a plain whisk in his hand, his eyes swirling with the slow, patient turn of creation.
"Lao Tzu," the Monarchs breathed, bowing in unison.
The old one's voice was soft, yet it filled every horizon. "It is not the Divine Realm."
Murmurs rippled. "Then who—?"
"A mortal world," Lao Tzu said, and even the wind dared not rustle. "One of billions. Its name concealed, its karmic cords severed. The hand that erased that planet does not climb the Heavens—it stands outside them. You will find no path if you search upward. Look… down."
"Shall we descend?" an elder asked, half in awe, half in dread.
Lao Tzu's gaze sharpened. "Do not trespass blindly. You will not see a towering god, nor a roaring blade. You will see a man who tills soil—and makes the Dao itself grow or wither at his leisure." He turned, and with him turned the page of an age. "Watch the mortal seas. A wave is coming."
He stepped out of reality. The ledger dimmed. Across countless immortal palaces, a single thought took root:
Find the farmer.
---
Back at the Farm
Morning settled warm and bright on Lai's fields. Dew pearled across cabbage leaves like tiny mirrors. Somewhere, a lark tried to outsing the breeze and failed.
On the porch, Ao Guang eyed the girl kneeling in the grass—a small figure with pale scales beneath travel-stained sleeves, serpent pupils catching the light. Blanca bowed properly, little hands clenched with determination.
Ao Guang squinted at Lai. "And why, exactly, must I train the little one?"
"Because you're both snakes," Lai said, deadpan, flicking a weed aside.
Ao Guang's beard bristled. "I am not a snake."
Lai blinked, then grinned. "Hahaha—I mean reptiles. One crawls on the ground; the other swims oceans or flies when bored. Close cousins."
Ao Guang made a long, withering sound that could drown fleets. "Hmph. Whatever."
"Good talk." Lai tapped the hoe against his shoulder. "She learns from you."
Blanca bowed again, earnest to the bone. "Please guide me, Senior."
Ao Guang's annoyance melted—just a little. "Stand. We begin with breath, blood, and coil."
He flicked his sleeve. The irrigation channels rose as silver ribbons, water spiraling into a floating ring-labyrinth. Ripples formed pathways; eddies formed hurdles. "Serpentine Coiling Breath. Inhale as the tide rises. Exhale before it breaks. Move as nine coils, strike as one."
Blanca stepped into the water maze. The world hushed. Her bare feet skimmed the ripples without sinking; scales ghosted along her wrists; her spine flowed like a drawn bow. Each breath thickened the air with a cool, tidal rhythm.
From the field's edge, Garfield scowled. "So she gets water dancing while I got iron golems punching my soul out of my ribs?"
Beside him, Long Fei—still mortal, still stubborn—crossed his arms. "I was tied to a tree and beaten by wooden giants for three days. She's… practicing ballet."
"Mm," Lai said, crouching to check a carrot's shoulders. "Your jealousy is loud."
Garfield jabbed a thumb at the water maze. "Master, this is unfair."
"Unfair?" Lai dusted soil from his fingers. "Because she's the second most powerful person in this world after Ao Guang."
Both men stared. "What?"
Ao Guang paused mid-instruction, one brow rising.
Lai leaned back on his heels, as if discussing fertilizer. "World Ranks. This mortal world is low—its laws are thin, its Heaven easy to ignore. Blanca's home world sits five ranks higher. Denser laws, heavier qi, older oaths. Bloodlines born there carry weight that can crush a lower sky by existing."
He pointed with his chin. "Drop a meteor in a pond—it does not need to swim to disturb the water. Blanca's blood is that meteor. Give her basics, and this world's Heaven will move out of her way."
Garfield's mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. "And I… wrestled iron golems."
"You learned to not die," Lai said, light as a laugh. "Now you can make others die. Balance."
Long Fei swallowed. "So she… outranks me because her home outranks me?"
"In law resonance," Lai said. "Strength is still earned. I'm letting you all earn it in different currencies."
Ao Guang's mouth quirked—the closest thing to a smile Lai had seen on him. "He speaks plainly today."
"Mm. I slept well." Lai shaded the cabbages with a cloth awning like a doting father. "Continue."
Ao Guang lifted his whisk. "Nine Coils, One Strike. Again." Water rose as mirrored serpents; Blanca slid among them, movements tightening into bright, precise arcs. When her palm fell, a thin groove etched the flagstone ten paces away, clean as a calligrapher's stroke.
Long Fei whistled softly despite himself. Garfield's scowl turned, grudgingly, into respect.
"Better," Ao Guang said. "We will add venom later."
"Venom?" Long Fei blinked.
Ao Guang's eyes gleamed. "A snake learns to be unseen until it is too late." He looked at Lai, then away, voice dropping. "And I am not a snake."
"Of course," Lai said, perfectly solemn. "Reptile."
Ao Guang pinched the bridge of his nose and decided not to flood the empire. Today.
---
Seeds, Lessons, Rumors
By midmorning, the farm breathed like a living organism—water rhythm in the east, iron golem footfalls thudding slow drills in the west as Garfield ran forms by choice (and trauma), Long Fei sweating through Food for the Soul, coaxing breath into mind and marrow until his pulse matched the sound of wind in wheat. Blanca's steps grew quicker, truer; Ao Guang's corrections became increasingly minute, increasingly deadly.
From Fallen Town, the market's laughter carried on the wind. Children shouted games about "The Farmer of Five Harvests" while vendors swore their greens grew sweeter lately "by Heaven's own smile." Somewhere, a drunken fiddler was trying to rhyme "cabbage" with "savage" and succeeding too well.
Lai listened, eyes half-closed, hearing the empire turn without noticing the thumb that steadied it.
The cabbages gleamed. The rows were perfect.
He was content.
---
Noon Visitors
The sun climbed to its summit and poured gold over the fields. Heat rose in shimmering veils. Birds hid in leaf-shade. The farm's wind chime clicked—three notes, a pattern it used only when the outer barrier admitted travelers who meant no immediate harm.
Two figures walked the lane: young women in merchant daughters' garb, dust on their hems, plain hats shading plain faces. The first moved with the effortless grace of someone who had learned to be ordinary; the second shadowed her half a step behind, too balanced, too careful, the way a blade tries to pretend it is wood.
"Merchants," Long Fei said, wiping his brow.
Garfield sniffed the air; the fine hairs along his neck rose. "…Their steps don't sound like coin-counters."
Blanca paused in the water maze, scales prickling without understanding why. Ao Guang's eyes narrowed, seeing through veils that pretended to be cloth.
"Interesting," he murmured.
Lai didn't look up from tightening the trellis around a row of beans. He merely said, in a voice that could make gods lean forward to listen:
"Let them in."
The gate swung by itself. The two young women crossed into the cool shade of the chestnut trees, the scent of mint and damp earth wrapping around them like a welcome.
The first lifted her eyes toward the man in the field, a farmer kneeling in dirt, hands gentle on living things.
Her heartbeat—disciplined for years—stuttered once.
The taller chestnut tree whispered as a breeze coiled through its leaves; somewhere above the clouds, Immortal eyes turned earthward; somewhere beneath the earth, ancient snakes smiled without showing teeth.
The noon light sharpened. The rows stood straight. The farm looked back.
And the two travelers—one of them the Empress in disguise—took their first step onto Lai's soil.
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