Chapter 2
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 2
That day, Lee Hyun returned to his hut without even trying to sell his firewood.
Drawing water from a nearby stream, he poured it into a shallow wooden basin and peered down at the surface, his heart hammering against his ribs.
Staring right back at him was the exact same face he had worn twenty years ago—the very day he first woke up in this body.
Aside from skin tanned by the sun and hair that hung a little longer, nothing had changed. Not a single crow’s foot lined his eyes, and his hair remained pitch-black, without a solitary strand of grey.
No matter how he rationalized it, remaining completely untouched by time for two whole decades was anything but normal.
Had an error occurred in the laws of the world when his soul claimed this vessel? Or had the original owner of this body been something other than human?
Lee Hyun stood up straight, drew a breath, and spoke cautiously into the empty air.
“Status window.”
Nothing happened.
“System.”
Outside the window, a lone bird chirped in the trees.
“Open.”
A faint breeze drifted through a gap in the wall, making the timber creak softly.
“What in the world…”
Eternal youth in itself wasn’t a curse. But right now, it terrified him down to his bones.
If word got out that an ordinary mortal didn’t age, Lee Hyun would be as good as dead.
This was a xianxia world, a realm ruled by cultivators. Why did those immortals risk life and limb, severing mortal ties to pursue the Dao? Was it not precisely to grasp boundless lifespan and heaven-defying power?
Yet here stood a mortal who hadn’t even stepped through the doors of the Qi Refining Stage, casually walking around with an ageless flesh vessel. The consequences, should anyone find out, were horrifying to contemplate.
If this leaks, death will be a mercy… I’ll either have my body seized by some ancient monster, get strapped to a table as a test subject, or worse, tossed straight into a cauldron to be refined into a pill!
Starting the very next morning, Lee Hyun let his beard grow wild, smeared soot and dirt across his cheeks, and walked with an exaggerated stoop.
Unfortunately, it was already too late.
Whatever loose words Jang Sam had traded around the tavern, the villagers were now scrutinizing Lee Hyun’s face whenever he came down the mountain with his bundles. No one dared ask him directly, but their sideways glances dripped with a suffocating mix of fear and curiosity.
In the end, Lee Hyun resolved to abandon Baekmok Village.
Though it was a home he had inhabited for twenty years, packing up took no time at all. His earthly possessions amounted to an axe, a paring knife, a shovel, a hammer, an iron cooking pot, and a few coarse garments tied into a bundle. He dearly wanted to take the wooden figures he had whittled over the years, but they were far too heavy to haul, so he left them behind.
Even after gathering his things, Lee Hyun didn’t slip away immediately.
Circling the perimeter of the hut, he deliberately kicked down the wicker fence. He took his knife and gouged deep, ragged furrows into the wooden door to mimic the claw marks of a wild beast, scattering splintered debris across the yard.
Next, he fetched a mountain rabbit caught in a snare he had laid a few days prior, slaughtered it, and crudely splattered its dark blood over the floorboards and the threshold. To any passerby, it would look like a lethal attack by a starving bear or tiger.
“Ugh… Sorry, little guy.”
Even after all this time, he still had no stomach for killing animals.
He cast one long, lingering look back at the beloved hut he had called home for two decades. Regret tugged at his chest, but survival came first.
Before the first light of dawn cracked the horizon, Lee Hyun crossed the mountain pass and vanished.
* * *
The place where Lee Hyun settled for his second life was a secluded mountain valley hundreds of li away from Baekmok Village.
This time, he discarded his identity entirely.
He took the name Lee Muk, introducing himself to the locals as a wandering woodcutter on the run from wild beasts. The villagers thought him a bit strange, but in these troubled times, nobody wasted energy prying into the business of an impoverished drifter.
After building a modest hut beside a rugged cliff a short trek from the village, Lee Hyun immediately took a shovel to the dirt.
At first, his goal was simply a cellar to store provisions. The surrounding mountains teemed with predators, and keeping cured meats inside the living quarters often lured them in by scent.
Once the root cellar was finished, however, he carved it out further, expanding it into an underground hollow large enough for a grown man to hide comfortably.
Then, considering what might happen if the hatch ever caved in, he began excavating an escape tunnel out toward the opposite side of the ridge.
Shoveling soft earth was simple enough, but whenever he struck bedrock, the real suffering began. He would build a roaring fire over the stone, douse the blazing rock with frigid water until it fractured from the thermal shock, and then chip it away piece by piece with a chisel and hammer.
As the passage deepened, he fortified the ceiling with sturdy timber frames.
Lee Hyun was in no hurry.
He had no grand ambitions, and time was the one thing he possessed in absolute abundance. Two decades of swinging an axe had made forestry second nature, leaving him with plenty of daylight to spare, and chipping away at his subterranean labyrinth became a quiet source of satisfaction.
If he grew tired after digging a single foot today, he could simply lay down his tools and resume tomorrow. There was no deadline, and no one waiting for him on the surface.
After a few years of patient labor, the modest cellar had blossomed into a sprawling tunnel system.
The far exit emerged beneath a tangle of thorny briars in the dense forest over the ridge, utterly indistinguishable from natural terrain. To keep beasts from wandering inside, he blocked the passage from the interior with a dry-stone barrier and loose dirt that could be easily kicked down from within.
Lee Hyun packed the underground depot with dried provisions and seasoned firewood. On nights when the hungry howls of wolves sounded too close to his doorstep, he slept in the tunnel altogether. It was damp, dark, and chilled, but he felt infinitely safer buried beneath several yards of solid earth than resting inside a flimsy wooden shack.
Deep within the burrow, he hollowed out an auxiliary chamber, lining the floor with dried mountain grass and stocking it with water jugs and sealed grain sacks. Even if the main entrance collapsed entirely, he could hold out for days.
Time marched forward without pause.
Another ten years slipped by.
Lee Hyun still did not age.
At this point, it could no longer be dismissed as good genes or self-delusion. His physical form was fundamentally divorced from the mortal coil.
Then came a sweltering summer night.
A deafening detonation tore through the heavens.
Jolted awake, Lee Hyun initially mistook the roar for thunder. But the concussive force that followed was far too close, rattling the dirt floor beneath his sleeping mat and rattling his teeth in his jaw.
Scrambling outside, he found the night sky illuminated by terrifying flashes of crimson and azure light.
High in the sky, two cultivators were locked in mortal combat.
One wore flowing crimson robes, surrounded by towering dragons of roaring flame that coiled through the clouds. Opposite him drifted a figure in emerald robes, flanked by dozens of azure flying swords hovering in silent, lethal arrays.
With every flick of their sleeves and every mudra they formed, blinding arcs of spiritual light sheared through the sky.
A stray azure sword-beam grazed a distant peak, and with an ear-splitting crash, half the mountain sheared off and slid into the valley below.
The fire-wielding cultivator barked a thunderous laugh and launched a colossal fireball the size of a manor house. An instant later, an azure flying sword cleaved the inferno in twain; a detached fragment of the blazing sphere fell across the mountain slope behind Lee Hyun’s ridge. Dozens of ancient pines instantly ignited into pillars of ash, and earth blasted upward like erupting magma.
Lee Hyun stood frozen, jaw slack.
It was a spectacle infinitely more terrifying than any CGI blockbuster from his previous life. The scorching gusts lashing against his skin and the violent tremors shaking the earth beneath his straw sandals made it brutally clear: this was grim reality.
Right then, a wayward gout of dragon-fire tumbled straight toward his clearing.
Lee Hyun spun on his heel, threw himself through the doorway, and wrenched up the concealed floorboards.
Plunging headfirst into the cellar, he yanked the trapdoor shut and scrambled madly on all fours into the deep tunnel. The jagged rock walls tore at his elbows and knees, but the sharp spikes of pain barely registered.
A heartbeat later, the world inverted.
A thunderous shockwave hammered through the mountain. The tunnel groaned under the strain, raining loose dirt, pebbles, and fractured stone down upon his back. Lee Hyun pressed himself flat against the trench floor, wrapping both arms around his skull.
Acrid smoke and searing, suffocating heat poured down the intake shaft.
I could actually die here.
Only in that terrifying moment did Lee Hyun grasp the profound truth: an ageless body was fundamentally different from an immortal soul.
His flesh might not decay with the years, but he possessed no supernatural durability to survive attacks that obliterated mountains. If the tunnel caved in, he would be crushed into paste; if the spiritual flames swept down the shaft, he would be charred to bone.
Crawling desperately toward the alternate exit, he scraped away just enough rocks from the stone barrier to create an air hole, pressing his face to the cool breeze outside to draw breath.
The battle above raged until the first light of dawn.
Throughout the night, Lee Hyun remained pressed against the dirt near the exit, shivering violently, not daring to twitch a single muscle. He didn’t know who was fighting, why they were killing each other, or who ultimately stood victorious.
The only truth etched into his mind was that two cultivators had clashed, and an entire mountain range had collapsed, forest and all—collateral damage that neither combatant spared a second thought for.
Only after three days of silence did he dare crawl back up the tunnel toward the surface.
More than half the wooden hut was gone, crushed beneath scorched debris, and the vibrant forest around it was reduced to a blackened wasteland of ash. In the distance, dark pillars of smoke still drifted lazily from the remains of the mountain village.
Have I been looking at this all wrong…?
Stepping into the cultivation world was undeniably dangerous. But remaining a powerless mortal clearly offered no safety either.
Lee Hyun held no lust for supremacy, nor did he care for prestige or secular wealth. He certainly didn’t need to cultivate merely to prolong his lifespan—his body had that handled on its own.
Yet, a deep desire bloomed within his chest: he needed to become strong enough to survive.
Strong enough not to be mauled by mountain beasts. Strong enough to break away if bandits ambushed him. Strong enough that a stray spark from an immortal’s clash wouldn’t wipe him off the face of the earth.
That was all he asked for.
Besides, living like this is boring anyway… There’s nothing to do in this world. Cultivating might give me something to pass the centuries with.
He had no idea whether he even possessed a spiritual root, but seeking out a cultivation sect didn’t sound like the worst scheme.
If he got in, he could learn basic breathing techniques, and perhaps pick up skills like tending spiritual herbs or refining medicinal pills. Once he had mastered enough, he could slip away under the cover of night, dig a deep sanctuary in an uncharted mountain, and live in utter peace. Who would waste resources hunting an insignificant, low-ranking runaway disciple?
Even if the sect branded him an apostate and posted a bounty, he could simply hunker down in his burrow and wait a century or two until every single person who remembered his face died of old age.
Back in the novels he used to read, spiritual herbs grew exponentially more potent the longer they matured. As luck would have it, time was the one currency Lee Hyun possessed in endless supply.
If a plant took ten years to mature, he would wait ten years; if it required a century, he would wait a century. He had no reason to risk his neck storming perilous secret realms to fight over millennium-old spirit plants. He could just sow a handful of seeds in a quiet corner of the world and watch them grow.
With his mind set—and partly to alleviate the creeping boredom of an endless life—Lee Hyun decided to seek out an immortal sect.
* * *
Even with his course decided, Lee Hyun felt no urgency. He repaired his half-collapsed hut, went about his woodcutting, and took his time gathering intelligence. It was a full five years later before he settled on a target.
During those years, he kept his ears open at the trading posts, quietly piecing together rumors dropped by wandering merchants, caravan guards, and tavern patrons.
After thorough deliberation, Lee Hyun chose Cheongha Valley.
Cheongha Valley was a well-established sect situated in the southwestern territory of the Great Yeon Kingdom. While not a colossal titan among sects, it carried a long heritage and enjoyed a remarkably peaceful reputation among the common folk.
Most importantly, it specialized in spirit botany and the cultivation of medicinal herbs.
A large portion of its disciples spent their days managing spirit fields and nurturing flora, and the sect housed dedicated alchemists who refined medicinal pills. Best of all, there were virtually no records of them engaging in bloody turf wars with neighboring clans.
It aligned with every single condition on Lee Hyun’s checklist.
Two years later.
A dense crowd had gathered at the foot of Cheongha Valley’s mountain gate.
The applicants varied dramatically in age, ranging from ten-year-old children to youths approaching their twenties. There were pampered scions of aristocratic clans draped in exquisite silk, as well as barefoot peasant children clad in coarse hemp.
Including family members, bodyguards, and attendants, the assembly easily surpassed a thousand people. The open plaza beneath the gate was as boisterous as a county bazaar, filled with the tearful farewells and stern admonitions of parents gripping their children’s hands.
Lee Hyun blended quietly into the periphery of the crowd as he ascended the stone steps.
He had abandoned the alias Lee Muk upon leaving the valley. For his entry into Cheongha Valley, he would use his true name: Lee Hyun.
The first trial was the spiritual root assessment.
Applicants stepped forward to place their palm upon a crystalline orb; the color and brilliance of the light that flared within revealed the elemental attributes and innate quality of their spiritual roots.
For the vast majority, the orb remained dead and dull. Those who drew even a faint flicker of radiance were granted entry through the inner gates, while the rejected slouched down the mountain trail with tears in their eyes.
Soon, Lee Hyun’s turn arrived.
Cold sweat slicked his palms.
Taking a measured breath, he placed his right hand firmly against the polished surface of the orb.
A heartbeat later, three distinct lights coalesced within the glass core.
Azure, crimson, and ochre.
The Cheongha Valley senior disciple overseeing the pillar leaned forward, squinting at the light before calling out flatly:
“Triple spiritual roots: Wood, Fire, and Earth.”
I actually have one?
“Pass through the gate.”
Suppressing his excitement, Lee Hyun bowed slightly and walked through the grand archway.
Beyond the gate hung towering silk curtains, well over ten feet high, partitioning the courtyard. The applicants who had cleared the first hurdle lined up to enter one by one.
When his turn was called, Lee Hyun pushed through the heavy fabric. A different disciple was waiting inside, holding an ornate, tarnished bronze mirror aloft.
“Hold still. We will inspect your Bone Age.”
Lee Hyun’s muscles instantly locked up.
“…Bone Age?”
“Some applicants attempt to deceive the sect regarding their years,” the disciple explained without looking up. “Unless blessed with extraordinary spiritual root purity, anyone exceeding twenty-five years of age is relegated strictly to the Labor Disciples.”
A pale beam of light poured from the mirror’s surface, sweeping over Lee Hyun from head to toe. A strange, lukewarm sensation trickled through his skeletal frame, and faint, glowing characters surfaced upon the bronze plate.
The presiding disciple glanced down and read the inscription with complete indifference.
“Bone Age: nineteen years old. Pass. Clear the exit.”
My bones haven’t aged either!
Lee Hyun stood rooted to the spot, his mind reeling. The disciple waved an irritated hand in front of his face.
“Are you deaf? You passed. Move along, you’re holding up the line.”
Jolted back to his senses, Lee Hyun hurriedly bowed, ducked through the far side of the curtain, and stepped onto the paved paths of Cheongha Valley.