Prologue. I Ate the Immortality Herb
A thatched cottage ringed by a low earthen wall.
Sunlight poured down on a small courtyard overgrown with nameless grasses, and an old door creaked in the wind. Before it stood a girl white as fresh snow, her manner formal and respectful. Half-opening a pair of pale blue eyes, she spoke through the door.
"Master. King Wei of Chu has sent an envoy once more, and he has left gifts behind. He says he wishes to borrow your wisdom to set his realm in order."
After a moment, an answer drifted out, accompanied by the rustle of bamboo slips being turned.
"The gifts and the official post—I need neither. Tell him I accept nothing and take nothing."
The girl nodded and turned to go, but hesitated, and asked once more.
"……So the gifts are all to be sent back, then?"
At the regretful note in her voice, the steady rustling of bamboo slips inside fell silent for a breath. Soon came a tch of the tongue against teeth, and the door slid open. Out stepped an old man draped in a faded gray robe.
His whitening hair was tied back, and his beard bore no trace of ever having been groomed. The years were carved deep into his gaunt face—yet his two eyes alone remained clear. Taking in the girl before him, the master shook his head.
"Still so greedy, my disciple."
"I'm sorry, Master."
The girl bowed her head, whether from embarrassment at his words or something else, and then—sneaking a glance at his face—ventured further.
"But, Master… among the gifts the King of Chu sent, they say there is a rare herb that protects the vital essence of the body. Your health has been poor of late. Might it not be well to accept at least that?"
At this, the lines around the master's eyes softened a little. But he schooled his expression back into severity and spoke.
"No. That a person grows old is but a turning of the seasons, like the circling of the four quarters of the year. How could one presume to correct it with an herb?"
"But…."
"I have said no. If it troubles you so, then you may as well eat it yourself."
At his firm tone, the girl's eyes went round.
"Huh? Me?"
No longer her usual deferential speech—her natural voice had slipped out in her surprise. The master stroked his beard and replied.
"Did you not say it protects the vital essence of the body? For me to take it would go against the natural order, but your case is different. Better it serves you, marked as you are by Heaven's punishment, than this old man."
His clear eyes passed in turn over the girl's snow-white hair and her blue irises. Feeling that gaze, the girl avoided his eyes and fidgeted.
Seeing this, the master spoke his final word.
"If I do not accept it, it will simply be sent back anyway. And then some old creature like me will end up eating it. So you eat it. If you have not decided by evening, I return it."
"…Yes, Master…."
So saying, he withdrew into the room at once. Sharak, sharak—the rustle of bamboo slips drifted back out through the door.
The girl listened to that sound and deliberated, and as the hours passed, evening drew near. She deliberated until the sun slanted low, and at last she opened the chest that held the herb.
Inside lay a bundle wrapped in cotton cloth: a root dug up whole and thick, its leaves brimming with life, and beside it a single round red fruit the size of a finger joint.
The girl's blue pupils widened slightly. She had only ever seen dried herbs before—she had not known one could be so vividly alive.
"…It's still fresh, huh?"
As her eyes darted this way and that over the herb, she recalled the words of the envoy who had delivered it.
"This is ginseng, dug from a land in the far east. They say it guards the body's vital essence and grants agelessness and long life."
"Ginseng, is it…."
She looked back and forth between the red fruit and the root. Its shape differed somewhat from the ginseng she knew, but she paid it no mind.
"Master wouldn't have been sent anything strange. Probably."
Her hands moved, unwrapping the cloth, and she lifted the whole herb to her mouth.
Munch munch.
After a moment of chewing, her face twisted strangely.
"It's bitter. Should've brewed it into a tea first…."
But she could hardly spit it out now, so she grimaced and forced the ginseng down, chew by chew, gulp by gulp.
Having devoured root and fruit both, the girl smacked her lips. Then she examined her body for a while, but nothing in particular had changed.
"…I suppose it doesn't work the instant you swallow it."
Well, it would still be nice if it helped her overcome the punishment she was born with. She was grateful for her master's consideration, too.
Thinking thus, she rinsed the bitterness from her mouth with water and headed for the kitchen to prepare her master's supper.
Ten years passed.
The girl's master died. His death was a natural one.
She and his other disciples, following his final wishes, held his funeral with simple humility.
After the rites were done, one of her senior fellow disciples looked at her and said,
"You never seem to age, little sister. You're exactly as you were ten years ago."
The girl regarded her exclaiming senior with indifference. Fellow students though they were, they might as well have been strangers.
Strictly speaking, apart from her master—who had raised and taught her like a foster father—she had never been close to anyone.
To the girl, it was all the same.
And so she dismissed his remark as nothing. Words from someone not close to her simply rang hollow.
"I suppose it must be something I was born with?"
"Heh heh… born with it or not, you look like a maiden who hasn't seen her first score of years."
Her senior laughed amiably, then asked,
"Ah, right—what will you do with yourself from here on, little sister?"
The girl glanced at him, then turned her gaze away and answered.
"Hard to say. I imagine I'll withdraw from the world, as Master did. Not forcing anything to change—just following change along, the way the seasons turn."
At the end of her gaze lay the mountain path, leading up and away.
Ten more years passed.
The girl left the place where she had lived with her master and went deep into the mountains. The mountain was called Mount Nanhua, and few people ever came there.
So she grew distant from the world of men, but felt no hardship in it. If anything, places where people gathered grew easily fouled—and such a world suited neither her nature nor her temperament.
Having chosen the seclusion of the mountains while still young, the girl lived out a peaceful life alone. Following her master's teachings, she even set her learning in order, gathering up all she had thought and studied over the years.
Then one day, amid those unchanging days, the girl happened upon her own face.
She had come to a spring in the mountains to draw water—and in its still surface, her reflection was white to the point of pallor, and utterly smooth.
At the sight of skin without a single wrinkle, the girl frowned without meaning to.
"……Why am I not aging?"
There, in the water, was the same face as ten years ago. The same face as twenty years ago.
When her senior had pointed it out, she had thought nothing of it. But even after another ten years had passed, without a single wrinkle appearing—that was strange.
Even accounting for the punishment she was born under, this was a different matter entirely.
Her affliction was the radiance of the Great Yin—her otherworldly looks and sickly frailty—not a complete immunity to age.
"………."
The girl fell silent and began to think, her expression grave. And in the midst of it, an old memory flickered through her mind.
Back when her master still lived, there had been a time she ate an herb in his stead.
Ginseng bearing a red fruit. Ginseng that granted agelessness and long life to whoever ate it.
What if its effects had been true? Not the usual exaggeration of a medicine-seller's boasts—but a ginseng that truly made one ageless, truly made one live forever?
"The herb of immortality…?"
The moment the possibility surfaced, a single word escaped her lips before she knew it. A word drawn from old memories—memories from before she was ever born into this life.
"So that thing actually existed?"
The elixir of immortality that the First Emperor—the first to unify all under heaven—was said to have scoured the land searching for.
This was a world where the First Emperor had not yet even appeared, and yet the elixir he would seek had long since passed down into her own belly.
No—rather, that he had not yet appeared was precisely the problem.
If the years turned and he did arise, he would surely turn the whole central plains inside out in search of the herb of immortality. And she, presumably, would have to spend her days diligently dodging that net of searchers.
And beyond that, all the many problems that reality -immortality- dragged along with it rose and fell, rose and fell, in the girl's mind.
A long while later, she smacked her dry lips, forced them apart at last, and murmured:
"……What do I do now?"
So spoke the girl whose name was Su Qing and whose courtesy name was Xiao Yao, her face full of bewilderment.
"Xiao Yao's given name was Su Qing. Her hair was white as snow and her two eyes like blue jade; her face bore the aspect of a young woman.
Xiao Yao was born with the qi of the Great Yin grown abundant, so that her body was cold and sickly—yet, strange to say, though the years flowed on, she did not age.
In her early years she entered Mount Nanhua and lived there alone, and though the people below the mountain saw her many times across the decades, her countenance did not change in the slightest.
Some said the qi of the Great Yin had reached such fullness within her that age could not touch her; others said she had found an elixir of immortality in the mountains and eaten it. After Qin unified all under heaven, she departed Mount Nanhua…"