Yuan Rusi sprang away like a startled bird, sword-light carrying her into the dusk. Su Yan sat alone on the goddess's crown, the sunset painting his face red.
He returned to the Yuan estate at dusk. Veyon met him at the gate, apologetic. "My sister abandoned you. I've punished her—no dinner, reflection in silence."
"Your sister was wonderful. I asked to stay out, sent her back first."
"Yuan rules stand."
A knock came. Pei Jingting waited outside, inviting Su Yan to a banquet. Su Yan agreed—Pei Jingting had lost everything escorting him. Refusal would be cruel.
At the Pei estate, a lone table stretched with a hundred dishes. No other guests. The family head, Pei Du, did not eat mortal food and would not attend.
Su Yan ate. Yuan Qi ate. When the serpent complained of hunger still, Pei Jingting ordered cattle brought.
Then Pei Jingting led Su Yan through gardens and corridors to a palace deep within the estate.
"The family head waits inside. His name is Pei Du."
The palace was silent, lit by palace lanterns. A middle-aged man turned—immaculate grooming, precise eyebrows, a single jade pendant his only ornament. Pei Du, the empire's chancellor, a nuo immortal.
"I've long awaited the Serpent King." He smiled. "Since you left Mount Jiuyi, your name has shaken the world. This way."
He led Su Yan through a passage that unfolded like a puzzle-box, revealing a corridor of unknown depth. Behind him, a jade-like sky rotated with grotto-heavens.
"My Pei family possesses a hereditary Secret—the Jade Pool." Pei Du walked without looking back. "But as a two-thousand-year clan, we know secrets others don't. Of the Six Secrets, only the Bubbling Spring eludes us."
They emerged into a jade-colored grotto-space. The air had weight; moving through it felt like swimming. A strange power invigorated Su Yan's qi.
Su Yan realized: follow this energy, and he could locate his own Jade Pool Secret.
Then he saw them. Ancestral figures seated in meditation, one after another, stretching down a corridor of linked grotto-heavens. Pei Du introduced them—born in Wang Mang's chaos, ascended in the Guangwu era, a lineage of nuo immortals spanning two millennia.
They walked past a hundred and fifty grotto-heavens.
The great bell whispered, "The Pei family mastered the Jade Pool utterly. No wonder they produce so many experts. But so many dead immortals... someone is harvesting them like leeks."
"We failed," Pei Du said quietly.
They reached the end. Before them lay a wasteland of rotting flesh—broken immortal mountains floating in a sky of gore, rivers of blood, white skeletal giants clawing at the peaks.
"Taohuayuan. The Peach Blossom Haven. We tried to build a true immortal realm by combining dozens of nuo immortals' Xiyi Domains. The longest-lived ancestor reached eight hundred years. Then it rotted."
He explained: the immortal mountains withered. The immortals' flesh decayed, their minds corroded, their bodies mutated. Longevity itself became a curse.
"The ancient evils—the ones like your Mud Pill Palace Master—avoid this curse. We believe the cursed flesh repels them."
Su Yan looked at the skeletal giant pounding the seal. "Is that an immortal?"
"My grandfather."
Pei Du's father had entered the forbidden zone, harvested a piece of cursed flesh, and grafted it onto himself. Three hundred seventy years old now, half-mad, but not eaten.
"After Taohuayuan, we changed direction. We studied 'yao arts'—ancient qi cultivation."
They circled the wasteland and entered a library grotto. Shelves upon shelves of ancient texts—bamboo, silk, leather, bronze, even inscribed bells and cauldrons.
Yuan Qi wandered through, flipping scrolls with serpent breath. He froze at one illustration—a boy who looked strikingly like Su Yan. A note described Wang Mang receiving an "immortal youth" who had lived a thousand years without aging. Wang Mang ordered him cooked and eaten.
Yuan Qi licked the illustration until it blurred. *Can't let the Pei family know,* he thought. *They'd eat him or dissect him.*
"Fortunately, you came." Pei Du's eyes gleamed. "I noticed you opened Mud Pill and Crimson Palace simultaneously. You decipher ancient techniques. With your help, we can escape the curse."
He handed Su Yan a thin golden scroll. "This is a qi cultivation text my family acquired. Our brightest disciples studied it for decades with little success. Can you decipher it?"
Su Yan read the title: *Primordial Spirit Calamity-Defying Scripture*. A method to refine the soul and forge the Primordial Spirit. The ancient script was clear as daylight to him.
"A few days."
"Two thousand years we've waited. A few days is nothing. Stay with us?"
"Your estate would become a battlefield. The Yuan family is safer."
Pei Du nodded. "True enough. I won't insist."
Su Yan left. Pei Jingting escorted him back.
Later, Pei Jingting returned to find Pei Du washing his hands. The basin water ran black, then gray, then finally clear.
"Family head?"
"Snake venom on a scroll." Pei Du dried his hands carefully. "The scroll spoke of Wang Mang cooking an immortal youth. Absurd, but interesting. Gather a hundred disciples. Search the library for every mention of 'immortal youths.' Compile them for me."
Pei Jingting bowed and left.
Pei Du set down the book, murmuring, "Immortal youth... could it be you?"
Back at the Yuan estate, Su Yan slept soundly. At dawn, birds tapped his window. He opened it to find Yuan Rusi below, back straight, hands behind her.
"I changed my rouge today. Want to taste?"
"I haven't eaten breakfast."
"It rubs off after breakfast. Try it now."
Su Yan leaned halfway out the window. She rose on her toes.
A cough echoed. Yuan Rusi fled like a bird.
Elder Xiao appeared, face dark. "Young Master Su. Breakfast."
Su Yan's heart hammered. *Almost caught.*
After breakfast, he bathed and prepared to work on the scripture. Yuan Rusi appeared at the door. "Su-gege, going out? Buying new rouge!"
Su Yan stuffed the texts into Yuan Qi's mouth. "Wait for me!"
Days blurred. Afternoons tasting rouge. Evenings regretting lost time. The fifth day, he thought: *The Pei chancellor said two thousand years. Surely two more days won't matter.*
By the sixth day, he had accomplished nothing.
At the Pei estate, Pei Jingting piled ancient texts across the study desk.
Pei Du looked up, surprised.
"Every mention of immortal youths in the library," Pei Jingting said.