Jin Se

Chapter 3

(*) zhongshen means 'for the rest of our lives', also used in wedding, which can be called zhongshen dashi

Legend has it on the nine layers of cloud, there are immortals (*). About these immortals, there are extensive stories and legends among the common people - there are those about a female immortal running away with a poor male mortal, or those about the busybodies Buddhist or Taoist monks separating those in love, or those about the stars fighting each other to strive for favour or to seize power ... But if you demand real, solid proof, honestly no one dare say they have actually met any immortal.

(*) xian ren: people that

What gets spread around and around are merely baseless phrasings like 'I heard that ...', 'Somebody said that ...', 'It's a popular story by the folks here that ...'.

From records for more than thirty thousand years on Yin Sheng lands, nobody has ever heard of anyone that truly ascend to become an immortal.

Those people that cultivate xian that people rarely see, they at most have the reputation of being free, at ease, and do not take part in worldly matters.

It is heard that Jianghua Sanren was originally from a large merchant family. Of scholars, farmers, industrial workers, and merchants, merchant is the lowest class. Though his family might have mountains of gold and silver, his father still felt that their ancestry is not of high status. His father spent his life anxious about reputation, not only wasting a lot of money to donate to government officials for himself, but also letting his descendants read books, practice Kungfu and follow religious teachings, even finding famous teachers from all over the place.

Yet, his eldest son, his problematic treasure, Jianghua, was a piece of rotten wood: neither his studies nor his Kungfu was good, and when he was chased by his father to join Jiulu mountain, it was not even half a month before he was kicked down the mountain by his shifu for being unusually naughty, rebellious to teachings, and dared to question and leave his shifu speechless during lectures in front of all other students.

He did not dare to come back home, with no accomplishments and no jobs. They said it could have been fate, then, that he met an old and bizarre wandering xian cultivator, and followed him to cultivate the xian path. This one trip, he went all three hundred years, who even knew what he actually cultivated, but regardless this flowery name 'Jianghua Sanren' has been bestowed to him by the people. It was thought that maybe the father that insisted on changing their family status could finally be at peace in the afterlife.

Right now, Shi Wuduan is worried. In his mind, he thinks this Jianghua Sanren is like exploded fireworks. He has been to all kinds of places, never resting for an instant, who knows if he is currently wreaking havoc in some place in the middle of nowhere, how am I supposed to find him?

This trip, would it take him three to five years then?

It was at this moment that lightning suddenly strikes. Shi Wuduan was shocked. He lifted his head to see that the weather in Cangyun valley has changed drastically in a blink of an eye. The sky that was blue and clear for miles just now has turned dark with gathering clouds, and moments later, raindrops that are as big as peas fall down. The jade sparrow's head retracts. Disregarding old grudges, it opens its wings to fly and huddle inside Shi Wuduan's large sleeves. Shi Wuduan grabs it by the back of its head and drags it out.

Shi Wuduan holds onto Bai Li and runs to the nearest cave, not forgetting to hold the jade sparrow over Bai Li's head to shield him from the wind and rain, fully committed to protecting his treasure and beauty.

Pitiful for that bird jade sparrow, it was born without the ability to side-eye, so now it does not know how to express its current despairing mood.