Eternal Life: I Can Sell Everything

THUMP. THUMP. THUMP. The sound of a body tumbling down a deep, dark passage echoed endlessly.

In the darkness, Song Ciwan endured the discomfort wracking her body and held the tiny Mr. Gao tightly in her arms.

Mr. Gao made no sound, just obediently curled up in her embrace.

The human and the bizarre being fell endlessly, endlessly down. They had no idea how far they had fallen when, suddenly, the downward passage began to level out. Song Ciwan’s Spiritual Sense perceived that they had landed on ground covered in a thick pile of dead leaves.

RUSTLE. CRUNCH. They rolled into a thick bed of dead leaves, setting off a cascade of crackling and rustling.

Light slowly filled the dim space. Song Ciwan’s eyes widened. A thick, acrid smell of burning filled her nostrils. The scene before her was a panorama of deep and pale reds, of charred, broken walls, and, in the distance, layers upon layers of fiery clouds that looked as if the Celestial Palace itself was on fire.

At the bottom of this deep passage was not an underground world, but another sky entirely.

Song Ciwan looked closer. Beneath the fiery clouds, the distant mountains were a bleak gray-black and the nearby waters had run dry.

At the foot of the mountains, scattered houses lay mostly in ruin. But to Song Ciwan, the layout of the crumbling buildings looked familiar.

This was unmistakably the layout of Huai Xi Village. It was a Huai Xi Village from another world—one that had clearly suffered a terrible catastrophe!

In the sky, the fiery clouds stretched with the wind, looking like countless blood-stained banners.

In the howling wind, those banners danced and seemed to cry out. One moment they took the form of people, the next, of birds. Then, for a fleeting instant, they seemed to become a mighty army, thundering across the clouds!

For a moment, it was as if a single fire burned from the heavens to the earth, blazing from a distant time and place all the way into the Mortal World.

Song Ciwan let go of Mr. Gao. Fighting through the excruciating pain in her body, she rose from the sea of dead leaves, momentarily stunned by the sight before her.

It was a scene of unspeakable magnificence, yet also one of indescribable sorrow.

Song Ciwan opened her mouth, but for a moment, she was at a loss for words.

Mr. Gao scrambled up beside her, but instead of standing, he simply sat down on the spot.

He hugged his knees, his small back slightly hunched, and tilted his head back to gaze at the fiery clouds on the horizon.

"Xin Mian," Mr. Gao asked. "Why did you save me?"

His voice was clear and crisp—a typical child’s voice. Before, although Mr. Gao’s voice had been youthful, his tone was always pompous and old-fashioned, making him sound awkward and strange.

But now, that affected, unnatural tone had somehow faded, and he sounded for all the world like a normal child asking a question.

But in a world of the uncanny, the more normal things seemed on the surface, the more abnormal they truly were.

Hearing his question, Song Ciwan pulled herself together and replied, "A student saving their teacher is only right and proper. What reason is needed?"

It should have been a safe answer, but Mr. Gao unexpectedly let out a sneer. "Heh, you people of the Mortal World are fascinating. You lie to the living, you lie to the dead, and now, you even lie to yourselves!"

Song Ciwan was instantly alarmed.

The uncanny denizens of a Deceitful Realm generally shared a common trait: bound by the realm’s rules, they never believed they were anywhere but the Mortal World.

Take Sha Si and Mo Hou’er, for instance. They clearly weren’t human, yet they had insisted Song Ciwan was a ghost. How could you reason with that?

Yet the Mr. Gao before her had started with "you people of the Mortal World." It was as if a lifelong drunkard had suddenly, in a single moment, become sober.

At first glance, this seemed like a good thing. But in the moment it happened, it was inexplicably and utterly chilling.

Song Ciwan’s thoughts raced, but she said nothing. She simply turned her head and looked at Mr. Gao in silence.

Her gaze was clear and profound, possessing an uplifting power that seemed to brim with life and tenacity.

Under her silent gaze, Mr. Gao, who had been full of mockery, somehow found himself feeling inexplicably flustered.

He sat on the ground, his gaze shifting away as he tried to continue his tirade. "Did you save me thinking I could get you out of here? Hah! Don’t even bother. I don’t even know how to leave myself! Since you... since you all came, you can just wait here to perish. Sooner or later, you will forget where you came from and where you were going."

"You’ll become villagers of Huai Xi Village, assimilated into this world where black is white and white is black. You’ll call a deer a horse and a goose a chicken, all while being muddle-headed and smugly self-satisfied! Heh heh, haha!"

As he spoke, Mr. Gao began to laugh again.

He laughed until tears streamed from his eyes. It was laughter, but it was also unmistakably weeping.

He had never been so lucid. Not a single moment in his existence had been as clear as this one.

This world beneath the ground seemed to possess a strange power, one that had taken all the inverted chaos of the other Huai Xi Village and smoothed it out, made sense of it.

Song Ciwan listened quietly to his every word. After a moment, she spoke slowly, "Mr. Gao, is this truly what you want?"

Mr. Gao was silent. Song Ciwan continued, "I imagine, Mr. Gao, that you want a world where people value kindness and duty, where compassion comes before profit, a world where all is in order, and black is clearly black and white is clearly white."

"But that’s so difficult to achieve," Song Ciwan sighed softly.

She also gazed up at the fiery clouds. "Mr. Gao, things in this world go wrong more often than not. We certainly can’t change the world easily, but we can stay true to ourselves. Every act of persistence becomes a spark in a world of chaos. A single spark may be tiny, but enough of them gathered over time can set a prairie ablaze."

"What do you think, Mr. Gao?"

Hugging his knees, Mr. Gao sat on the ground and listened to her every word. He was silent for a moment, then began to laugh again.

"Heh heh heh..." Mr. Gao chuckled. "Xin Mian, you don’t look particularly young. How is it that you’re even more naive than a little child like me?"

"Heh heh, haha!" His body shook with laughter. "Stay true to yourself? Hahaha! If that were so easy, why would the world be so full of muddle-headed fools?"

"Do you know—do you have any idea how these ruins came to be? Do you know how many people there once were in my Gao Family?"

"The Gao Family clan had one thousand, eight hundred members!"

He pointed a finger, and the fiery clouds in the sky suddenly shifted.

Within the endless crimson, a magnificent, palatial garden seemed to appear—a vision of the lavish life of nobility, reminiscent of the Celestial Palace itself.

Mr. Gao continued, "The Gao Family clan: one thousand, eight hundred members! Gao’s Subordinates: one hundred and eight thousand strong!"

"In the 14th Year of Hongsheng in the Yun Country, my Gao Family propped up half the nation!"

Within the celestial vision, the fiery clouds collided and twisted, tearing apart one moment and merging the next.

Countless silhouettes seemed to race and circle within the sky, scattering tales of joy and sorrow, of meetings and partings, across the heavens.

"That year, a great drought fell upon the land. My great-grandfather said we must provide disaster relief! But the Emperor claimed the victims were all traitors, that Heaven itself was punishing the wicked, and that to provide relief would be an act of treason!"

"The Emperor actually said disaster relief was treason. Can you even believe that?"

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