Seeking the Immortal Way

My name is Chen Shouyi. I was born in Yinshan County in northern Guangdong. While my mother was pregnant with me, she went to seek guidance from an immortal. The spirit medium told her the child had been “borrowed from the underworld,” and that to keep me, she had to promise me to “the other side” as a son-in-law. When I was a hundred days old, strange things happened in the village, and I was adopted by the century-old banyan tree at the village entrance, locally known as the Village Deity. When I was seven, I accidentally wandered into the forbidden burial grounds in the back hills and saw something I shouldn't have. I ran a high fever for three days. The village's spirit medium, Granny Li, forcibly locked my three souls and seven spirits back inside my body. From then on, I could faintly hear the whispers of the dead. This volume tells, in an episodic format, of my eerie childhood in the countryside of northern Guangdong, laying the groundwork for my “child destined for the underworld” constitution and my first understanding of “seeking guidance from immortals.” This novel and its characters are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental. Do not imitate.