The Path to Immortality

Ying Zheng once reached the pinnacle of the Immortal Path, but for his beloved Qingcheng Xue, he shattered his spiritual root, gave up his cultivation, and reincarnated. When they open their eyes again, the two have become children in Xiling Village, their ties to immortality locked away by the Heavenly Dao. To break the deadlock, he descends into the underworld with the spirit of a Chaos Fate Chart, a sharp-tongued gray donkey, and the reincarnation of Marshal Tianpeng, a gluttonous black pig, rebuilding his foundation on the brink of life and death. After a shocking upheaval leaves him stranded in Desolate Spirit Province, he starts from scratch and joins the bottom-ranked Thirty-Third Hall of Jingyuan Sect’s outer sect. There, he meets Zhou Yu, a hall master who’s given up; Lao Tie, an alchemist who keeps blowing up his furnace; Qu Rou’er, a muscular Barbie; twin sword cultivators who speak one word at a time; and a descendant of a tomb-raiding family burdened by blood vengeance... He even takes in a seven-year-old mute girl who crawled out of a pile of corpses and can only cry, “Brother, it hurts.” Other people cultivate immortality through talent, fortuitous opportunities, or a wise old mentor. Ying Zheng cultivates immortality through Donkey Lord kicking Golden Core elders away with a single hoof, 999 times over; Pig Second unleashing his Heaven-and-Earth transformation, becoming a ten-second hero and flattening half a courtyard; Rou’er crushing a divine ability talisman, turning into a muscular Barbie and stomping demonic cultivators underfoot; Li Yi and Li Er each contributing a word to assemble a sword art that lets them punch above their weight; Lao Tie blowing things up until he somehow refines pills by the catty; And Ying Zheng himself, squatting by the wall with a smoking pipe as he repairs the courtyard wall, casually feeding the Qingcheng Sword until it evolves from a spiritual weapon into a Heaven-ranked treasure. They call it “wholesale-style cultivation”: robbing the rich to help the poor is a no-cost shopping spree, raiding a demonic sect’s headquarters is a supply run, and even the inner-sect assessment turns into a family picnic. But when the Shared-Fate Knot begins to throb, when the Ice-and-Snow True Spirit resonates with him across thousands of miles, and when he clutches the bloodstained letter reading, “Brother Zheng, don’t worry about me. I’ll come back” until his knuckles turn white... Ying Zheng taps the ashes from his pipe and rises to his feet. “Xue’er is waiting for me.” “Then I’ll flip this chessboard and bring her back.”