This is a story about a mortal questioning the ways of immortality with perseverance.
Han Zhen was born in Qingshi Town. His seventeen years of life had nothing to do with the word "immortality". Every day he spent nothing more than going up the mountain to cut firewood, fishing in the river, guarding the dilapidated blacksmith shop left by his parents, and hammering ordinary farm tools in exchange for meager copper coins. He had seen the occasional stream of light passing over the town, and had also heard the fairy tales told by storytellers that moved mountains and seas. But those were things from another world and had nothing to do with him, an ordinary person who could not find a trace of spiritual roots in his body. He originally thought that life would be like the bluestone river outside the town, calm and with a view to the end.
Until that rainy night, in search of the lost old yellow dog, he strayed into the ancient mountain col that had been abandoned for many years outside the town. At the moment when lightning tore through the sky, he caught a glimpse of a corner of the cliff that had been washed away, revealing a hidden cave entrance heavily buried by vines. The cave is not deep, and at the end there is only a dead skeleton that has been lying on the stone wall for an unknown number of years. On the ground in front of the dead body, there is a dark blue ancient book that is neither silk nor leather and has cold tentacles. Next to the book is a palm-sized gray cloth bag.
