Lin Xiaoyun, 21 years old, with end-stage leukemia.
The doctor says he has three minutes left.
In those three minutes, he dreams that he transmigrates to the world of immortal cultivation, where he takes a master, undergoes trials, founds a sect, survives tribulations, and ascends to immortality. He lives for three thousand years.
Over those three thousand years, he wonders countless times: Is this real?
Only when he pushes open the Southern Heaven Gate does he find out.
Beyond it isn’t the celestial realm, but the surgical lights in an operating room.
He floats in the air, looking down at his tiny self, at his crying parents, and at the heart monitor as its line turns flat.
Then he hears his mother say, “Xiaoyun, wake up.”
He wakes up.
But the flying sword in the painting by his bedside really does flash with light.
If this is a dream, why does the sword glow?
If it isn’t a dream, why did he come back?
