A Line of Eternal Light

For three generations, the Shen family has guarded a single lamp.

His father brought the lamp home in his arms before he died, saying, "As long as the lamp is here, our family is here."

A transmigrator? No. A System? No. Shen Huaishan has only a flame tempered through hardship, and the words his father left him: Don't touch what you don't understand.

The whole town is speculating on fire notes, and overnight riches are made every day. The Chai family lays schemes, the banks fleece people, and the Immortal Court collects on their behalf. Everyone says the Shen family is foolish for refusing to touch the notes.

Then the market crashes. The whole town is wailing, but the Shen family's shop doors open as usual: cash for flatbreads, no notes accepted.

The Chai family patriarch, Chai Wanxin, offers two hundred thousand taels for the lamp. The Shen family gives him a four-character reply: One lamp, passed down through generations.

A black-lacquered letter from the Immortal Court arrives at the Chai residence in the dead of night. It bears no writing or signature, only a seal of red wax. Chai Wanxin opens and burns it himself, then replies, "The lamp is with the Shen family. No one has crossed the threshold."

Everyone has their eyes on this lamp.

But they don't know that this lamp has burned for three hundred years, and it has never been waiting for the Chai family, nor the Immortal Court...

It has been waiting for the Shen family, to pass the flame from one lamp to the next.