While others cultivated immortality and rode swords through the skies, Lu Chen stayed in Old Locust Alley, settling disputes between neighbors.
While others formed golden cores, Lu Chen was pulling copper pipes out from beneath the city.
Each pipe was connected to a dead city. Pull one out, and the city came back to life, and its people returned.
Lu Chen spent three years keeping watch over the alley, pulling out chicken feathers for three years, until one day, a representative of the Dao Office came to his door. "Three hundred li away, there's a city that's been dead for ten years. Go pull out its pipe."
He went. He pulled it out, and the city came back to life.
He pulled another, and another city came back to life.
As he kept pulling, he discovered that immortals in this world didn't soar through the clouds. They kept the lamps burning through the night. When the lamps lit up, the people returned.
This is the story of a neighbor who pulls pipes all across the world.
