Everyone beneath the heavens looks up, seeking immortality and the Dao, talking of eternal life and ascension.
Yet no one is ever willing to lower their head and look beneath the great immortal sects.
Herb gardens, alchemy chambers, mines, markets. Lower still are the people controlled by servant disciples. They bleed them, test medicines on them, make them mine and carry corpses. They live to sustain the immortal sects, and die to fertilize the herb fields. No one asks their names or whether they are willing.
Beneath the Taixu Immortal Sect are smaller sects, beneath those are courtyards, and beneath those are people.
Chen Ye is at the very bottom.
When he was young, his parents died before his eyes. Captured by rogue cultivators and sold from one owner to another, he eventually ended up at Baishou Mountain. There, he spent three years bleeding to nourish plants, swallowing inferior pills for testing, and enduring whips and piles of corpses.
Alive, he was a source of blood.
Dead, he would be buried in the herb fields as fertilizer.
Asked if he was willing, he would only lower his head and push the copper basin forward to collect his blood. After three years, he had grown so numb that he could no longer remember how to answer.
Until the day it was his turn to die, and a rusty hoe fell into his hands.
Chen Ye gripped the handle and, for the first time, did not kneel.
"I don't want to die."
"This godforsaken world doesn't get to decide that I'm going to die."
"I will live, and step by step, climb to the very top."
