The Long Life Hall

The spiritual tide receded three thousand years ago. Longevity is expensive, and breaking through to the next realm is even more so. When cultivators can't survive the tribulation, afford pills, or save their partners, anything can be used as collateral. Years of life, memories, threads of affection, talent, even a sword strike they never got to finish. The Ji Family Pawnshop has a blackwood scale that weighs not pounds or ounces, but what you pay. Its first rule: the shopkeeper never enters an item in the ledger empty-handed. For every thing he takes in, he must pledge something of his own. When Ji Heng was fifteen, he took over the shop. It was poor, but its rules were not. His father didn't teach him much. The most important thing he said was: “Poverty is a matter of the ledger. Being worth nothing is a choice you make yourself.” Ji Heng recorded those words in the ledger. His father's pawn ticket was still pressed beneath the ledger's pages. The name on it was his father's own. He had pledged himself for thirty years, and by the end, there was only one thing left he could offer. That night, words appeared on the first page of a running ledger that had remained blank for three thousand years. 【Forfeited pledge. Pledgor: Ji Heng.】【Term: Three thousand years.】【Redemption date: None.】 His father had finished pledging. Now it was his turn. Every debt must be repaid. Even debts owed to Heaven.