The Immortal Fate of Gluons

In 2031, nine supernovae erupted within a single year in a galaxy that had been quiet for four hundred years.

What people on Earth call "spiritual energy" is actually the earliest and last force in the universe: the gluon. Imprisoned for ten billion years, it has only just begun to leak out. But it never exists alone. Once released, it must bind itself to something else.

Zhang Jibai, a night-shift analyst at CERN, was the first person in the world to see it. He was also the person in the world least suited to cultivating immortality: the moment spiritual energy entered his body, it spontaneously clumped and settled into solid masses, a terminal illness recognized throughout the cultivation world.

But he had devoted his entire talent to "clumping and settling." While others cultivated dispersion, he cultivated concentration.

In 1987, his grandfather went down into Yangbajing. Of the nine who went down, only two returned. The forest ranger on Zhongnan Mountain guarded a stone array tilted seven degrees east. The first lesson he taught Zhang was not a cultivation technique, but a line from a duty log: Someone is needed here.

Every time a star exploded in the sky, the waters on Earth jumped up one step. When news of the ninth star's death reached Earth, the star that had been dead for six hundred years, the doorbell rang.

Time differed by seven seconds on either side of the door.

"You think the apocalypse is here? No. They can finally see us."

Spiritual energy began with a star. And on this star, someone always has to stand night watch.