The Inn of Rebirth

Mo Bai loved brewing wine. The first jug she ever made was for a mortal named Qin Yuan. Much later, she named that wine Heart-Sunderer. It was not a pleasant-sounding name, so she brewed it only twice in her life.

Later, she went to the mortal realm, learned many more ways to brew wine, and made countless fine wines. But she never brewed Heart-Sunderer again. In the mortal realm, she gained things, then gradually lost them. At last, her wish came true: she had lived through the mortal world and emerged from it as a deity, becoming the Celestial Court's immortal wine-brewer. "To gain this is to lose that; seek to restore the natural order. What is lost may be gained, and what is gained may be lost. This is rebirth." That was how the mortal named Qin Yuan once described the Rebirth wine she had made. At the time, he was nothing more than a soul on the verge of scattering.

Later still, she resigned from her post as the immortal wine-brewer and opened an inn called Rebirth at the end of the ancient road through the underworld. At the Rebirth Inn, she brewed only one kind of wine, a drink called Thousand Zen. Someone told her that if she was willing to wait on that underworld road for tens of millions of years, she would meet someone willing to brew Rebirth and Heart-Sunderer for her.

She waited a very, very long time. She saw countless souls and heard countless tales of joy and sorrow, of parting and reunion. Yet she could only remain at the Rebirth Inn on that ancient road through the underworld...