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  Vol. 2: Refining the Immortals Yi City sat at the edge of the wild. The Yi Wang Palace carried none of the ethereal grace of ordinary immortal halls. Its stones were massive and blunt, carved with totems of swords splitting axes, spread across every wall. The place felt like a held breath before battle. Bai Shuo had come with a purpose. She needed to find Chongzhao. She followed the maid into the main hall and stopped dead in the doorway. The hall was already packed. Immortal and demon children had arrived early for the Wutong Martial Arts Banquet, filling every seat. At the throne, Beichen and Nanwan's Mujiu Chongzhao sat in prominence. Bai Shuo was only an outer disciple, here only because of Chongzhao's standing. She and Fan Yue had been seated closest to the temple gate, several meters back from the throne. Word of Wuming Mountain had already spread. Groups of immortals and demons stared at Chongzhao in clusters, voices low, expressions riding the line between contempt an...

Fortunately, Xue Ranran was not the only hopeless case to stumble through the gates of Lingxi Palace. The palace had not taken on new disciples in some time, but under the sponsorship of the immortal physician Su Yishui, the mountain gate had opened once more. The ceremony drew a crowd, yet when the incense smoke cleared, only three apprentices had been accepted alongside Ranran. Both of the boys were older than her. The eldest, surnamed Takakura, came from a martial arts family. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with thick brows and an open, honest face. The second senior brother went by Bai Baishan. Slender where Takakura was solid, he carried himself with a quiet, bookish refinement. Beyond her two senior brothers, Ranran also gained a third senior sister: Qiu Xier. Like Ranran, she was an ailing seedling no other physician had been able to cure. Her family had run out of money and options, and had all but resigned themselves to waiting for the end, when the master found her at t...

Ranran's stomach growled. She dug into the pouch at her waist and fished out a few pumpkin seeds to quiet it. Yu Tong noticed and disappeared into the kitchen, returning with a fistful of peanuts. She watched Ranran pick them apart one by one. After they'd left Juefeng Village that day, the master had turned back to Jue Mountain, snapped a branch from the reincarnation tree, and dug out a section of its root. Back at West Mountain, he planted the branch in the garden and fed it spiritual water to coax it into taking root. If Ranran guessed right, the girl was a spirit-fruit grown from that tree. Unripe and uprooted too far from its source, she would have been starving for spiritual energy. So the master had brought the tree to her. When the soul was first drawn into the wood, the master had sacrificed the blood of his own wrist to seal the knot. That bound him to the fruit. When he met the girl in the village, he must have known her by her breath alone. There was also the ...

Cai Zhao was small. Qian Xueshen was lean. Together they fit easily on the back of the golden-feathered roc. The air grew colder the further north they flew. The roc's wings cut through grit and cloud without slowing. Before the third sunset, they landed at the town crouched at the foot of the snow mountains. In the far north, days shrink and nights stretch. The sky sat low and colorless, the color of old lead. Across the grey-white expanse, a few dark figures moved without sound or hurry. Xueshan Town was small. One inn. It sat at the center of town and bore the unremarkable name Xueshan Inn. Two heavy wool-felt curtains blocked the doorway against the wind. Both were stiff with old grease, their original color long gone. Cai Zhao lifted the curtain, met a wall of stale air thick with smoke, liquor, and the particular sourness of men who had not bathed in weeks. She frowned, breathed through it, and stepped inside. A slender girl and a fine-featured young man appearing in the...

Mr. Qian was drying his hair in the courtyard when a crash of voices erupted from inside the main house. A moment later, the handsome young man was kicked out the door, water still dripping down his cheeks. Mr. Qian froze. "Miss Xiao Cai is bathing in there — and he was inside ? That's... not right." — He said this as a man whose business dealings ran unconventional, but whose moral floor remained firmly in place. Mu Qingyan glanced at him. "The men a brothel girl has known are beyond counting. I doubt she finds it troubling." Qian Gongzi went quiet. He watched Mu Qingyan's tall figure disappear down the path and cursed under his breath. There were truly vicious people in this world. A short while later, Cai Zhao stepped out of the house, fully dressed and composed. Spotting the young man lingering in the courtyard, she asked his name. Qian Gongzi explained that his master, the Thousand-Faced Old Man, had found him on a day of heavy snowfall and name...