Chapter 1: A Jade Pendant

The night was thick as ink, pressing down heavily upon the Servant Peak of the Qingyun Sect.

The wind howled through the cliffs like a weeping child, tearing at the rotten thatch roofs of the low, dilapidated shacks. It seemed as if the shelters might be ripped away at any moment, leaving the occupants exposed to the unforgiving dark.

A damp, suffocating miasma hung in the air. It was a toxic blend of stale sweat, choking smoke from cheap oil lamps, and the pungent reek wafting from the distant spirit beast pens. A single breath was enough to make a normal man retch, but Chen Ping had long since grown numb to the stench.

He lay curled in the corner of his shack on a pile of withered grass that mocked the definition of a “bed.”

His ragged hemp clothes offered no protection against the chill seeping through the stone walls. The wind sneaking through the cracks in the door made him shiver uncontrollably, but it wasn’t just the cold that racked his emaciated body.

It was the hunger.

He was truly starving. Since ascending the mountain three years ago, a full meal had been nothing but a memory. His stomach cramped violently, a hollow ache feeling as if a thousand tiny insects were devouring him from the inside out.

His last meal had been half a bowl of watery gruel the previous evening—thin enough to see his own reflection and already turning sour. That was his entire reward for a full day of backbreaking labor as the lowest-ranking Servant Disciple of the Qingyun Sect.

Outside, the suppressed coughs and pained groans of other servants echoed in the night. They were all struggling on the brink of death, praying for the dawn.

Chen Ping closed his eyes, forcing himself to block out the sounds.

Yet, in the darkness, the image of that bowl of gruel stubbornly surfaced. He remembered the murky broth with a few disintegrated grains of Spirit Grain settled at the bottom.

He remembered the impatient face of the Outer Disciple who had ladled it out, and the accidental flash of a sparkling jade bracelet on the man’s wrist. The luster of that jade, contrasted against the emptiness in Chen Ping’s stomach, was a brutal reflection of their status.

He abruptly opened his eyes.

His hollow gaze fixed on a hole in the roof gnawed by rats. Faint starlight trickled through, falling on his face to remind him he was still alive.

Alive… but only just.

He was an ant surviving in the cracks of this colossal immortal sect, clinging to life for a pitiful handout of sour gruel.

His fingers unconsciously dug into the rough, prickly straw mat beneath him. His knuckles turned white from the force. Chen Ping gritted his teeth.

A surge of hot, defiant unwillingness rose from the depths of his gut, expanding until it occupied his entire mind.

Was he really going to live this low-key, miserable existence until he died?

After a long silence, the fire in his chest could only dissolve into a helpless sigh.

Clang!

Before the first light of dawn could pierce the horizon, the piercing sound of a gong exploded through the servant quarters, brutally tearing apart the last remnants of sleep.

“Get to work! You bunch of lazybones!”

Manager Wang’s grating voice drilled through the thin walls, making eardrums buzz. “Still lying there dead when the sun is up? Are you waiting for me to invite you with my whip?”

Chen Ping jolted upright with instinctive swiftness.

He quickly rolled up his tattered bedding and stuffed it into a corner. He pulled on his worn-out straw sandals, the soles nearly worn through to the earth.

He tied a frayed hemp rope tightly around his waist—a desperate trick to slightly suppress the endless feeling of emptiness in his stomach.

Rushing out of the shack, he merged into the silent, weary stream of people trudging toward the massive buildings halfway up the mountain slope.

Servant Peak… it sounded impressive by name.

In reality, it was merely an impoverished, barren mountain clinging to the side of the Qingyun Sect’s main peak. It was rocky, desolate, and sparse in Qi.

They, the lowest-ranking servants, were forever assigned the dirtiest, most exhausting, and least respected tasks. Carrying water, chopping firewood, cleaning latrines, hauling stone, clearing garbage…

Day after day, year after year, they squeezed out every last bit of their Physical Strength to exchange for meager rations barely sufficient to keep them from starving to death.

Today, Chen Ping’s assigned task was clearing away the mountains of Waste Residue piled up in the Pill Hall area.

It was a filthy, exhausting job. The air there carried a lingering, strange odor—a mix of scorched earth and decaying medicinal dregs—that no one wanted to deal with.

But Chen Ping had no choice.

The massive pill furnace hall resembled a slumbering giant beast. Even without the fires lit, it emanated oppressive heat and residual medicinal vapors.

Chen Ping dragged a heavy wooden wheelbarrow back and forth between several deep pits designated for dumping waste.

The cart was heavy with ashes, fragments from shattered pill furnaces, medicine cloths stained with unknown filth, and large amounts of charred medicinal paste from failed alchemy attempts.

Sweat soon soaked through his thin clothes. They clung to his bony back, smeared into dirty streaks by the falling dust.

He pushed the cart to the most remote pit, a place where the stench hung heaviest. He went because orders were orders, even if the foul air made his lungs revolt against every breath.

The sunlight beat down mercilessly upon the stones, making them sizzle. Chen Ping struggled forward one last time, pushing the barrow laden high before tipping the contents over the edge.

He watched the debris slide down into the darkness below, leaving behind a cloud of grey dust.

He coughed violently, wiping the sweat and grime from his eyes with his sleeve. As his vision cleared, he noticed something glinting faintly near the base of the pit wall.

It was almost invisible, covered in thick ash, like a fish eye buried under the silt of a riverbed for ages. But it caught the light at just the right moment.

Chen Ping’s heart gave a sudden, inexplicable leap.

He looked around, confirming no one was nearby. Then, he slid carefully down the steep pit wall, his feet sinking into the sticky, suffocating muck below.

The stench made his head spin, but he pressed onward, step by step.

He reached the spot and dug his fingers into the filth, pulling out a hard object. He wiped it clean, revealing a jade pendant.

It was the size of half a palm, irregular in shape with chipped edges. The material was neither metal nor true jade—just a dull, lifeless grey-white stone. It looked like an ordinary pebble washed by currents for millennia.

There were no intricate carvings, only a few crooked, faint grooves that looked like a child’s careless scratches. In the center lay a tiny, nearly imperceptible dark red spot.

His heart sank. Even the lowest Outer Disciple of the Qingyun Sect wore ornaments possessing some spiritual glow or treasure aura.

This thing was likely trash discarded along with the Waste Residue. A failed experiment from some unfortunate Alchemist, or simply a stone left over from a furnace fire.

Disappointment washed over him like an icy tide.

“Foolish,” he mocked himself silently. “Wishful thinking. How could an immortal fate fall upon a servant lower than a dog?”

Still, he wiped the pendant on the least dirty patch of his clothing and stuffed it into his chest pocket. Maybe it would be useful for cracking grain husks later.

He climbed out of the pit, dragging his empty cart back to continue his endless labor.