After exiting the restaurant with a full stomach, Li Ming decided to take a stroll across the streets of Beijing.
He had just wanted to take a walk for health reasons. Not because he had been eating unhealthy food almost daily.
Just as Li Ming was lost within the atmosphere of the lively streets of Beijing at night, Li Ming saw something flying past his eyes.
As the flying thing got close to Li Ming's field of vision, he was able to make out the picture of the flying object.
It was a young man in white, immortal robes, with extraordinary bearing on top of a flying sword.
"Hey! Isn't flying forbidden inside Beijing City?"
"That immortal lord must have extraordinary status to allow the imperial family to ignore the disrespect."
"Maybe it is so."
The nearby whispers didn't reach Li Ming's ears as his eyes lingered on the passing figure of the immortal.
Li Ming's mind went blank.
He had lived in a world with immortals.
In the 16 years he had spent living in this world, Li Ming never realized that immortals had existed in his world.
To be honest, it was Li Ming's fault for never realizing the kind of world he had lived in.
During his 16 years of life in this new world, Li Ming only minded his own business without paying unnecessary attention to the outside world. When his parents were present, Li Ming only paid attention to his studies and when his parents were gone, Li Ming only paid attention to making money.
That night, Li Ming returned to his home in a daze.
Before drifting into sleep, Li Ming lay down in his bed, the faint silver light of the moon spilling through the paper windows. His room was quiet, filling his mind with questions.
He closed his eyes and began to sort through the swirling tangle of thoughts that had haunted him.
If this world truly held the immortals, then what role was he meant to play in it?
He was a transmigrator. The kind often seen in novels as harbingers of destiny, as people chosen by the heavens to shift the flow of the world. Shouldn't he be chasing the Dao? Seeking enlightenment and carving his name upon the Heavens?
And yet… for sixteen years, he had lived a quiet, stable life. No calamities, no bloodshed. He had a place to return to in this unfamiliar world. In this new life, he had finally found stability. Was it not foolish to throw it all away just to chase an elusive dream?
The Tao was beautiful, yes—but also distant, cruel in its indifference. Cultivation promised power, but it often demanded everything else in return: time, safety, even identity.
Li Ming exhaled slowly, his chest tightening.
What use was eternity, if the cost was every peaceful morning?
He had nearly resolved to let it go—to live his life as it was, quietly, peacefully, with no need to gamble everything on an immortal path that might devour him whole.
But then a memory rose from the depths of his heart: his parents.
He hadn't seen them for a year, but their faces were etched into his soul, vivid and sacred. The laughter of his mother in their kitchen, the rough warmth of his father's hand on his shoulder, the smell of home on a rainy day.
He had lost them.
But what if…?
In the cultivation novels he'd read in his past life, immortals lived for eons. Some saw the reincarnations of their loved ones bloom and return like springtime after endless winter. A single glance from afar. A moment of recognition. Not to disrupt, not to interfere—just to witness.
To see them live again, to know they were happy in this world… That would be enough.
Not for reunion, not for attachment, but for quiet, wordless joy.
And so, in that still night, with moonlight painting shadows across the floor and the gentle rhythm of his breath filling the silence, Li Ming made his decision.
He would walk the path of immortality.
Not to defy heaven. Not to conquer death. Not even to ascend.
But for the faint, impossible wish of seeing his parents smile again in a life beyond memory.
A wish more illusory than the Tao itself.