The croaking of frogs went on without end. A fine drizzle had continued for several days before finally stopping. After this autumn rain, the mountain paths had become muddy and difficult to travel.
Yet in the darkness of night, a carriage emerged from the end of the mountain road.
The waning moon was obscured by clouds. No lantern hung from the carriage, yet it traveled through the gaps between mountain after mountain as if on level ground.
The carriage was pitch-black inside. Its windows had been sealed with wooden boards, and the entrance was covered by a curtain. Only by the moonlight that appeared and vanished intermittently could one make out the broad-backed driver behind the curtain.
The driver remained utterly motionless. A foul odor wafted from him, reeking of blood and carrying the peculiar stench of grease.
Li Mo stared at the driver's back for a long time. An instinctive fear chilled the back of his neck. Coupled with the cold, damp carriage, his thin body unconsciously pulled his cotton-padded clothes tighter around himself.
He looked no older than ten. His features were ordinary, his skin the wheat-colored shade of a farmer's child, and his lips were slightly pale.
Only Li Mo's spirited eyes made him stand out somewhat among the poor.
Suddenly, he heard several shrill cries from outside the carriage.
From Li Mo's knowledge of livestock, they definitely did not belong to horses or yellow oxen, much less donkeys or mules. All he could tell was that whatever made them moved with two feet gripping the ground.
Suppressed sobbing from children soon sounded within the carriage.
As though accustomed to it, Li Mo took out some dry rations and swallowed them. His hand instinctively touched the Peace Amulet carved from hard wood around his neck.
There were fourteen children in the carriage, all about the same age.
The exposed skin of nearly all of them was bloodless. Among the slightly older ones, obvious signs of premature aging had already appeared on their faces.
Zhao Zhu moved close to Li Mo, glanced at the driver, and cautiously asked, "Hei Wa, how much longer until we reach Smelting Town?"
Hei Wa was Li Mo's childhood name. His parents were still alive, and he also had an older brother who had inherited the family carpentry business, as well as a sister who had been married for years.
"Zhu Zi, don't be rash. Don't think we're still in Niu Family Village."
Li Mo smacked Zhao Zhu on the head, then answered anyway. "Counting the days, we should arrive in another two days."
After saying that, he ignored Zhao Zhu and closed his eyes as if resting.
How could Li Mo not understand Zhao Zhu? He had probably come from far away and missed his family. But once an arrow left the bow, there was no turning back. Li Mo had never heard of a boy who went to Smelting Town and ever returned home.
Even so, whenever a chance to go to Smelting Town arose, the villagers still fought until their heads bled over it.
Li Mo wanted to doze off for a while, but no matter how he tossed and turned, he could not fall asleep. His mind remained in a constant state of excitement, his heart thudding wildly without pause.
It was not that homesickness had made him timid. He was simply about to come into contact with a world beyond imagination.
Li Mo was not a native born of this land. In his previous life, he had come from the technologically advanced Blue Star, only to accidentally inherit the body of a drowned child.
He had already spent five years in this strange and unfathomable world, and was nearly forgetting the dazzling lights and revelry of his previous life.
Li Mo gripped the pulse on his left wrist and could not help thinking, Forty-five beats per minute. It's slowed down again compared to a week ago.
If this continues, I'll become neither alive nor dead too.
Seeing Li Mo tossing and turning, Zhao Zhu asked worriedly, "What's wrong, Hei Wa?"
"I'm fine."
Li Mo shook his head and said no more. Just then, the morning sun rose outside the carriage, and he used the light to examine the children around his age.
Ma Ergao was the oldest among them, already past sixteen.
He seemed somewhat timid, hugging his knees as he curled up in a corner. Flecks of white dotted his temples—the white hair of one who had aged before his time.
Li Mo sighed.
The people of This World possessed extraordinarily strange constitutions.
Everything was normal before a child turned eight. But once they passed eight, the frequency of their heartbeats would decline year by year, until it stopped at the age of twenty years.
Then their internal organs would lose vitality, their skin would turn grayish-white like a corpse's, and a series of symptoms would follow, including premature aging and muscle atrophy.
It could be said that if people did not marry and have children before twenty years, they would no longer be capable of reproducing, because their bodies would gradually turn into half-corpses that were neither living nor dead.
Of course, compared to the drawbacks, the benefits gained were even more unbelievable.
That was "Eternal Life," also the "Death Sickness" that elders spoke of with terror.
Once someone passed twenty years, the signs of life in their body would completely vanish. They would no longer suffer the ravages of disease, and no matter how they aged, they would not die from the exhaustion of their lifespan.
They did not even need to consume food.
In Li Mo's memory, there were several elders in the village who were over three hundred years old.
Even when their bodies had become so frail that they could not move, they continued living day after day, until they finally requested to be burned alive.
It was said that Niu Family Village's Ancestral Hall even held an ancestor who had lived for a thousand years.
The ancestor's joints had completely stiffened. His flesh and blood had rotted beyond measure. Only during ancestral rites would young and strong villagers carry him out to ward off misfortune.
Li Mo had always believed that Eternal Life was a curse.
One could only watch one's body wither away, while the soul remained trapped in its shell, enduring forever the torment brought by Eternal Life.
Li Mo was heading to Smelting Town because he had discovered that Smelting Town possessed a way to slow the Death Sickness.
Only once every twenty years would an assistant from a shop in Smelting Town come to Niu Family Village. Yet this time, it was the Shopkeeper himself, ostensibly recruiting young assistants and apprentices.
Li Mo had asked the elders about it.
He had heard that Smelting Town rarely opened to the outside world. Ordinary people could go their entire lives without ever encountering it. Only residents of the town could bring outsiders into the city.
Although the elders spoke of Smelting Town as if it were taboo, they still pushed their own grandsons out to compete for shop apprentice positions.
As a carpenter, Father Li held no low status in the village. Naturally, he had obtained a spot, and Li Mo happened to be at the age when he was about to establish his own household.
Li Mo had known nothing about it at the time, but Father Li had already reported his name to the Shopkeeper.
Because of that, Li Mo had met the true face of Steward Tian. Though his appearance was somewhat peculiar, despite being over forty, his visible corpse-like transformation was insignificant compared to others his age.
The driver of the carriage was Shopkeeper Tian, who had come alone to Niu Family Village.
To resolve the Death Sickness, Smelting Town seemed to be one of the few remaining choices.
"What a pity..."
Thinking of this, Li Mo could not help closing his eyes. His consciousness entered the Chaos within his mind, where a book emerged.
The book seemed to be made of both cloth and paper. Mist leaking from it continuously transformed into immortal birds and rare beasts, while the words "Book of Fortune" were engraved upon its cover.
The Book of Fortune had appeared in his mind for no apparent reason, and its origins were impossible to determine.
Li Mo had seen at a glance that the Book of Fortune was extraordinary. Unfortunately, from the age of five to ten, he had never found a way to open it.
Li Mo gazed at the Book of Fortune and gradually slipped into a half-asleep, half-awake state. Through his haze, he could still hear Zhao Zhu's endless muttering.
Before long, Zhao Zhu also fell into a deep sleep, his faint snores echoing beside Li Mo's ears.
Only when the carriage came to a stop did Li Mo instinctively awaken. Yet he did not act rashly, continuing to pretend that his eyes were closed.
He heard the sound of bones knocking together outside the carriage, but it abruptly ceased after only a few breaths.
"Cough, cough, cough."
The curtain was lifted, and sunlight streamed into the carriage. The children all covered their eyes in discomfort.
"Come out, all of you."
The children sat as though on pins and needles and hurriedly crawled out from beneath the curtain. Li Mo followed close behind.
Shopkeeper Tian wore a kindly expression. He was dressed in a long purple-black robe, with a brocade belt edged in pale green auspicious clouds around his waist.
His protruding belly resembled that of a woman ten months pregnant, as though it might burst through the restraint of his ribs at any moment.
Shopkeeper Tian's skin and flesh bore numerous wounds. Though no blood flowed from them, the pale flesh did not look as if it could heal.
This, too, was the price of Eternal Life: injuries were difficult to recover from completely.
The carriage had stopped on an official road paved with gravel. Since dawn had just broken, the travelers and merchant caravans on the road were sparse and scattered.
They deliberately detoured around the carriage, not daring to approach Shopkeeper Tian, their eyes filled with fear.
Li Mo observed discreetly and discovered that beast hoofprints stopped before the carriage. Specks of blood stained the reins, while the animal pulling the carriage seemed to have vanished into thin air.
A few droplets of blood likewise stained Shopkeeper Tian's cuffs.
When Shopkeeper Tian had come to the village, he had not brought any livestock. The carriage had been parked more than ten li outside the village.
Li Mo did not dare think too deeply about what the reins had been tied around before.
"Little ones, there's still some distance to Smelting Town. Follow closely behind me. If you fall behind, you'll have to walk back to Niu Family Village by yourselves."
Shopkeeper Tian smiled. His features, squeezed together by wrinkles, made him resemble an old fox clad in Human Skin, enough to send chills down one's spine.
The children all retreated several steps, only to see that Shopkeeper Tian had already set off along the official road.
They hurried after him. Fortunately, Shopkeeper Tian did not walk quickly. Even children could keep up with a brisk jog.
Li Mo remained near the rear of the group.
His stamina was not poor. When he had first transmigrated, he had thought exercise might slow the Death Sickness.
Thus, Li Mo ran around the village entrance every day. Although it had not made him sturdier, his endurance was enough to rival that of a youth of seventeen or eighteen.
After more than half an hour, the group stumbled and staggered over a hill.
Only a little girl named Li Qingfang had twisted her ankle, and Ma Ergao carried her for most of the journey.
Li Mo watched the passersby from the corner of his eye and noticed that their corpse-like transformation was even more severe than that of the villagers, yet for some reason, it did not affect their movements in the slightest.
There were also children from other villages heading to Smelting Town. However, judging by the outfits of the assistants leading them, they likely belonged to shops different from Shopkeeper Tian's, and their walking postures seemed slightly uncoordinated.
Gradually, the sun sank in the west, and a mountain-backed town appeared at the end of the official road.
Smelting Town was not merely situated at the foot of the mountain. Even the mountain peak was covered with rows of houses. Yet because the mountain was steep and rugged, the houses were crooked and slanted, looking exceptionally awkward.
Gray-black smoke and dust coiled around the mountaintop, while even the mountain wind carried a trace of rot.
Outside the town stretched an endless expanse of farmland, where farmers cultivated crops. When they saw Shopkeeper Tian, they did not flee, but kept their heads lowered as they pulled weeds.
The farmers' exposed faces were covered in black spots. Their gums had shrunk, their eyes were bloodshot, and even scattered wounds showed signs of decay.
Li Mo's expression became dazed. The Smelting Town before him gave him the strange feeling that he had seen it in a dream.
At that moment.
The dead object that was the Book of Fortune suddenly underwent a change. The immortal birds and rare beasts circling the book instantly transformed into a Corpse Mountain Sea of Blood.
Then, the Book of Fortune opened to its first page.
The image on the page was a living brain.
A vast quantity of fragmented memories surfaced in Li Mo's mind. They depicted a town three or four parts similar to Smelting Town.
A mountain peak hung a hundred meters in the air, connected to the ground by iron chains. Daoist Temples stood in neat rows, while faint clouds and mist shrouded the mountains.
The passing Daoists raised birds and beasts. Their appearances were ordinary, without any signs of the Death Sickness.
Li Mo looked stunned, for according to the fragmented memories, Smelting Town had been an Immortal Sect centered on raising Spirit Beasts seven thousand years ago.
It was called Heart Beast.
New book, please add it to your collection!!!
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