Volume One: Days in the Shantytown - Chapter One: A Shantytown Resident (Part One)

Toad Mountain was an utterly unremarkable little mountain in the Immortal Realm. Its slopes sprawled without shape, and its spiritual energy dispersed without gathering. It had streams but no spiritual charm, woods but no beauty, and caves but no mystery. In a realm of sacred mountains and splendid waters, a place lacking all three truly deserved to be called a shantytown. The Immortals who lived there must have been the most down-and-out in the entire Immortal Realm.

Yet on this very shantytown mountain, someone had used immortal power to carve out a cave residence with an imposing entrance. It occupied a third of the height of Green Toad Peak, Toad Mountain's main summit. Beside its entrance stood a slab of cheap Mirror Stone bearing a line of large characters: Luo Trading Development Co., Ltd.!

Mirror Stone was the cheapest material for entrance monuments in the Immortal Realm. Split open practically any mountain, and you could mine it by the tens of thousands of tons. Though the slab was enormous, it lent its owner not a trace of grandeur. Worse, the characters on it twisted and crawled like snakes and worms. They were as ugly as could be, seemingly written not with the long-haired wolf-hair brushes common in the Immortal Realm, but in a script resembling the fountain-pen handwriting that had become popular in the Mortal Realm only within the last century!

The Mirror Stone monument stood half as tall as the mountain, but immortals seldom set foot in the Toad Mountain shantytown. The imposing entrance of Luo Trading Development Co., Ltd. saw scarcely a visitor. Business did not look good.

The company's general manager, Luo Qian, was a plain-looking male Immortal of average height. At that moment, he sat before his fashionable crescent-shaped desk, carved from Mirror Stone, studying his Laptop with meticulous attention as he reviewed the past month's business.

Suddenly, the Laptop sounded a series of beeps. Its power light blinked twice, the battery ran out, and the computer went to sleep!

"Fuk! Sht! This damned knockoff didn't even last four hours! And that damned shopkeeper told me it used the latest energy-saving technology and could stay on standby for at least twenty hours! Next time I go down there, I'm making him take it back for a full refund."

There were no power plants in the Immortal Realm. With the battery dead, he could only charge it the next time he descended to the Lower Realm. For now, the laptop was useless.

Luo Qian snapped it shut and stood up to inspect his company.

Even a sparrow had all its organs, small though it was. How much more should that be true of Qianluo Trading Development Co., Ltd., whose frontage was at least "impressive"? Inside the cave residence, a spacious hall had been carved from the mountain. Mirror Stone tables stood within it; this was the reception area. There was no beautiful, alluring receptionist, but... Luo Qian rubbed his chin and consoled himself. Yes, there'll be bread someday. Sooner or later, there'll be a "hotgrl" too.

On the left side of the hall was a door bearing a wooden sign with two characters: Storeroom. The stone door on the right also bore a sign: Meeting Room.

Inside the storeroom sat an ultra-slim DVD player, two Laptop batteries, a large-capacity case, and a rice cooker. That was the entire inventory of the mighty Qianluo Trading Development Co., Ltd.

The meeting room's huge oval conference table, made of Mirror Stone, did lend it something of a big company's air.

Why was everything made of Mirror Stone? Because there was so much of it. Carving out the cave residence alone had yielded over a thousand tons. Mirror Stone truly was the cheapest material in the Immortal Realm.

A gust of wind sounded outside the deserted Qianluo Trading company. Then a timid face peered through the cave entrance. Seeing only Luo Qian inside, the visitor finally breathed a sigh of relief. "Old Luo, I'm here to pick up my order. Those discs I ordered last time..." Business had arrived, and Luo Qian immediately turned cordial. "Brother Ling, come in, come in! Your order's here. Have some tea while I fetch it."

With a sweep of Luo Qian's sleeve, a cup of hot tea appeared on the table. "Sit for a moment." He turned into the storeroom and took a disc from the large-capacity case. Its cover showed a naked woman with full breasts and a slender waist, sprawled out with a gaze so inviting it stirred an urge to commit a crime.

...Damn.

Luo Qian rejoiced inwardly. Ling Xiaose was a direct-line disciple of the Ling Household, a famous Aristocratic Clan of the Immortal Realm. His family controlled Extreme Truth Cave, one of the thirteen great Immortal Jade mines known as the "Upper Three, Lower Ten." Though it ranked among the Lower Ten Caves, it still made the Ling Household filthy rich! Young Master Ling, however, was a shut-in: dull by nature and poor at dealing with people. A single word to an unfamiliar woman left him red-faced and unable to string a sentence together. He had ascended centuries ago and was, by the Immortal Realm's standards, a perfectly normal adult man, yet he had never once been in love. Heaven and earth, yin and yang, coupling and dual cultivation—this was the proper path. The Immortal Realm had countless methods of dual cultivation, any one of which brought faster progress than practicing alone.

It was a shame. Young Master Ling had good looks and an illustrious family, but his tongue always failed him, and he remained single. Even shut-ins had needs, though, and Luo Qian had gone to considerable trouble to secure such a valuable customer. High investment brought high returns: ever since Ling Xiaose had watched the first disc Luo Qian gave him, trembling all the while, he had become even more of a shut-in!

With discs from the kingdom of pornography and a DVD player at hand, Young Master Ling no longer left the Ling Household's residence in Clear Peace Source, a prime location in the Immortal Realm, except to buy new discs and batteries from Luo Trading.

The Immortal Realm's "Three Heavens, Six Sources, Twelve Overseas Continents, and Thirty-Six Mountains Within the World" were all superb places rich in spiritual energy. The higher a place ranked, the more it aided cultivation. After the Three Heavens—Jade Clarity Heaven, Upper Clarity Heaven, and Supreme Clarity Heaven—came the Six Sources. Clear Peace Source was one of them. Owning a cave residence there meant you had entered the Immortal Realm's upper society. A sizable fortune in standard Immortal Jade alone could never accomplish that.

The currency of the Immortal Realm was standard Immortal Jade. One grade above it was Low-Grade Immortal Jade, exchanged at a rate of one to one hundred. Two grades above it was Mid-Grade Immortal Jade, at one to ten thousand. Three grades above it was High-Grade Immortal Jade, at one to a million. Above that, Top-Grade Immortal Jade, which could be used to forge Immortal Artifacts, was not something so easily obtained through exchange.

All told, Luo Qian had already earned three million standard Immortal Jade from Young Master Ling! He was Luo Qian's biggest customer, so the general manager attended to him personally. Not that he had a choice: he did not have a single employee yet. Even the alluring receptionist who would serve tea was still a distant milestone in his grand development plan...

"Haha, Young Master Ling, this is the latest release. It wasn't easy to get!" Luo Qian showed him the disc, and Ling Xiaose snatched it away as if afraid someone might see it, though there was no one else there to see. What could you do? He was a shut-in.

One glance at the disc told Ling Xiaose that its star was his favorite actress. His blood surged. Who said immortals had no desires? His gaze fell on the two rosy points on her chest, and he promptly felt that the part of him that made him a man had not, after all, been left behind in the Ling Household's mansion, deep and secluded as a noble lord's estate.

"All right, all right. Take it home and enjoy it!" Luo Qian chuckled. Ling Xiaose blushed, hurriedly put the disc away, and said gratefully, "Thank you, Brother Luo!" Luo Qian replied, "Young Master Ling, you know what a serious crime it is to descend from the Immortal Realm without permission. I'm taking a huge risk!"

As technology surged ahead in the Mortal Realm, methods of detection multiplied. Immortals who liked flying through the sky were increasingly easy to spot. Over the past few centuries, the Immortal Realm, along with the realms of gods, demons, and Buddhas, had therefore imposed strict controls on travel to the Lower Realm.

In the Immortal Realm, for instance, only three immortal officials had originally been responsible for investigating unauthorized descents. But as enforcement intensified, the Immortal Realm established a dedicated department three hundred years ago: the Immortal Apprehension Office. It answered to the Realm Security Court and was tasked specifically with tracking down immortals who descended to the Lower Realm without permission.

To prevent officials of the Immortal Apprehension Office from abusing their authority, the rules also forbade them from descending to the Lower Realm. Throughout the Immortal Realm, no one could descend to the Lower Realm without the Immortal Emperor's Golden Jade Order.