Testing the Method on Himself

Five years passed in the blink of an eye. The peach blossoms in the mountains bloomed and fell again.

Every few days, Meng Yuan went into the Immortal Mausoleum to inspect it, feeling over every corner dozens, even hundreds of times.

He put a hundred times more care into it than into feeling up Chen Yuyin.

Yet he still found nothing.

That autumn, Chen Yuyin went away, returning only after more than half a year.

That year, Meng Yuan was forty, and Chen Yuyin forty-three. They were not getting along and had not slept together in a long time.

After Chen Yuyin returned, she seemed to have put her worries to rest, and her whole bearing grew much lighter.

"You've fulfilled your father's and brother's last wishes, and made all the arrangements for your ancestors' duty of guarding the mausoleum. But what about you? You've spent your whole life running around. Have you never thought about yourself? You married two men you didn't like, one after another, slept with someone you didn't like day and night, then used your internal power to force it out afterward, afraid of dirtying your body. Have you never thought about yourself? Never considered your own interests? You've drawn a prison around yourself for your entire life!" Meng Yuan casually gave her something to stew over.

Sure enough, Chen Yuyin's expression turned ugly. She lowered her head, unable to say a word.

"Vast as this world is, I'm the only person who understands your troubles. And I'm the only one who truly cares about you, who's truly helping you."

Meng Yuan coaxed her again, then invited her into the peach grove to play. With just a little touching, he got his hands on her. They were used to sleeping together, after all, and so they indulged themselves freely.

From then on, whenever Meng Yuan had nothing to do, he sought out Chen Yuyin to sleep with her. The two actually became husband and wife again.

Another five years passed in the blink of an eye. Pei Huasheng had grown terribly old. She brought a man and a woman, the Pei family's successors.

Two more years passed. Pei Huasheng died of old age, and Bai Xingshuang brought his younger paternal cousin.

Another ten years passed. Chen Yuyin brought a boy and a girl, Chen Huaiyuan's children.

Meng Yuan had once taken Chen Huaiyuan as his adopted son. After learning who Meng Yuan was, the two children knelt and called him Grandfather. Meng Yuan refused to acknowledge it, insisting on treating them as peers. Chen Yuyin was very angry.

That year, Meng Yuan was fifty-two.

"Wife, look at my thighs," Meng Yuan said one morning after they had finished.

"Ah." With a helpless sigh, Chen Yuyin swept up her hair, looking resigned and past bothering to calculate anything. "I'll do anything you want from now on. Just please stop trying to seduce Huaiyuan's daughter."

"I meant look at the flesh on my thighs. The flesh has grown back on them!" Meng Yuan sighed. "The years slip away, yet I haven't made the slightest progress."

"Have you decided?" Chen Yuyin asked.

"My mind is made up." Meng Yuan nodded. "Still, since you've already put your hair up..."

After they had finished again, the two went to find Bai Xingshuang.

Bai Xingshuang summoned the mausoleum guardians of the Three Surnames, who escorted Meng Yuan into the Immortal Mausoleum.

They passed the Sword Qi vase, entered the passage, and continued onward. The candlestick was unchanged.

"Remember, if I lose my senses and won't wake when you call, you must treat a dead horse as though it were still alive. Pierce my seven orifices with needles. Even pouring poison down my throat will do. You have to try something. Yuyin, you share my bed. You..." Meng Yuan leaned close to Chen Yuyin's ear and whispered a few private words.

"..." Chen Yuyin had already guessed what Meng Yuan would say. She was no longer young enough to feel shy about it and merely sighed. "I... I'll try."

After he finished giving his final instructions, Chen Yuyin tied a rope around Meng Yuan's waist, and he stepped forward.

He advanced step by step. When he was fifty paces from the candle flame, Meng Yuan did not stop.

In a daze, Meng Yuan seemed to enter another world, as though he smelled a delicate fragrance and heard celestial music.

Passing skeleton after skeleton, Meng Yuan was intensely alert, yet felt nothing unusual.

After an unknown length of time, he finally reached the bronze candlestick.

Meng Yuan looked back and saw Bai Xingshuang and Chen Yuyin standing far away, both wearing astonished expressions, as though they could not believe he had reached the end.

Why am I all right? Meng Yuan grew even more wary. He drew a breath and found that his Internal Cultivation circulated unhindered, while his mind remained clear.

With that thought, Meng Yuan walked around the bronze candlestick, only then discovering cracks in it.

Has it broken?

Meng Yuan saw them clearly. It's only been thirty-odd years since Chen Yucheng and Pei Liuguang died. It looks like the candlestick broke sometime in those thirty years. Heaven truly favors me!

With that thought, Meng Yuan pushed open the stone door behind the candlestick, only to find another passage.

Meng Yuan stepped into the passage, and the stone door closed behind him. He ignored it and kept walking. After a dozen or so paces, he discovered another world within: a peach grove.

A stone platform stood at the center of the grove, but there was no sign of an immortal, only a book and a pill bottle upon the platform.

He picked up the book and read it. It was actually an immortal's wondrous method. Inside the pill bottle were precious pills that helped one become an immortal.

Meng Yuan immediately sat cross-legged on the stone platform. After calming himself, he swallowed a precious pill and practiced the immortal's method.

His cherished wish of two lifetimes had come true in a single day. Meng Yuan cast everything else aside, heedless of heat or cold, ignoring all distracting sounds, devoting himself wholly to cultivation.

The Immortal Method was indeed extraordinary. Before long, Meng Yuan felt its utter wonders.

Kingdoms and conquests, widows of city-toppling beauty-all were merely clouds and smoke passing before his eyes.

Only now did Meng Yuan discover life's profound wonders.

I'm going to become an immortal!

Meng Yuan grew ever more enthralled. After an unknown length of time, he actually began to sense the way heaven and man transformed and gave rise to life, nourishing all things.

Yet pain sometimes coursed through his body, and at times he still thought of women.

I haven't been focused enough in my practice. My realm is still too low!

Just as he was about to bury himself in arduous cultivation again, Meng Yuan seemed to hear distracting noises reaching his ears.

"Meng Yuan?"

"Brother Meng?"

"I give him water every day, but his throat is already ruined. I can hardly get honey water down it anymore. In three to five days at most, he'll certainly die."

"We should have expected this, but we still have to try again. His feelings for you run deepest. Why don't you call his name while you... give him a little joy to ward off death..."

"I've given him that kind of joy dozens of times over these ten days! Has it helped at all?!"

"Huh? Haven't his tendons been severed and his bones crushed? How have you still managed it so many times?"

"You'll have to ask him that!"

"Then there really is nothing we can do. If even a dragon and phoenix among men like him can't succeed, perhaps we should seal the Immortal Mausoleum again, so it won't harm future generations. My young cousin and your grandniece have taken a liking to each other. The two of them..."

The voices drifted faintly, seeming right before him, yet also at the edge of the sky.

Is that Bai Xingshuang and Chen Yuyin? What nonsense are they babbling about?

For the sake of our old friendship, once I become an immortal, I should give those two some guidance as well. Even the chickens and dogs ascend to heaven, after all!

Yuyin has aged a little over the years. Though she's grown more alluring, I still miss the softness and smoothness of her youth, the sight of those lovely feet stretched taut as she gritted her teeth and endured. It really makes a man... Oh, why am I thinking about women again?

Casting aside distracting thoughts, Meng Yuan immersed himself in cultivation again.

After an unknown length of time, Meng Yuan made another great advance. His entire body felt light and floating, as though he were about to shed his mortal form and become an immortal.

I've done it! The Turning Wheel grants a hundred lifetimes, but I found the way to immortality in just three!

Unable to contain his joy, Meng Yuan could not help thinking of the Turning Wheel. As he turned his thoughts toward it, he saw that the Turning Wheel had stopped at some unknown point and no longer turned.

While he was wondering about this, the Turning Wheel slowly began to turn backward. This meant he was dying, but not yet dead.

It can't turn anymore...

I... I didn't make it?

On the verge of departing, Meng Yuan forced his eyes open. He saw Chen Yuyin, a middle-aged wife who still possessed considerable charm, seemingly crying, yet also seemingly smiling. When she saw Meng Yuan open his eyes, she was first horrified, then murmured with a sigh of relief, "He's finally dead."

"Auntie can't take it anymore!"

In his daze, Meng Yuan suddenly heard Pan Shi shrieking.