The elderly woman was not in very good health. As a child, she had fallen into a river. Although someone had eventually rescued her, her lungs and other internal organs had already been damaged.
She had once drunk what her father called his treasured immortal water, but it was merely the last trace of medicinal potency left at the bottom of a bottle that had been rinsed with clean water countless times.
That "immortal water" had indeed kept her ailment from recurring in her youth. But as she aged and weakened, entering the twilight of her life, even a little chill would leave her gasping violently without end.
The elderly woman was named Li Yue. She was the principal wife of Fang Wende, a Grand Secretary of the current dynasty, and had enjoyed great prestige.
Watching the three or four children chasing one another and playing in the garden, Li Yue's eyes brimmed with tenderness. Occasionally, she narrowed her eyes and looked up at the sky, where white clouds of all shapes drifted slowly past.
For a moment, the sight seemed to carry her back to childhood, when she had sat on a hillside with her two brothers, a blade of grass held lightly between her lips, her hands braced against the turf as she gazed up at the sky.
Back then, they would watch the white clouds drifting near and far along the horizon, imagining them as mountains and wild beasts of every shape...
They would always wonder whether they could fly up there and see if the legendary immortals lived "beyond the mountains"...
I'm old now. I keep dwelling on the past!
Li Yue felt her eyes sting. She slowly closed them and smiled inwardly in self-mockery.
Just then, unseen by anyone there, space rippled faintly before the