Three days later, Li Ergou was married.
There were no grand betrothal rites; everything was kept simple.
At the wedding banquet, a few of the bride's kin came.
The groom's side had even fewer.
Li Ergou had exactly one friend, Lu Changan, who helped greet the guests and see them off.
The other four immortal seedlings came along to fill out the numbers.
To show a little goodwill, Lu Changan and the other seedlings all brought gifts.
The seedlings were poor as church mice and could only offer a bit of mortal silver or some small trinket off their persons.
Lu Changan gave a hand-copied booklet.
It was titled Secret Essentials of Locking the Dragon.
It was no immortal cultivation art, but a secret technique of the bedchamber.
Besides strengthening one's ability in that department, it could lock in more of a man's primordial yang qi, so that he would not be drained hollow by beauty.
In this life, I doubt I'll have any use for the Secret Essentials of Locking the Dragon.
Lu Changan was quite certain of it.
In his last life he had been born into a cultivation clan, with no say in his own affairs—wives and concubines in droves, and no small number of offspring left behind.
Early on, the backing of a cultivation clan had indeed been a great help.
But past a certain level, clan and children became a burden.
For the sake of the clan and his sons and daughters his energies had been pulled in every direction; at times he had been dragged into whirlpools not of his choosing, fighting and killing for profit.
Li Ergou did not waste any time.
Two months after the wedding, his wife Mu Qing was with child.
When the family head, Mu Maode, learned of it, he handed out a lavish reward on the spot.
A low-grade magic treasure, a set of dharma robes, thirty spirit stones, two bottles of Qi-Nourishing Pills, sixty jin of spirit rice...
A reward so generous made the other seedlings green with envy.
Even Lu Changan felt a stir of temptation.
At present he had only three and a half spirit stones to his name and one shoddy magic treasure.
The Mu family head is setting up a model, hoping the rest of us will follow suit.
Lu Changan saw it clear as a mirror.
The Mu family head had declared that whoever fathered the first child, and whoever produced the first child with a spirit root, would each receive extra rewards.
All at once, the seedlings who had still been wavering could sit still no longer, and vied to take wives and beget children!
Only, the rewards for those who came after were less than a third of Li Ergou's.
It was after Li Ergou dropped by for a visit one day
that Lu Changan learned that Ergou's wife was a grand-niece of the family head, Mu Maode.
So the reward for his being first to father a child—the reward for setting the example—had been especially generous.
That kid. Simple souls have their own kind of luck.
Lu Changan sighed inwardly.
The family head surely had no shortage of descendants, and one grand-niece did not weigh all that much.
Lu Changan guessed that it was precisely because Li Ergou had no background, no learning, and a simple heart that he had been chosen—that kind of person was easy to win over.
The Mu family was thinking of taking this live-in son-in-law in and making him truly one of their own.
Lu Changan, by contrast,
was firm of mind and worldly-wise; he would be hard to truly subdue.
Even if he fathered children as eagerly as Ergou, he would never receive any real nurturing from the family.
A year and a half later.
Every seedling who had come to the Mu family had taken a wife and had children, melting into the Feiyue Lake Mu family as clansmen of an outside surname.
Everyone except Lu Changan.
He had not wavered to this day, shutting himself away in bitter cultivation.
Though he rarely left his door, the young women of the Mu family knew the rumors about him.
Some said Lu Changan had a mid-grade spirit root and thought far too highly of himself to marry into a family, that he looked down on the Mu family's mortal women.
In the training room of the side courtyard.
Lu Changan, in a white robe, sat cross-legged cultivating the Evergreen Art.
He was like a carved wooden statue; outwardly silent and still, while within him flowed a continuous, vital mana.
Through his wood spirit root he circulated the art, drawing the heaven-and-earth qi of the outside world into his body, until at last it formed Evergreen mana of his own.
The difference between heaven-and-earth qi and mana was this:
heaven-and-earth qi was wild—
chaotic, unordered, uncontrollable; low-tier cultivators could not use it directly.
Mana, on the other hand, was what a cultivator took in through his spirit root and transformed through his art, "taming" the qi of the outside world into a form under his own command.
I never imagined the Evergreen Art would cultivate at such a "gentle" pace.
Lu Changan opened his eyes, his expression sour.
With a first-rank spirit vein, and a year and a half spent,
and my only three and a half spirit stones used up,
His cultivation had barely scraped the peak of the first layer of Qi Refining.
A whole month earlier, Li Ergou had already advanced to the second layer of Qi Refining.
One of the other four seedlings had broken through as well.
Instead it was Lu Changan, the one with a mid-grade spirit root, who had ended up dead last.
Three reasons had produced this result:
First, the Evergreen Art cultivated with particular slowness, and the experience Lu Changan had gathered over his first two lives gave it no great boost.
It effectively canceled out his advantage from re-cultivating.
Second, he cultivated this art through his wood spirit root, whose sensitivity was seventeen—equivalent to a low-grade spirit root.
Lu Changan's mid-grade root was his fire root, with a sensitivity of twenty, and it went unused.
Third, because Lu Changan refused to marry a Mu woman and beget children, the Mu family had squeezed the cultivation resources they gave him down to the bare minimum.
They provide only the spirit-vein training ground, the most basic cultivation art, and three jin of spirit rice a month.
Lu Changan let out a sigh.
This was plainly Mu Maode's tactic, meant to force him to submit.
Li Ergou, by contrast, received pills every month to advance his cultivation, and was issued a full thirty jin of spirit rice.
Of "wealth, partner, method, and place," wealth came first.
Without means, even a top-grade spirit root would never reach Foundation Establishment in a lifetime.
Faced with such "unfair" treatment, Lu Changan bore no grudge.
There was an old saying: one meal makes a benefactor, a thousand meals make an enemy.
Lu Changan had not forgotten his original aim—he had come to freeload off the Mu family's spirit-vein training ground.
Whether it was their intention or not, the Mu family had at least done him a kindness.
Another half year passed.
Lu Changan had been with the Mu family for two full years.
That day, in the training room.
Qi Refining, second layer.
The fluctuations of mana on Lu Changan rose to a whole new level.
A strand of mysterious qi, the very air of passing years, flickered and was gone.
That aura...
For the first time in this life, shock showed on Lu Changan's face!
A year ago he had felt this strange sensation as well.
It was the sense of an ancient tree cycling through the four seasons, and he had taken it for a trait of the art.
This time, crossing into his second year, at the very instant of his breakthrough, that mysterious qi had been caught again.
Had his soul's perception not been so keen, he would likely have missed it.
Could the Evergreen Art be drawing in the qi of the years as it cultivates?
If that is the truth of it, then its slow progress makes perfect sense...
Lu Changan suppressed the shock and excitement in his heart.
The turning of the years—that was a law of heaven and earth.
Certain primordial true spirits of legend, the divine beasts of desolate antiquity, were said to feed on the years themselves.
Power of that order was beyond even the Nascent Soul stage.
No wonder the Evergreen Art can extend one's lifespan...
Lu Changan realized that this ancient health-preserving art was anything but simple.
If the chance ever comes,
I absolutely must get my hands on the second volume of the Evergreen Art!
In his last life, in the cave dwelling of the great Nascent Soul cultivator Yan Donglai, he had fought others for it and, amid the melee, come away with half a volume of the Evergreen Art.
The other half had gone to a Golden Core true cultivator of a major sect.
Clues about that man could be found deep in his memory.
But Lu Changan could not be sure these two lives were lived in the same cultivation world.
After advancing to the second layer of Qi Refining, Lu Changan came out for a little relaxation.
The Evergreen Art needed to draw in the qi of the years, after all; there was no rushing it.
No wonder this art was said to cultivate one's temperament.
He went first to the courtyard next door.
Li Ergou was playing with his child, and was delighted to see Lu Changan come over.
"Come on, say hello to Uncle Lu."
Li Ergou was holding his eldest son, Mu Yifan.
Unfortunately the child was only one year old and none too clever yet, and only gurgled and babbled.
The reason he was called the eldest son:
a month ago, Li Ergou's wife Mu Qing had conceived again.
Everyone knew cultivators did not breed easily—the higher the cultivation, the harder it was.
Lu Changan suspected that the Secret Essentials of Locking the Dragon he had given them might have lent a hand.
Lu Changan stroked the toddler's forehead, and the child was strangely quiet and well-behaved.
A child's cultivation aptitude would not show until the age of six; for now nothing could be told.
"Tsk, that's strange—our Little Fan is usually scared of strangers."
Li Ergou said in surprise.
Ordinarily the boy was left in the care of a Mu family wet nurse; as a father busy with cultivation, he saw the child so rarely that sometimes the boy did not even know him.
"Oh! Brother Lu, you've advanced to the second layer of Qi Refining—congratulations, congratulations."
Li Ergou offered his congratulations.
"Nothing next to your pace."
Lu Changan's feelings were a little mixed.
The two of them had started from the same line.
And here he was, a man cultivating his third life, fallen behind a farm boy.
Li Ergou was two years younger than him, besides.
"Brother Lu, I don't see anything bad about marrying into the Mu family. Why don't you think it over too?"
Li Ergou's life these days was impossibly comfortable.
He used the Mu family's spirit-vein training ground and enjoyed the spirit rice, pills and cultivation arts the family provided.
He did not have to raise the children himself, and was rewarded for having them besides.
"Every man has his own ambitions. There's no need to persuade me."
Lu Changan shook his head, and again turned down the pills and spirit stones Li Ergou offered him.
"Oh, right! Brother Lu, a couple of days ago I got a letter from Lin Yi."
Li Ergou's face turned serious, and he handed the child to the wet nurse.
"Lin Yi?"
Lu Changan thought of the Young Marquis, who had once been rather full of himself.
"Do you remember, Brother, the promise we made on the road to the sect trials back then?"
"Us seedlings who came out of Hengshui Prefecture agreed: whether or not we got into a sect, three years later we'd all meet again at the Gathering Immortals Tower in Hengshui Prefecture."
"That old promise? Would disciples who got into a sect ever take it seriously!"
Lu Changan was not optimistic.
He could not help recalling Zhao Siyao, that lively, lovely daughter of a grand house.
Once one entered a sect, one was no longer on the same level.
"Haha! You're selling people short, Brother. Lin Yi says in the letter that Zhao Siyao has agreed to come to the gathering—she has not broken her word."
Li Ergou grinned broadly, greatly comforted.