The rain arrived without ceremony.
It did not fall with the fury of a storm nor the gentleness of a blessing. It simply came, steady and cold, tapping against the cracked tiles of the village like fingers counting something long overdue.
Li Qingshan noticed it only because the roof leaked again.
A thin stream of water slipped through the clay tiles and dripped directly onto the wooden table where he had been carving. The droplet struck the surface with a dull sound, spreading into the grain of the wood and blurring the half-finished lines of a talisman that was never meant to work anyway.
Qingshan sighed.
He set the carving knife down and reached for the bowl he kept nearby for moments like this. He placed it beneath the leak with practiced ease, the soft plink plink plink of water filling the room. It was a familiar rhythm. Too familiar.
This house had been falling apart for years. Perhaps decades. No one really remembered when it had last been repaired properly. His father had said it was already old when his grandfather inherited it. His mother had joked that the house would probably outlive them all out of stubbornness alone.
Now, only Qingshan remained.
The room smelled of damp wood, old oil, and faint medicinal herbs hanging from the rafters. A single oil lamp cast trembling shadows on the walls, illuminating shelves cluttered with tools, jars of dried plants, and scraps of paper covered in crooked characters.
Li Qingshan was seventeen years old.
In the village of Clear River, that was an age suspended between usefulness and expectation. Old enough to work the fields alone, old enough to hunt in the nearby hills, old enough to bury your parents when illness or misfortune came knocking. Yet not old enough to be respected without proof, not old enough to escape the invisible boundaries that hemmed the village in like the walls of a shallow well.
He had been born ordinary. Painfully so.
No auspicious signs marked his birth. No strange lights in the sky. No beasts crying in the mountains. No wandering immortal passing through to comment on his bones or his destiny. He arrived into the world during harvest season, amid the smell of wet soil and crushed grain, crying loudly and doing nothing remarkable at all.
And so life treated him accordingly.
Qingshan rose from his stool and crossed the room, careful to avoid the loose plank near the doorway. Outside, the rain darkened the packed earth of the courtyard, turning it into a patchwork of mud and puddles. Beyond the fence lay the village, low houses huddled together as if sharing warmth, smoke rising from chimneys into a gray sky.
Farther still, beyond the rice fields and the river that gave the village its name, loomed the mountains.
They were always there.
Tall, ancient, and silent, their peaks hidden by clouds so thick that even the bravest hunters refused to venture too deep. The elders spoke of those mountains in lowered voices. Wild beasts lived there, they said. Bandits too. Sometimes worse things, things that did not leave tracks.
Qingshan had never believed those stories. Not truly.
He had believed in hunger. In exhaustion. In the ache of muscles after a long day's labor. In the way grief settled into the bones and never quite left. Those were real.
The rest felt like stories told to children so they would stay close to home.
He reached for his cloak and slung it over his shoulders. The rain was light enough that he could still make it to Old Chen's shop before nightfall. He needed lamp oil, and perhaps some dried salt if the price was not too cruel today.
Before leaving, his gaze drifted to the small wooden tablet resting on the shelf by the door.
Two names were carved into it.
Li Wen. Zhao Lian.
He bowed, as he always did.
"I'm heading out," he murmured, feeling faintly foolish even after all these years. "I'll be back soon."
The tablet, as always, did not answer.
Clear River Village did not change.
Seasons passed, children grew, elders died, but the shape of life remained the same. The same gossip drifted through the air, the same disputes flared and cooled, the same paths were worn deeper into the earth by countless footsteps going nowhere new.
Qingshan walked through it like a ghost that no one quite noticed.
He exchanged nods with a few villagers. Some greeted him politely. Others barely spared him a glance. To most, he was simply Li Wen's son, the quiet one, the boy who never caused trouble and never brought honor either.
That suited him fine.
Old Chen's shop sat near the center of the village, a squat building with faded red banners hanging crookedly by the door. Inside, the air smelled of oil, grain, and metal. Shelves lined the walls, cluttered with tools, foodstuffs, and odds and ends scavenged from traders who passed through once or twice a year.
Old Chen himself was hunched over the counter, counting copper coins with fingers knotted like tree roots.
"You're late," the old man said without looking up.
"Rain," Qingshan replied.
Old Chen snorted. "Rain has never stopped anyone who needed something."
Qingshan did not argue. He placed his coins on the counter and asked for lamp oil and salt. The old man squinted at the money, weighed it in his palm, then grudgingly nodded.
As Old Chen turned to fetch the items, the shop door creaked open.
A stranger stepped inside.
The temperature in the room seemed to shift.
Qingshan felt it before he saw it. A pressure, subtle but unmistakable, like the air before a storm breaks. He turned instinctively, eyes widening.
The man wore plain gray robes, unadorned and dust-stained from travel. His hair was bound simply with a strip of cloth. There was nothing outwardly remarkable about him. No aura of grandeur, no dazzling presence.
And yet.
He stood too straight. Too still. As if the world itself had decided to pause around him.
Old Chen froze.
For a heartbeat, the old shopkeeper forgot to breathe.
Then, with a speed that startled Qingshan, he bowed deeply, nearly knocking his forehead against the counter.
"Honored guest," Old Chen stammered. "This humble shop welcomes you."
The stranger's gaze swept the room, lingering briefly on Qingshan before returning to Old Chen.
"I need water," the man said. His voice was calm, neither loud nor soft, yet it carried clearly. "And directions."
Old Chen scrambled to comply, pouring water into a chipped cup with trembling hands. Qingshan watched silently, something stirring in his chest.
This was not how Old Chen treated anyone. Not even the village head.
The stranger drank, then asked, "These mountains. The ones to the north. How far?"
Old Chen hesitated. "Honored guest, those mountains are dangerous. Few go there and fewer return."
The man nodded, as if confirming something he already knew. "How far?"
"Two days' walk, if one follows the river. Less if cutting through the forest, but…" Old Chen trailed off.
"That will do."
The stranger turned to leave.
Before Qingshan realized what he was doing, he spoke.
"Wait."
The word slipped out, raw and unplanned.
The shop fell silent.
Old Chen looked as though he might faint.
The stranger paused and turned.
"Yes?" he asked.
Qingshan swallowed. His heart pounded, but something deeper pushed him forward, something that had been dormant his entire life.
"I… I can guide you," he said. "At least part of the way. I know the forest paths."
Old Chen made a strangled noise.
The stranger studied Qingshan. Not his clothes, not his posture, but something beneath. Qingshan felt as though invisible hands were sifting through him, weighing his marrow, his breath, his very existence.
Finally, the man smiled faintly.
"You are not afraid?"
Qingshan thought of his empty house. The leaking roof. The silent tablet. The years stretching ahead, identical and endless.
"I am," he said honestly. "But I don't want to stay here forever."
The stranger's smile deepened, just a fraction.
"Very well," he said. "We leave at dawn."
And just like that, the course of Li Qingshan's life bent.
They left before sunrise.
Mist clung to the ground like a living thing, curling around their feet as they passed the last houses of the village. No one came to see them off. Qingshan had not told anyone he was leaving. He was not sure he would come back.
The forest swallowed them quickly.
As they walked, the stranger spoke little. Qingshan filled the silence with cautious questions. Where was he from? Why the mountains? What lay beyond?
Most questions went unanswered.
But after hours of walking, as the trees grew older and the air thinner, the stranger finally said, "You sense it, don't you?"
Qingshan frowned. "Sense what?"
The man stopped and gestured upward.
Qingshan followed his gaze.
The sky above the forest seemed the same as ever. Clouds drifted lazily, sunlight filtered through leaves. And yet, now that he focused, something felt wrong. Or perhaps right, in a way he had never noticed.
The air vibrated.
Not audibly. Not visibly. But it pressed against his skin, sank into his breath, tugged at something deep within him.
"I thought it was just the mountains," Qingshan said slowly.
The stranger nodded. "The mortal world is dust. Thin. Weak. Above it lies another layer, one mortals walk through without ever lifting their heads."
He turned to Qingshan, eyes sharp.
"This is the world of Xianxia. Of cultivation. Of those who refuse to age quietly and die obediently."
Qingshan's mouth was dry.
"You are saying immortals are real."
The man smiled.
"I am saying you are standing at the threshold."
The forest wind stirred, carrying the scent of pine and something ancient.
Qingshan felt it then. Clearly. Irrefutably.
His life until this moment had been a closed room.
The door had just opened.
And beyond it stretched a path that led not forward, but upward, into the clouds, into danger, into eternity.
He did not know yet that this path would cost him everything.
But as he stepped deeper into the mountains, following a man who was no longer merely a stranger, Li Qingshan understood one thing with absolute clarity.
He would never be ordinary again.