Renegade Immortal Chapters 10-12: Wang Lin's Humble Entry and Hidden Treasure
The fate of a mortal boy hung in the balance, debated not out of merit but out of inconvenience. Within a hall of the Heng Yue Sect, Elder Li’s cold voice cut through the disagreement. “Elder Ma, the patriarch told me to handle this matter. If it’s not handled properly, and this piece of trash attempts suicide a second time… isn’t that more embarrassing?” The issue was Wang Lin, the village boy who had tried to take his own life after failing the sect’s test. His act of desperation had become a messy problem for the immortals.
A middle-aged man smoothed over the conflict with a pragmatic solution. “Why don’t we let him become a disciple first, then after eight or ten years, when he fails to keep cultivating, we can send him back and there will be no problem.” He chuckled, dismissing concerns about setting a precedent. “After this, we have learned our lesson. When we fail people in the future, we should instill in them the idea of not suiciding.” Privately, the man smiled. Oh Wang Lin, Wang Lin. I have helped all I can. I have repaid you for the piece of metal your fourth uncle gave me. He was deeply curious how a mortal family came to possess such an unusual material, unaware it had been bought from a simple blacksmith. That mysterious piece of metal, its origins and purpose unknown, had subtly shifted the gears of destiny. Wang Lin was in.
Two days later, standing at the sect’s gate, Wang Lin watched his parents depart. The profound relief and blazing hope in their eyes seared into his soul. Their joy was his mandate. Whatever awaited him within these mountain walls, he vowed to take it seriously. The dream of cultivating immortality, however tarnished its acquisition, was now his reality.
That reality manifested quickly, and it was far from the lofty halls of learning he had imagined. Summoned to the work assignment station, he was met by a shifty-looking youth in yellow robes whose face was a mask of contempt. “So you are Wang Lin, the kid that got to be a disciple by suiciding?” The youth sneered, not waiting for an answer. “Boy, starting tomorrow morning you come to me for work. Your job is to fetch water, no less than ten vats a day. If you can’t finish the work, then no food for you, and if you continue for seven days then I’ll tell the elders to kick you out of the sect.” He tossed a bundle of gray cloth at Wang Lin. “Remember, honorary disciples can only wear gray.” With that, he closed his eyes, dismissal absolute.
Clutching the coarse uniform, Wang Lin found his way to the northern quarters, a row of simple houses teeming with other gray-clad disciples. They moved like ghosts, faces pale and drawn, eyes avoiding contact, a silent procession of the exhausted. The atmosphere was one of drained endurance. A yellow-clothed disciple in charge assigned him a room with an impatient wave. The space was sparse but clean: two wooden beds, a table, two chairs. Wang Lin claimed the empty bed, lay down, and sighed into the quiet. He was inside the Heng Yue Sect, but his path seemed to lead only to a mountain spring and back, carrying buckets.
Night had fallen when his roommate stumbled in, a youth gray with fatigue who collapsed onto his bed without a word. Later, stirred by the scent of food, the boy awoke to see Wang Lin eating a sweet potato. His eyes locked onto it, mouth watering. “Can I have a piece?” he asked in a low, hungry voice.
Wang Lin, feeling a pang of kinship in this cold place, pushed several pieces toward him. “I have a lot here. If you’d like, have some more.”
The youth, Zhang Hu, devoured them gratefully, washing them down with water. “Damn it! I haven’t eaten anything in two days.” He introduced himself, then his expression turned awkward. “So you are Wang Lin, the trash that entered the Heng Yue Sect by attempting suicide…” He caught himself, embarrassment flashing. “Brother, please don’t blame me. In fact, I admire you for being able to enter the sect this way.” The rumor had spread like wildfire; Wang Lin was already infamous.
Wang Lin offered a bitter smile, passing more sweet potato. Zhang Hu accepted but then grew serious. “Wang Lin, you better leave some for yourself. You are new here. Who knows what evil things that yellow weasel will try to do.”
“Weasel?” Wang Lin asked, the image of the sneering work assigner coming to mind.
“The man in yellow,” Zhang Hu confirmed. “He’s an honorary disciple who’s been given the right to start cultivating. He doesn’t look like a good guy at all.” When Wang Lin recounted his water-carrying sentence, Zhang Hu’s face fell. “Brother, did you offend him before?” Seeing Wang Lin’s confused denial, Zhang Hu gestured wildly. “Wang Lin, are you thinking the vats are like the ones you use at home? Like this big?” He formed a small circle with his arms. “The vats he is talking about are the size of this room. Filling up ten vats… you’ll be lucky to get food every four to five days.”
A cold fury surged through Wang Lin, hot and blinding. It was an impossible task designed to break him. But then he saw, in his mind’s eye, his father’s proud smile and his mother’s tearful relief at the gate. He clenched his jaw and forced the rage down, swallowing it like a bitter pill. He would endure.
Before dawn the next day, he was at the station. The yellow-clad youth—Liu, the ‘weasel’—barely glanced at him. “Get a bucket and head out east. There is a spring in the mountain.” He then sat cross-legged, facing the rising sun. A faint, mesmerizing white mist began to curl from his nostrils, coiling like tiny dragons. Wang Lin watched, his heart aching with a deep, yearning envy. That was cultivation. That was the immortal technique he craved. He turned away, picked up a heavy wooden bucket, and began his march.
The spring was beautiful, a serene spot where water chuckled over stones. He had no time for beauty. Fill, lift, trudge up the mountain. Pour the meager bucket into the cavernous vat. Repeat. By dusk, his body was a symphony of pain. His muscles screamed with every movement, and the vat was not even one-tenth full. Only the sweet potatoes in his belly gave him any fuel.
In a secluded spot, driven by desperation and memory, he conducted an experiment. He filled the bucket halfway, carefully took the mysterious stone bead from his neck, and dropped it in, sloshing it around. He retrieved the bead, secured it, and drank the water. A familiar warmth, though milder than the miraculous dew he’d tasted before, spread from his stomach. The sharp, debilitating pain in his muscles receded, replaced by a lingering soreness and a returning tide of energy. It worked. The bead’s magic transferred to the water. It wasn’t as potent as the direct dew, but it was a sustainable, life-giving secret.
From that moment, a routine was born. Wang Lin became a ghost in the gray streams of disciples, fetching water under the watchful, disdainful eyes of his peers. He drank the bead-infused spring water to sustain his body and hid his growing strength. He made a show of exhaustion, returning to the quarters late with a weary slump, while inside, the bead’s energy hummed.
His roommate, Zhang Hu, became his sole source of human connection and information. The boy’s job was collecting firewood, a three-year grind that had only recently allowed him to eat once every two days. “Honorary disciples do chores for ten years,” Zhang Hu explained between bites of begged-for sweet potato. “When you can do your work and still eat three meals a day, then they might teach you the most basic cultivation.”
He painted the sect’s hierarchy in stark colors. Inner disciples, clad in purple, black, white, or red, lived in the main courtyard. They had masters, private rooms, and spent their days solely in cultivation. Then there were helpers, like Wang Hao, who served specific masters, performed light duties, and learned low-level techniques—a permanent middle-ground for those with just enough talent to be useful but not enough to advance. At the very bottom were the grays, and among the grays, Wang Lin was the lowest of the low.
“Talent is just spiritual energy,” Zhang Hu said with a shrug born of resigned acceptance. “Everyone has some, but if you don’t have enough, it might take a hundred years to learn a single technique. What’s the point? A man’s life is too short.”
A month flowed by like the water Wang Lin carried. His body, fortified daily by the bead’s essence, grew stronger, leaner, and more resilient. The task that once seemed impossible now took him three days instead of six. He maintained the illusion of relentless, backbreaking labor by starting before first light and returning after dark, earning a reputation as a desperate, hardworking fool.
The scorn from other honorary disciples was a constant drizzle. Their faces, twisted by years of frustration at the bottom of the hierarchy, found a target in him. He was their pressure valve, the “trash who entered by suicide,” someone they could look down upon to feel marginally superior. Wang Lin absorbed their insults and contempt with a deaf ear and a blind eye, but he did not forget. In the quiet of his mind, he seared each arrogant face into his memory. When I become strong enough, he promised himself, a cold resolve crystallizing in his heart, I will remember.
His real focus was the stone bead. It was his secret ally, his source of hope in a hopeless place. He experimented tirelessly, using stolen moments during his water trips. He tried soaking the bead in different liquids: spring water, his own sweat, even a drop of his blood. The results were clear. The natural dew that condensed on the bead itself, especially at dawn, was the most potent elixir. Spring water infused by the bead was next, providing sustained energy and recovery. Blood and sweat were nearly useless.
To harness this, he became a forager of gourds, finding small, wild ones, hollowing them out, and using them to store the precious dawn dew. He never kept them in his room, instead creating a network of hiding spots in remote crevices and hollow trees around the mountain spring. He would retrieve a gourd during his work, take a sip when fatigue threatened, and feel vitality course back through his veins.
He noted another mystery. Often, the bead would appear covered in dozens of glistening dew droplets at dawn, but when he went to collect them, he would only manage to gather a fraction. The rest seemed to vanish into the bead itself, as if the stone was drinking its own condensation. He had no explanation, only the quiet certainty that the bead was even more mysterious than he understood.
One evening, after filling the last of the ten colossal vats, Wang Lin approached the meditating Liu. “Brother Liu, I’m going to take a trip home so I won’t be coming tomorrow.”
Liu opened one eye, snorted, and closed it again, offering no acknowledgment.
Wang Lin had learned from Zhang Hu that honorary disciples were allowed three home visits a year, a policy designed not from compassion but from pragmatism: let the disciples show off a sliver of the sect’s magic to attract more applicants from the mortal world. His father’s birthday was the perfect reason. He made his way to the main courtyard, the domain of inner disciples and elders, a place he usually passed with longing glances.
The buildings here were grander, the air tinged with a different energy. After announcing himself, a young man in pristine white robes sauntered out. Wang Lin’s heart tightened. He knew the hierarchy of colors: white was for inner disciples, a level far above his gray. The youth looked him over with palpable disdain. “You are Wang Lin?” After a confirming nod, the disciple’s mouth twitched in a cold smirk before he turned, expecting Wang Lin to follow.
They walked to a secluded garden house surrounded by a vibrant array of medicinal plants. The white-clad disciple announced him lazily and departed. The moment Wang Lin pushed the gate open and stepped inside, he was enveloped by a rich, complex aroma of herbs—a scent that had been completely absent from the outside air, as if sealed by an invisible barrier.
A hoarse, impatient voice came from a corner room. “What are you doing standing there? Hurry up and say your name.”
“Disciple Wang Lin here to meet Elder Sun. My dad’s birthday is tomorrow; this disciple wishes to return home for a visit.”
The voice turned sharp with disapproval. “You are Wang Lin? So it was you. Hmph, a person training to be an immortal caring about worldly affairs? In your lifetime, you will never become an immortal!”
A spark of defiance, long buried under obedience and endurance, flickered in Wang Lin. He frowned and spoke without thinking. “Disciple hasn’t even cultivated any immortal technique. How could disciple be on the path to an immortal?”
There was a pause from the room, as if the elder was momentarily taken aback by the retort. Then, with impatient finality, he said, “You have three days, so return quickly. This is a Thousand Mile Immortal Talisman that can be used twice. It will increase your speed greatly.” A piece of dull yellow paper, unremarkable and flimsy-looking, floated out from the window and landed at Wang Lin’s feet.
He picked it up. Zhang Hu had told him about these. They were low-quality talismans, easy to use—just stick it on your leg—and would slightly enhance a mortal’s running speed. Their primary purpose was spectacle for the villages. Many honorary disciples, however, hoarded them, as they could be traded for goods in the mortal world. The three-day visits were often just a pretext to collect another talisman.
Wang Lin left the garden, the strange scent vanishing the moment he crossed the threshold back into the common air. He returned to his room, said a quick goodbye to the exhausted Zhang Hu, and prepared to leave. The stars were already out. He didn’t want to waste the talisman and feared missing his father’s birthday, so he decided to start the long journey home on foot that very night.
Under the starlight, he began his descent from Heng Yue Mountain, the talisman tucked in his robe, the stone bead a comforting weight against his chest. He was leaving a place of oppression and hidden growth, returning to the source of his determination. The path ahead was dark, but he moved with a steady, strengthened pace.
Back in the secluded garden, Elder Sun emerged from his room sometime later, intending to gather a few night-blooming herbs for a concoction. As he passed the gate where Wang Lin had stood, he stopped dead. His eyes, sharp and experienced, widened in disbelief. All the Blue Spirit Grass that had been flourishing along the gate path—a plant sensitive to spiritual energy fluxes—was now completely withered, its leaves dry and crumbling as if drained of all life in an instant. The elder stared at the dead plants, then at the gate, his mind racing. The only unusual presence that had stood there recently was that defiant, talentless honorary disciple. A deep, unsettling frown etched itself onto Elder Sun’s face as the silent, star-lit mountain held its breath around him.