The morning sun poured over the village of Qingmu, casting long, golden rays across the thatched rooftops and winding dirt paths. Birds chirped, children laughed, and the smell of fresh bread drifted from the small bakeries nestled between clusters of wooden homes. Life, in its simplest form, moved in rhythms as predictable as the rising and setting of the sun. For most, this day would be no different than the thousands before it, yet for Lian Xu, it would mark the first day of an existence that no human had ever known.
He awoke on a cold stone floor, the roughness pressing against his back, yet he felt no discomfort. His eyes opened to a faint shimmer in the air, the light bending unnaturally as if the world itself were aware of his presence. Lian Xu could not recall his past, nor did he feel the usual burden of memory. There was only clarity: he existed. And for the first time, he sensed something that mortals never could—the inexorable flow of time surrounding him, like a river, stretching forward and backward, infinite and merciless.
At first, he thought he was dreaming. Mortals often spoke of moments when the veil between life and some higher reality thinned, and visions blurred the line between the present and eternity. But as he rose to his feet, he realized the truth was far stranger. His body felt unassailable. When he pricked his finger on the rough edge of the stone, not even the sting of pain touched him. Wounds that should have bled and bruised seemed to evaporate before they could form. And then, with a thought as simple as blinking, he tested the impossible: he leapt from the roof of a nearby barn. The fall should have broken bones, should have ended a mortal life in a cruel instant, but he landed softly, not even the soles of his feet bruised.
The villagers screamed. A child fell backward, a basket of bread rolling across the ground. Mothers clutched their babies, eyes wide with terror. Lian Xu looked at them, really looked, and understood something he had never known: he was alone. Not in the sense of solitude, but in the very fabric of existence. Everyone here, everyone in the surrounding lands, would age, suffer, and die. Their lives were bound by time, and he—he was free from it.
"Who… who are you?" a villager demanded, voice quivering.
"I… do not know," Lian Xu said, his voice calm, almost monotone, though his mind was a whirl of questions he could not yet articulate. He could sense the seconds stretching into minutes, minutes into hours, the weight of years pressing invisibly upon the villagers. For them, time flowed naturally, predictably. For him, it did not flow at all; it simply existed, waiting.
And so he left the village. Not out of malice, but necessity. Lian Xu felt the first pang of loneliness—a strange, creeping feeling that only someone who had seen eternity could comprehend. He wandered through forests, across rivers, and over mountains, observing the slow dance of mortal life. Seasons changed, blossoms fell and regrew, generations passed like pages turning in a book written for all but him. Children he saw playing on one day grew old, bent with age, and eventually vanished, leaving behind empty homes and silent fields.
It was on the 47th day, though he knew not why counting mattered, that he first heard the faint whisper of cultivation in the air. A tiny flicker of power, almost imperceptible, brushed against his awareness as he stepped into a secluded valley. Rocks hummed faintly, streams glowed with a soft light, and the wind carried an energy that was not of the mortal realm. Lian Xu crouched beside a jagged boulder, closing his eyes. His senses expanded—not just sight, hearing, or touch, but something deeper, something primal. He felt the pulse of the valley, the rhythm of energy as it flowed through stones, roots, and water. It spoke to him, beckoned him, promising knowledge beyond his comprehension.
Without hesitation, he reached out. A spark leapt from the rock to his fingers, a sensation both exquisite and terrifying. In that instant, Lian Xu understood the first truth of his existence: time could pass without consequence to him, but cultivation—the mastery of body, mind, and spirit—required patience beyond imagination. Days would pass as he trained. Centuries would pass as he meditated. He would emerge, not as mortal, not even as immortal in the conventional sense, but as something entirely new.
The first centuries blurred. Lian Xu trained with a focus that mortals could never sustain. Mountains crumbled under his feet, rivers shifted their courses, forests grew and withered around him, all unnoticed in the span of his meditation. He emerged not merely stronger, but more attuned to the universe itself. He could sense the rise of kingdoms far to the south, the collapse of empires beyond the horizon. Civilizations were fragile, fleeting, like water droplets on stone.
After one thousand years—or what should have been a thousand, though the measurement seemed meaningless—he opened his eyes to a world transformed. The village he had known, once quaint and lively, had vanished beneath the weight of time. Forests had replaced homes, rivers had carved new valleys. He wandered, seeing signs of other civilizations: stone structures far more advanced than the simple wooden huts he remembered. The air hummed with cultivation energy far stronger than anything he had sensed in his early days. He understood then that he had crossed the first true epoch.
Time, for Lian Xu, became a canvas. He could move in centuries when he wished, pause when he desired, and observe the growth and fall of civilizations like one studies the ripples on a pond. And yet, he discovered something he had not expected: eternal life is a heavy burden. Loneliness pressed upon him like gravity; friends, companions, lovers—none could follow him. Those he grew attached to aged, faded, and perished, leaving him to witness their absence in every epoch.
He traveled further, crossing mountains that now touched clouds and deserts that had swallowed ancient kingdoms. Along the way, he encountered remnants of old cultivators: statues, ruins, and inscriptions warning of the arrogance of immortality. Some spoke of "gods who fell," others whispered of "time itself consuming the proud." Lian Xu studied them, learned from them, but he did not fear them. Mortals and immortals alike were bound by rules he could no longer obey. He had become the anomaly, the eternal witness, the only constant in a world of endless change.
In one valley, he stumbled upon a massive tree, older than anything he had ever known. Its trunk was thick as a mountain, its branches stretched toward the stars, and its roots delved into the earth like veins carrying the life force of the planet. As he touched it, he felt the pulses of time through it: entire civilizations had lived and died beneath its canopy. This tree, silent and enduring, spoke to him without words: patience is mastery, observation is power, and eternity is both gift and curse.
Centuries turned into millennia. Lian Xu meditated beneath the tree, emerging occasionally to see empires rise and fall, races evolve and vanish. He witnessed the creation of new continents and the collapse of mountains into dust. The world reshaped itself around him, and yet he remained unchanged, a single point of awareness threading through the tapestry of existence.
It was on the ten-thousandth year of his journey that he first saw a mortal reach for the heavens with true power. The sects of that era called themselves "Celestial Ascendants," and their cultivation rivaled anything he had imagined. He observed silently, letting them struggle and learn, knowing that their lifespans were mere flashes compared to his. When their empires fell and their sects crumbled, Lian Xu remained. And he understood, fully, that he was no longer bound by the concerns of mortals or immortals—he was beyond them, a constant observer of all time.
Time continued to stretch infinitely. Lian Xu traveled, meditated, and cultivated, each era teaching him something new: patience, strategy, humility, power, and the delicate intricacies of civilizations. He learned that life was ephemeral, and yet the universe itself moved in cycles, echoing the eternal rhythm he had come to know intimately. The stars shifted, galaxies collided, and new worlds were born. Entire species rose to the pinnacle of their potential and vanished into legend. All of it passed before him, unhurried, unfolding like the pages of a book written in eternity.
And through it all, Lian Xu remained. The first epoch had passed, the first civilizations had disappeared, and yet he endured. He had become the Eternal Wanderer, the singular consciousness threading through the vast expanse of time. With each century, with each millennia, he knew this would be his reality forever: watching, learning, enduring, and never dying.
The sun set on another world, casting long shadows across valleys he would never tread again. Lian Xu closed his eyes beneath the branches of the ancient tree, listening to the heartbeat of the planet, the pulse of the cosmos, and the eternal rhythm of time itself. And in that silence, he smiled, for he knew—this was only the beginning.