Cultivation of immortality begins with an eighty-year-old eunuch.

Chapter 466 Reflections! It's raining!

Old Master Li's body had long since turned cold, curled up in the tattered cotton quilt like a shriveled shrimp. He still clutched half a moldy pancake in his hand, which he had saved for himself.

At that time, he, like this boy, knelt by the bed, wanting to cry but unable to. Eunuchs were not allowed to cry in the palace; if they did, they would be punished with a beating. He could only grit his teeth, pry open Eunuch Li's cold hand, take out the half-cake, and stuff it into his own bosom.

Later, he spent three days dragging Eunuch Li's body to a mass grave outside the palace under cover of night and hastily buried it. There was no coffin, no tombstone, only a pile of yellow earth.

The moon was cold that night, and the wind was strong.

"What's your name?" Chen Fan suddenly asked.

The boy hesitated for a moment, then raised his swollen, red eyes and said timidly, "Dog...Dog...Mother said a humble name is easier to raise..."

"Doggy," Chen Fan repeated, standing up, "your mother is gone."

"She didn't leave!" the boy screamed suddenly, his voice hoarse. "She's just asleep! She said she'd take me to the city, to find work, to have enough to eat... She wouldn't abandon me!"

Chen Fan stopped talking and simply raised his hand and pressed down lightly.

A gentle spiritual energy enveloped the boy, and his struggling movements gradually ceased. The madness and resistance in his eyes were soothed by a gentle force, leaving only confusion and exhaustion.

"Go to sleep," Chen Fan said softly.

The boy's eyelids grew heavier and heavier until he could no longer stay awake. He slumped down beside the woman's body and fell into a deep sleep. But his little hands still clung tightly to his mother's clothes, refusing to let go.

Tianxiangzi sighed softly, took out a clean cloak from her storage bag, and gently covered the boy with it.

"What should we do with this child?"

Chen Fan did not answer immediately.

He walked to the temple gate and looked up at the night sky.

Before anyone knew it, thick clouds had gathered in the sky, completely obscuring the moonlight. The mountain wind grew stronger, making the ancient trees outside the temple rustle and their branches dance wildly.

"It's going to rain," Chen Fan said.

As soon as he finished speaking, the first raindrop hit the broken temple tiles with a crisp "plop".

Then, a second drop, a third drop... in an instant, a torrential downpour began.

The rain was torrential, with raindrops pouring in like a curtain from the holes in the roof of the dilapidated temple, creating puddles on the ground. The temple was instantly filled with moisture, damp and chilly.

Tianxiangzi quickly made a hand seal, and a pale blue light screen rose up, protecting the corner where the boy and woman's bodies were. Raindrops hit the light screen, splashing up tiny droplets, but they couldn't get inside.

Chen Fan did not go inside the light curtain to avoid the rain, but remained standing at the temple entrance, letting the rain soak his robes.

He looked out the door at the torrential rain.

Raindrops fall from a great height. At first, they are just tiny water vapors that condense in the air and turn into raindrops. Pulled by gravity, they fall faster.

This process takes only a moment.

Raindrops pounded on the ground, some splashing water, some seeping into the soil, and some flowing into the stream, eventually disappearing as if they had never existed.

From birth to death, it's just a matter of a fall.

Chen Fan suddenly remembered what Li Qingyang had said to him many years ago when they were playing chess in the stone pavilion.

Between life and death, there is great terror, but also great opportunity.

"Look at those fallen leaves. Sprouting in spring is life, withering in autumn is death. But fallen leaves return to the roots, turning into spring mud, nourishing new buds again next year. Isn't this death another kind of life?"

"I have been stuck in the late Nascent Soul stage for three hundred years, unable to even touch the threshold of the Deity Transformation stage. It is not because my magical power is insufficient, nor because my understanding is lacking, but rather... because I cannot see through the meaning of life and death."

At the time, Chen Fan didn't understand.

He had only been practicing Taoism for a short time. Although he had experienced battles and witnessed life and death, he had never truly calmed his mind to contemplate the meaning of life and death.

For him, life was simply living, and death was simply annihilation.

Cultivators defy the heavens, seeking immortality and transcendence of reincarnation.

Life and death are opposing forces; it's either one or the other.

But at this moment, looking at the torrential rain and watching the raindrops go from birth to death, he was suddenly moved.

Raindrops condense from the clouds, and that is life.

Raindrops fall to the ground and vanish without a trace; this is death.

But what about the descent process in between?

What is that brief, fleeting fall?

Is it the transition from life to death?

Or is it a transformation from death to life?

Chen Fan slowly raised his hand and caught a few drops of rain.

The raindrops were icy cold, splashing across his palm and forming a small puddle. He stared at the puddle, his consciousness immersed in it, as if he could see in each drop that the myriad phenomena of heaven and earth were reflected, the rolling clouds, the weeping boy in the temple, the already cold woman, his own eighty years as a eunuch, and all the life and death separations he had experienced along the way.

The rain is getting heavier.

The world was a vast expanse of white, and the sound of rain was like ten thousand horses galloping, deafening.

Chen Fan closed his eyes.

His divine sense spread out like a tide, enveloping the entire dilapidated temple and the surrounding mountains and forests for miles around.

He "saw" raindrops born from the clouds, falling joyfully, drawing countless trails in the sky, each trail unique, each raindrop carrying a different destiny.

Some landed on the leaves, sliding down the veins and nourishing the vegetation.

Some of them crashed onto the rocks, shattering into pieces and turning into steam.

Some flow into streams, then into rivers, and finally into the sea.

Some seep into the soil, nourishing the root system, and transform into a wisp of life as new buds the following year.

In this rain, life and death no longer seem so distinct.

Raindrops falling is life, hitting the ground is death, but the process of falling is...

That brief yet magnificent fall is the only proof that it truly existed.

Just like that boy's mother.

She was born into this world, endured hardships, and ultimately starved to death in a dilapidated temple—this is death.

But she left behind her child, her bloodline, those whispered words of comfort in the dead of night, and the last half-cake she saved on her journey to escape famine.

Will these memories, these warmth, these insignificant traces, like rainwater seeping into the soil, quietly sprout new buds in some spring of the following year?

Just like Princess Yuanping.

She died, her body was never found, and the Changchun Sect also fell into ruin.

But the golden bowl she bestowed upon him years ago changed Chen Fan's life forever. That kindness and that stroke of luck continue to live on in Chen Fan today!

Is this another kind of "life"?

Just like himself.

After eighty years as a eunuch, he encountered a divine opportunity as he approached death, embarking on a path of cultivation. Those days feeding horses in the Imperial Stables, those years of cautious living deep within the palace, those hardships and humiliations that he once thought were meaningless.

Looking back now, wasn't it the foundation of his Daoist heart?

Without those deaths, there would be no life today.

Between life and death is not an insurmountable chasm, but a long, meandering river.

Stagnant water flows in, and fresh water flows out, in a continuous cycle that never stops.

So-called "death" is nothing more than existing in a different form.

The so-called "birth" is nothing more than a new continuation of the old form.

At this moment, the vague barrier in Chen Fan's heart quietly cracked open.