Cultivating Immortality: Heavenly Eye of Transcendence

Evening lights began to bloom over the city.

Though it was already March and the end of the workday, the streets were crowded with people shrouded in bulky winter jackets. The clamor of car horns and hurried voices merged into a great river of humanity, all rushing toward their destinations. Towering, glaring streetlights illuminated the vapor of hurried breaths, which, together with the remnant, biting northern wind, cast a chill and indifference over Wennan, a city in the north—cold and aloof, just like the rows of withered trees lining the streets.

Slightly tipsy, Shen Junhuai once again climbed to the top of Mount Wanfo, to Xingguo Zen Temple, for this was the place where he and Lü Na had pledged themselves to each other as students. From the highest blue stone platform, he could see the building where Lü Na lived at the foot of the mountain; with a high-powered telescope, he could even make out the pink curtains in her ninth-floor room.

Shen Junhuai had served in the military for five years, nearly three of them in a special forces unit. Half a year ago, he received Lü Na’s letter of separation; just a few days ago, news of her impending marriage. He thought that time would dull the pain that tore at his heart, but when he received the call from a friend, the old wound bled anew.

So Shen Junhuai returned—not for revenge, but only to see whether she, dressed in a wedding gown, was truly happy.

He was not a model soldier. The year he failed his university entrance exams, he found his way into the army through his uncle, a captain, and was