Bai Xiaochun was afraid of dying.

This was not an unusual fear. Most people were afraid of dying. The difference was that Bai Xiaochun had made it the organizing principle of his entire life. He avoided dangerous activities, ate only food he had personally inspected for poison, and never — under any circumstances — engaged in activities where the phrase 'it might explode' appeared in the instructions.

Which was why his decision to join the Spirit Stream Sect was so deeply confusing to everyone who knew him, including himself.

'You want to be a cultivator?' The village elder stared at him like he'd announced plans to become a fish. 'You? The boy who fainted when Old Man Chen's rooster chased you?'

'The rooster was demonic,' Bai Xiaochun said with dignity. 'I could sense it.'

The truth was simpler and more embarrassing: a Spirit Stream Sect recruiter had passed through the village and mentioned that cultivators could live for hundreds of years, and Bai Xiaochun had immediately decided that he wanted to live for hundreds of years. Immortality was the ultimate expression of not dying. It was, in a sense, the logical conclusion of his entire personality.

He packed a bag of dried sweet potatoes, said goodbye to the only village he'd ever known, and set out for the Spirit Stream Sect with the stubborn determination of a man who had decided that death was simply not an acceptable outcome.

The Spirit Stream Sect was nothing like he'd imagined. It was bigger, louder, and considerably more dangerous. The first thing he saw upon arriving was two disciples sparring in the main courtyard, one of whom accidentally blasted the other into a wall so hard that the wall cracked.

The other disciple got up, spat out a tooth, and kept fighting.

Bai Xiaochun stared at the cracked wall. He stared at the tooth on the ground. He stared at the smiling recruiter who was waiting for him to sign the registration form.

'I've made a terrible mistake,' he whispered.

But then he thought about living forever, and he signed the form with trembling hands.