The Caged Bird

Immortality is the true prison.

There's no escaping it, no leaving it; you're trapped inside for life.

Shen Gui was so desperate to get out that he went crazy.

Others seek immortality to live longer, but he simply wants to escape.

Whether it's reaching the legendary immortal realm, returning to somewhere else, or even being blasted to death by immortal energy, it doesn't matter... as long as it changes the current situation.

But immortals are not so easy to find.

The clouds on the mountaintop darkened, the wind blew from afar, and night descended.

It's raining.

Shen Gui reached out and caught a few drops of rain.

People were lying in the mud underfoot.

The dead, the wounded, the half-dead—all these people came seeking a connection to the immortals. It all started with a rumor that spread like wildfire until everyone claimed there were signs of divine intervention here.

Where there are traces of immortals, there are immortals; where there are immortals, there is a destiny to be among them.

Countless people trekked through mountains and rivers, killing each other, and finally died on the road, halfway up the mountain, or at the summit.

But there was nothing on the mountaintop.

There are no cave dwellings, no elixirs, and no immortals.

Only blood.

Blood mixed with mud flowed down the mountain path, making it impossible to tell whose it was.

"Help...me."

Someone reached out a hand to Shen Gui, their knuckles twitching, like a drowning person trying to grasp at a last straw.

Shen Gui bypassed the hand and turned to go down the mountain.

My arm hung down and remained still.

In his endless life, Shen Gui had witnessed too much death; there was no way to save everyone from death.

He saved one, but ten died; he saved a hundred, but a thousand died; and he had to keep living until he saw the fate of everyone.

After watching too much, I'll stop watching.

If you save too many, you'll stop.

Halfway up the mountain, there was a corpse with a wine gourd tied around its waist. Shen Gui picked it up and shook it, but there was no wine in it, so he threw it away and continued on his way.

At the foot of the mountain.

Shen Gui looked down at his boots. The boots were torn, and his big toe was sticking out. He couldn't remember when he last had them repaired. It was probably at a ferry crossing in Nanyangzhou when a boatwoman sewed a few stitches for him.

How many years ago was that? Ten years? Twenty years? I can't remember, and I'm too lazy to remember.

More than a thousand years ago, he traveled to this world, opened his eyes and lay in the mud. It was raining that day too.

At first, Shen Gui was very excited and learned everything: swordsmanship, talismans, alchemy, Gu poison, military strategy, medicine, and farming.

He grew stronger every day, until one day, six hundred years later, he suddenly felt somewhat lost.

It's that feeling of bewilderment that comes after quickly completing a great game by using cheat codes.

A question began to pop into Shen Gui's mind:

Why can I live forever?

He's been pondering this question for a hundred years, but he still hasn't figured it out.

So he stopped thinking about it, went to war, and won.

Three hundred years later, he sat on the dragon throne and began to feel weary of everything.

Even the best food will become tasteless after a thousand times, and even the most beautiful scenery will become just background after a thousand years. Shen Gui lived a closed loop: he had experienced all kinds of wealth and glory, and nothing was new to him anymore.

Things were simple after that.

He started looking for things to do.

Seeking immortals, seeking those who only exist in unofficial histories, who can tread on stars and are not bound by heaven and earth.

This is unrealistic and impractical.

But like a carrot dangling in front of a donkey's eyes, it made Shen Gui feel that he still had something to do.

He chased after the "traces of immortals" in various places.

An old map was marked "Immortal's Abode". After searching for three years, the cave existed, but the immortal was nowhere to be found.

He didn't even blink when he threw a compass, which took him ten years to craft, off the cliff.

A legendary "immortal sword," rumored to be incredibly powerful, was broken with a single squeeze by him.

Every "miracle" is fake.

It's the same this time.

Shen Gui was like a waterwheel; the axle suddenly broke, and it stopped.

It stopped in a small town on the border of Dongjinzhou.

There's only one main street in the city; if you fart at the east end of the street, you can smell it at the west end.

The city wall was made of rammed earth, and there were several breaches in it. No one repaired it. An old soldier sat at the city gate, basking in the sun every day. He didn't check anyone who entered the city. Even bandits were too lazy to come to this place.

Shen Gui lived in a dilapidated temple in this city; it didn't really matter where he lived.

The face of the statue was half collapsed. He found a corner under the eaves that wouldn't leak and laid a layer of straw there.

He stopped talking to people.

Occasionally, a beggar would come and take over his territory, asking him, "Where are you from?" Sometimes he would answer, sometimes he wouldn't. He would look at the other person, his eyes showing neither malice nor kindness, he would just keep looking.

The beggar felt uncomfortable being stared at, as if he were on his deathbed, so he left and never came back.

Shen Gui did nothing in the city.

When I'm hungry, I go to the city to buy some food; when I'm not hungry, I lie down. Sometimes I lie down for days on end, too lazy to even turn over.

The people in the city gradually got used to this person.

The common people didn't know his name, where he came from, or why he was there; they just thought of him as another poor, displaced person.

These days, it's not uncommon for families to be torn apart and people to die.

Every few days, this poor man would walk across the only street, stop at the bakery to buy a pancake, and then slowly walk back, always at the same slow pace, as if he were dragging an invisible heavy object.

The children threw stones at him, but he didn't dodge. The stones hit him, but he seemed not to feel them.

A bold child ran up to him and tried to spit in his face, but he glanced at the child.

The child got scared and ran home crying to his mother, who said sternly, "Don't mess with that person."

The child asked why.

She said, "That man's eyes were like the last look your grandfather gave you before he died."

The adults also thought he was bad luck. The owner of the pharmacy in the west of the city said he was a plague god, and that his pharmacy business had been bad ever since he moved into the city. The butcher in the east of the city said no, that the pharmacy had never had any business and it had nothing to do with him. The two argued and fought over this, and finally went home.

Shen Gui was unaware that someone had fought for him.

He just does the same thing every day... spacing out.

Time flies like an arrow; several years have passed in the blink of an eye.

Some people died in the city, some from illness, some from old age, and the boy who threw stones married the girl next door he had disliked when he was a child.

There was an unusually heavy rainfall that year, starting in early spring and continuing into summer.

The stream overflowed its banks, flooding several vegetable plots outside the city. Another breach appeared in the city wall, and this time no one was going to repair it. Even the torches that should have been burning day and night had become cold.

In short, life in the small town became more difficult.

One evening, the rain stopped.

Shen Gui lay in the haystack, looking at the beams of the dilapidated temple.

The atmosphere in the temple suddenly changed, becoming extremely quiet.

The noisy crickets fell silent, even the wind seemed to be held still by something, and the blade of grass on the eaves remained motionless.

Shen Gui did not get up.

He looked at the wormhole in the roof beam and said to a man who had been standing in the doorway for a long time, "Are you going to die too?"