The Compost of Immortals

The Medicine Dregs Valley did not smell of magic. It smelled of rot, wet earth, and the bitter tang of failed ambition.

Fan shoveled the slurry of decomposed spirit herbs into the bamboo basket strapped to his back. The rain was relentless, a cold, gray curtain that turned the valley floor into a quagmire. He was twenty years old, though his back was bent like an old man’s, and his hands were stained permanently green from handling the toxic runoff of the Azure Cloud Sect above.

Fan was a "dust-mortal." He had no spiritual root. He could not sense Qi, could not cultivate, and would die in sixty years while the masters on the peaks lived for thousands. His job was to compost the waste of the immortals so that the next crop of ginseng could grow a little brighter.

"Move it, Fan!" the foreman shouted from the dryness of the shed. "The glorious Elders need the soil turned before the moon rises!"

"Yes, Master Liu," Fan muttered, wiping mud from his eyes.

He trudged toward the edge of the valley, where the cliffs grew steep and the shadows deep. This was the disposal site for "volatile waste"—cauldrons that had exploded, talismans that had backfired, and sometimes, the bodies of disciples who hadn't survived their training.

Fan tipped his basket. The slurry slid down the slope.

Something shimmered in the mud below.

It wasn't the dull glimmer of broken bronze or the white flash of bone. It was blue—a piercing, celestial blue that seemed to push the gray rain away.

Fan hesitated. Scavenging was punishable by death. But the light... it called to him. It was the color of the sky he was never allowed to look at.

He slid down the embankment, his straw sandals finding purchase on the roots of dead trees. He reached the bottom and gasped.

It wasn't an artifact. It was a woman.

She lay half-buried in the muck, her body twisted at an unnatural angle. She wore robes of silk so fine they looked like woven water, now torn and stained with black blood. Her skin was translucent, pale as moonlight, and cracked like porcelain.

Fan froze. This was an Immortal. An Inner Sect disciple.

She shouldn't be here. She should be soaring on a flying sword, miles above his head.

He stepped closer. Her chest rose, a shallow, rattling breath.

"Help..." she whispered. The sound didn't come from her throat; it echoed directly in Fan’s mind, a bell ringing in a quiet room.

Panic seized him. If he reported her, the foreman would likely kill her for her storage ring and claim she was dead when found. If he left her, the toxic dregs would eat her skin before dawn.

He looked at her face. Even covered in mud, she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. She was the legends come to life.

Fan dropped to his knees. He scooped his hands under her shoulders. She was impossibly light, as if her bones were made of hollow glass.

"I have you," Fan whispered, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. "I won't let the mud take you."

He didn't take her to the shed. He took her to the only place that belonged to him—a hidden limestone cave behind the waterfall, where he kept his meager collection of shiny rocks and stolen moments of peace.