Legends of immortals were easy to repeat and hard to audit.
Every time someone pushed past the poetry and checked the record, the same pattern appeared:
not confirmed transcendence,
only *yuhua* — and then ash.
In this age of bright engines and bright lies, New Star labs and old-money houses had dug through Old Earth for a century hunting longevity. They had opened chambers named in old texts, seen figures preserved enough to shock the room, then watched those figures collapse into dust within minutes.
The stories survived.
The people did not.
Examples were already in the public skeleton of history:
Chixuzi, listed in **Records of Immortals**, found as residue.
Guan Lingyin, coffin extracted and archived as museum material.
Ethan did not need the mythology to survive cross-examination.
He cared about a narrower fact: lifespan ceilings for peak *fangshi* were real and quantifiable.
The woman in the bamboo vessel had minimum estimates near seven hundred and upper projections brushing nine-fifty.
That was not eternal life.
It was still far beyond baseline human architecture.
If he ever reached that tier, time would stop being the immediate enemy. He could ask what lay beyond the old path with years left to spend.
The thought steadied him.
Then the second thought arrived and did the opposite.
If her reserve had been that deep, why rush into ascension pressure at all?
What had forced timing?
Personal choice?
Civilizational event?
A trigger in the environment?
"Her failed ascension preserving this body is tightly coupled to the bamboo," Zhou Yu said, continuing the brief.
Origin had named it **Ascension Bamboo**.
Dense supernatural payload. Extreme biological vitality.
Qian Lei asked the next question cleanly.
"Additional research branches?"
"Yes," Zhou Yu said. "One major branch. Internal codename: **Longevity Seed**."
"Explain," Qian Lei said.
He knew they were still holding cards. He also knew time favored investigators who remained patient and wrote everything down.
Zhou Yu spoke without embarrassment.
"The female *fangshi* has lost consciousness but retains exceptional body viability. Physiological profile remains in prime reproductive range."
Even the two military old-arts specialists, men trained to keep faces blank under fire, broke expression.
Qian Lei adjusted his glasses as if buying seconds.
"You're proposing conception?" he said. "After three thousand years?"
"Correct."
No hesitation.
"She is the closest verified near-immortal biological case we've recovered. Her hereditary material is not ordinary. A descendant line would be scientifically invaluable."
Zhou Yu's restraint thinned. She cut the air once with her hand, energized, almost triumphant.
Aoki, who had walked through burial halls under active fire without blinking, looked briefly unsettled.
Ethan stood still and felt his mind reject the sentence on instinct.
Dead for millennia.
Still not left alone.
If he ever failed on this path, he decided in that instant, there would be nothing to harvest. He would burn himself clean first.
The suspicion followed immediately:
Maybe that was exactly why other top *fangshi* had chosen fire at the end.
Qian Lei's tone hardened.
"This experiment does not proceed at current phase."
Zhou Yu nodded. She did not stage a fight.
"We had no near-term launch window anyway. Maternal substrate is strong. Suitable paternal substrate is not currently available."
Then the needle came out.
"Maybe in ten years. If the new-art line produces a sufficiently qualified male profile. Old arts likely won't. That route no longer yields pre-Qin class outputs in modern conditions — too slow, too narrow, non-universal."
Ethan said nothing.
The woman in the vessel had already escaped one violation only to sit beneath ten future proposals.
Qian Lei spent another stretch negotiating protocol boundaries. On departure, he requested one cut section of Ascension Bamboo for independent analysis.
Origin handed it over as if the gift had been budgeted in advance.
Aoki almost stepped in to demand parity for the expedition side.
Origin pre-empted him.
"No further branch removal from the vessel," Zhou Yu said. "We risk destabilizing bamboo activity and, by extension, body stability. That breaks all downstream work."
No room left to argue without looking like sabotage.
Aoki received a single gold leaf as a "token."
He looked at Qian Lei's branch sample, then at his own palm, and discovered a new definition of restraint.
"Fine," he muttered.
Ethan raised a hand.
"May I take a few stones from the cave wall?"
Everyone turned.
He offered the acceptable explanation at once:
old-arts practitioner, respect for predecessors, keepsake as discipline anchor.
Aoki gave him a sideways look; this was not Ethan's usual style.
One military specialist laughed warmly and played elder-brother mentor — praised Ethan as a "martial obsessive," offered contact exchange, invited future discussion despite his own transition toward new-art methods.
Ethan thanked him with perfect sincerity and gave him the expedition-facing number, not personal channels.
Origin personnel agreed. The cave had been scanned repeatedly. No hidden layers. No unlogged energy anomalies. No intact artifacts left.
Ethan walked to a cracked section and pulled six stones by hand.
Origin researchers noticed the grip force and filed that away.
The crack interiors still showed blackened traces.
Not clean burn patterns.
Closer to strike-scorch, almost lightning-like.
Ethan's face stayed neutral.
Inside, he was sharply alert.
Aoki followed suit, taking two stones with a sigh and old-arts lament.
The military specialist took two more, mourning the old route theatrically.
Jin-chuan, not to be left out of a possibly useful gesture, pocketed two fist-sized pieces with solemn commentary.
Ethan stared at them.
Did they understand something — or just understand each other?
Origin staff watched with amused contempt.
If there had been value in those walls, they would have removed it long ago.
"You people," Qian Lei said, shaking his head.
Back to the elevator.
Back to the surface.
Back to skiff transfer.
Then the military specialist came over smiling politely.
"Young man, my team will ask for souvenirs. Two stones won't cover it. Spare one or two?"
Ethan exhaled once.
So the mentorship speech had been prelude.
Qian Lei added his own request with bureaucratic elegance.
"One sample from blast-site stone for independent assay."
Ethan almost laughed.
None of them were simple.
He had planned for this and taken extra pieces. Only two actually mattered to him.
He tossed one stone to the military man, one to Qian Lei. Saw Aoki half-open his mouth and gave him one too.
Jin-chuan moved fast.
"Brother, same expedition umbrella —"
"No," Ethan said, crisp. Then the line he owed him: "You tried to cut me out before."
Jin-chuan swallowed the correction between *interception* and *assassination* and chose silence.
Ethan looked at the cluster of middle-aged professionals and called it what it was.
"You're over-reading this. I took stones as reminder only."
The military specialist grinned. "Experience does this to people."
"Move out," Aoki said. "We're done here."
The return flight was smooth.
The mission had survived.
Ethan's discomfort with borrowed command structures had not.
Yet his mood was not low.
If anything, he was close to exhilarated.
Those stones in his bag pulled at his attention hard enough that even his usual discipline frayed.
The moment he reached the city, he broke for home without pause.
Whatever he had taken from that wall, he intended to test it now.