It was always incredible how fast a person's life could change in a mere second. In about the time it took for a housefly to flap its wings once, Laude Tellstar had died without warning.

But this, in of itself, had not been the ending of his story but rather... the beginning of something new.

Laude groaned as he clutched his head and muttered, "U-Ugh... It's so hot and spring's barely begun... Goddamnit, this year's going to be a bi—"

Unfortunately, he choked on his words when his head smashed into something hard. The sudden pain jostled him wide awake and he opened his eyes only to find that... he couldn't see anything.

It was dark — pitch-black — to the point that it proved impossible for Laude to make out what had hit him in the head. Naturally, this provoked a great concern out of Laude, and he began to wildly panic, flailing about as he tried to make sense of his dim surroundings.

After a couple of seconds of frantic probing, Laude quickly discerned that he had been put into something rather small and hard. Even without his sight by he was able to feel his surroundings by the amount of he could move freely.

Perhaps, it was a large box or a small closet? Laude wouldn't put it past his older brother to pull a prank like this on him, but something felt... off. The more he moved inside his restricted prison, the more clues he began to pick up, like... the strangely comfortable bedding he was laying on.

It had given him a mortifying clue as to what he might be inside of.

Pitch-black darkness... Extremely limited capacity to move... No discernible exit... Comfortable bedding...?

A flash of imagination struck him and then realization hit him. The moment Laude put the pieces together, he roared at the top of his lungs, "I'M NOT DEAD!!! HELP ME!!! GET ME THE HELL OUT OF HERE!!!"

Deathly silence was all that Laude heard in reply, which only supported his grim theory that someone had actually left him for dead. For some unknown, godforsaken reason, somebody had actually buried him.

"The nerve of these bastards...!" thought Laude as he desperately pushed on the lid of his coffin, "To bury a living person! Who the hell would even do something like this?! What I have ever done to warrant this?!!"

Laude swore to himself that if he managed to dig his way out of his grave, he'd hunt down the asshole who did this to him and bury him twice as deep. Nevertheless, that was a quest for another day.

If Laude could not manage to escape this troublesome situation, he'd never get to see the light of another day, much achieve his revenge.

When Laude realized that he was running out of air to breathe, he struggled even harder and pounded at the lid of his coffin with even greater fervor, striking at it like a feral beast. And eventually, after much hardship and cursing, Laude miraculously succeeded.

With one last yell, he gathered his remaining strength and managed to break the lid a little bit... and a single, tiny ray of light landed on his chest.

There was light.

To Laude's surprise... he had not been buried alive. When he saw that tiny string of sunlight, he began to sob as he carefully tried to grab the ray of light in futility.

It was a pitiful sight to behold though, so someone finally intervened on Laude's behalf and spoke.

"It's clear that he isn't a corpse puppet, so stop tormenting the poor boy. He doesn't deserve to be treated like this, you damned fogeys. Let him out already."

"Who are you calling an old fogey, you shriveled mummy?! You're even older than us!" replied a different voice in objection. Nevertheless, someone followed the order and begrudgingly walked over to Laude's coffin and pried it open to find a sniveling mess of a boy, covered in tears and sweat...

"H-Huh?! W-Who the hell... are you?!" said Laude as he tried to dry his wet eyes with one of the corners of his shirt. "I don't have anything of value, goddamnit! I'm a bloody farmer, for the love of god! Don't hurt me!"

The old man who had opened Laude's coffin said, "You know not what you truly possess, young man. In any case, we aren't going to hurt you, so quit crying and wipe the snot off your face. It's unsightly."

"S-So, wait... you guys didn't kidnap me for money?" Laude said nervously. It was what Laude assumed he had been abducted for — cash. He had assumed that a couple of clever bandits who caught wind that an ex-Imperial Delegate lived in Haalo kidnapped him to extort money out of the village.

But once Laude lifted himself out of his coffin, he was astounded when he noticed that his would-be abductors were all...

Elderly folks. Geriatric fossils from when dinosaurs ruled the world, so to speak.

Laude felt a wave of depression come over all of a sudden. The thought that he had been kidnapped by a pack of evil fogies brought Laude's spirits down more than his perceived brush with death no more than a minute a ago. What a pathetic gaffe it would be to have actually been bested by a bunch of soft-tooth porridge-eating grandpas and grandmas!

"Who in the hell are you people? And where the devil have you taken me?" said Laude as he haphazardly took in his surroundings.

The eldest of the five old-timers, a cheerful-looking old man who had a bird's nest of a hairstyle, walked over to Laude and said, "Greetings, young lad, I am the Patriarch of White Dew Society, Alnus Magamantro. And these ancient geezers are my subordinates, the Head Elders of the Mountain-Sanctuaries our Society operates. Please don't mind them."

To think that I'd ended up in the territory of an actual Immortal Society! Oh, for the love of...! Heaven forbid I actually owe these cultivating assholes anything by the end of today...

Laude ruefully chuckled as he thought about his shit luck today. It wasn't enough to wake up in a coffin; he had also ended up in the care of the one group of people he despised the most.

"So this isn't a retirement home? Could have fooled me, to be honest..." said Laude as he curiously surveyed his surroundings.

The room they were in was elegant in a minimalistic sort of way. It spoke volumes of the wealth this Society possessed and its attitude. They were rich, but weren't keen on gaudily showing off their money. For what it was worth, Laude didn't hate that type of ideology.

When Laude looked down at the floor, he gasped. Not at the dark cherry wood that the floor was constructed out of — which must have cost a fortune — but at the sight of what had been reflected back from the polished floor...

His face.

A long streak of white hair now ran from the top of his head all the way down to the bangs on his covering his forehead. It sort of looked as if someone had used his head as a canvas for a botched art project.

He awkwardly glanced at the elders and said, "Any of you have some water? I think I've got pigeon shit on my hair. ...Oh, I'm Laude Tellstar, by the way. It's a pleasure to meet you all."

Alnus laughed heartily and said, "If only it were pigeon shit, sonnie. Fortunately... or rather, unfortunately, that's not pigeon shit on your head. You see, something terrible occurred. You... were struck by lightning."

Laude's eyes popped out of their sockets and he said, "Struck by lightning? Me? That can't be possible. Last I was awake, it was a beautiful, sunny day! Y-Yeah... I was heading back home with my uncle to eat lunch and then... and then..."

"And then I...." mumbled Laude as he tried his hardest to remember.

No matter how hard Laude tried, he couldn't recall what happened later that day. The last memory he remembered involved him getting nagged on by Francesco on the way home...

"And then...?" said Alnus.

"I don't know," said Laude perplexed. "I can't remember what happened after that. It's almost like there's a gap in my memory. I can't recall anything past that..."

Alnus shook his head slowly and said, "That lightning bolt struck you pretty hard, you know. You're incredibly fortunate that one of our Society's disciples was in the area when it occurred. The injury inflicted by the lightning bolt was not something that your village's healer would have been able to mend. You would have certainly died had you not been brought here."

It was an extraordinary transformation of events. One moment he was heading home and in the next, he was having talks with the Patriarch of an Immortal Society.

For better or worse, Laude almost died yesterday. And in need of medical attention, a compassionate disciple of White Dew Society had brought him here. But Laude would soon learn that there had been some minor complications along the way ...

To begin with, everyone in Haalo thought Laude had actually died. The disciple who had saved him did not have the time to discuss why they needed to take Laude away to save him. It would have been difficult and too time-consuming to persuade the villagers that they were there to help.

In all likelihood, the villagers would have considered the sudden appearance of the disciple at the time of Laude's accident proof that they had been responsible for what had occurred to Laude.

There was simply no time to clear the misunderstanding, so the disciple used an Immortal Art to create a convincing illusion of Laude or, well, an illusion of his corpse. The disciple left Haalo with the real Laude and left the village with the substitute.

Laude was rendered speechless. That, and the fact that he had been saved, no less than by cultivators, was something he thought possible, even in his wildest dreams. It left him dumbfounded.

A selfless act of compassion by these fellows? Never thought I'd live to see the day when pigs could fly...

Nevertheless, it was time to head home. Laude couldn't just let his family and friends mistakenly mourn his death. The faster he got home, the easier it'd be to clear up this bizarre misunderstanding.

"Unfortunately, that would not be the best course of action for you to take," said Alnus with a complicated expression on his face. "Not with the... special situation regarding your health and the events surrounding your near-death accident. You heading home would be a most terrible idea, indeed."

"What are you talking about?" said Laude, confused.

"While we did our best to heal you, we were not able to fix the... underlying problem that occurred when the lightning bolt struck you," said Alnus.

Laude hurriedly inspected his body and found that aside from his hair and very faint scarring across his upper body, he appeared about the same as he always did. As a result, Alnus's reply made no sense to him.

"As far as I can tell, everything seems to be in working order, sir. Can't see anything wrong with my body," said Laude, unconvinced.

Was the old man trying to scam him for extra money for the medical treatment they gave him? It wouldn't surprise Laude if these fellows were pulling a long con on him right now. Everything thing they'd told him sounded beyond ridiculous. Only an imbecile would take what these fogies have said at face value...

Laude's prejudice for cultivators had not disappeared, even though they had saved his life. He knew what they were truly capable of, so he didn't put anything beneath them. Perhaps, they really did save them out of kindness, but... they could just as easily have been the reason for his injuries.

A stray bolt of lightning on a sunny day? Even if he believed their story, they still had not explained why it had occurred in the first place.

He could completely imagine two idiotic cultivators fighting above his village for some inane reason, only for him to get accidentally hit by one of their stupid attacks. Collateral damage, so to speak.

And then, one of the idiots brought him to fix that mistake out of fear of the repercussions of harming a mortal. It was common knowledge even to people in the most remote parts of the world that cultivators were forbidden from harming mortals in any sort of way.

If they dared to harm a mortal, the Heavens would sever their connection to them, barring them from ever using Immortal Arts for the rest of their lives. It went without saying that they would not be allowed past the Gates of Heaven, either.

Alnus and the Head Elders appeared mildly perplexed by Laude's answer and stared at him with a variety of concerned expressions that made Laude himself increasingly concerned.

One of the Head Elders had an expression of total confusion as if she had hit a roadblock in her understanding of something.

Another Head Elder seemed deeply disturbed by Laude's answer, despite his best efforts to hide it. He even seemed to be repelled by Laude's very presence, as if he was afraid of him...

The third Head Elder stared at Laude with a fascinated expression, his eyes glimmering with naked enthusiasm as he observed Laude like an interesting specimen. He seemed to be particularly delighted with Laude's answer.

The fourth Head Elder, on the other hand, was impossible to discern. An elegant veil covered her face that had been enchanted with a manner of Immortal Spell. No matter how hard Laude tried to see through that thin veil, all he was able to make out was a blurry, vague shape of a face...

Alnus sighed and said, "Listen carefully, Laude Tellstar. I don't want you to panic, so take a couple of deep breaths and try to relax. And then after you calm yourself down, I want you to put one of your hands on your chest and just keep it there."

Laude's brows furrowed deeply, but he did what he was asked to do — he tried his best to relax and then put one of his hands on his chest.

His skin was warm and comfortable to the touch as expected. He pinched himself and felt a burst of small pain, so he knew that his senses were working, too. Everything was in working order, as expected.

"There's nothing wrong. At least, nothing that I can identify," said Laude, unconvinced.

"Are you sure about that? Are you sure that something isn't missing or... different?"

"Huh? What are you talking about? I feel perfectly..." said Laude, but his voice trailed away into a quiet murmur when he figured out that something was wrong.

He couldn't feel it.

Where was it?

It wasn't there.

Laude put two fingers on one of his wrists as he desperately tried to find it, but he still was unable to feel anything after multiple attempts.

"That's NOT possible... How can something like this be possible?! What did you do to me?!!"

Alnus shook his head and said, "If we knew how to keep people alive... past the point of death, don't you think this technique would have been known across the world? This is not our doing, Laude Tellstar..."

"It is the Heavens that have done this to you," said Alnus with a solemn expression on his face.

"And it is the reason why you cannot go back home..."

"You are dead."