This year has been a bad one—months without a drop of rain, and it looked like there would be a total crop failure, nothing to harvest at all. The three brothers... it seemed they simply couldn’t be supported any longer.

William Clark knew what their parents were thinking. He himself had been apprenticed for a year and a half; in another year or so, he’d be able to start bringing money back home and was the The Carter Family’s hope for the future. The youngest brother was still in swaddling clothes, and as parents, of course they couldn’t bear to part with him. That left only the middle child, Edward Clark, who was, frankly, superfluous—no real use in keeping him around. If he could be sent off with a passing Taoist priest to cultivate immortality, that would at least be somewhere for him to go.

If he succeeded, it would be a stroke of luck for the The Carter Family; if not, it didn’t matter. Letting him go with someone else—whether he wandered the world, or resorted to trickery and deceit—at least he’d have enough to eat and a chance to grow up. That was a way out.

Mr. Ethan Clark and the short-sighted head of the The Carter Family quickly came to an agreement on this “transaction.” Mr. Clark left a small ingot of silver; money was exchanged for the child, and from then on, Edward Carter was renamed Henry Carter. That afternoon, he would sever his worldly ties and set out on the road with his new master.

William Clark was a few years older than his second brother. They didn’t talk much and weren’t particularly close, but the younger brother had always been sensible—never crying or making trouble, never causing problems. He wore his big brother’s hand-me-downs, let the youngest and their ailing mother have the best food, and was always the first to work, never complaining.

William Clark never said it, but in his heart, he cared deeply for this brother.

But there was nothing to be done. The family was poor and couldn’t support everyone. It wasn’t yet time for William Carter to take charge of the household, so he had no say in big or small matters.

Still, they were flesh and blood—how could they just sell him off like that?

The more William Clark thought about it, the worse he felt. He wanted to take a big iron ladle and bash a dent in that old swindler’s head, but after thinking it over, he didn’t dare. After all, if he really had that kind of nerve, he wouldn’t be running errands as an apprentice—wouldn’t robbing and looting bring in even more money?

Henry Carter wasn’t completely ignorant of his parents’ plans or his big brother’s frustration.

He wasn’t especially precocious—not one of those prodigies who wrote poetry at seven or became a minister at thirteen—just a little more observant than most.

His father worked from dawn to dusk, William left before sunrise and returned after dark, and his mother, with her eyes on William and the youngest, simply couldn’t spare any for him. So in the The Carter Family, though no one beat or scolded him, no one really paid him any mind either. Henry Carter understood this perfectly. He was naturally tactful, trying not to be noisy or annoying. The most outrageous thing he’d ever done was climb the old scholar’s tree to overhear some incomprehensible classics.

He worked diligently and earnestly, treating himself as a little errand boy, a little laborer, a little servant—just not as a son.

Henry Carter didn’t really know what it felt like to be a son.

Children are supposed to be talkative and lively, but since Henry Carter wasn’t a son, he didn’t have the privilege of being chatty or mischievous. He kept all his thoughts to himself, and over time, with nowhere else for his words to go, they turned inward, poking holes all over his small heart.

With a heart battered like a beach in the rain, Henry Carter knew his parents were selling him, but he felt a strange calm, as if he’d always known this day would come.

Before he left, Henry Carter’s sickly mother, for the first time in ages, got out of bed. Trembling, she called him over and pressed a small bundle into his hands, her eyes red. Inside were a few changes of clothes and a stack of wheat cakes. The clothes, as always, were hand-me-downs from William, and the cakes had been made by his father the night before.

After all, he was her own flesh and blood. As she looked at him, she couldn’t help but reach into her sleeve. Henry Carter saw her shakily pull out a string of copper coins. The sight of those pitted, dark coins stirred something in his otherwise indifferent heart. He felt like a little animal, frozen stiff, sniffing in the icy snow and catching a faint whiff of his mother’s scent.

But his father saw the coins, and with a heavy cough, his mother had to put them back, tears in her eyes.

So that motherly scent, like a flower in a mirror or the moon’s reflection in water, flickered for a moment and vanished before Henry Carter could truly take it in.

“Come here, Edward Clark,” his mother, in her flat, weary voice, took Henry Carter’s hand and led him into the inner room. After just a few steps, she was already out of breath.

She sat down, exhausted, on a wide bench, pointed to the small oil lamp hanging from the ceiling, and asked weakly, “Edward Clark, do you know what that is?”

Henry Carter looked up indifferently. “The Immortal’s Everlasting Lamp.”

This unremarkable little lamp was the The Carter Family’s family heirloom, said to be part of Henry Carter’s great-grandmother’s dowry. It was palm-sized, with no wick and no need for oil. A few lines of talismanic script were carved into its ancient ebony base, and it could glow on its own, illuminating a small square of space for years on end.

But Henry Carter could never figure out what use the thing was, other than attracting bugs in the summer.

Still, since it was an immortal’s artifact, it didn’t need to be practical. As long as it could be shown off to neighbors and guests from time to time, for country folk, it was a treasure worth passing down for generations.