THE LUNEFABLE REVIEW
Immortality Begins with Breathing Exercises
Immortality Begins with Breathing Exercises review: the storyteller would like to keep his supper
Lin Zheyu can hold a teahouse audience spellbound. Keeping his wages and a little meat safe on the way home proves harder—and gives him a very practical reason to learn martial arts.
THE SHORT TAKE
A patient, quietly funny martial progression opening that earns its training scenes through a vulnerable livelihood and a teacher who has very strong opinions about the afternoon entertainment.
A good ending is bad for business
Lin Zheyu begins by leaving his audience hanging. His borrowed ghost story reaches an enticing point, and he stops for the day, pleading a tired throat while the teahouse protests. It is a pleasingly human entrance into a novel promising immortality. He has discovered one useful thing he can do in this world: make people want the next instalment. For the moment, applause and a handful of coins are achievements enough.
The brightness of Hundred Flavors Street sits beside memories of hunger and displacement. Lin has survived war, separation and the misery of reaching a city with almost nothing. His new occupation doesn't erase that history. When enticing food smells make him hesitate over spending, the restraint has a reason. This is a protagonist who would like to eat properly and stop being frightened, before he can afford a more magnificent ambition.
The first defeat costs him dinner
The local bullies catch him trying to avoid them and take the little piece of meat he has bought. He has already learned to hide his earnings in separate places, but protecting every part of an ordinary evening is beyond him. He lets the food go. The scene resists giving him a clever speech that would somehow overcome four stronger men. Humiliation remains humiliation, and the missing supper makes the loss concrete.
Moving to a safer neighbourhood becomes his first practical response. It is an expense rather than a dramatic victory, helped by the teahouse manager's contacts. Lin's decision gives the story a sensible foundation: he needs circumstances in which he can improve, not merely a vow to work harder. A quiet rented courtyard can matter as much as a secret technique when the alternative is being watched for signs that he has earned anything worth stealing.
The patron by the window has other interests
Liang Song, the generous customer who enjoys Lin's stories, makes an appealing possible teacher because he has a life before he becomes a mentor. Lin approaches with wine and then waits while the older man looks out of the window. The silence lasts an inconveniently long time. His patience is understandable—he needs this opportunity—but the scene also allows Liang the pleasure of refusing to organise his afternoon around a stranger's urgent request.
The same balance continues in the courtyard, where flowers receive attention before the student does. Liang is particular about his plants and impatient with ceremonial fuss. He also has opinions about which characters in Lin's stories deserve more attention. Their relationship grows out of an exchange of real pleasures: one man offers knowledge, the other supplies entertainment. The comedy comes from how naturally the supposedly lesser art keeps asserting its importance.
An invisible horse takes a great deal of effort
Foundational training occupies substantial space, and the novel makes that choice feel deliberate. Liang starts Lin with a moving horse stance, correcting his posture while describing the sensation it should evoke. The frail beginner cannot hold it for long. His task is to return only after meeting a demanding standard, leaving him with the less glamorous work of arranging food, recovery and practice around the storytelling that pays for them.
Lin's mysterious Source Power doesn't immediately bypass this stage. Ordinary exercises have failed to register as skills, and pushing himself too far can leave him unable to function comfortably for days. The result is an enjoyable tension between an interface promising advancement and a body that still requires care. Watching a timekeeping device while his legs shake carries more weight than a sudden leap in rank would have at this point.
Please recover in time for the next episode
Liang's response to an overenthusiastic training session is the opening's best joke. Lin proposes missing an afternoon of storytelling to continue practising. The master objects with surprising force: what, exactly, is he supposed to listen to if his pupil doesn't turn up? Concern for the boy's limits and concern for his own entertainment become almost impossible to separate. The martial expert is also a customer who hates waiting for the next chapter.
Lin's working relationships give the story warmth without making him meek. He appreciates the manager who offered him a chance, yet can still use a rival teahouse's offer to negotiate better pay. Gratitude needn't mean refusing an improved wage. When the conversation later turns from fictional monsters to the possibility of real ones, that familiar setting changes colour. The stories that earned his living may describe dangers he has not properly considered.
A promise worth following at walking pace
The first eight chapters ask for an appetite for training detail. Costs, repeated postures and recovery can slow the movement, while explanations sometimes repeat what the action has already made clear. The opening is strongest when those details belong to a person: the young man who needs a meal, the old man guarding his flowers, the employer delighted by a busy room. Their routines make improvement something more appealing than a numerical obligation.
By the time Lin can test what his mysterious reserve actually does, the question has acquired stakes. Can an advantage help a body already worn out by earning it, and what will the next day's work demand? The title points far ahead; this beginning earns interest much closer to home. Open chapter one for the storyteller silencing a room. Follow him outside to see what it takes to bring his wages, his supper and himself safely back again.
Based on chapters 1–8 of the English edition. This is an opening impression, not a full-series verdict. No later plot developments are discussed.
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