Three centuries of cultivation, yet the sect thought I had passed.
Synopsis
Three hundred years of cultivation, and the sect thought I had long since passed away in meditation.
I entered the Qingxuan Sect at seventeen. Foundation Establishment at thirty-seven. Core Formation at eighty-seven. Nascent Soul at one hundred and sixty-seven.
My junior brother reached Foundation Establishment at twenty, Core Formation at fifty, and his Nascent Soul at a hundred.
Everyone called me one thing: the Sect’s Disgrace.
In my three hundred and fifteenth year, the Demonic Path struck the mountain, and the genius defected.
They broke open the door of my cave residence, meaning to carry off my Pill Cauldron as a loyalty token for the enemy.
The door opened.
Inside sat a good-for-nothing at the peak of Spirit Severing.
Chapter One
My name is Lu Chen.
In three thousand years of Qingxuan Sect history, the slowest Inner Disciple there has ever been.
Not one other.
When I entered at seventeen, they ran the spirit root test. The five elements, all of them, muddled together into a five-element mixed spirit root. The Elders’ faces changed on the spot.
Not shock. Disgust.
It was the old Sect Lord, Han Qingshan, who took me in. He watched me standing on the spirit-testing platform while every head around him shook, and he said one thing: “Bone structure is not everything. Join my Qingxuan Sect.”
I knelt and kowtowed three times.
That year, one other person entered with my cohort.
Fang Chengyuan.
Heavenly Spirit Root.
Pure fire.
On the first day, the Elders fought over who would take him. In the end the Deputy Sect Lord came and led him away himself.
And I was assigned to the Bing Cave Residence, the farthest corner of the back mountain.
No master. No guidance on any Cultivation Technique. One copy of the most basic text there was — the Qingxuan Breathing Art.
I did not mind.
I only cultivated.
In my twentieth year, Fang Chengyuan reached Foundation Establishment.
The sect celebrated for three days. Firecrackers. Thirty-six tables of banquet.
I was still at the seventh layer of Qi Refining.
At twenty-five, Fang Chengyuan reached the middle stage of Foundation Establishment.
I was at the ninth layer of Qi Refining.
At thirty, Fang Chengyuan reached the peak of Foundation Establishment.
And I finally touched the threshold.
Thirty-seven.
I reached Foundation Establishment.
No banquet. No firecrackers. No one came to congratulate me.
Because Fang Chengyuan, who had entered the same year I did, had already reached Core Formation.
Yes. Core Formation at fifty.
The fastest record in eight hundred years of Qingxuan Sect.
When word of my Foundation Establishment got out, the junior brothers in the pill house looked at me with something I could not name.
Not malice. Pity.
The kind of pity you feel watching an ant struggle up a wall, knowing it will fall.
I paid them no attention.
Back to the cave residence. Keep cultivating.
Chapter Two
Time, to a cultivator, is the cheapest thing there is.
And the most expensive.
After Foundation Establishment I spent fifty years walking every layer of it steady and sure.
Nine layers, like everyone else. Three years to a layer. The quick ones break through in half a year.
Me? Five or six years a layer.
But every layer I broke through, my spiritual energy came out three times as deep and dense as any man at that layer.
No one cared.
No one studies the cultivation details of a good-for-nothing.
At eighty-seven, I reached Core Formation.
That day I came out of the cave residence and ran into Fang Chengyuan in the sect plaza.
He was already at the early stage of Nascent Soul.
Nascent Soul at a hundred. The first man of Qingxuan Sect.
The whole sect was saying it: Fang Chengyuan would surely reach Spirit Severing before three hundred, would have a shot at Tribulation Transcendence before five hundred, and might even reach Ascension within a thousand years.
He stood in the middle of the plaza, junior brothers and sisters crowding around him.
He saw me, and smiled.
I remembered that smile for two hundred years.
“Senior Brother Lu Chen.”
He called me Senior Brother, in a courtesy that looked down from a height.
“Congratulations on your Core Formation, Senior Brother. Eighty-seven is slow, but at least you have set foot on the proper path.”
The people around him laughed.
Not loud laughter. The held-in, polite kind.
I looked at him.
Fang Chengyuan went on. “If you ever find yourself confused in your cultivation, Senior Brother, come to me. I entered the sect after you, but perhaps I can help a little.”
His junior sister covered her mouth, shoulders shaking.
I said nothing.
I turned and walked away.
Behind me, a voice: “I still don’t know why the Sect Lord took him in. He holds an Inner Disciple’s place, wastes the sect’s resources, and he’ll never even touch Nascent Soul in his life.”
I did not look back.
My pace did not change.
Back at the cave residence: shut the door, sit down, circulate.
Spiritual energy moved through my meridians. The Golden Core turned slowly in my dantian.
Steady.
Deep.
Dense.
My Golden Core was twice the size of an ordinary man’s.
Dark in color, its surface without a single flaw.
This was what fifty years of solid work had bought.
No one could see it.
No one needed to.
Chapter Three
In my one hundred and sixty-seventh year, I formed my Nascent Soul.
Nascent Soul.
It had taken me eighty years.
Fang Chengyuan? He had formed his at a hundred.
I was sixty-seven years behind him.
But my Nascent Soul was five times as solid as his.
That is not boasting. I could feel it myself.
With every breakthrough, my foundation went far beyond my peers.
But what use was that?
In the cultivation world, no one cares how solid your foundation is.
They only look at speed.
They only look at what realm you reached, and how old you were when you reached it.
The day I formed it, I came out of seclusion and went to the sect for the routine cultivation registry.
The registry-hall junior brother looked at the information on my jade token and froze.
“Lu Chen? You’re still in the sect?”
I said I had never left.
He flipped through the ledger. “Your last entry was eighty-seven years ago. Core Formation… wait. Nascent Soul? You formed a Nascent Soul?”
I nodded.
He looked up, his expression strange. “Nascent Soul at one hundred and sixty-seven. That speed…”
He did not finish.
Because he did not know what to say.
Too slow. Too slow to be worth congratulating.
And yet I had, in fact, reached Nascent Soul.
In Qingxuan Sect, a Nascent Soul cultivator was already qualified to sit as an Elder.
No one offered me the seat.
Because that year, Fang Chengyuan was already at the peak of the late stage of Nascent Soul, about to push at Spirit Severing.
What was I, freshly formed, next to that?
The registry-hall junior brother updated my jade token. As I left he said, “Senior Brother Lu Chen, that Bing Cave Residence of yours is really too far out. Should I put in a request to move you?”
I said no need.
It was remote, but the spiritual qi there was just concentrated enough for my cultivation.
Quiet.
No one came to disturb it.
That was enough.
Chapter Four
After forming the Nascent Soul, I entered closed-door cultivation.
It lasted one hundred and forty-eight years.
One hundred and forty-eight years.
I did not know what had happened outside.
Did not know whether Fang Chengyuan had reached Spirit Severing.
Did not know how the sect was.
Did not know whether the old Sect Lord was still alive.
I knew one thing.
In those one hundred and forty-eight years my Nascent Soul walked from the early stage, step by step, all the way to Spirit Severing.
Yes. After forming it, I never passed through the middle stage, the late stage, the peak, the way anyone else would.
Because my method is not theirs.
They push up one layer at a time.
I pour a foundation.
For one hundred and forty-eight years I tempered every last thread of spiritual energy in my Nascent Soul, over and over. And when the critical point came, I did not face a Spirit Severing tribulation.
More precisely: the tribulation clouds came.
Then they scattered.
Because my cultivation base was so deep and dense that the heavenly tribulation could find no flaw to strike.
Just like that… they scattered.
I opened my eyes.
Three hundred and fifteen years old.
Spirit Severing.
Peak Stage.
The cave residence was utterly quiet.
A thick layer of dust had settled.
The formation at the door was still running, but it was old, and clearly no one had maintained it in a very long time.
I stood up and worked the stiffness out of my joints.
Three hundred years of cultivation. Three hundred years of accumulation.
I had finally come to this step.
Slow?
Slow.
Far too slow.
But steady.
Look across three thousand years of Qingxuan Sect history, and there is no second man whose peak Spirit Severing stands on a foundation as steady as mine.
I let out a light breath.
I made ready to push the door open and go out for air.
Then I heard the noise outside.
Very loud.
Very panicked.
Crying.
Explosions.
People killing each other.
Chapter Five
The moment I pushed the door open, a black streak of spiritual light cut across the sky above the summit.
Blood-red everywhere.
The Qingxuan Sect’s Mountain-Protecting Formation. Broken.
A formation that had held for three thousand years was coming apart block by block, the fragments falling as streaks of light.
At the foot of the mountain, people, packed shoulder to shoulder.
Black robes. Ghost masks. Demonic qi rolling off them in waves.
Blood Fiend Sect.
The whole back mountain was shaking. Disciples running in every direction.
A Foundation Establishment disciple ran past the door of my cave residence, soaked in blood, one arm hanging dead at his side, plainly broken.
I stopped him. “What happened?”
He looked up, tears and blood smeared together on his face. “S—Senior Brother? Who are you? What are you doing here? Run. The Demonic Path is on the mountain. Fang Chengyuan defected. He brought the Blood Fiend Sect through the gate.”
Fang Chengyuan.
Defected.
Something slammed through my head.
That genius of three hundred years ago, standing in the middle of the plaza, full of himself.
Defected.
I pressed him. “The Sect Lord?”
The boy was crying. “Badly hurt. Fang Chengyuan hit him from behind, punched through three vital points. Elder Zhou and the others are holding the front mountain, but not for long.”
Then he ran, limping, stumbling.
I stood in the doorway of my cave residence.
Wind poured down off the summit, carrying the smell of blood and something scorched.
Three hundred years.
Three hundred years cultivating in this broken cave residence.
The first day out.
The day the sect fell.
My fists closed.
The old Sect Lord, Han Qingshan. The man who took me in three hundred years ago.
I owed him a life.
Today I paid it.
I stepped out, and went to the front mountain.
Chapter Six
The front mountain.
It could hardly be called a front mountain anymore.
It should be called rubble.
The main hall was half collapsed, stone columns snapped, broken rock piled into hills.
In the black fog, seven or eight Qingxuan Sect Elders were holding on by their fingernails, every one of them wounded.
Elder Zhou, the man who had been first to say I wasted the sect’s resources, now had his left arm gone at the elbow, blood dripping from his sleeve, his face paper-white.
In front of them stood three men.
One was the Blood Fiend Sect’s Sect Lord, the Crimson-Faced Old Ancestor, middle stage of Spirit Severing.
One was the Blood Fiend Sect’s Grand Elder, Ghost Hand Venerable, early stage of Spirit Severing.
And one more.
Fang Chengyuan.
Middle stage of Spirit Severing.
He wore a blood-red robe. Not the drifting white of years past.
His face carried a smile that had already won.
He looked down at Han Qingshan, kneeling on the ground, soaked in blood, and shook his head. “Old Sect Lord. You were so discerning back then. You took in so many geniuses. A pity that the best of them didn’t want to spend his life as your dog.”
Han Qingshan knelt there and spat out a mouthful of blood.
He raised his head, clouded eyes fixed on Fang Chengyuan. “I took you in… taught you carefully. Why…”
Fang Chengyuan laughed. “Why? Because you’re all weak. This broken place, Qingxuan Sect, doesn’t deserve my talent. I needed more resources, a higher platform. The Blood Fiend Sect gave me everything I wanted.”
He crouched and patted Han Qingshan’s cheek. “Old thing. Before you die, I’ll let you watch how I grind your fine sect to dust with one hand.”
Elder Zhou roared and hurled himself forward with the last of his spiritual energy.
Fang Chengyuan did not even turn his head. He waved a hand, and a streak of spiritual light threw Elder Zhou across the yard into a broken wall, where he coughed blood and could not stop.
Fang Chengyuan went on. “Oh, right. Didn’t you take in a good-for-nothing too? What was his name again? Lu Chen? That one’s probably been dead in his cave residence for years. Three hundred years without coming out. He must have passed away in meditation and dried into a pile of bones.”
Han Qingshan’s body trembled.
Fang Chengyuan laughed out loud. “Look at the people you took in. One genius, and he defected. One good-for-nothing, and he’s dead. Your eye for people has been rotten your whole life.”
The Crimson-Faced Old Ancestor spoke from the side. “Chengyuan. Enough talk. Kill the old thing. We still have their treasure vault to strip.”
Fang Chengyuan nodded. “True.”
He stood, and a blood-colored longsword gathered in his hand.
“Old Sect Lord. Safe travels.”
The sword came up.
Every disciple of Qingxuan Sect shut their eyes.
And then the sword stopped.
Because Fang Chengyuan felt a presence.
Rolling in from the direction of the back mountain.
Vast.
Deep.
Immeasurable.
The presence of Spirit Severing.
And —
Stronger than his.
Far stronger.
His head snapped around.
I stood at the edge of the ruins.
A dusty old robe, hair loose and uncombed, my face still carrying the pallor of three hundred years of closed-door cultivation.
But my eyes were calm.
Calm enough to be frightening.
Fang Chengyuan’s pupils contracted. “You—”
I said one thing.
“Fang Chengyuan. You talk too much.”
Chapter Seven
Fang Chengyuan stared at me, disbelief filling his eyes.
“Lu Chen? You’re not dead?”
I did not answer.
I was looking at Han Qingshan.
The old Sect Lord knelt on the ground, the wounds all over his body still seeping blood.
His hair had gone entirely white, his face gaunt. The middle-aged cultivator full of fire from three hundred years ago was now old past recognition.
But when he saw me, his eyes lit.
That flicker made my chest seize so hard I could not breathe.
I walked toward him.
Behind Fang Chengyuan, the Crimson-Faced Old Ancestor frowned. “Who is this brat? Spirit Severing too? When did he crawl out?”
Fang Chengyuan drew a deep breath, and the smile finally left his face. “Lu Chen, you… how could you be at Spirit Severing? You only formed your Nascent Soul at a hundred and sixty-seven. A hundred and forty-eight years at most. From the early stage of Nascent Soul to Spirit Severing in a hundred and forty-eight years?”
His voice was shaking.
Not from fear.
From refusal to believe.
A good-for-nothing with a five-element mixed spirit root. How could he walk from Nascent Soul to Spirit Severing in a hundred and forty-eight years?
He himself had a Heavenly Spirit Root, and it had taken him a hundred and twenty.
I stopped walking and turned my head to look at him.
“Fang Chengyuan. Have you always believed that fast means strong?”
His face went livid.
I went on. “Foundation Establishment at twenty. Core Formation at fifty. Nascent Soul at a hundred. Spirit Severing at two hundred. Fast, certainly. But do you know why your middle-stage Spirit Severing couldn’t break a three-thousand-year-old Mountain-Protecting Formation, and you had to rely on a sneak attack and someone opening the gate from inside?”
His grip tightened on the blood-colored longsword.
“Because your foundation is unstable.”
Five words.
Five weightless words.
Fang Chengyuan’s face twisted.
That was the thing he hated most to hear.
A genius all his life, crushing everything in his path, everyone calling him a once-in-a-millennium prodigy.
Only Han Qingshan, on the day of his breakthrough to Spirit Severing, had said one thing to him: Chengyuan, you are too fast.
He had not listened.
He thought the old Sect Lord was jealous.
And now a good-for-nothing, a good-for-nothing who had needed three hundred years to reach Spirit Severing, was saying the same thing to his face.
He lost his temper.
“Lu Chen, you trash who crawled three hundred years to reach Spirit Severing. You think you have the right to say that to me?”
He thrust.
A full-force strike from the middle stage of Spirit Severing.
The sword light was blood-red, wrapped in killing intent that covered the sky.
That one sword could split a thousand-zhang mountain.
I raised a hand.
Just raised a hand.
Two fingers caught the tip.
The whole scene went silent.
Fang Chengyuan’s pupils shrank hard. The sword did not move a hair at my fingertips. He drove his spiritual energy madly, face going red, veins standing out at his temples.
The sword did not shift by a fraction.
I looked at him and said, calmly, “Three hundred years. Every single day, I polished my foundation. You think that’s slow. You think it’s worthless. But have you ever considered what three hundred years of accumulation, compressed into peak Spirit Severing, actually means?”
I pinched gently.
The blood-colored longsword began to break, inch by inch, from the tip.
Fragments drifted down onto Fang Chengyuan’s face.
He staggered back three steps, the webbing of his palm split open, blood running down his fingers.
“Impossible.” Fang Chengyuan’s voice was hoarse, the rims of his eyes red. “Impossible! You, a good-for-nothing with a mixed spirit root, how could you be stronger than me!”
The Crimson-Faced Old Ancestor’s expression finally changed.
He had cultivated for six hundred years and seen too many cultivators. Right now he could sense it clearly: the depth of this gray-robed man’s spiritual energy was far past the middle stage of Spirit Severing.
This was Spirit Severing at Peak Stage.
And the most solid Peak Stage he had ever seen.
“Chengyuan!” His voice was low. “Withdraw!”
Fang Chengyuan did not hear. Or would not.
His eyes bloodshot, his hands forming seals, all the spiritual energy in his body surging: “Lu Chen! I don’t believe it! I, Fang Chengyuan, heaven’s own talent. I cannot lose to the likes of you!”
He invoked the Blood Fiend Sect’s Forbidden Art.
To burn life for power.
To trade years of life for a brief burst.
In that instant his presence jumped from the middle stage of Spirit Severing to the peak of the late stage.
The Crimson-Faced Old Ancestor was aghast. “Chengyuan, are you mad?!”
Fang Chengyuan paid him no mind and drove a palm at me.
A seam opened in the sky, and spiritual energy poured down like a tide.
That palm.
He had staked three hundred years of lifespan on it.
I stood where I was, and did not move.
The spiritual energy struck me.
Then it scattered.
Just scattered.
The power that hit me did not so much as stir the hem of my robe.
Fang Chengyuan froze.
Everyone froze.
I raised my hand and pointed one finger.
No dazzling display. No earth-shaking sound.
Just a finger.
It touched Fang Chengyuan’s chest.
His protective spiritual light shattered.
Six of his ribs broke.
He flew backward across half the plaza and struck the ruined wall of the main hall. The wall came down with a roar and buried him.
Blood seeped out between the stones.
The whole field was silent.
Chapter Eight
The Crimson-Faced Old Ancestor’s face went entirely dark.
Ghost Hand Venerable took an involuntary step back.
The Blood Fiend Sect disciples who a moment ago had been strutting and jeering felt a bucket of cold water poured down their spines.
Their ace, Fang Chengyuan, had been flattened in one move.
One move.
The Crimson-Faced Old Ancestor drew a slow breath. “Your Excellency. Which senior of Qingxuan Sect might you be? Spirit Severing at Peak Stage… why has this old man never heard of such a figure in Qingxuan Sect?”
I glanced at him.
“Because you don’t deserve to hear of it.”
His face flushed red.
Six hundred years of cultivation, middle stage of Spirit Severing, a regional overlord of the Northern Domain in his own right.
When had anyone ever spoken to him like that?
But he held it in.
Because the strength was right there in front of him.
He could tell: if this came to a real fight, he would not last ten moves.
“Your Excellency.” The Crimson-Faced Old Ancestor pressed his anger down. “What happened today was Fang Chengyuan’s doing. He invited me here. If Your Excellency is willing, this old man will take his people and leave, and never trouble Qingxuan Sect again.”
Elder Zhou dragged himself out of the rubble, his face a mask of blood, and stared at the Crimson-Faced Old Ancestor.
Every Qingxuan Sect disciple on the field was looking at me.
I looked down at Han Qingshan.
The old Sect Lord could not hold on much longer. His breathing was faint, ready to stop at any moment.
I crouched, laid a hand on his chest, and passed spiritual energy into him.
Gentle. Deep and dense. Inexhaustible.
Some color came back to Han Qingshan’s face. His breathing steadied.
He gathered the last of his strength and gripped my wrist. “Lu Chen… you…”
I said, “Sect Lord. Don’t speak.”
He shook his head, and there was wetness in his clouded eyes. “I wasn’t wrong about you.”
Those words.
The thing that had been pressing on my chest for three hundred years came apart in an instant.
I stood and turned to face the Crimson-Faced Old Ancestor.
“You said you would take your people and leave?”
The Crimson-Faced Old Ancestor nodded. “Correct. This old man keeps his word.”
I shook my head. “You attacked my sect. You wounded my Sect Lord. You killed my fellow disciples. And then you tell me you’re leaving, and that’s the end of it?”
His expression changed.
I went on. “I have cultivated for three hundred years and never once raised a hand against anyone. Today is the first time.”
I raised my right hand.
Spiritual energy gathered.
Not the loud, crashing kind. Silent, soundless, and the spiritual qi of the entire sky came pouring toward my palm.
The Crimson-Faced Old Ancestor’s pupils shrank. “What are you doing?!”
“Leaving your life behind.”
My palm turned over, and pressed down.
Heaven and earth changed color.
That palm held no blood light, no flame, no flourish of any kind.
Only pure force.
Coming down.
The Crimson-Faced Old Ancestor resisted with everything he had, both hands raising his protective spiritual light, invoking the treasure that anchored the Blood Fiend Sect: the Blood Soul Banner.
The banner unfurled. Thousands of vengeful souls shrieked, forming a blood-red barrier.
My palm force landed on the barrier.
One breath.
The barrier shattered.
The Blood Soul Banner burst.
The vengeful souls scattered. The Crimson-Faced Old Ancestor staggered back seven steps, and with each step the ground cracked open into an abyss-like ravine.
His protective spiritual light broke apart, and a palm print deep enough to show bone appeared on his chest.
“How… how is this possible…” Fear was in his voice now. “We are both at Spirit Severing. How can you be this strong?!”
I did not answer him.
Ghost Hand Venerable saw it, turned, and ran.
Early stage of Spirit Severing, against a gap that wide. His judgment was sound.
But he could not run.
I reached out, and a great hand of spiritual energy condensed out of the air, crossed a hundred zhang, and hauled Ghost Hand Venerable back.
Dropped him beside the Crimson-Faced Old Ancestor.
Two Spirit Severing cultivators, lying on the ground, looking up at me.
The Blood Fiend Sect disciples had collapsed entirely.
Some knelt and kowtowed. Some turned and fled. Some lay where they were, unable to move.
And every Qingxuan Sect disciple had his eyes wide open.
That Foundation Establishment disciple, the one-armed young disciple I had met on the back mountain, stood far off with his mouth open wide enough to fit a fist.
A fellow disciple beside him tugged at his sleeve. “Who is that? Who on earth is that?!”
The boy murmured, “The one from the Bing Cave Residence on the back mountain… that Senior Brother…”
Elder Zhou leaned against the broken wall, and under all the blood on his face was a shock he could not process.
He remembered.
Three hundred years ago, in the registry hall, he had said one thing: I don’t know why the Sect Lord took him in. He takes up an Inner Disciple’s place and wastes the sect’s resources.
That sentence had turned into a knife, and it was in his chest now.
Chapter Nine
Fang Chengyuan crawled out of the rubble.
He was soaked in blood, six ribs broken, his organs displaced, his realm dropped straight to the early stage of Spirit Severing from the backlash of burning his life.
But he stood up anyway.
His eyes fixed on me.
What was in them was not fear.
It was hate.
It was the refusal to accept it.
It was the madness of a man whose whole world had been overturned.
“Why.” His voice was hoarse, one word at a time. “Why you.”
I looked at him.
“Why not me?”
He clenched his fists until the knuckles went white. “I, Fang Chengyuan, reached Foundation Establishment at twenty, Core Formation at fifty, Nascent Soul at a hundred, Spirit Severing at two hundred. I have been a genius since the day I was born. My talent, my bone structure, my comprehension, all of it first rate. And you? You have nothing. You are a good-for-nothing with a five-element mixed spirit root. What gives you the right to be stronger than me?!”
By the end he was roaring, and blood came up with it.
I listened to all of it.
I was not angry.
I was not pleased.
I only found it… pitiful.
“Fang Chengyuan. Do you know what your problem is?”
He glared at me.
I said, “You are in too much of a hurry. You are afraid of slow. Afraid of being caught. Afraid of not being the strongest one there is. So you rush every step, and the faster you rush, the thinner your foundation. The thinner the foundation, the more you need something outside yourself to make up for it. So you went over to the Demonic Path.”
His body was trembling.
I went on. “And I am afraid of nothing. Not slow, not being laughed at, not being called a good-for-nothing. I only cultivate. Day after day, year after year, doing the work properly. Three hundred years. That is all there is to it.”
Fang Chengyuan opened his mouth, wanting to argue.
Nothing came out.
Because the facts were standing right there.
Middle stage of Spirit Severing, flattened in one move.
Burning his life to the peak of the late stage, and he could not touch the hem of my robe.
That was the distance between foundations.
That was the weight of three hundred years.
He stood there, swaying, the light in his eyes dimming by degrees.
In the end he knelt.
Not surrender.
His legs would not hold him.
Body and spirit had broken together.
I turned to look at the Crimson-Faced Old Ancestor and Ghost Hand Venerable.
Both of them were covered in wounds, lying on the ground, not daring to move.
“For what happened today, I can spare your lives.”
The Crimson-Faced Old Ancestor’s head came up fast, a flicker of hope in his eyes.
But what I said next dropped his heart into the bottom of his stomach.
“The Blood Fiend Sect is expunged from the rolls, starting today. Disperse your cultivators, hand over your resources. From now on there is no such thing as the Blood Fiend Sect in the Northern Domain.”
The Crimson-Faced Old Ancestor’s face went ashen. “You—”
“You have three days to think it over. In three days I come to collect.”
I was not negotiating with him.
I was informing him.
The Crimson-Faced Old Ancestor opened his mouth, and in the end said nothing at all.
He had lived six hundred years.
He had seen many powerful men.
But he had never seen one of these: absurdly young, and strong enough to crush an entire generation of his.
He lowered his head.
He took the loss.
Chapter Ten
Fang Chengyuan’s cultivation base was destroyed.
By my own hand.
One finger to his dantian, and the cultivation base of Spirit Severing crumbled inch by inch under the grinding of my spiritual energy.
He screamed. Only once.
Then he went silent.
When the cultivation base had drained away completely, he became a mortal.
Three hundred-odd years old, and now a mortal. Hair and beard gone white.
He lay on the ground, breathing in ragged pulls, his clouded eyes on the sky.
He did not weep. He did not beg. He did not say one more arrogant word.
He only said, in a very small voice, “I cannot accept it.”
I crouched and met his eyes levelly.
“Cannot accept what? Losing to a good-for-nothing? Or taking the wrong road?”
He did not answer.
I stood and walked away.
Behind me, Elder Zhou brought a few disciples forward and took Fang Chengyuan and the rest of the Blood Fiend Sect faction away.
Han Qingshan was carried carefully into the rear hall.
The spiritual energy I had passed into him had stabilized his wounds, but he was old, and badly hurt, and it would take a long time to recover.
By the time I walked into the rear hall, he could speak.
Seeing me come in, he struggled to sit up.
I held him down. “Sect Lord. Lie still.”
He did not struggle. He only looked at me, with far too much in his eyes to say.
Finally he said, “Three hundred years. Three hundred years on the back mountain, and I thought something had happened to you. I sent people to look. The formation on your cave residence was sealed. There were signs of life inside, but no progress in your cultivation they could sense. They came back and told me Lu Chen might have suffered qi deviation.”
I smiled. “No qi deviation. Just cultivating.”
He smiled too.
And smiling, tears ran from the corners of his eyes.
“When I took you in, everyone objected. Said I was wasting a place. Said a five-element mixed spirit root would never amount to anything. I looked at you standing on that spirit-testing platform, all that laughter around you, and you said not one word, and your eyes were bright. I knew then. This child will make it.”
I said nothing.
I only stood by his bed, standing there quietly.
Three hundred years.
The first time in all those years that anyone had said it to me: you can make it.
I had heard it once at seventeen.
At three hundred and fifteen, I heard it again.
Nearly three hundred years apart.
In those three hundred years I cultivated alone, broke through alone, faced every mockery and every silence alone.
No master to guide me. No fellow disciples to support me. No one at all to clap.
And I had never once regretted it.
Because that one line from the old Sect Lord was enough: Join my Qingxuan Sect.
Chapter Eleven
Three days later.
The Crimson-Faced Old Ancestor came in person with the remnants of the Blood Fiend Sect, bringing the sect token, the whole of their resource reserves, and a writ of dissolution.
A sect of six hundred years. Struck from the rolls, just like that.
He stood in front of me, face ashen, older by more than a decade.
When he handed the writ over, his hand was shaking.
I took it, glanced at it, and nodded. “Go.”
He turned and walked away.
Ten steps out, he stopped without turning around and asked, “Your Excellency… have you truly only cultivated for three hundred years?”
“Three hundred and fifteen.”
He was silent a moment, laughed a bitter laugh, and left.
He never came back.
With the Blood Fiend Sect’s business settled, Qingxuan Sect began to rebuild.
The Mountain-Protecting Formation was broken, half the main hall destroyed, three in ten disciples dead or wounded.
A disaster.
But not an ending.
Because I had come back in time.
Elder Zhou came to me with the rest of the Elders, his manner toward me nothing like it had been three hundred years ago.
“Lu Chen… no. Senior Lu.” Elder Zhou had one arm gone, and he cupped the remaining hand in salute. “Back then this subordinate was blind to what stood before him and spoke disrespectfully. Senior, I beg your pardon for my offense.”
I looked at him.
This man, who three hundred years ago had said I wasted the sect’s resources.
Now meek and downcast, as respectful as a man could be.
I did not make it hard for him.
Words once spoken cannot be taken back, but today he had fought for the sect with everything he had and lost an arm doing it. That counted for something.
“No need,” I said. “Just guard the sect well from now on.”
His eyes went red, and he bowed deeply.
The other Elders bowed as well.
I waved a hand and turned toward the back mountain.
Behind me came a small, hesitant voice, the one-armed young disciple’s. “Senior Brother, are you still living in the Bing Cave Residence?”
I did not turn my head. “Three hundred years there. I’m used to it.”
He asked again. “Can I come find you, then?”
I paused.
Looked back at him.
A boy of fifteen or sixteen, early stage of Foundation Establishment, one arm, blood still not dry on his face.
His eyes were bright.
As bright as mine had been, standing on the spirit-testing platform at seventeen.
“You can,” I said.
He grinned.
Grinned so wide it lit up his whole face.
Chapter Twelve
The rebuilding took three years.
With a cultivation base at peak Spirit Severing, I laid out the Mountain-Protecting Formation again.
This formation was more than ten times stronger than the old one.
Because the old one had been accumulated slowly by generations of Sect Lords over three thousand years.
Mine was poured in all at once by one man at peak Spirit Severing.
Different depth underneath. The results were not in the same world.
On the day the new formation settled, every disciple of Qingxuan Sect stood at the mountain gate to watch.
Spiritual light shot into the sky, auspicious qi in a thousand strands. The moment the formation locked into place, the spiritual qi density for a hundred li around rose by thirty percent.
Everyone knelt.
Not to me.
The pressure of it drove them off their feet.
Han Qingshan’s wounds were seventy percent healed.
He stood at the door of the main hall leaning on a cane, watching my back where I stood at the formation eye, and said something to Elder Zhou beside him.
“Everyone called him a good-for-nothing back then.”
Elder Zhou kept his head down.
Han Qingshan went on. “Three hundred years, and he never once argued back. Today he has not put on any airs either. Do you know why?”
Elder Zhou shook his head.
Han Qingshan’s gaze went far away. “Because he does not care. From the beginning to the end, he has only cared about cultivation itself. Not to prove anything to anyone. Not to slap anyone’s face. That temperament is the real reason he could come this far.”
Elder Zhou was silent a long while, then said softly, “The Sect Lord saw what others could not.”
Han Qingshan shook his head. “It was not my eye. He made himself worthy of it.”
I stood at the formation eye and drew in the last strand of spiritual energy.
The formation was complete.
I looked up at the sky.
The sky was high. The clouds were thin.
Three hundred and fifteen years old.
Spirit Severing at Peak Stage.
The next step is Tribulation Transcendence.
And after that, Ascension.
No hurry.
I have never been in a hurry.
Slowly.
Just like the three hundred years behind me.
One day at a time.
One step at a time.
I am Lu Chen. Five-element mixed spirit root. Inner Disciple of Qingxuan Sect.
My cultivation speed was the slowest there was.
But every step I took was solid.
No one could push me over.