The Era of Spiritual Peak

The spiritual stone in the stall owner’s hand was only the size of a thumb, yet the spiritual energy inside was so dense it was nearly liquefied, with a few faint strands of milky white mist slowly flowing within.

Hmm…

Ye Chuan glanced at the spiritual stone in the other’s hand, then looked down at the things he had just tossed out, and for a moment, he didn’t know what to say.

What he had taken out were indeed low-grade spiritual stones.

At least, in the Tianxuan Continent he knew, these were the standard currency used by all ordinary cultivators.

But in this world before him, his low-grade spiritual stones seemed not even worth the scraps. No wonder the stall owner thought he was trying to pass off a few rocks as payment.

“Sorry, I really didn’t mean to dine and dash.”

Ye Chuan was an honest, kind-hearted, and innocent cultivator, who never liked to act high-handedly.

He picked up the few stones from the table, then took out several spirit crystals from his spatial bag and placed them before the stall owner.

These were the highest purity cultivation resources he had on hand, and in the normal Tianxuan Continent, they would be enough to make plenty of cultivators fight to the death over them.

“Should these be enough?”

The stall owner picked up one of the spirit crystals, examined it against the sunlight, and then carefully felt its weight in his palm, his brow still furrowed.

“There’s some spiritual energy to it.”

“But the quality’s too poor, and there’s too many impurities. Looks like some shoddy spiritual stone dug up from who knows what backwater.”

Ye Chuan: “…”

This was the first time he’d ever heard a spirit crystal called a shoddy spiritual stone.

If those sect elders from the normal timeline ever heard that, they’d probably start doubting what absolute garbage they’d been cultivating for the past few thousand years.

The stall owner weighed the spirit crystal in his hand, but didn’t keep pressing the three of them.

“We’ll call it five of these, and count it cheap for you.”

“You can take the spirit fruits. The rest is your change in local currency.”

With that, he poured a few low-grade spiritual stones from his storage pouch and casually pushed them over to Ye Chuan.

Ye Chuan picked one up and looked at it.

Even this most ordinary low-grade spiritual stone from here contained spiritual energy purer than the spirit crystals of the normal Tianxuan Continent.

“That big of a difference?”

Ye Chuan finally confirmed that the stall owner hadn’t deliberately tried to scam him with high-quality stones.

The currency used by the cultivators coming and going on the street was indeed all this kind of stuff.

Lan Xiaoke bit into a purple spirit fruit and had listened for a while without understanding much, only knowing that the money Ye Chuan had taken out earlier had been looked down on.

“Ye Chuan, you’re that poor? I thought you said you were rich?”

“Just eat.” Ye Chuan pinched her baby-fat cheek.

Fox Li, however, understood what was going on.

She looked down at the spiritual stone in Ye Chuan’s hand, her fox ears twitching lightly.

“Boss, the cultivation resources in this place are on a completely different level from our world.”

“I know.”

Ye Chuan looked up at the cultivators constantly flying across the sky, and his confusion only grew.

The cultivators of this timeline…

Were they that much stronger?

A golden age of spiritual energy?

Ye Chuan turned back to the stall owner.

“Excuse me, boss. The three of us have been cultivating deep in the mountains with our master for years, and we’ve only recently come down for the first time. We’re not too familiar with things outside.”

“Could we ask you for some information?”

The stall owner looked the three of them up and down, his expression clearly skeptical.

“Cultivating deep in the mountains?”

“You don’t even recognize spiritual stones, how remote must your mountain be? Where, out on the edges of the continent, floating in the void?”

Ye Chuan nodded seriously.

“Somewhere around there.”

The stall owner was still a bit doubtful at first, but after sensing the auras of Lan Xiaoke and Fox Li, his expression became a little more thoughtful.

These three youngsters lacked common knowledge, but their energy wasn’t weak, and their clothes and demeanor didn’t mark them as ordinary swindlers.

Especially Ye Chuan.

The stall owner could clearly see him standing right there, yet he didn’t sense the slightest trace of spiritual power fluctuation. When he tried to probe with his divine sense, it vanished like a mud ox sinking into the sea.

This was either the sign of an ordinary mortal,

or someone whose cultivation far surpassed his own.

Bringing two decidedly capable junior sisters on a stroll didn’t exactly fit the first category.

The stall owner pocketed the spiritual stones, and his tone softened a little.

“Friend, what do you want to ask?”

Ye Chuan didn’t beat around the bush. “Where exactly is this place?”

The stall owner’s expression immediately turned strange.

“This is Green Mountain Town, of course.”

“I mean beyond Green Mountain Town. What’s this continent called, and what powers are nearby?”

The stall owner was silent for a moment, and by then, the look he gave Ye Chuan was no different from how one would regard a mountain wildling.

“This continent is naturally called the Tianxuan Continent.”

“Green Mountain Town is in the Southern Domain of the Eastern Wasteland, under the jurisdiction of Azure Cloud Immortal City. The most powerful sect nearby is the Supreme Immortal Sect.”

Tianxuan Continent.

The name was the same, certainly.

But the Southern Domain of the Eastern Wasteland, Azure Cloud Immortal City, and the Supreme Immortal Sect were names Ye Chuan had never heard of in the normal timeline.

“How vast is the Eastern Wasteland?”

Ye Chuan continued.

The stall owner thought for a moment, as if the question wasn’t easy to answer.

“Vast beyond measure. An ordinary cultivator riding a flying ship from the southernmost of the Southern Domain to the northernmost, without using arrays, would take at least tens of thousands of years.”

“And if they run into a void storm or get caught in a battle between mighty beings along the way, whether they make it out alive is anyone’s guess.”

Lan Xiaoke stopped mid-bite of her spirit fruit.

“Ba-a-a?”

Tens of thousands of years?!

“That would take forever! What a hassle!”

The stall owner couldn’t help but glance at her.

He had no clue what kind of origin this silver-haired girl had. It was strange enough that she talked oddly, but when she heard about distances spanning millennia, her first reaction was to complain about the journey?

“Ordinary cultivators certainly wouldn’t cross the entire Eastern Wasteland,”

the stall owner explained. “Every major immortal city has cross-domain teleportation arrays. As long as you can pay the immortal crystals, you can reach another city within a day.”

“And if you’ve become an immortal yourself, you can just tear open the void and travel.”

Ye Chuan seized on the key point.

“Become an immortal?”

The stall owner paused.

“What?”

“Immortals exist in this world?”

Ye Chuan asked very seriously.

The stall owner’s expression instantly became rich—like someone hearing, for the first time, a person in a cultivation world asking if cultivation existed.

“What exactly does your master teach you in your mountain?”

“Does he just make you sit in meditation all day and never even mention the cultivation realms?”

“He’s mentioned some,”

Ye Chuan said humbly. “But they might not be the same as the system out here.”

Hearing this, the stall owner wasn’t overly surprised.

The Tianxuan Continent was boundless, and some ancient heritages had their own systems, so it was normal for the names of the realms to differ from the mainstream.

He cleared his throat, then pointed at a cultivator flying by in the distance.

“A cultivator, upon crossing the heavenly tribulation and shedding their mortal body, can step into the Earth Immortal realm.”

“But between the peak of the Flying Ascension stage and a true Earth Immortal, there is a period of immortal body transformation, often called the Quasi-Earth Immortal.”

“A Quasi-Earth Immortal already has some immortal power, but hasn’t truly condensed an immortal body, and is still lacking in lifespan, soul, and dao laws.”

Ye Chuan nodded.

This explanation wasn’t too far off from the system he had come into contact with.

Except that, in the normal timeline, the path to immortality had been cut off, and the Flying Ascension stage was the limit most cultivators could ever reach.

There was simply no environment for achieving immortality in that world.

But this old Tianxuan Continent before him… seemed to still have a complete path to immortality.

The stall owner continued, “Above the Celestial Immortal is the Golden Immortal. At that level, the immortal soul is imperishable, and the physical body remains undecayed through countless kalpas. One has truly stepped onto the path of immortality.”

“Going further up, there are the Taiyi Golden Immortal, the Great Luo Golden Immortal, the Immortal Venerable, the Immortal King, the Quasi-Immortal Emperor, and the Immortal Emperor who stands above all realms.”

Taiyi Golden Immortal.

Great Luo Golden Immortal.

Immortal King.

Quasi-Immortal Emperor.

Immortal Emperor.

This place not only had immortals but also a complete cultivation system that reached all the way to the Immortal Emperor level.

At present, Ye Chuan had reached the peak of the Golden Immortal realm.

In the normal timeline, he could barely find any opponents to fight head-on. Even a Star Lord who governed an entire galaxy could only stalemate him at best.

But in this era, a Golden Immortal seemed far from the top.

Ye Chuan glanced at the cultivators coming and going in Green Mountain Town.

“Are there Celestial Immortals here?”

The stall owner looked at him like he was an idiot.

“Of course there are.”

“Although Green Mountain Town is just a border town, it’s backed by the Immortal Mountains. Countless cultivators come here to hunt immortal beasts and search for immortal herbs.”

“The major families in town each have a Quasi-Celestial Immortal stationed there, and the town lord himself is a true Celestial Immortal.”

“Do you see that cyan-colored treasure ship that just flew overhead?”

Ye Chuan looked up.

A cyan ship over a thousand yards long was passing through the clouds, its hull surrounded by faint immortal light. On the deck stood many young cultivators.

“That’s an immortal boat from the Supreme Immortal Sect picking up new disciples,” the stall owner said with obvious envy. “The elder standing at the bow is a Celestial Immortal—he’s in charge of escorting the new disciples back to the sect.”

Ye Chuan was silent for a moment.

Even an elder responsible for welcoming newcomers was a Celestial Immortal.

Back in the normal Tianxuan Continent, a figure like that could likely make entire holy lands kneel with a single thought.

“So… Celestial Immortals are common here?”

“Not exactly,” the stall owner shook his head. “An immortal is still an immortal. Ordinary cultivators might never cross that threshold in their whole lives.”

“Still, Quasi-Celestial Immortals are plenty. Especially in a place like Green Mountain Town, you could see dozens of them every day.”

Dozens…

Ye Chuan looked at the old man selling beast materials on the street corner, then glanced at the young man sipping tea in front of the restaurant.

Earlier, he had only sensed that these people were incredibly powerful.

But now that he paid closer attention, he could distinguish at least seven or eight auras that had already touched upon immortal power, just a step away from true Celestial Immortal.

Green Mountain Town really was crawling with Quasi-Celestial Immortals.

Lan Xiaoke didn’t react much.

Whatever nonsense they were spouting, Ye Chuan was my dad!

“Let’s go,” Ye Chuan said. He thought it would be wise to stay cautious, especially since the three of them stood out in their modern clothes.

Ye Chuan led Lan Xiaoke and Fox Li to change into clothes from the Tianxuan Continent, finally blending in.

“Let’s go check out that Immortal Sect.”

“What?”

“The stall owner just mentioned the Supreme Immortal Sect. We can go see what’s going on there. Starting from a sect is definitely the right move,” Ye Chuan said.

“Are we joining the sect?” Lan Xiaoke tilted her head, seeming tired already. “Ye Chuan, I’m tired. Let’s find an inn and play games until tomorrow!”