For Luo Wutian, who hailed from the Scripture Pavilion, recognizing the figure represented by the divine statue summoned by the Tribulation Transcender was child’s play.
Of course, it wasn’t because he was exceptionally well-read or had vast knowledge—but simply because... that statue was an exact replica of Ancestor Lingxiu’s portrait, down to every detail of her appearance and even her divine aura!
But why did the statue radiate such an overwhelming sense of death?
Could it be... that Ancestor Lingxiu had fallen?!
And that the Tribulation Transcender was responsible?!
How could that be possible?!
Ancestor Lingxiu had ascended to the Immortal Realm centuries ago, while the Tribulation Transcender couldn’t even survive his own Immortal Ascension Tribulation!
The difference was night and day!
This wasn’t meant to disparage the Tribulation Transcender—it was simply stating the facts!
So the question remained: how did the Tribulation Transcender, who couldn’t even reach the Immortal Realm, obtain a divine statue of Ancestor Lingxiu?
After all, a divine statue wasn’t just any ordinary sculpture. It had to bear Ancestor Lingxiu’s will and imprint to be genuine—otherwise, it would merely be an empty shell, devoid of spirit!
The statue held by the Tribulation Transcender... was undoubtedly real. But why did it feel so lifeless?!
Had the venerable Ancestor truly met with misfortune in the Immortal Realm?
In an instant, countless thoughts flashed through Luo Wutian’s mind, but none were ones he was willing to accept!
Huo Hai, the Sect Master of the Carefree Sect, was equally unwilling to believe it.
He, too, recognized the statue. After a brief mental shutdown, he erupted in denial:
“Impossible! Absolutely impossible!”
“My Ancestor Lingxiu is invincible!”
“Her Instant Annihilation of a Thousand Tribulations technique was peerless—even the Immortal Ascension Tribulation couldn’t touch her! Even if the Immortal Realm is filled with mighty beings, no one could stop her if she chose to leave!!!”
“Tribulation Transcender, what’s the meaning of presenting this statue? To deceive us? To shatter the spiritual pillar of our Carefree Sect?!”
“Our sect has already declined to the point of barely being a third-rate faction—you could wipe us out with a flick of your finger! Why resort to crushing us spiritually? Why go this far?!”
“What wrong has our Carefree Sect done? We’ll change—just tell us what to fix!”
One might call Huo Hai a stubborn relic of the old guard, a lingering scourge as his name suggested.
But no one could deny his love for the Carefree Sect. He cherished it deeply—so much so that he even bought groceries himself!
Chen Yi sighed faintly. “I regret to inform you of a harsh truth: Chen Lingxiu has indeed perished. This statue is the last trace she left in this world.”
“No!”
Huo Hai’s eyes turned bloodshot. He spun around and dashed toward the sect’s ancestral grounds, soon returning with a massive compass in tow. Growling, he declared:
“The Mark of Time is a semi-immortal treasure left behind by Ancestor Lingxiu before her ascension. Since I became sect master six hundred years ago, I’ve maintained it day and night, never daring to slacken. Though our ancestors drained much of its Dao essence to resolve past crises, Ancestor Lingxiu’s will remains within it. I’ve always felt her presence—she couldn’t possibly have—”
Before he could finish—
Crack!
The moment the Mark of Time compass approached Chen Lingxiu’s statue, it fractured like a spiderweb before crumbling into dust, as if unable to withstand the erosion of endless ages.
Boom!
Huo Hai’s mind seemed struck by lightning. His pupils dilated as he stood frozen, petrified with shock.
Thud!
Elder Luo Wutian also collapsed to his knees, his body limp.
Though he had braced himself for the worst, the confirmation still shattered him beyond control.
Who was Chen Lingxiu?
She was the spiritual pillar of every disciple in the Carefree Sect!
And now, that pillar had collapsed!
“Ah... Dreams like the flicker of a dying candle, souls adrift like scattered catkins, thoughts slipping through fingers like loose sand, minds floating like duckweed on water... I, too, have been bound by sorrow, wasting half my life, drifting apart from kin and comrades...”
Xu Jinghong, cradling the statue, mused aloud.
This was the state of a shattered spirit. As someone who had been through it, he understood the Carefree Sect disciples’ anguish all too well.
“Wah—Senior Xu, you’re making me cry again...” Lin Yuyu had been holding up fine, but Xu Jinghong’s poetic lament instantly brought tears to her eyes.
An excess of empathy could be a curse.
“Enough. She’s merely dead—not beyond revival. Stop mourning as if all hope is lost!”
Chen Yi shook his head and snapped lightly, snapping Huo Hai and Luo Wutian out of their daze.
Huo Hai’s gaze gradually sharpened. Realizing the implication, he scrambled forward on his knees, kowtowing fervently:
“Honored Transcender, is there still hope? What must I do? I’ll do anything to bring Ancestor Lingxiu back—strip me of my position, demote me to a menial laborer, just don’t cast me out of the Carefree Sect!”
Luo Wutian remained silent but followed suit, kowtowing desperately.
Chen Yi asked leisurely, “What if it requires you to abandon your Nascent Soul cultivation?”
Huo Hai didn’t hesitate. “This junior is worthless, having failed our ancestors. If my years of cultivation can revive our forebear and restore the Carefree Sect’s glory, I’ll gladly sacrifice it all!”
“Same here!” Luo Wutian declared with equal resolve.
For men like them, the sect’s honor came above all else.
And that was precisely what made dealing with them so difficult.
They were men of faith—you could kill their bodies, but never their unyielding will.
“Good.”
Chen Yi nodded slightly before raising a hand. With a single tap, Huo Hai’s body and Nascent Soul dissolved, leaving only his soul hovering in place.
Just as Huo Hai braced for martyrdom—
A radiant beam descended from the heavens, bathing his soul in light. A unique mark etched itself onto his forehead, solidifying his ethereal form.
The sensation was indescribable—warm, soothing, as if soaking in a hot spring, comfort surging from his toes to his crown.
When he reopened his eyes moments later, the world seemed both familiar and subtly altered.
The scenery remained unchanged, save for wisps of an otherworldly energy now visible to his naked eye.
Luo Wutian, standing beside him, was enveloped in green-tinged energy with hints of azure. According to the knowledge imprinted in Huo Hai’s mark, this indicated Luo Wutian’s status as a Nascent Soul cultivator blessed by a unique fortune, granting him the potential to advance to the Divine Transformation realm.
This was just the surface. Deeper insights were still unfolding.
Luo Wutian, age 638, mid-stage Nascent Soul cultivator, monthly stipend of 900,000 spirit stones, personal reserves estimated at: three jin of azure-grade materials, five hundred jin of green-grade, ninety-one tons of yellow-grade, nine tons of blue-grade, two hundred fifty jin of white-grade...
Note: One catty of white-tier supplies can sustain three adult humans for a week. One catty of blue-tier supplies can sustain ten adult humans plus three 200-catty beasts for a month. One catty of yellow-tier supplies can sustain a hundred adult humans plus fifty 500-catty creatures for a year. One catty of green-tier supplies can sustain a thousand people...
Wait, seriously?
Luo Wutian, you're this rich?
Just your personal resource stockpile alone could feed roughly ten million people for a year?
How much blood and sweat did you squeeze out of the common folk, you old bastard?!
Hold on—
Luo Wutian has always been frugal, living modestly. He dutifully relies on his official stipend, and his cultivation resources are all allocated by the sect. He only stockpiles what he doesn’t use up—there’s practically no chance he’s embezzling anything. So...
It’s my Carefree Sect that’s exploiting the people?!
The resources we monopolize every year might seem trivial to cultivators, but for the lower classes, they’re life-saving rations?!
Oh no—I’m the villain now!
young master of the Shen family—a figure of immense power and wealth beyond measure—and awakened the "Destined Ultimate Villain System"! His starting scenario? Running into his icy fiancée who shows up with a mountain-descending divine doctor to break off their engagement. The divine doctor arrogantly taunts: "What does your Shen family have besides a bit of stinking money? You're not even worthy of tying Qingxue's shoelaces!" Shen Fei just smiled. He completely defied the usual script: "Fine, I agree to break off the engagement. Also, notify the finance department to withdraw all investments from the Su family." Minutes later, with its capital chain severed, the Su Group teetered on the brink of bankruptcy! The once aloof and proud ice queen CEO was thrown into utter panic. That very night, she went to Shen Fei's villa, casting aside all dignity to beg and plead desperately... From then on, in this world teeming with Sons of Destiny, Shen Fei embarked on a path of extreme dimensional suppression! A mountain-descending divine doctor? Peerless medical skills? Shen Fei: "Reporting you for practicing medicine without a license! I'll gladly take your ancient medicinal cauldron and twin sister assassins." The Crooked-Smiling Dragon King? Commanding a hundred thousand soldiers with a single order? Shen Fei: "Illegal assembly and suspected treason! Let a fleet of attack helicopters sanitize the area and teach you what the state apparatus really means!" A reborn tycoon? Knows all the golden opportunities of the next decade? Shen Fei: "A trillion in capital to reverse and pump the stock market, making you blow your margin and jump on the very first day of your rebirth!" What Chosen Ones? What bearers of Heavenly Fortune? In Shen Fei's eyes, they're all just chives (i.e., suckers/marks) waiting to be harvested! Shen Fei: "Sorry, but as the Destined Ultimate Villain, I don't play by the rules of honor. I only play the game of dimensional suppression."
transmigrates into the world as the sect master of the Heavenly Yan Sect, which is on the verge of being wiped out. He binds a system that grants him cultivation power based on the number of disciples he has: for each disciple, he automatically gains a year's worth of cultivation every single day! Take one disciple: every day he gains 1 year of cultivation power. While others struggle through a year of bitter training, he gets the same just by sleeping through a single night. Take ten disciples: every day he gains 10 years of cultivation power. Foundation Establishment, Core Formation, Nascent Soul—he breezes through all bottlenecks without lifting a finger. Take one hundred disciples: every day he gains 100 years of cultivation power. Even a Soul Transformation Venerable before him can’t survive a single blow. Take ten thousand disciples: every day he gains 10,000 years of cultivation power! With a wave of his hand, he topples empires. With a single step, he crushes the sacred grounds of the universe. ... While others fight tooth and nail for secret techniques, Lin Yan casually hands out Nascent Soul-level cultivation manuals as beginner textbooks. While others strain to find talented recruits, Lin Yan opens his doors to anyone—so long as they’re human. In just three short years, the Heavenly Yan Sect went from a backwater sect made up of three crumbling huts to a sacred land that every cultivator under heaven would kill to enter. ... One day, otherworldly demon gods invade, with a million demon soldiers pressing down upon the realm. Lin Yan, yawning, rises from his lounge chair and glances at the system panel: [Current Disciples: 1.28 million] [Daily Cultivation Increase: 1.28 million years] He waves his hand casually, and the countless demon soldiers are reduced to ashes in an instant. “So noisy… interrupting my fishing.”
ing gift was a patch of barren land, and disciples were all picked up along the way. He spent fifty years diligently building three "ramshackle little sects," thinking he could finally live a carefree life relying on his disciples. But right at the fifty-year mark, he was suddenly swept away by a spatial rift and exiled to the Chaos Desolation, the Disorderly Ruins. There was no spiritual energy there, only slaughter. Relying on the cultivation feedback from his disciples, Gu Changyuan hacked his way through a sea of blood for eleven hundred years. When the system finally fished him back out, he discovered the ramshackle little sects he'd built back then had developed a rather... unusual style. Hold on... I vanished for a thousand years, so how did my ramshackle little sects become holy lands?!
saw a female celebrity tied up and stuffed in the trunk! Little did he know, countless cameras were aimed at him at this moment - this was a new type of reality show. The first randomly selected passerby was caught in less than an hour. But when Xu Moru was selected, things started to take an unexpected turn. "Damn, this isn't how the script goes. This Xu Moru is too bold, he's not following the rules at all." "Crap, is this guy taking it seriously?" "The female celebrity has been scared to tears!"
