That phantom figure had yet to fully solidify.
It was merely a remnant of an obsession left within the finger bone, one that had endured across tens of thousands of years.
Even so, when that ancient, weathered voice asked, “Who is calling my true name?” the entire spectacle of the boiling sea of stars seemed to be instantly erased by an invisible hand.
The wind ceased. The waves fell still.
Even the blood-choked air froze in place at that moment.
Gu Qing’s fingers tightened around his folding fan until his knuckles turned white. The fan’s ribs groaned beneath the strain.
He stared fixedly at the phantom, a trace of something he himself refused to acknowledge buried deep within his eyes—
Fear.
It was the awe engraved in the bloodlines of the entire cultivation world toward that name.
“Cough… cough… cough…”
A wrenching fit of coughing shattered the silence.
Within the crater, Ning Shuangyue struggled to rise.
Her body was already broken beyond recognition. Her limbs and organs were collapsing, her skin cracking like parched porcelain and peeling away in great chunks, exposing the muscular tissue beneath—tissue that was no longer the vivid red of living flesh.
It was a sign that her life force had been drained to its absolute limit.
Yet her eyes shone with an alarming brightness.
“I…”
Ning Shuangyue’s voice was warped and hoarse, like two rusted pieces of iron grinding against each other.
With the one hand she had left, she clung desperately to the rock beneath her. Her fingernails split, blood flowing freely, but she stubbornly forced her ruined body to straighten, inch by inch, until her spine stood erect.
“I can die…”
“But I absolutely cannot lose…”
She looked at Gu Qing. The madness in her eyes had not faded with the collapse of her body. If anything, the phantom’s appearance had fanned it into an all-consuming blaze.
“At the very least…”
“I must slay an immortal here…”
“I want the world to see that the divide between immortals and mortals is not an impassable chasm!”
“The path ahead for every cultivator should not be this hopeless dead end where no light can be seen…”
Every word she spoke was steeped in blood.
If another Grand Ascendant cultivator had been present, they would have felt an inexplicable sorrow rising in their hearts.
The Grand Ascendant Realm…
It was the ultimate destination that countless cultivators could not reach even after exhausting their entire lives.
Yet before an “immortal,” one could still obtain the right to speak as an equal only through such a self-destructive act.
How tragic.
And yet—
“Bullshit!”
A furious roar exploded like thunder, instantly shattering the solemn, tragic atmosphere.
Gu Qing’s refined features twisted completely out of shape.
He whipped his folding fan, sending a streak of azure immortal power sweeping across the scene. It smashed apart the faint aura Ning Shuangyue had only just managed to gather.
“Stop indulging in your own melodrama!”
Gu Qing looked down at her from above, his eyes filled with undisguised disgust.
“Slay an immortal?”
“Do you really think what you’re doing is some earth-shattering feat?”
“It’s not as if no one has ever slain a True Immortal while in the Grand Ascendant Realm!”
“And what happened afterward?”
“Did the world change?”
“No!”
Ning Shuangyue was knocked to the ground by the surging force, yet she stubbornly raised her head again. “He was different…”
Her gaze passed over Gu Qing.
“At our level, we should both understand the truth.”
“Do you really think that so-called Immortal Venerable Fallen Dragon reached that point through nothing more than fiery conviction and a mortal’s rise to power?”
“Back then, the Great Emperor conducted blood sacrifice after blood sacrifice in his pursuit of eternal life. He even tried to refine the lives of half the beings in the Canghuang Realm. That was what provoked Heaven’s Dao.”
“Heaven’s Dao is heartless, but it also defends itself.”
“And that so-called Immortal Venerable Fallen Dragon was merely the ‘chosen one’ who emerged in response to the calamity!”
“He might not have been exceptional at all. He may even have been nothing more than a beggar by the roadside—or some uncouth hillbilly from a remote mountain village.”
“It was simply because he bore the favor of this world’s destiny. Heaven’s Dao chose him to serve as the blade with which it would kill!”
“Otherwise, how do you explain it?!”
“How did he become a Venerable in only a thousand years?”
“How did he encounter one fortuitous opportunity after another, turning every crisis into safety?”
“This proves nothing!”
“When all is said and done, even if he had been merely a Grand Ascendant, the ‘status’ he carried would still have far exceeded that of an ordinary immortal. Heaven’s Dao had forced that status upon him!”
“Otherwise, how could he have fought an Immortal Emperor head-on?”
Ning Shuangyue’s tone carried an air of unquestionable belief in fate.
“It has been an ironclad law since ancient times: the Emperor cannot be defiled.”
“A mortal trying to defy Heaven is nothing more than a joke!”
“And the moment he severely wounded that Immortal Emperor, his mission had already been fulfilled.”
“Once a blade has served its purpose, it is naturally broken, left to rust, and discarded in the trash.”
“So it was only natural that someone would seize his Dao fruit.”
Ning Shuangyue looked at the silent phantom, the fear in her eyes now gone, replaced by disdain.
“He was nothing more than a puppet dangling from Heaven’s strings.”
Gu Qing shook his head, his voice thick with ridicule.
“When others slay immortals, it’s because they were lucky—because Heaven’s Dao handed them the meal.”
“But you?”
“You’re the one who opened a new path for those who came after? You’re the special one?”
“How ‘great’ of you.”
“When it comes down to it, you’re still fighting for your own selfish desires.”
“You want to become an immortal. You want eternal life. You want power.”
“Don’t dress up your filthy desires in such lofty, righteous language.”
“Disgusting.”
Just as the two of them were locked in an unending argument…
“Hum—”
A soft ringing sound echoed through the air.
The phantom, which had remained silent all this time, seemingly nothing more than a prop—
Slowly raised its head.
Upon that indistinct face,
a pair of eyes suddenly lit up.
That was not the light of a lifeless thing.
Those were…
the eyes of a living person.
“Fallen Dragon… What a familiar yet unfamiliar name…”
“So this is how history was written?”
“He was nothing more than a vile wretch who ambushed me when I was caught off guard…”
“What a pity… He’s already dead. Otherwise, if he dared appear before me, I would surely cut him down without mercy…”
+ Slow Paced + Main Character Thrives Together with His Disciples】 Transmigrated into a cultivation world, Chu Xingchen awakens a discipleship system that reveals the tags of his disciples! Starting from scratch, he builds the strongest sect. Disciple One: Li Yingling 【Gold Tag: Genius Cultivator】【Purple Tag: Extremely Lucky】【Blue Tag: Bewitchingly Beautiful】 Disciple Two: Li Hangtian 【Gold Tag: Reincarnated】【Purple Tag: Ruthless and Decisive】【Blue Tag: Loyal and Noble】 Disciple Three: ??? 【Orange Tag: Alluring Demoness】【???】【???】 Thus, in the cultivation world, an unremarkable little sect appears out of nowhere, but little do others know that each member of this sect is a powerhouse in their own right. The book is also known as: Cultivation? It's Exactly Like This!
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?!
with countless casualties. As a top-tier gamer, Liu Xuan volunteered to join the fight, intending to dominate with his skills, but instead he obtained the hidden class: [Pacifist]. Unable to attack. Unable to use active skills. Fortunately, with each level gained, he acquired a new passive skill. And so, armed with a body full of passives, Liu Xuan slaughtered his way through the battlefield of ten thousand races! [You attacked Liu Xuan] [You gained the debuffs: 'Poison', 'Fear', 'Burning', 'Bleeding', 'Freeze', 'Silence', etc.] [Your attack speed has been reduced by 99%] [Your armor and magic resistance have been reduced by 99%] Warriors of the Ten Thousand Races: How the hell am I supposed to fight this?!
ut it can buy an entire year of absolutely perfect training results! Su Yu stared at his empty wallet and decisively opened up various online loan platforms. “Borrow a thousand bucks! Recharge my vitality!” Boom! His vitality broke a hundred points, shattering the limits of the human body! “Borrow ten thousand bucks! Recharge my combat skills!” Boom! A basic punching technique so common it was everywhere instantly maxed out, revealing the ultimate assassination technique of Five Elements Unity—Inner Force! When a rich kid hired assassins for a midnight ambush, aiming to break both of his legs, they instead ran headfirst into a monster—a human-shaped tyrannosaur, brimming with dragon-like vitality. With just two fingers, Su Yu snapped a steel staff reinforced with alloy. Staring at the killer’s stash of stolen cash—a staggering quarter-million dollars—he showed a corporate-sincere smile: “Thanks for the pre-exam gift pack, Mr. Zhao! I’m gonna go re-invest this!” Three days later, at the National Martial Arts College Entrance Exam, while everyone else struggled just to reach the passing line, Su Yu threw a single punch—and more than a thousand vitality points literally detonated the entire arena!
