It was precisely because Lin Qingyan was watching from the side that none of the cultivators present dared to challenge Gu Chengyin immediately.
It wasn’t that they didn’t want to. They simply didn’t dare.
All the cultivators of the Celestial Master’s Abode knew what Lin Qingyan was like.
Fairy Jingzhe was invincible among Golden Core cultivators.
Her record was unmatched, and her combat prowess was unstoppable.
More importantly, Lin Qingyan was famous for protecting her own.
She could beat, scold, or bully her people as she pleased, but no one else was allowed to lay a finger on them.
What was more, Gu Chengyin was not merely one of her people. He was her fiancé—the husband granted to her by imperial decree.
It could be said that if Gu Chengyin lost even a single hair, every cultivator present would have to be buried alongside it.
That was not an exaggeration or a metaphor. It was a fact.
Lin Qingyan really was capable of doing something like that.
She was Jingzhe of the Celestial Master’s Abode. Even if she killed a few of the Abode’s honored enshrinees, it would still be an internal matter of the Celestial Master’s Abode.
The news would never get out, much less affect the larger situation.
Therefore, even Emperor Luo would not do anything to her.
Besides, with Lin Qingyan’s current strength, killing a few Golden Core enshrinees truly would not be difficult.
Perfected Spirit Pine knew this just as well. Fine beads of sweat had already appeared on his forehead.
He hurriedly raised both hands and waved them vigorously in front of himself, his voice even taking on a slight stammer.
“Lord Jingzhe! I’m not here to challenge him! I just have a few questions!”
Only then did the golden lightning surrounding Lin Qingyan withdraw.
The tiny serpents of electricity crawled over her robes a few more times before silently sinking into the lightning patterns.
Lin Qingyan withdrew her gaze and let it fall once more upon Gu Chengyin.
The fleeting softness and pride in her eyes made Perfected Spirit Pine breathe a sigh of relief.
The terrifying pressure around him vanished at once.
Perfected Spirit Pine promptly pulled a crumpled handkerchief from his sleeve and wiped the cold sweat from his brow.
A moment ago, he had thought the spectacle today was wonderfully entertaining, and his appetite for gossip had left him itching all over.
Now, however, he wished he could slap himself twice. If only he had known, he never would have gotten involved.
He had nearly caused someone to die.
And for some reason, Perfected Spirit Pine felt that Lin Qingyan had grown even stronger.
Just being watched by her was enough to make the oppressive force feel heavier than before.
Could Lord Jingzhe have already reached the late Golden Core stage?
Was this cultivation speed even normal?
At that moment, Gu Chengyin spoke up.
“May I ask what questions Perfected Spirit Pine wishes to ask?”
Perfected Spirit Pine tucked the handkerchief back into his sleeve, then cautiously glanced toward Lin Qingyan.
After confirming that the golden lightning around her had indeed disappeared, he let out a long breath and once again put on his Maitreya-like smile.
“Junior Preceptor Gu, the Celestial Master’s Abode hasn’t seen a Grand Harmony Battle in five hundred years.”
Perfected Spirit Pine’s tone was no longer as languid as before. Instead, it carried a rare note of seriousness.
As he spoke, the sharp light in his tiny eyes—nearly squeezed shut by layers of fat—flickered brightly. He looked like an entirely different person from the slovenly old man he had seemed to be moments earlier.
“The previous challenger was also young, hot-blooded, and extraordinarily gifted, just like you.”
“He challenged every enshrinee of the Celestial Master’s Abode, fighting more than twenty battles in succession. In the end, however, he still failed to win his way to the finish.”
“He never became Grand Harmony either. Do you know why?”
Perfected Spirit Pine paused, but without waiting for Gu Chengyin to answer, continued on his own.
“Because the enshrinees of the Celestial Master’s Abode were not of one mind.”
“Some genuinely wanted to fight him. Some had been invited out of personal obligation. Others simply couldn’t be bothered to take the field.”
“But the rules were the rules. If he couldn’t defeat every enshrinee, he couldn’t become Grand Harmony.”
“Not a single one could be left out. So in the end, that challenger didn’t lose to strength. He lost to the hearts of men.”
Perfected Spirit Pine sighed and turned his gaze back to Gu Chengyin. His tone grew heavier than before.
“If Lord Jingzhe challenged them on your behalf, then with her strength, and with me smoothing things over behind the scenes, there would still be a ninety-nine percent chance of success.”
“But you actually intend to come yourself. Junior Preceptor Gu, I’m not looking down on you, but you are only at the Foundation Establishment stage.”
Perfected Spirit Pine placed heavy emphasis on the words “Foundation Establishment,” as though he wanted to chew them to pieces before spitting them out, forcing Gu Chengyin to understand their weight.
Gu Chengyin merely smiled.
He knew Perfected Spirit Pine was not deliberately belittling him, but kindly offering a warning.
This old enshrinee did not know him at all. He could easily have stood aside like everyone else and watched the spectacle.
Yet he had gone out of his way to step forward and say all this, which showed how honest and kindhearted he was.
After all, Foundation Establishment was still only Foundation Establishment.
In the cultivation world, the chasm between Foundation Establishment and the Golden Core realm was deeper than the gulf between mortals and cultivators.
No matter how powerful a Foundation Establishment cultivator was, he was still trapped in a mortal body.
No matter how weak a Golden Core cultivator was, he had already shed his mortal shell and undergone a fundamental transformation.
The difference between them was not something that could be bridged through technique, tactics, or sheer willpower.
It was a qualitative difference—a distinction between entirely different levels of life.
If Lin Qingyan were the one to take the challenge, then, just as Perfected Spirit Pine had said, she would have at least a ninety-nine percent chance of success.
With her strength, it would not be quite as easy as chopping vegetables, but neither would it take much effort.
But if it were Gu Chengyin, a cultivator at the peak of Foundation Establishment, then he had a ninety-nine percent chance of failure.
Never mind anything else—even the weakest enshrinee would be impossible for him to defeat.
After all, even the weakest enshrinee was still a Golden Core cultivator.
And as long as one had formed a Golden Core, one was no mere Foundation Establishment ant for a True Person to trample beneath his feet.
This was an ironclad rule that had stood unshaken in the cultivation world for countless millennia.
It was the law of Heaven itself, an insurmountable gulf that no one could cross.
“Perfected Spirit Pine speaks the truth.”
Gu Chengyin did not immediately contradict him. Instead, he sincerely acknowledged the other man’s point.
He even inclined his body slightly to show his respect for the old enshrinee.
That earnest attitude left Perfected Spirit Pine stunned.
He had already prepared himself to be challenged in return.
Young people were like that—especially young people who were exceptionally gifted. They hated being told they were incapable.
Perfected Spirit Pine had lived for nearly two hundred years and had seen far too many youths like that.
Tell them they were no good, and they would insist on proving they were.
Tell them they were only at Foundation Establishment, and they would insist on challenging someone in the Golden Core realm.
And the result?
Nine and a half out of ten would end up battered and bloodied. The remaining half would simply be lucky enough to have been stopped by their elders in time.
Perfected Spirit Pine had assumed Gu Chengyin would be one of them. He had not expected this young man to accept the truth so calmly.
But if Gu Chengyin understood this principle, why had he proposed a public challenge—and insisted on taking it himself?
It certainly wasn’t because Lin Qingyan was unwilling to fight. Perfected Spirit Pine could tell that Lin Qingyan’s feelings for Gu Chengyin ran deep.
Forget an ordinary Grand Harmony Battle. If Gu Chengyin so much as opened his mouth, Lin Qingyan might even resign as Jingzhe of the Celestial Master’s Abode on the spot.
For the first time, Perfected Spirit Pine truly found himself unable to see through the situation.
No matter how he looked at it, a Foundation Establishment cultivator could not defeat a Golden Core cultivator.
Even when it came to challenging someone above one’s level, there was no reason anyone could cross such an enormous gap.
What was more, Gu Chengyin was not facing one or two Golden Core cultivators, but every Golden Core enshrinee of the Celestial Master’s Abode.
s + Rent Collection Wealth】 At the start, he inherited a rundown house in the urban village from his grandfather. The house had no tenants, but the moment he was diagnosed with a terminal illness, a self-proclaimed empress from the Tianxuan Continent arrived as his first tenant. Ye Chuan soon discovered that with every new tenant moving in, not only did he receive massive daily payments, but he also obtained unique items related to their backgrounds. 【Acquired Bai Qianshuang’s related item: Tiger Strength Pill—dramatically enhances physical power!】 【Acquired Bai Qianshuang’s related item: Deer Blood Pill—significantly boosts vitality!】 …… From that day on, all sorts of bizarre tenants began appearing in the house: the empress from Tianxuan Continent, an apocalyptic sorceress from the Magic Realm, a mysterious scientific girl who fell through a spacetime rift… Every single day, he received strange, powerful items and endless money. Then one day, he suddenly realized—he had become invincible. Enough, enough! Stop giving me more!
ive and Ruthless] Before his transmigration, Ye Xuan was playing a game called "Severing Emotions to Attain the Dao." The game's core wasn't about leveling up by fighting monsters, but about conquering various "bad women" with wicked personalities and cold, fickle natures. There was only one method to conquer them: stay unwaveringly by their side, then die at a critical moment, driving them to madness after losing the protagonist. The higher their level of regret, the higher the player's score. To dominate the server, Ye Xuan conquered all the bad women. In the early stages, he showered them with boundless tenderness, only to choose to sacrifice himself for them later, making them weep bitterly and drown in regret. Among them were: Xia Lengyue, the unfaithful immortal wife who chased after powerful men and discarded her husband like trash. Ye Qingcheng, the Demonic Venerable of the Joyous Union Sect, who appeared pure and innocent but was, in reality, promiscuous. Wu Lingxiao, the Empress of the Great Xia Dynasty, who lusted after men and loved maintaining a harem. Bai Qiangu of the Endless Demonic Sect: a bloodthirsty mass murderer. However, when the protagonist transmigrated into the game world, he made a horrifying discovery. Eight hundred years had already passed. The bad women he had conquered had now each become deities and revered ancestors. Faced with the endless stream of toxic women coming for him, Ye Xuan could only rely on his god-tier acting skills to carve a path of survival through this world of treacherous women.
and couldn't return to the real world. Finally, I gave up and decided to go with the flow, only to discover that writing a diary could make me stronger. Since no one could read it, Su Luo wrote freely, daring to pen anything and everything. Female Lead #1: "Not bad. This diary helped me steal all the protagonist's opportunities. I just want to get stronger." Female Lead #2: "I don’t care about reaching the peak of the cultivation world. Right now, I just want to enjoy the chaos." Female Lead #3: "What? Everyone around me is a spy? I’m the Joker Demon Lord?" ... It’s so strange. Why is the plot completely off track, yet the ending remains the same? Are you all just messing with me?!
nd fell into a coma while saving his younger sister from an out-of-control car. He became a vegetable. No one knew that his consciousness had crossed into a world of cultivation. Over the course of sixty years, he began as the lowest kind of mine slave, struggling to survive amid mountains of corpses and seas of blood. By sheer chance, he eventually obtained the complete memories of a fallen Immortal King. Alchemy, medicine, formations, feng shui, physiognomy, artifact forging… Every great inheritance of the cultivation world was now his. But when he opened his eyes again, he discovered that ten full years had passed in the modern world. To pay for his treatment, his father had sold the family’s shop and house, leaving himself covered in lasting injuries and illness. His mother had cared for him day and night, and more than half of her hair had already turned white. His younger sister, who had been only fifteen back then, was now twenty-five. To help repay the family’s debts, she had been forced to lower her head and put on a smiling face in places of glittering lights and endless revelry. Only then did Chen Xuan understand that what he had lost was not merely ten years. He had lost the life his entire family was meant to have. The good news was that he had brought back the memories of an Immortal King’s entire lifetime. The bad news was that his soul had returned alone—his cultivation had not come with him. Spiritual energy was scarce, resources were depleted, and the modern world still had firearms, surveillance, capital, and laws. If he wanted to protect his family, break free from everyone’s control, and become truly invincible beneath the heavens, he would have to start all over again.
