Seventh-Tier Martial Immortal, a Hundred Lifetimes of Reincarnation
At this, Chen Du looked toward the carved beams, painted rafters, and upturned eaves deep within Duke Tianyuan's Estate.
There, the lights blazed, wine scented the air, music played, and people laughed and made merry.
Where he was, it was cold enough for him to hear his own teeth chatter.
The scorn and humiliation Ning Chuan had suffered since childhood had also become a towering fury buried in his heart, with nowhere to vent it.
Then the panel continued to appear:
[Name: Chen Du] [Cultivation: Sixth Tier evolver, Martial Dao path: Star-Pressing Realm / Sixth Tier evolver, factor path: late stage of the Restriction Realm] [Current status: true spirit descended] [Talent 1: World's Spiritual Endowment Level: Lv2 (1/4) Ability 1: Infinite Awakening Lv2 (1/4) (expandable) [Talent 2: Myriad Worlds Traversal Level: Lv2 (1/4) Ability 1: Gate of Traversal Lv2 (1/4) (expandable) [Talent 3: Divine Revelation Reading Level: Lv3 (2/8) Ability 1: Martial Arts Creation Lv8 (23/248) (expandable) [Talent 4: Achieving the Dao Through Anger Level: Lv3 (4/8) Ability 1: Becoming an Immortal Through Anger Lv10 (613/998) (expandable)] [Talent 5: Stunning Everyone with a Single Cry Level: Lv3 (2/8) Ability 1: Lie Dormant Lv7 (93/248) (expandable)]
After reading it, Chen Du began weighing his options more carefully.
It seemed he would have to traverse many worlds to grind up those talents that were difficult to improve.
As long as he successfully traversed a world, he was guaranteed to profit without a loss.
But reality soon pulled him back from the pleasure his talents had brought him.
It had to be said, Ning Chuan's plight was truly miserable.
The duchess had not only abused him on a regular basis, but also laced his food with a slow-acting poison that had ravaged his martial meridians.
They were in tatters, some severed and others blocked.
Ning Chuan saw cultivating the Martial Dao as his only hope of rising above his station, but he couldn't even manage the most basic breathing exercises, much less cultivate. He could only let the duchess do as she pleased with him.
Of course, Ning Chuan had fallen into such a miserable state because of the duke's indifference and disregard as well.
But ruined martial meridians were easy enough for Chen Du to fix!
Besides, he was also very interested in the Martial Dao cultivation realms of the Spirit Martial Realm.
Martial Dao cultivation in the Spirit Martial Realm was divided into seven ranks.
Seventh-Rank Martial Artists opened their martial meridians and tempered their sinews and bones. It was the first threshold of cultivation.
Sixth-Rank Martial Generals could project true qi outside their bodies and take an enemy general's head in the midst of ten thousand soldiers. They were already considered powerhouses in their own right.
Fifth-Rank Martial Marshals could turn true qi into force that extended dozens of zhang beyond their bodies, splitting mountains and shattering stone.
Fourth-Rank Martial Kings possessed all manner of abilities. Chen Du judged them comparable to those in the Transcendence Realm and even the Heavenly Human Saint Tier.
Third-Rank Martial Emperors could also condense Martial Dao manifestations, and every move they made could change the color of heaven and earth. He likewise judged them comparable to Heavenly Humans.
Second-Rank Martial Gods had already developed this world's Martial Dao nearly to its limit. Their fist intent reached the divine; on closer consideration, he judged them comparable to those in the Star-Pressing Realm.
Now came the main event. Above Martial Gods were First-Rank Martial Immortals, who entered the Dao through martial arts. Their mortal martial bodies transformed into something extraordinary, and they could determine cause and effect! They had lifespans of three hundred years, could overturn rivers and seas, and were capable of anything.
By Chen Du's estimate of Blue Star's evolutionary system, someone at the Martial Immortal Peak Stage was definitely beyond the sixth tier—at least seventh tier to start!
And Duke Tianyuan, Ning Shanyue, was at the Martial Immortal Peak Stage.
This body's birth father was one of the people on this land closest to the Heavenly Dao.
But so what!
To Duke Tianyuan, Ning Chuan was merely a concubine's son whose martial meridians had been ruined. In his eyes, he was probably less important than the stone lion at the estate gates.
Moreover, the Spirit Martial Realm also had a lineage of immortal cultivators, standing alongside the seven ranks of the Martial Dao.
Immortal cultivators progressed through seven realms: Qi Refining, Foundation Establishment, Core Formation, Nascent Soul, Deification, Void Refinement, and Body Integration. They followed the orthodox path of absorbing the spiritual qi of heaven and earth and condensing a golden core and primordial spirit.
Although the Motian Sect disciple Chen Du had met on Blue Star also cultivated the Immortal Dao, it was nothing like the immortal cultivators of the Spirit Martial Realm.
The other party had clearly been at Qi Refining, yet his strength was enough to rival someone at Deification. He must have followed an immortal cultivation path with a higher Divine Status.
In other words, the realm names were exactly the same, but they were entirely different things.
And Duke Tianyuan's Estate, where he now resided, was one of the foremost powers of the Martial Dao.
A duke's estate overseen by someone at the Martial Immortal Peak Stage was a behemoth of note throughout the entire Great Sheng Dynasty.
The original owner, Ning Chuan, was a discarded pawn, forgotten in a corner of that behemoth.
With the martial meridians in his body ruined, he couldn't even become a Seventh-Rank Martial Artist, much less cultivate immortality.
For ordinary people in this world, having their martial meridians ruined meant the complete severance of their path of Martial Dao cultivation.
But to Chen Du, although this body's martial meridians were indeed broken, the Martial Canon contained a secret technique called Reverse Meridians.
He had created it in passing back then. Its principle was to use severed meridians as the foundation of a formation, gathering scattered true qi back together and opening a new path out of a dead end.
The technique was extraordinarily dangerous for anyone else; only powerhouses at the Heaven-Human Realm or above could attempt it.
But his true spirit now carried insights from his cultivation in two Sixth Tier paths. Regrowing his severed meridians might not be beyond him.
Although this body currently had no true qi at all and didn't even qualify as seventh rank, his insights into those realms were like a spark. As long as the spark remained, it was only a matter of time before the fire burned again.
First he would stay alive and heal his injuries, then break the black hands reaching for him, one finger at a time!
Duchess or not, he would kill her!
As for Duke Tianyuan, at the seventh-tier Peak Stage, he would have to take his time planning.
The next day, footsteps sounded outside the courtyard gate.
A maid in blue cloth clothes came in carrying a wooden tray. On it were a bowl of coarse rice, a dish of yellowing vegetable leaves, and half a bowl of cold soup with specks of oil floating on top.
She was seventeen or eighteen, with her hair arranged in the twin-looped buns worn by the estate's low-ranking maids.
The maid stopped at the doorway without entering. She set the tray on the threshold, her voice full of impatience. "Hey, time to eat."
She didn't look Chen Du in the eye. Her gaze swept around the dilapidated room, and she curled her lip and turned to leave. After two steps, she looked back and added, "Leave the bowl outside when you're done. Don't expect me to come back and collect it.
"It's bad luck just coming to this dump."
As she spoke, she covered her nose with her sleeve, as though she had smelled something foul.
Chen Du ignored her.
Others' attitudes toward him didn't concern Chen Du, either.
Hearing her, he went out, picked up the rice bowl, and ate with his head down, without so much as looking at the maid.
The rice was coarse and hard, mixed with half-cooked husks that rasped between his teeth, and the vegetable leaves tasted a little sour.
Even so, Chen Du wolfed it down, shoveling in mouthful after mouthful at a furious pace. In the end, he scraped every last grain from the bottom of the bowl.
This body had gone hungry for too long. With every mouthful, his empty stomach felt as though it were on fire.
The maid watched him eat, gave a derisive snort, and left with a swish of her sleeves.
Chen Du put down the bowl, wiped his mouth, and resumed sitting cross-legged, closing his eyes.
The meal was finished.
Next came the same thing as before: he still had to survive.
His first goal was to regain his Sixth Tier Peak Stage strength as quickly as possible.