Beside the outer martial arts training ground, Chen Du was wiping down an ordinary iron knife used for cutting spirit bamboo.
A familiar senior brother approached, his face somewhat grim, and said in a low voice, "Junior Brother Ning, have you heard? That old bastard, Lord Tianyuan of the Great Sheng Duke Tianyuan, has obtained another great opportunity, and I heard his Martial Dao have improved again. It's truly outrageous!"
Chen Du continued working with his hands, only glancing at him briefly to signal him to continue.
In fact, the name of the Great Sheng Duke Tianyuan was also very well-known in the Spirit Flourishing Sect.
The senior brother looked around and lowered his voice even further. "You haven't been in the outer sect for long, so you probably don't know this old scoundrel's background. This fellow was originally a woodcutter from the outskirts of the capital, with no connections whatsoever. His family was so poor that they couldn't even afford a decent pair of trousers."
But this person's luck was simply outrageous. When he went up the mountain to chop wood, he could kick out a piece of bone left by an ancient Martial Immortal. When he went down the river to catch fish, he could find half of a lost boxing manual.
He was chased and fell off a cliff, but instead of dying, he found a ten-thousand-year-old blood fungus at the bottom of the cliff. After eating it, he broke through Third Realms in one go.
Even more outrageous is that a Second-Rank Martial God died on the mountain where he chopped wood. Before he died, he wanted to find a successor, but everyone on the mountain looked down on him. However, he took a liking to this poor boy who hadn't even opened his martial meridians.
At this point, he complained, "Later, as he cultivated his way up, while others faced a life-or-death situation when breaking through, he broke through as easily as eating and drinking."
If he was missing any cultivation technique, he could stumble upon an opportunity just by going out for a stroll; if he was stuck at any bottleneck, he could even comprehend the Dao in his dreams after taking a nap. With such luck, he managed to cultivate to the Martial Immortal Peak Stage.
"These days, which of the Martial General in the court doesn't curse him behind his back? But who dares to say a word against him to his face? Just because of this incredible luck, he can still overshadow my Spirit Flourishing Sect. It's truly... there's nowhere to reason with him."
After listening, Chen Du nodded and continued wiping his knife.
Seeing that he had no reaction, the senior brother assumed that he was a novice who didn't know anything, sighed twice, and left. Chen Du sheathed his sword and looked at the Spirit Flourishing Sect in the distance, but his mind was already racing. Duke Tianyuan Ning Shanyue Martial Immortal Peak Stage with heaven-defying luck, and he would have a series of fortuitous encounters every now and then.
It would be too difficult to catch up with such an enemy through hard work alone!
This is also why he left the Duke's mansion.
Given Ning Shanyue's incredible luck, he's the one who'll most likely die.
After all, the world he is currently in is the Spirit Martial Realm.
A poor woodcutter, with no background or master, somehow managed to have incredible luck and peacefully cultivate to the Martial Immortal Peak Stage.
This isn't some extraordinary talent; it's like God has been feeding them to them.
He would encounter extraordinary events every few days, events that most people might never experience in their lifetime.
This kind of person is not only terrifyingly strong, but what's even more troublesome is that he has a "fate" that inspires despair.
You could kill him ten times, and he might escape nine times due to some incredibly absurd coincidence.
It's impossible to kill him unless his life force is completely exhausted.
Fortunately, I didn't make a move rashly in the manor.
That night, he did not go to the back mountain to cultivate. Instead, he sat on the bed in the stone house outside the gate, staring at the moon outside the window and thinking about the matter over and over again.
Luck is an elusive and intangible thing, yet it is terrifyingly real. The Spirit Martial Realm is Seventh Tier world, and the rules of Seventh Tier world must be more complete than those of the Heavenly Human Realm.
Since fortune truly exists, there must be traces to follow, and there must be ways to steal, destroy, or deplete it.
The Spirit Flourishing Sect was able to contend with the Great Sheng Dynasty for so many years, and it was not just because a few ancestors held on.
He must enter the inner gate and the scripture pavilion as soon as possible to find a solution.
However, outer disciples are not allowed to enter the inner sect's scripture pavilion.
Fortunately, with his current Void Refinement stage, it would be incredibly easy for him to pretend to be a genius in the outer sect.
But that would be too conspicuous; he didn't want anyone to associate him with the Ning Family's runaway third young master.
Disguise is the only way. Use the most inconspicuous method to slowly reveal your above-average talent, and then find an opportunity to become an inner disciple.
He closed his eyes again, his breathing gradually becoming deeper, and the Void Refinement Mana and the Second-Rank Martial God Power within his body proceeded in parallel without conflict.
Outside the window, the evening bell of the Spirit Flourishing Sect rang out from the direction of the main hall, deep and resonant, echoing through the mountains.
In the blink of an eye, a century has passed!
Chen Du has spent a full hundred years in the Spirit Martial Realm.
A century is but five days on Blue Star.
Meanwhile, [Divine Revelation Reading] continues to exert its strength.
A century has passed in the blink of an eye.
[In the first twenty years, you worked as an outer sect servant, keeping a low profile, and read through all the basic outer sect techniques of the Spirit Flourishing Sect, from miscellaneous scriptures to array symbols, from pill formulas to sword techniques, without being picky.]
Late at night in the back mountain, he repeatedly tested his Martial Dao True Essence and magical power against each other, but he could never truly merge the two.
Both First-Rank Martial Immortal and a cultivator at the peak of the Body Integration Stage are blocked from reaching the Sixth Tier Peak Stage by an invisible door. You've pondered this for twenty years without finding the way, and can only continue accumulating experience.
[In the second twenty years, you have entered the inner sect and become an inconspicuous disciple who transmits skills. The inner sect's scripture pavilion has opened the bottom few rows of bookshelves to him.]
You read voraciously, studying the myriad arts of immortal cultivation, the essentials of formations, and the basics of alchemy, but the more you read, the more you feel as if there is a layer of mist surrounding it.
You vaguely feel you've grasped something, yet you always slip through your fingers just before it becomes clear. Martial Dao and cultivation, two great paths, how can they be unified? He pondered this for forty years, yet still falls short by a hair's breadth.
[In the third twenty years, you will have become an inner sect Golden Core cultivator. You will not be conspicuous, but you will no longer be the lowest-level servant.]
You begin to delve into the deeper scriptures of the Spirit Flourishing Sect. One day, in a tattered ancient travelogue, you read a sentence: "The path is divided into two, though different, they lead to the same destination. Those who enter the Seven Realms do not cultivate power, but rather cultivate 'Oneness'."
You were struck dumb, like a bolt of lightning, standing frozen in front of the bookshelf all night, pondering for sixty years, and finally found your direction.
[In the fourth twenty years, you are still stuck at the Peak Stage the Void Refinement and the Peak Stage the Second-Rank Martial God, but you are no longer anxious. During the day, he works as an ordinary inner disciple in the Spirit Flourishing Sect, and at night he studies Martial Canon in the back mountain.]
You lay out all the worlds and power systems you've experienced in your sea of consciousness, fusing them all into one. This process is extremely slow, but you have plenty of time; eighty years will pass in the blink of an eye.
[You spent a full hundred years on the fifth twenty-year period. You sat at the foot of that century-old cliff on the back mountain, opened your eyes, and smiled at the heavens and earth.]
[Deduction complete... "Martial Canon: Martial Immortal Chapter" and "Martial Canon: Body Integration Chapter"]
[You have broken through the Sixth Tier limit and can break through to the Seventh Tier. Do you wish to proceed?]
Chen Du closed his eyes, sensing the subtle changes.
Outside the stone house, a hundred beasts roared from the back mountain, and purple clouds rose from the east in the sky, but he suppressed them ten feet above his head, not letting them escape in the slightest.