After arriving in Central Province, many things had overturned Luo Chen's assumptions.
For one, powerful cultivators were as numerous as clouds across this continent, and clans stood everywhere.
Nascent Soul True Persons, once a rare sight, were everywhere.
He had persuaded himself that Central Province gathered the finest the Mountain Sea World had to offer.
But some of its high-level cultivators still left him grumbling inwardly.
They clearly possessed the profound cultivation of Golden Core or Nascent Soul, yet in conduct and bearing alike, they fell far short of high-level cultivators elsewhere.
Immature!
Those two words summed up Luo Chen's judgment of certain "young" high-level cultivators in Central Province.
Over time, he had come to understand why.
Central Province's cultivators had known peace for so long that they tended to be carefree and detached. Even when they competed, they usually settled it across a small Go board. They were nothing like a "mud-footed nobody" like Luo Chen, whose life had never had anything to do with clear winds and bright moons, only flashing blades and swords, blood and slaughter.
These cultivators of Central Province resembled the immortals in storybooks: free of calamity and struggle, untouched by hardship, cultivating at their leisure.
But that lack of tempering had left them with high cultivation and none of the bearing to match.
Luo Chen did not know whether this way of cultivation was good or bad for a cultivator. Either way, he would never experience it. If he wanted to reach the summit of this world, he had to climb there one solid step at a time.
Of course, Luo Chen knew the Heaven Origin Dao Sect's privileged geniuses had their merits.
They were exceptionally gifted, and they had grown up amid competition within both sect and clan. Their character was not poor.