Just past noon.
After waking, Bai Yujun raised her snake head and looked back at her own serpentine body. After shedding her skin, her length had grown from twelve meters to fifteen, an increase of three meters that had also advanced her cultivation by one level. She was now equivalent to a human at the Foundation Establishment Early Stage.
Only after muddling along for so long had she learned that cultivation levels were divided into several stages: Qi Refining, Foundation Establishment, Golden Core, and all sorts of stages beyond that.
Newly transformed spirits and monsters were equivalent to humans in the Qi Refining Stage, and the stages afterward were roughly the same. Only, each level was divided into early, middle, late, and complete stages.
Humans really had it easy. Take Xu Ling and Yang Mu, for example—they had already reached the Foundation Establishment Late Stage at just sixteen or seventeen. It was practically cheating.
Bai Yujun had muddled along for sixty-seven or sixty-eight years before painstakingly crawling her way into the Foundation Establishment Realm. The further one went, the harder it became. Just because you could take human form did not mean your body would become the same as a human's. Your true body was still your real self.
She landed and transformed into human form, picked up her old shed snakeskin, and headed for Qingxu Palace.
After a year away, Qingxu Palace was still the same as ever, as though even after a thousand or ten thousand years, nothing would change. Before the statues, incense smoke drifted faintly toward the heavens, while the bronze bells rang clear and refreshing.
Strangely, Yu Rong was nowhere to be seen, nor were Xu Ling and Yang Mu. In the air...
She sniffed carefully. Why were there so many unfamiliar scents? The smells