In the seventh year, after celebrating your sixth birthday, you officially began practicing martial arts.
What you practiced was the Body Tempering chapter of your own Sun Swallowing Divine Art.
You had created it specifically for yourself in The Smiling, Proud Wanderer world by combining numerous body-tempering martial arts.
The Sun Swallowing Divine Art contained not only the Body Tempering chapter, but also Houtian and Xiantian chapters. It was a complete, high-grade Xiantian-level cultivation method progressing from the lowest level to the highest.
Because you had created the cultivation method yourself, you had long since comprehended it to the Perfection Level.
With a cultivation method at the Perfection Level, perfectly suited to you, along with sufficient nutrition and the dual boosts from the talents Eating is a Blessing and Strength Multiplier, your cultivation proceeded as if aided by the heavens, and your progress was astonishingly fast.
In the eighth year, after a year of arduous cultivation, you successfully raised your strength to the peak of the early Body Tempering Realm.
Your family's business was flourishing, and your parents began planning to open another inn, making them even busier and leaving them with less and less time to care about you. They merely found you a private tutor and had you begin studying the Four Books and Five Classics.
In the ninth year, because you needed to attend school, your cultivation speed slowed somewhat. Even so, you successfully raised your strength to the middle stage of the Body Tempering Realm.
At the end of the same year, your family's inn officially opened. It was named Fulai Inn and stood opposite your family's restaurant.
Your parents consequently became even busier, and paid even less attention to you.
At the beginning of the eleventh year, your diligent cultivation finally paid off. Your strength increased again, and you successfully broke through to the late stage of the Body Tempering Realm.
That same year, you successfully passed the county examination. Although you had only ranked eleventh, you became a famous little prodigy throughout the area, which delighted your parents.
In the twelfth year, while studying and cultivating at the same time, you successfully raised your strength to the peak of the late stage of the Body Tempering Realm.
That same year, Emperor Kangxi, Aisin Gioro Xuanye, formally took personal control of the government at the age of only fourteen.
At the end of the thirteenth year, your strength advanced again, and you successfully broke through to the Body Tempering Realm's Perfection Level.
That year, you also successfully passed the prefectural examination. Although you had only ranked eighteenth, you obtained the qualification to take the academy examination, which delighted your parents.
However, your heart was not set on this. You took the examinations merely to placate your parents; your focus remained on martial cultivation.
At the beginning of the fourteenth year, after reaching the Body Tempering Realm's Perfection Level, you officially began cultivating the simplified version of the Purple Cloud Divine Skill.
It took you only one day to condense your first strand of internal energy and successfully open your Dantian Sea of Qi.
You consequently broke through to the early Houtian Realm.
That same year, Emperor Kangxi successfully eliminated the powerful minister Oboi and seized complete control of the government.
In the fifteenth year, after cultivating the Purple Cloud Divine Skill for more than a year, your strength surged. You successfully opened nine of the Twelve Meridian Channels, and your strength consequently broke through to the peak of the late Houtian Realm.
At the beginning of the sixteenth year, you opened three more of the Twelve Meridian Channels. Your strength consequently broke through to the peak of the Houtian Realm, leaving only one final step before reaching the Innate Realm.
Two months later, after accumulating enough Innate True Qi, you successfully opened the Ren Meridian among the Eight Extraordinary Meridians. You consequently formally broke through to the Xiantian Realm, despite being not yet fifteen years old.
After formally breaking through to the Xiantian Realm, your body began undergoing earth-shaking changes under the strengthening effects of your Innate True Qi.
Your martial aptitude, physical strength, reaction speed, mental processing speed... everything rapidly improved with the assistance of your Xiantian qi.
As your mental processing speed continued to improve, reading became effortless for you. You could even innovate upon old ideas and draw inferences from one example to understand many others.
By this point, your cultivation had entered a regular rhythm. You only needed to bask in the sunlight every day to continue growing stronger.
Bored, you decided to try the imperial examination path and see how far a Xiantian expert like you could go.
That same year, relying on the powerful memory and mental processing speed of a Xiantian expert, you successfully passed the academy examination and achieved an excellent third-place ranking. You consequently became a student member, also known as a Scholar.
This was a great achievement that brought honor to your family. Your parents were so delighted that they could not sleep for three days. Your family's business also improved because you had become a Scholar, while the local ruffians who usually came to extort protection money vanished without a trace.
You rarely visited your family's restaurant or inn. If your father had not happily let the matter slip after you passed the examination, you would never have known that ruffians had dared to visit your family's restaurant and inn to collect protection money.
Otherwise, you had plenty of ways to make them disappear forever.
In the seventeenth year, while studying and cultivating at the same time, you successively opened the Du Meridian and Chong Meridian among the Eight Extraordinary Meridians. Your strength consequently broke through to the middle stage of the Xiantian Realm.
After your breakthrough, both the quantity and quality of the Innate True Qi within your body increased substantially.
This greatly increased your strength while also causing your body to once again be strengthened by the more powerful Innate True Qi within you.
In August of the same year, you took that year's provincial examination.
Because your memory and mental processing had become even stronger, you successfully passed the provincial examination and achieved an excellent seventh-place ranking, becoming a Recommended Scholar.
Compared with a Scholar, a Recommended Scholar held a far higher status. Not only could one exempt one's entire family from corvée labor and receive an annual stipend, one could also go to the Ministry of Revenue to select an official post—whether one could actually be selected was another matter—as well as enjoy numerous other privileges, such as not having to bow before officials and being exempt from corporal punishment.
Your parents also became superior to others because of your status, and your family's business consequently became even more prosperous.
At the beginning of the eighteenth year, while studying and cultivating at the same time, you once again opened the Dai Meridian among the Eight Extraordinary Meridians. Your strength consequently rose to the peak of the middle stage of the Xiantian Realm.
In March of the same year, you took that year's metropolitan examination and successfully made the list with your even stronger memory and mental processing speed, achieving an excellent fifth-place ranking and becoming an Imperial Student.
The following month, you took the palace examination and met the twenty-year-old Emperor Kangxi.
With ideas far ahead of this era, you were unexpectedly personally selected by the young Emperor Kangxi as the Top Scholar. You were appointed Hanlin Academy Compiler and granted an official rank of Sixth-Rank.
Although this surprised you greatly, this was merely the diversion you had chosen to pass the time during your otherwise boring cultivation, so you naturally did not refuse.
In May of the same year, you officially entered the Hanlin Academy and began working. Your primary duty was essentially that of the emperor's secretary.
However, you had never encountered this world's chosen one, Wei Xiaobao, in the imperial palace.
After making inquiries, you learned that Wei Xiaobao had been sent to attack Dragon Island the previous year. He had yet to return, and his life or death was unknown.
This reminded you that Wei Xiaobao should have been hunted by the Dragon Cult Leader around this time, forcing him to flee to Russia.
As far as you knew, he would not return to the capital until a year later.