To other people, no matter how powerful a Qi Refining Realm cultivator was, they were still an existence to be looked up to—visible, yet out of reach.
For an ordinary family, producing a Qi Refining Realm cultivator took more than just several generations of hard work. What mattered more was an opportunity, namely Immortal Destiny.
Without Immortal Destiny, no matter how much you said, it was all useless.
But was Immortal Destiny really so easy to obtain?
Even the Zhou Family had managed to support only one Qi Refining Realm cultivator over the years.
Immortal Destiny was hard to come by. That was no empty saying.
But for the Yu Family, Immortal Destiny was already within arm's reach—or rather, they had already grasped most of it.
They only had to wait for Yu Dashan to reach Perfection of Fetal Movement before he could seize Immortal Destiny and break through to the Qi Refining Realm.
But the cruel scene they had just witnessed had made it glaringly clear what it meant for life to be as fragile as grass, and for fate to be fickle.
If they had been even a little slower just now, and failed to reach the shore in time, they might have been among the dead. And even if their family had Immortal Destiny, what use would it have been then?
Perhaps it was their father, guarding the family home, who had blessed them and let them escape disaster.
Even though their faces were blank now, they couldn't stop the lingering fear in their hearts.
They had been only that close.
But beyond his lingering fear, Yu Dashan felt even more longing for the power of Qi Refining Realm cultivators.
To be honest, this was his first time seeing a Qi Refining Realm cultivator act from such close range. Even a casual strike had made someone at Fetal Movement Major Accomplishment seem no sturdier than paper.
And the Water Origin Turtle, which was likewise on par with the Qi Refining Realm, had only to release its aura to leave him struggling to breathe.
No wonder one had to reach the Qi Refining Realm to truly count as a cultivator.
Meanwhile, Old Man Yu had already shut the gate. He was carrying the stones piled in the courtyard and building another ring around the Elm Tree, planning to shield the little tree as well.
He wasn't sure whether it would help, but doing something was better than doing nothing.
Looking at the branches and leaves that had already poked slightly above the wall, Old Man Yu wondered whether to trim them or build the wall higher.
In the end, he chose the latter.
After working for half the day, Old Man Yu looked at the work he had mostly finished and breathed slightly hard.
"Little Tree, do you think Dashan and the others have reached the Blessed Land yet? I wonder if they've run into any danger along the way."
Alone, Old Man Yu could only ease his worries by talking to the little tree in front of him.
His three sons hadn't gone thousands of miles away, but with them out of sight, it was hard not to worry.
Especially after last night's sudden storm...
At the thought, Old Man Yu lifted his head.
The sky still looked gloomy. There was no sun, and the temperature had dropped considerably with it.
At this rate, in a few days at most, the water in the courtyard's vat would probably freeze. By then, even the soil in the Spirit Field would harden.
So before the ground froze, he had to secretly dig out some more soil from the Spirit Field and give his family's Rare Species little tree a stronger foundation.
Otherwise, by the time the weather turned bitterly cold and the Black Annihilation Wind Disaster began to blow, it would be too late.
When that time came, he would have no choice but to hide in the cellar.
Just thinking of the Black Annihilation Wind Disaster's terrifying ability to strip away life made him shudder.
Because when he was young, he had experienced that feeling himself.
Of course, it hadn't been because he lacked Spirit Stones and stayed home to experience it. Otherwise, he couldn't have lived to this day.
Whenever the Black Annihilation Wind Disaster came, the Blessed Land didn't close itself off completely. If there were no attacks from the Insect Race, some Insect Hunter Teams would briefly leave the Blessed Land to hunt insects in the surrounding area.
These Insect Hunter Teams would go out for at most half a day to a day at a time, then return to the Blessed Land to rest for several days. Even if the wind stole some of their lives, the cost was still within acceptable limits.
After all, the minimum requirement for joining an Insect Hunter Team was Fetal Movement Minor Accomplishment.
Basically, half a day outside was equivalent to losing a month of life.
Over the course of an entire wind-disaster season, they would lose at most two or three years of their lifespan. Compared with the Spirit Stones they gained, it wasn't an unacceptable price.
That was the real price of selling one's life.
Of course, that was assuming you survived. If you died, then it was all over.
After all, how could hunting the Insect Race not be dangerous?
The main force of an ordinary Insect Hunter Team was actually made up of those at Fetal Movement Major Accomplishment and Perfection of Fetal Movement.
Those at Perfection of Fetal Movement, especially, could resist the Black Annihilation Wind Disaster far better than those at Fetal Movement Minor Accomplishment.
Going by a half day at a time, they would lose only around ten days of their lifespan.
Back when Old Man Yu had taken refuge in the Blessed Land, he had accepted a few small jobs, going outside to help merchant caravans that specialized in purchasing insect corpses transport them.
Compared with hunting teams, transporting insect corpses was undoubtedly much safer, and many people chose to do it.
But he had strictly forbidden Yu Dashan from doing the same. Losing lifespan was, at its core, losing one's life force.
Anyone with ambitions of breaking through to the Qi Refining Realm took great care before reaching it. They couldn't replenish enough as it was, so why would they willingly sacrifice their lifespan?
Only those with no room left to advance, who were older and had little potential, yet wanted to earn resources for their children, would choose to risk it—those "old folks."
However, Old Man Yu had once heard that high-level cultivators could craft a kind of magical artifact. As long as one wore it, even an ordinary person caught in the Black Annihilation Wind Disaster could resist its life-stealing power.
Some great families often used this method to train their juniors.
But such magical artifacts were far too precious—even harder to obtain than Immortal Destiny. Forget ordinary people; even ordinary Qi Refining Realm cultivators couldn't get their hands on one.
It was precisely because he had once experienced the Black Annihilation Wind Disaster's life-stealing power that Old Man Yu knew how terrifying it was.
When you could clearly feel your life rapidly slipping away, the pressure and fear it brought were far harder to endure than a physical injury.
Hearing Old Man Yu's words, Yu An felt a stir in his heart, and the effects of the Divine Ability Town Protection surfaced once again.
[Town Protection]: An elm in the home, surplus year after year. It can slightly improve the fortune of the household and shelter its descendants.
Compared with when he had first acquired it, once he had grown to Juvenile Stage Two, the Divine Ability Town Protection had gained the ability to shelter descendants.
In theory, the household protected by his Town Protection was Old Man Yu's home. After all, he had grown right there in the man's house.
And the head of that household was Old Man Yu.
That meant Yu Dashan and his two brothers should count among those descendants.
Shelter descendants.
Did that mean he could, to some extent, improve their fortune and protect them?
Even if the improvement was slight, at a crucial moment, it might still turn disaster into good fortune.
One's life came first, fortune second, feng shui third.
Fortune here meant one's fate.
Fate was invisible and intangible, yet it truly existed.
Yu An believed that Divine Abilities were called Divine Abilities because they possessed extraordinary powers that defied common sense.
Since the effects of Town Protection were as described, it had to be able to help.
Especially in this cultivation world, where the more powerful a cultivator became, the more they could bring great power within themselves; even transcending the world wasn't impossible.
So even if Yu Dashan and his brothers really did encounter danger along the way, as long as it wasn't a situation where death was certain, his Divine Ability would definitely be able to help them in some way, however small.
As for the truth, perhaps he would find out when the three Yu brothers returned next year.
After gathering his thoughts, Yu An watched Old Man Yu get back to work and sank into his own world once again.
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