In the cultivation room, Meng Nan opened his eyes.
There was no one else around him this time. The place felt especially desolate.
"What year is it now?"
Meng Nan lowered his head and saw that his hair was gray at the ends and his hands were withered. He immediately summoned the information panel—
Name: Meng Nan Lifespan: 0/8 Faction: Qingtian Market Cultivation: Fetal Breath Contemplation Inner Breath: 90 Root Bone: 1 Techniques: Thunder Illumination Scripture, Fifth Layer Spells: Spirit Wandering Steps (proficient), Pine Wind Swordplay (proficient), Blood Arrow Secret Technique (skilled)) Skills: None Death Log: Available
[Death Log]-- [Name: Meng Nan] [Age at death: 82] [Cause of death: Lifespan depleted; died peacefully without illness] [Cultivation before death: True Qi Stage, Body Cleansing Realm] [Rewind: Two months]
"I actually lived to be eighty-two in this life?"
Meng Nan looked at the [Death Log], a wave of delight washing over him.
He had died at thirty in each of his first two lives, nearly making him think that thirty was fated to be a year of calamity for him.
Now it seemed that wasn't the case.
Hadn't he lived to eighty-two in this life?
And his cultivation had reached the Body Cleansing Realm of the True Qi Stage. That was already the second stage of the True Qi Stage; one more step would take him to the True Essence Stage.
"Eighty-two years old."
"Body Cleansing in the True Qi Stage."
"I must have gained a lot in this life!"
Meng Nan had a feeling.
But the first thing he needed to do now was figure out what the outside world was like.
He could see clearly that the "Faction" entry on the information panel had once read "Cha Mountain Cave," but now it had become "Qingtian Market."
A lot must have happened over these six decades.
"I'll go take a look."
Meng Nan rose and opened the door.
Qingtian Mountain, Qingtian Market.
The four peak True Essence cultivators—Qian Yu, Chen De, Wang An, and Chu Zhongliang—gathered together. Zhao Xiaoshuang was also in attendance.
Time flowed on.
Six decades had passed. Both Qian Yu and Zhao Xiaoshuang had gradually grown old—
Their wrinkles had deepened.
Their hair had turned white.
Even their eyes had grown somewhat cloudy, no longer clear and bright as they had been in their youth.
These were the marks of time.
Qian Yu looked at Zhao Xiaoshuang, her voice slightly hoarse. "How likely is Junior Brother Meng to break through to the True Essence Stage during this seclusion?"
"Not very likely."
Though Zhao Xiaoshuang was already over eighty and showed her age, her back remained straight. Her sword was always at her side, and she still carried a sharpness about her.
Nearby,
Wang An sighed. "Master has cultivated for many years and forced his way through the bottleneck several times, leaving behind many hidden injuries and shortening his lifespan. If he can't break through this time—"
He knew that Master Meng Nan had little chance of breaking through this time.
To advance from True Qi to True Essence, one needed to be in peak condition to break through in a single push. The older one got, the harder the breakthrough became.
His master was utterly spent; there was no hope.
Wang An felt a pang of sorrow.
He had followed his master and cultivated by his side since childhood, receiving his guidance and advancing by leaps and bounds—he had entered the Inner Qi Stage before he was seventeen and reached the True Qi Stage at twenty.
Then he had been sent to cultivate in Tianlin Cave, where he had been expected to reach the True Essence Stage before turning forty.
Then disaster struck.
Tianlin Cave changed hands.
Wang An left Tianlin Cave with his master and the others, traveling fifty thousand li to settle on Qingtian Mountain. Starting with a few bricks and tiles, they had gradually built a modest market town.
In the blink of an eye,
the moment of parting in life and death had arrived.
"True Qi."
"True Essence."
"In the end, we're still mortals, unable to defy Heaven's will!"
Wang An sighed.
The atmosphere in the hall was heavy.
In the end, Zhao Xiaoshuang was the first to speak. She looked at everyone. "Life and death are in Heaven's hands! There's no point dwelling on it now. Let's discuss business. Next month, the market's third spirit field will be ready. We had planned to use it to cultivate spirit medicines, but we happened to receive a batch of Yellow Bud Rice seeds some time ago. I'm wondering whether we should plant this spirit rice instead. What does everyone think?"
The meeting returned to its proper course.
At home,
Meng Nan came out of the cultivation room.
It was a modest residence with a dozen or so rooms and seven or eight servants. Every one of them addressed Meng Nan as "Master" when they saw him.
Meng Nan merely nodded without replying.
He looked through the rooms one by one.
The first one he found was the bedroom.
The familiar furnishings suggested that this was where he and Zhao Xiaoshuang lived. Looking at the objects and household items in the room, he could see traces of Zhao Xiaoshuang's life.
That put Meng Nan at ease.
Then he picked up the bronze mirror on the table and looked at himself. Compared to when he was young, he was a little thinner, and his hair had long since turned gray. He looked like a vigorous old man in good health.
At least, that was how he had looked before.
Now that Meng Nan had returned to life after dying, his body had gone back to the state it had been in at the moment he had entered reality. His skin and hair were only outward appearances; inside, he was still healthy.
Of course,
his cultivation had come back with him too.
"Fetal Breath Contemplation."
"Body Cleansing in the True Qi Stage."
"I wonder if I can catch up in eight years this time."
Meng Nan was glad, but he also felt the pressure.
Even though his true realm was already the Inner Qi Minor Heavenly Cycle, he still had a major realm and several minor realms to cross before reaching Body Cleansing in the True Qi Stage.
It wouldn't be easy.
Meng Nan glanced around the bedroom, looked at himself in the mirror, and searched briefly, but didn't find any of his diaries or notes.
After more than sixty years, his diaries and notes must have accumulated enough to fill several rooms.
There wasn't enough space in the bedroom.
Meng Nan went out and searched again.
There weren't many rooms in the house, so it didn't take long to find them.
Sure enough, one room was lined with boxes, each marked with a number. The year and month were clearly noted on them.
The records on cultivation and geography were also sorted into separate categories and neatly organized.
It would probably take a long time to read through everything.
"Sixty-four years!"
"I've got plenty to read!"
It was a happy problem. In the end, Meng Nan felt more anticipation than anything else.
Following the labels on the boxes, Meng Nan first found the geography records and summaries.
When he opened the box, the topmost item was a general overview.
"South Frontier."
"Cha Mountain."
"Sky-Scraping Cliff."
"Shepherd Ridge."
"Tianlin Cave."
"Eight newly built cities."
"Ghost Mother Mountain, Qingtian Mountain."
Meng Nan spread out the maps attached to the geographical overview, one by one.
The first was the [South Frontier Map].
The map covered a vast area, but it was far from detailed. Most of it was a blank expanse, representing unknown regions.
Only a small area in the middle was marked, with [Cha Mountain], [Sky-Scraping Cliff], [Shepherd Ridge], and [Ghost Mother Mountain] labeled on it.
These four places seemed to be on the same level, each occupying one of the cardinal directions.
[Cha Mountain] lay to the west.
[Sky-Scraping Cliff] lay to the north.
[Shepherd Ridge] lay to the east.
[Ghost Mother Mountain] lay to the south.
But those were only rough directions. The four places were actually connected in various ways; if one looked beyond their borders, one might consider them a single whole.
But Meng Nan was among them, so he divided them more finely.
[Tianlin Cave] was in the northeast of [Cha Mountain], while [Qingtian Mountain] was in the west of [Ghost Mother Mountain]. The two were fairly close, though the map marked the distance as "fifty thousand li."
Looking at the scale in the lower-left corner and making a quick estimate, Meng Nan realized that each of the four places probably stretched hundreds of thousands, perhaps even a million li.
"That big?!"
Meng Nan was a little startled.
Those four places alone covered such a vast area. Yet when he looked at the entire South Frontier, they seemed to occupy only a small corner of it.
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