Map! Change! [Please Keep Reading!]

He dug out the written records corresponding to this map.

"Just as I thought!"

Meng Nan quickly confirmed his guess.

Places like Cha Mountain were indeed just one corner of the South Frontier. Beyond them lay vast territories. It was simply that with Meng Nan's cultivation, he could no longer travel farther or make contact with those places. He had only heard a few scattered rumors, most of them distorted. They were like a fog, and for now he still couldn't see through it.

He continued reading.

"Cha Mountain."

"Sky-Scraping Cliff."

"Shepherd Ridge."

Each of these three places was occupied by a different power.

Take Cha Mountain, for example.

It was divided into numerous separate caves, each controlled by a Qi Refining Immortal Master. Tianlin Cave was one of them, ruling a territory of thirty thousand li that included Yinlian Village and the Three Hundred Cave Villages.

"Tianlin Cave."

Seeing this, Meng Nan turned his attention to the second map.

This was a detailed map of Tianlin Cave. The label at the top said it was from the fortieth year of the Immortal Era. It marked Yinlian Village and the other cave villages.

There really were more than three hundred cave villages around Yinlian Village.

But they occupied only a small part of the southern region under Tianlin Cave's jurisdiction.

Beyond the mountains and rivers, there were seven more regions like the Three Hundred Cave Villages, some near and some far, some to the south and others to the north, surrounding Tianlin Mountain at the center.

"Around the eighteenth year of the Immortal Era, the Three Hundred Cave Villages had a population of three hundred thousand."

"By the fortieth year of the Immortal Era, the population had surged to nearly a million."

"Add in the other seven regions, and by the fortieth year of the Immortal Era, Tianlin Cave had nearly ten million people under its rule!"

But the land was still vast and sparsely populated.

Tianlin Cave stretched thirty thousand li from east to west and eighteen thousand li from north to south. Its total area was probably no smaller than all the land on Earth in his previous life.

With fewer than ten million people scattered across such a vast territory—and most of it made up of mountains and dense forests—it was even more sparsely populated than it seemed.

"Sparse is good."

"That means I'll have more room to move around."

Meng Nan felt this was good news for him.

If Tianlin Cave were densely populated and strictly controlled, with Qi Refining Immortal Masters looking down on everyone from above, Meng Nan would feel stifled, worried that he could be exposed at any moment.

But such a vast region, with so many uninhabited areas, gave him more room.

That was a good thing.

Thinking this, he continued reading.

This time, he looked at the map of Tianlin Cave from the fiftieth year of the Immortal Era.

On this map, the Three Hundred Cave Villages and the various settlements in the other regions had all faded into gray. In their place, eight cities had been built at carefully chosen sites, with Tianlin Cave at the center.

The Three Hundred Cave Villages had jointly built one city, called Angming City. It held a population of a million and was protected by two satellite cities.

It had taken ten years, from the fortieth to the fiftieth year of the Immortal Era, to complete them.

And not long after the eight cities of Tianlin, including Angming City, had been completed, news of the death of the Tianlin Immortal Master spread.

The rumor was that the Immortal Master had passed away six years earlier, in the forty-fourth year of the Immortal Era.

Tianlin Cave had built the cities to consolidate its strength and guard against unrest that might follow the Tianlin Immortal Master's passing.

As it turned out, that did no good at all.

When the Immortal Master from Sky-Scraping Cliff arrived, Zheng Shanpeng, the Immortal Master who had taken over Tianlin Cave, was the first to pack up and run.

More than a hundred True Origin cultivators from Tianlin Cave left with him.

As for Chen De, Wang An, Chu Zhongliang, and the others, who were still at the True Qi Stage at the time, they were all abandoned. With disaster at their door, everyone flew off in their own direction.

They had feared being held to account.

On top of that, with the Three Hundred Cave Villages gathered into one city, struggles over power and profit had grown more and more intense, and infighting had turned vicious.

They also knew little about the Immortal Master from Sky-Scraping Cliff.

At the time, quite a few Inner Qi, True Qi, and even True Origin cultivators fled Angming City.

Meng Nan and the others were among them.

They fled with their families in tow.

Setting out from Angming City in Tianlin Cave, they traveled southeast and eventually reached Ghost Mother Mountain, settling at one of its locations, Qingtian Mountain.

The two places were fifty thousand li apart.

They traveled in fits and starts.

They fled in the fiftieth year of the Immortal Era and didn't reach Qingtian Mountain until the fifty-fifth. They thought the place seemed all right, so they finally stopped there.

There was no need to mention the hardships along the way.

After more than twenty years of development, the group of outsiders had put down roots for good.

Ghost Mother Mountain had many Rogue Cultivators. There were also would-be cultivators who occasionally came from Sky-Scraping Cliff to the north, Cha Mountain to the southwest, and Shepherd Ridge to the east. Meng Nan and the others saw a business opportunity and built a market at Qingtian Mountain.

It had grown from a crude setup into something more complete.

Now Qingtian Market had reached a modest scale and gained a modest reputation. It had established itself and entered a period of healthy growth.

Given enough time, if they could produce a Qi Refining Immortal Master, the market might rise to another level and become a small cultivation sect.

Using the successive maps as a thread, Meng Nan quickly pieced together the course of events over the past sixty-odd years and formed a general impression.

He sorted out the timeline—

In the thirty-second year of the Immortal Era, Tianlin Cave cultivated its first Qi Refining Immortal Master, Zheng Shanpeng.

In the fortieth year of the Immortal Era, Tianlin Cave began building eight cities, and the Three Hundred Cave Villages merged to form Angming City.

In the forty-fourth year of the Immortal Era, the Tianlin Immortal Master passed away, and Zheng Shanpeng took over.

In the fiftieth year of the Immortal Era, the eight cities were completed. News of the Tianlin Immortal Master's passing leaked out, and Sky-Scraping Cliff and Cha Mountain officially went to war. The newly appointed Tianlin Immortal Master, Zheng Shanpeng, fled.

That same year, Meng Nan, Zhao Xiaoshuang, and their family left Angming City and Tianlin Cave, along with their friend Qian Yu, six of Meng Nan's disciples who had once cultivated in Tianlin Cave—Chen De, Wang An, Chu Zhongliang, and the others—and several friendly True Qi cultivators, including Feng Ying. The group headed east.

In the fifty-fifth year of the Immortal Era, they reached Qingtian Mountain and began building and running Qingtian Market.

And that brought them to the present.

It was now the eighty-second year of the Immortal Era.

"More than sixty years!"

"Enough to see too many things happen!"

As Meng Nan put the broad strokes in order, even the scraps of information on the maps gave him a sense of how tumultuous the past sixty years had been. He could imagine the upheaval of Tianlin Cave building eight cities in ten years.

Then came the clash between the two cultivation powers of Cha Mountain and Sky-Scraping Cliff. Their slightest movements had been enough to send Meng Nan and the others fleeing in panic, afraid they would be caught in the crossfire.

Meng Nan and the others had been only one group among many.

There had been plenty of people like them in Angming City.

Across all of Tianlin Cave, there had been even more.

And if one widened the view to regions as vast as Cha Mountain and Sky-Scraping Cliff, the number of people who had been frightened, affected, or caught in the fallout was beyond counting.

Even in the area around Qingtian Market alone, many Rogue Cultivators had fled from those two places.

"When immortals fight, mortals suffer."

Meng Nan sighed.

Fortunately, the war wouldn't break out until the fiftieth year of the Immortal Era. By then, he would likely have already reached the True Origin Stage in the real world—and perhaps even become a Qi Refining Immortal Master. He would have more means to protect himself.

Even during the upheaval of the fortieth year, when the cities were being built, Meng Nan's cultivation and standing wouldn't have been low.

He would have had some protection.

Besides, he still had at least twenty-two years. That was enough time to visit the future again several times, learn more about the major trends and smaller details, and face what was coming with greater composure.

With these thoughts in mind, Meng Nan wasn't in a hurry to look at the details. He put away the maps and prepared to check his cultivation progress over the years.

Just then,

the door swung open.

Meng Nan looked up and saw Zhao Xiaoshuang stride in. She, too, had grown visibly old, but she was more capable and spirited than ever—more so even than in his second life.

"Xiaoshuang."

Across time and space, husband and wife had met again.