In the 211th year of the Nanxun Calendar, on the ninth day of the first lunar month.
Inside the Chen Manor, a lively atmosphere filled the grounds, yet it lacked any chaotic rowdiness. The sounds of strings and woodwinds intertwined faintly with the echoes of laughter, and the guests wandering through the estate were either wealthy or noble, every last one an elegant scholar.
Outside the manor at this very moment, a considerable number of high-ranking officials and distinguished nobles had come to pay their respects, all waiting in line to present congratulatory gifts—a sight sufficient to demonstrate the formidable prestige of the Chen Family.
Yet right now, as the protagonist of the celebration, Chen Family Head Chen Dengming had already grown somewhat weary of such mundane socializing. Deep within his heart, a long-buried impulse grew increasingly restless as the date upon that invitation drew ever closer.
As the eighth martial arts expert in the Nanxun Kingdom to step into the Xiantian realm, Chen Dengming had traversed the martial world for decades, his renown shaking Nanxun long ago.
However, the experience that made his reputation truly skyrocket was how, over a decade ago, the monarch of the Nanxun Kingdom personally invited Chen Dengming to become the crown prince's grand tutor, traveling to the Imperial Palace to instruct the crown prince in martial arts.
Although the grand tutor to the crown prince was an honorary title, it nevertheless caused the Chen Manor to rise in power and influence, leaping in status from an aristocratic martial lineage to an official-backed powerhouse of a household.
Among these rumors, the most fascinating one of all was that Chen Dengming had encountered an immortal in his early years and been bestowed a Youth Preserving Pill, leaving Old Master Chen well past the age of eighty today, yet still youthful in appearance, dashing and refined, mature and steadfast—the dream lover of countless women in the martial world.
Recently, due to his stellar instruction of the crown prince's martial arts, the Nanxun Kingdom monarch had personally inscribed the golden plaque "Nanxun Saber King" and bestowed it upon Chen Dengming.
For a time, Chen Dengming's renown threatened to eclipse even the other Xiantian Grandmasters.
These past few days, the guests coming to congratulate the Chen Manor nearly broke down its threshold, all for the sake of catching a glimpse of that plaque belonging to the Nanxun Saber King, and to behold the demeanor of Saber King Chen.
Yet ironically enough, Chen Dengming's most formidable martial art was not his saber technique, but rather the Gu arts he had obtained from that immortal back then.
I have transmigrated for eighty-two years now. If not for my Golden Finger aiding my cultivation and extending my life, I fear I would already be dead by now. The pity is that ever since my martial arts reached grand completion twenty years ago, ordinary martial arts—even supreme ultimate techniques—could no longer help me cultivate and extend my life. The only thing that still holds hope is the Gu art I obtained from that immortal back then.
Chen Dengming stood with his hands clasped behind his back atop a tall tower, looking down at the bustling, brilliantly illuminated banquet below with an expressionless face, as though he had already seen through the vanity of the mortal world and was unwilling to waste even a shred of energy on it anymore.
Behind him stood four screens engraved with the Eighteen Scenes of Nanxun. Behind the screens, the ground was already knelt full of Chen Family loyal guards and elite retainers—every last one of them first-rate experts he had cultivated with his own hands, who were about to perform a task for him.
Chen Dengming felt a deep emotional sigh within his heart. Pity. Even with my Golden Finger assisting me, due to a lack of cultivation resources, that Gu art obtained from the immortal can no longer advance any further.
Now I have a mere fifty years of life remaining. If I still cling to this mortal world's glory and wealth, I am ultimately destined to live out my life like an ordinary person and die just like that.
It would have been fine had he remained ignorant of the immortals' existence; Chen Dengming could have completely pretended that he had transmigrated into a wuxia world.
He had practiced diligently to reach where he was today, able to share a cup of wine and converse merrily with the monarch, capable of instructing the crown prince and becoming the crown prince's grand tutor, shaking the entire land north and south of the great river. Back in his younger days, he had reveled in wine and song, surrounded by countless beauties, and even taken seven wives and concubines. One could say he had enjoyed all the glory, wealth, beauty, and power there was to experience, and his life was without regret.
Over the next fifty years, he also possessed the confidence to walk to the pinnacle of the martial world, truly becoming the number one martial artist.
Yet, since he had known very early on that immortals existed in this world, his ambitions had also undergone a subtle transformation quite early on.
Ever since he obtained the Gu art legacy from that immortal back then, he had practiced it unceasingly through the years, yet gradually he could no longer advance an inch due to limited mortal resources.
Fifteen years ago, his lifespan had also completely halted at the milestone of one hundred and thirty-two years, no longer capable of increasing by even a sliver through the practice of cultivation techniques.
Thus, fifteen years ago, he married wives and took concubines with great fanfare, expanding his lineage. It could be considered a madness undertaken for the worst-case scenario—to experience a complete life without regrets.
Yet throughout it all, he never sired any children. This was primarily related to a Indestructible Vajra Zen Skill he had learned in his youth, and furthermore, he still held a final shred of hope in his heart. For along with the immortal's Gu art legacy obtained back then, there had also come an invitation.
The invitation stated that every hundred years, otherworldly immortals would descend to hold the Ascension Convention at Misty Cliff in the Ice Wind Forest north of the Nanxun Kingdom.
Anyone holding the invitation, regardless of background, was qualified to head to Misty Cliff and test their Immortal Destiny.
Should they possess the aptitude for cultivation, they would be taken in as disciples by an Immortal Sect, stepping into the Cultivation World to seek the Dao of longevity.
It was the existence of this very invitation that caused Chen Dengming's ambition to seek immortality to never extinguish through all these years.
And now, merely half a year remained until the formal commencement of the Ascension Convention. Chen Dengming had already resolved to cast aside the Chen Family and set forth.
He took one last look at the bustling family banquet, then gazed from another window toward the backyard area.
His seven wives and concubines were conversing and laughing happily with the female family members of various high-ranking officials and distinguished nobles.
It was evident that these wives of his all thoroughly enjoyed their present wealthy lives.
These wives were originally married by him during his days of great wealth and prosperity fifteen years ago. Every single one of them was a well-bred young lady from a prominent family with an exceptional background, having approached him for the sake of wealth from the very beginning, and naturally they enjoyed what they had attained today.
Yet the pity was that not a single one of them understood his state of mind.
By now, he suddenly felt a measure of enlightenment regarding that emotionally numb state of Tang Bohu when looking upon his numerous wives and concubines in Flirting Scholar which he had watched before his translatation; it unexpectedly resembled his current self to such a degree.
When he failed to understand it back then, he was still a senior high school student; now that he understood it, he was already an elderly man burdened with the three highs of aging.
He turned and left, instructing the housekeeper who guarded his side like a shadow to summon his sixth and third wives.
Fifteen years had passed, and many of his seven wives and concubines from back then had already grown old and withered. By contrast, he remained preserved at the appearance of a thirty-year-old thanks to consuming the Youth Preserving Pill in his youth.
Among the seven wives and concubines, only the sixth and third wives remained young and beautiful, their skin smoother than a young maiden's and their temperament beyond reproach.
Over three months ago, his Indestructible Vajra Zen Skill had reached grand completion, free of all obstructions.
Before parting, Chen Dengming intended to indulge in a final madness, leaving behind offspring so that this mortal life would be thoroughly without regret.
Otherwise, should some danger arise and he fail during the pursuit of his immortal destiny, wouldn't he have walked through this world in vain, leaving behind too few traces, with even the vast family enterprise he had built lacking anyone to inherit it?
"Chen Zhong."
Chen Dengming said flatly.
"This old servant is here!"
Housekeeper Chen Zhong was withered, tall, and thin, with honest features, yet a pair of eyes flashed with sharp brilliance, making one feel he possessed unyielding perseverance and was far from simple. At this moment, he bowed to await Chen Dengming's dispatch.
Chen Dengming spoke calmly, "Should the third and sixth wives conceive, regardless of whether they bear sons or daughters, I want you to protect the children as they grow up and pass the family estate down to them. They need not be extraordinarily formidable; I only hope they can grow up healthy and safe."
"This old servant will certainly not fail the master's entrustment!"
Chen Zhong dropped to his knees in agitation, raising his hands high to receive the tokens and instructions handed down by Chen Dengming, his eye sockets already reddened.
He understood this to be Chen Dengming's utmost trust in him.
Having been bestowed the surname Chen and changing his name to Chen Zhong, he would devote his entire life solely to loyalty toward the Chen Family and loyalty toward the master.
Having drifted and fought in the martial world for so many years, Chen Dengming would never rely on just a single plan, but Chen Zhong—whose strength had reached the peak of the Houtian realm and who possessed incomparable loyalty—was his primary choice selected to monitor and guard the family after his departure.
In addition, he had also selected other candidates from among the loyal guards, ensuring nothing was left to chance.
That night.
In the family head's bedchamber of the Chen Family's backyard, an eighty-year-old groom wed an eighteen-year-old bride, their snowy white hair set against crimson makeup. Within the mandarin duck quilt, they became a paired night; a single pear tree pressed down upon crabapple blooms.
On this very night as well, fireworks and firecrackers resounded across the vault of heaven all around the Chen Family. Outside the courtyards, the east wind let loose a thousand flowers of fire; inside the courtyards, a thousand trees and ten thousand trees of pear blossoms bloomed.
The third and sixth wives wept tears of joy, feeling only that after suffering through so many years of waiting, the master had finally thought it through and wished to bear offspring, yet how could they possibly know that Chen Dengming was about to depart to pursue the great Dao of seeking immortality and longevity.
The following day.
The Chen Family's first batch of elite guards departed first, heading straight for Misty Cliff in the Ice Wind Forest north of the Nanxun Kingdom.
For the sake of seeking his immortal destiny, Chen Dengming had searched diligently for several decades without ever finding any traces or divine manifestations of immortals.
As for this place called the Ice Wind Forest, he had also dispatched people to investigate it on numerous occasions, yet had failed to uncover any clues.
Now, the closer it drew to the Ascension Convention, the calmer he grew instead. He did not become so excited as to rush over to investigate it himself, but rather moved only after careful deliberation, dispatching elite guards ahead of time to scout so that any dangers could be averted in advance.
After all, the legacy of the Gu Dao immortal he had obtained back then had merely been acquired from a corpse.
Why the immortal had died, whether the Ascension Convention was a scam, and so on—these were all unknowns.
As a transmigrator, Chen Dengming's thinking and perspective were incomparable to the indigenous people of this world.
At the mere mention of immortals, the reaction of the natives might be extreme awe, or even reach a point of blind obedience where they dared not resist or defy them.
Yet Chen Dengming's reaction was more along the lines of 'Immortals are perhaps merely cultivators—that is, practitioners of truth—who are likewise strong individuals forged through human cultivation'—something he had read far too much of in novels from his past life.
Of course, since he had not yet truly witnessed a so-called "immortal" at present, and did not know whether the cultivators of this world would differ from the beings he imagined, everything was indeed still an unknown.
One week after the departure of the first batch of elite guards.
Outside the Blood Centipede Cave, a notorious forbidden ground in the martial world, the figure of a man in lavish garments suddenly appeared.
The Blood Centipede Cave was renowned for the countless venomous blood centipedes existing within its caverns, where one could see numerous caves flashing with phosphorescent light amid the dim gloom, eerie as ghost fire.
Every day at the hour of zi and chou, this cavern would spew forth pale green miasmic poison, which was the excrement of the venomous blood centipedes, shot out from skull-like apertures along the cavern ceiling. Should a person carelessly inhale it into their lungs and chest, they would undoubtedly succumb to the poison and die.
Years ago, some people in the martial world mistakenly believed that treasures existed within this cave—specifically the mausoleum of a previous dynasty's imperial family—attracting no small number of martial artists driven by greed who desired to enter and plunder the treasures within.
Who could have known that this Blood Centipede Cave was merely a place for raising Gu belonging to Old Master Chen Dengming of the Chen Family.
At that time, Chen Dengming had not yet advanced to the Xiantian realm, but he was already a fairly renowned chivalrous hero in the martial world. Facing those greedy martial artists blinded by profit, he had even spoken stern words of warning regarding the dangers within the cavern, yet not a single person was willing to listen to his admonitions. Some even believed he was trying to deter everyone so that he could monopolize the treasures himself.
Left with no other choice, Chen Dengming could only let them be, while he himself exerted all effort in the dark to control the blood centipedes to prevent them from harming people.
Yet the greedy martial artists poured in one after another, searching frantically inside the caverns. In the end, they still disturbed the blood centipedes, resulting in numerous casualties within the Blood Centipede Cave.
For many years afterward, people still entered the caverns one after another—either unwilling to give up on the rumored treasures, or harboring greed for the secret manuals and weapons of the martial artists who had died within the caves in days past. It was only after even more people suffered injury and death with meager gains to show for it that the Blood Centipede Cave gradually became a forbidden ground, and no one dared to rashly charge inside ever again.
Without experiencing the pain of blood, without crashing against the southern wall, human greed ultimately never ceases.
The lavishly dressed man sighed softly. Listening to the rustling movements of centipedes squirming and crawling within the cavern ahead, he walked over to another patch of dwarf woods, calculated the time, and bent down to begin digging open the soil pit with a small hoe, retrieving the toxic fungi from within.
Hiss, hiss—
A brightly patterned snake head suddenly darted out from the soil pit, flicking its red forked tongue.
Yet he casually grabbed it, pressing the snake head back down into the pit, while his other hand unhurriedly began harvesting the pale green toxic fungi growing densely along the edges of the soil pit, dropping them into the Gu pouch at his waist.
One could see that the soil pit was entirely packed with venomous snakes writhing together in tightly entangled clusters—green ones, patterned ones, red ones, and so on. Their cold snake pupils, scales, and darting forked tongues were enough to strike terror into the hearts of beholders.
Yet he had long since grown accustomed to it, for he himself was an expert in playing with Gu. Cultivating madness Gu was merely the most ordinary of means to him.
Naturally, he was Chen Dengming, the legendary figure of the Nanxun Kingdom.
According to records in the ancient Gu Dao texts left behind by the former Gu Immortal, this kind of cultivated madness Gu was the most ordinary mortal Gu, failing to enter any official grade.
Even so, according to what was recorded in the Gu Refining Art, it still posed a certain threat to cultivators of lower realms, and could be considered one of the trump cards he prepared before heading to the Ascension Convention this time.
Refining this Gu required burying venomous snakes into the soil to cultivate snake venom fungi, after which the fungi were harvested to harm people or feed the blood centipedes for the purpose of refining Gu.
After harvesting the madness Gu, Chen Dengming proceeded to a nearby bamboo grove, retrieving the bamboo slice Gu that had been soaking within bamboo tubes infused with special medicinal liquid for over a dozen years.
Following that, he journeyed to a nearby pond, retrieving the loach Gu crafted from loaches mixed with his own hair and special toxic mud.
Having retrieved all categories of Gu poison, Chen Dengming finally stepped into the notoriously fearsome Blood Centipede Cave.
After striking a flint to ignite a fire starter, one could see deep within the Blood Centipede Cave a vast, densely packed mass of writhing blood-red centipedes—enough to cause anyone with trypophobia to suffocate at the sight.
The sound of thousands of jointed limbs crawling across the ground, or venomous pincers snapping at one another in mutual slaughter, resembled countless popping candies jumping about inside one's ears.
Refining ten thousand blood centipedes to forge a single Gu—Gu refining had always been this cruel.
Within this single cavern, ultimately only a single blood centipede could survive, and that surviving blood centipede would become the primary material for refining the blood centipede Gu. This was precisely "the so-called practice of placing a hundred insects into a jar and opening it after the span of a year, where inevitably a single insect will have consumed all the others; this is what is called a Gu."
Chen Dengming stripped away the garments on his body, neatly folding them inside the cavern.
One could see that even though he was over eighty years old, his physique remained robust and well-muscled, with layers of stacked muscle blocks, and even bearing a few saber and sword scars—the hallmarks of years spent practicing martial arts and engaging in bloody battles throughout the martial world.
He smeared specialized medicinal concoctions over his body, then stepped into the depths of the Blood Centipede Cave.
Countless ferocious blood centipedes caught the scent on his body and instantly surged toward him like a tidal wave.
Chen Dengming showed not a shred of fear. He drew a blade, slashed open the skin of his wrists, and sprinkled a circle of fresh blood around his body.
Immediately, the massive swarm of swarming blood centipedes all halted outside the circle he had drawn with his blood, viciously slaughtering one another as they scrambled to consume his blood.
This was the so-called "refining Gu using human flesh," the entire process eerie and mysterious.
Blood centipedes were naturally ferocious and untamed, exceedingly difficult to command like one's own limbs. Once forged into a blood centipede Gu, they were even harder to control, easily turning to backlash their master.
Yet through the method of "refining Gu using human flesh," the blood centipedes could ultimately consume the blood and mixed medicinal concoctions of the master refining them, allowing the blood centipede Gu forged in the end to obey human commands, existing in a state akin to shared bloodlines and synchronized intent with the master.
To cultivate this blood centipede Gu, Chen Dengming had expended forty full years of time.
Before departing for the Ascension Convention, this would be the ultimate trump card he prepared for himself.
For once this blood centipede Gu was successfully refined, it would be a true spirit Gu, possessing fatal threats even against cultivators.
Should any mishap occur during the Ascension Convention, this might well be the life-saving ace up Chen Dengming's sleeve.
Moreover, the blood centipede Gu would also serve as the critical key for his Gu Refining Art to break through further, at which point his lifespan would likewise experience another surge of growth as a result.
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