The very fact that One Heart Daoist asked that question showed just how unwilling he was to accept it.
He truly could not believe that he had been defeated so easily by someone at the Golden Core stage.
The history of modern Dharma immortal cultivation spanned only two thousand years. Some old fossils had cultivated for far longer than that. On Linghuang Island, there were still witnesses who had watched the rise of modern Dharma cultivation.
One Heart Daoist even clearly remembered that, two thousand years ago, the earliest Primordial Spirit cultivators had merely been the result of failed Righteous Nascent Soul breakthroughs—when the core shattered but the Nascent Soul did not form, and one luckily survived, the Golden Core's essence dispersing throughout the body. It had been a product of coincidence, originally impossible to replicate and no stronger than a Nascent Soul. It was only later, when a minor Golden Core cultivator from the Holy Infant Sect defected to Spirit Beast Mountain, that the earliest God Method was spread abroad—that person was the current Tianze Shenjun.
Then, the paths of Primordial Spirit, Void Refinement, and Nirvana were established. After that, the highest realm of "Free and Unfettered," utterly different from Mahayana, also appeared. Yet at that time, a Free and Unfettered Cultivator could only reliably defeat the combined forces of two or three Mahayana cultivators.
And then, it became impossible to rein in.
Ever since Lord of Yuanli entered the Dao, modern Dharma immortal cultivation had grown more powerful by the day. Not only were high-level cultivators becoming more numerous, but the combat strength of every realm was growing stronger and stronger.
But no matter what, it should not have reached the point where an Outsider Golden Core could defeat a Righteous Dividing the Spirit cultivator! This defied the