Three Hundred Years to Forge My Road to Heaven Above! (Bonus Chapter-Asking for Monthly Tickets)

"Damn legs, run faster!!"

After getting far away from Ankang Hospital, Zhang Fusheng sprinted wildly.

He feared that Twelve Refinements martial artist would realize something was wrong and come after him.

The moment he had heard that fellow instruct Dean Long to seek out "Chaimen," he had already understood. This was likely someone from the Western Sect.

Eldest Senior Brother had said that Chaimen was in contact with the Western Sect.

Along with that phrase—"Heaven Above."

He ran all the way until he was about to leave the dark alley, then found an empty spot, leaned against the wall, and let out a heavy breath.

"That was close. Good thing I bluffed him. What are a Martial Arts Master and a Great Grandmaster?"

He recalled the two terms that martial artist had blurted out when he cried out about the Mental Spiritual Realm.

After pondering it for a moment, Zhang Fusheng vaguely came to a guess.

"Could it be that a Martial Arts Master is someone whose Visualization Method has reached Minor Perfection, while a Great Grandmaster is someone whose Visualization Method has reached Perfection?"

"No, that's not right. The Visualization Method should merely be a prerequisite."

"This should be a realm above Martial Arts Masters."

Zhang Fusheng pondered thoughtfully. It was not hard to guess. He had read plenty of novels in his previous life; lines like "A master must not be insulted," corny and clichéd as they were, he had read no fewer than a thousand of them—eight hundred at the very least.

There was no helping it. They were good, and he loved reading them.

He fiercely shook his head and silently calculated his gains.

"There are sixty-three grams of Star Beast Meat left. In other words, speeding up sixty-two days cost a full thirty-seven grams of Star Beast Meat."

"The effect has worsened. I just don't know whether all Star Beast Meat has become less effective, or whether it's only the Unicorn Giant Rhinoceros Meat."

Zhang Fusheng frowned slightly. This would be difficult to verify in the short term. He had asked Second Senior Sister before; Unicorn Giant Rhinoceros Meat was the mainstream supply of Star Beast Meat.

Other Star Beasts did exist, but they were not commonly seen—at least, not within Jiangzhou City.

"One hundred and sixty-seven years of Contemplation Time... will that be enough?"

Doubt stirred in his heart. His master was at least a hundred years old, yet had still failed to cultivate the White Bone Meditation to Perfection.

What was certain was that his master's aptitude was absolutely far better than his own.

But he now had one hundred and ten years of accumulation. Adding these one hundred and sixty-seven years would make nearly three hundred years.

Perhaps he truly could push the White Bone Meditation to genuine Perfection.

The Contract Book was dim at this moment, its cooldown once again reaching more than sixty days. Logically, it should not have been this long. Was it because of the Flesh and Blood Plague?

Within the Ancestral Aperture between his brows, inside the Contract Book, aside from the two old men's memories of the transaction, there floated two portions of Contemplation Time and two clusters of red matter.

Zhang Fusheng did not dare take that stuff out.

His awareness peeled away from the Ancestral Aperture between his brows. He removed his veil and quietly walked out of the deserted alley, looking back at the bustling crowds beyond the dark alleys stretching across the entire Lower-Level District.

A sense of urgency welled up in his heart.

If he left the Lower-Level District, could he keep himself clean and untouched?

This thing was called a "plague"!

If he left Jiangzhou City, could he avoid it?

Zhang Fusheng did not know.

"Trading for Huang Qiuxian's past cultivation is difficult." He muttered to himself. "The most urgent matter is still to bring him into the Gaotian Association."

"I need to understand what exactly the Western Sect is, what they intend to do, and how extensive the danger will be."

"Weak! Weak!"

"I'm still too weak!"

After leaving the dark alley, he casually found a hotel. After slamming ten thousand yuan onto the front desk, he directly obtained the hotel's guest information.

There were roughly a hundred guests staying there, and none of them were very old. That was rather regrettable.

After swallowing another thirty-plus grams of Star Beast Meat, Zhang Fusheng picked through them and chose a middle-aged man in his fifties.

He neither knocked on the door nor went to meet him. Instead, he checked into the room next door, and then—

The Mental Spiritual Realm unfolded.

The middle-aged man, who had been lying peacefully on his bed, abruptly rolled over and sat up. He stared blankly at the boundless wasteland stretching endlessly in every direction.

Then he sensed something. Trembling, he raised his head and saw a gigantic face filling the entire vault of heaven.

The face's left eye was the sun, its right eye the moon, making sun and moon hang in the same sky. With every breath came clouds and rosy clouds spanning thousands upon thousands of miles, sweeping across the heavens and earth!

The middle-aged man dropped to his knees and kowtowed without stop.

To someone who did not understand the "Mental Spiritual Realm" and did not know all this was an illusion, stumbling into it would easily feel like colliding with a divine miracle and encountering a god.

"How many years hast thou cultivated the Visualization Method?"

The one with sun and moon for eyes asked. Lightning spilled between its teeth, transforming into bolts that tore apart dawn and dusk.

"F-forty years!" the middle-aged man asked in terror.

"If thy Visualization Cultivation were bought with money, how much would it be worth?"

The middle-aged man kowtowed frantically.

"As you wish, as you wish!"

"Speak freely." The "god" merely spoke thus, and a mountain of gold fell to the earth.

The middle-aged man froze. He swallowed and cautiously said,

"This mountain of gold?"

"Are thy forty years worth this mountain of gold?" the gigantic face asked in return.

The middle-aged man shuddered in fright, then hesitantly opened his mouth.

"O-one million?"

Zhang Fusheng immediately drafted the contract, only to find the Contract Book scorching hot, as though it were on fire—showing that one million could not truly make the middle-aged man willing.

He raised the amount to three million, and only then did the Contract Book calm down.

Then three million it would be.

The Mental Spiritual Realm abruptly vanished. The middle-aged man looked around blankly, only to hear knocking at the door. He shook his head, feeling as though it had merely been a dream, then staggered over to open it.

And then—

He saw the aged face from his "dream," and saw the indescribable parchment floating in the old man's hand.

"Gulp!"

The middle-aged man knelt again.

"Forty years of Visualization Cultivation, along with fifteen minutes of thy memories."

"Can the contract be made?"

After tossing the unconscious middle-aged man onto the bed, Zhang Fusheng, disguised as a decrepit old man, returned to his own room.

There was a faint moldy smell. After all, it was not a good hotel.

He turned off the lights and drew the curtains.

"Contract Book."

The old man sat cross-legged on the bed, his five centers facing heaven.

"Let me see your limit!"

Two hundred and seven years crashed down with a boom, washing over him like a great river in flood.

[Year One: Though I knew hope was slim, I still launched an assault upon the realm of Perfection!]

[I failed.]

[Year Two: Unyielding, bearing a resolute heart toward the Dao, I continued my assault!]

[Year Three.]

[Year Forty-Seven: Though I had no intention of tempering the Eight Forms of Body and Spirit, beneath my heavy Mental Accumulation, I nevertheless naturally comprehended the "Giant Contemplation."]

[In this Form of Body and Spirit, my flesh rotted and swelled into a three-meter-tall decaying giant. Every restraint within my body collapsed with a roar, and my strength more than tripled.]

[Year Fifty-Five: In cultivating the White Bone Meditation, though I failed to break into Perfection, my control over the Mental Spiritual Realm grew increasingly profound.]

[Year Seventy-Four: For the first time, I used Mental Intent to make a drop of water float in midair.]

[Though this was difficult and its result tiny, it meant that I could already begin interfering with reality through mental will. This was a major step toward Perfection!]

[Year Ninety: I forgot myself entirely, cast aside external things, and saw all living beings beneath heaven as white bones. Suddenly, an urge arose within me—to draw all living beings beneath heaven into my Mental Spiritual Realm.]

[Kill kill kill kill kill kill kill!]

Zhang Fusheng briefly awakened from the torrent of time. His eyes were bloodshot as his hands flailed wildly, carving seven characters for "kill" into the hotel wall.

The contract glowed and forcibly jolted him awake.

Then he fell back into the torrent of time.

[Year Ninety-One: I fell into madness.]

[That same year, a powerful force dragged me from my sinking state. I knew it was the Contract Book. It made me absolutely correct, pressing forward without turning back.]

[Year Ninety-Two: I fell into madness again, then was dragged out from my sinking state.]

[Year Ninety-Three.]

[Year One Hundred Forty-One: I broke free from my sinking state once more. Falling into madness time and again left my mind chaotic, yet it seemed I had touched upon something.]

[This year, my Mental Spiritual Realm could descend into reality—though only for the brief span of a finger snap.]

[Year One Hundred Sixty: I still cycled endlessly between falling into madness and awakening. White Bone Meditation, Dense White Bone Contemplation—this was an evil art!]

[Year One Hundred Sixty-Eight: I shouted, "Heaven gave birth to all things to nourish mankind, yet mankind has nothing with which to repay Heaven," and fell into madness once more.]

[That same year, when I awakened, I suddenly attained great enlightenment.]

[Whether others are white bones or not, what does that have to do with me? I seek only my own Dao.]

[Year One Hundred Eighty: It seemed that amid decades of continuous madness and awakening, my mind had become exceptionally resilient. I seemed to see the Great Dao.]

[Year One Hundred Eighty-One: This year, I did not fall into madness. I sat cross-legged upon the dust and decayed into white bones in reality.]

[Though I had clearly not even mastered the fourth Form of Body and Spirit, the Blood-Soaked Form, through my repeated descents into madness, I directly comprehended the seventh Form of Body and Spirit—Scattered Bones Form.]

[I am a skeleton. I succeeded. I proved the Dao. Hahahaha!]

[This year, I went insane.]

In the hotel room, upon the bed, the old man became a youth, Zhong Shan became Zhang Fusheng, and then his skin rotted away and his flesh vanished.

He became a skeleton. He had no flesh, no organs, no brain—yet he was still alive, still sitting cross-legged.

The skull's upper and lower teeth clicked ceaselessly together as though laughing, producing clacking sounds that echoed through the room.

[That same year, I was forcibly dragged out of madness. I awakened once more, regained clarity once more.]

[Year One Hundred Eighty-Two: I fell into madness once in the first half of the year and went insane once in the second half.]

[Year One Hundred Eighty-Three: This year, I neither fell into madness nor went insane.]

[That same year.]

[I transformed into a body of white bones in reality, sitting quietly cross-legged, and attained great enlightenment.]

[One skeletal hand pointed to heaven, one skeletal hand touched the earth, just like the illustration my master had shown me many years ago when I first learned the White Bone Meditation.]

[I still remembered that within the illustration was a person half-rotted and half-bone, seated cross-legged upon a wasteland. Their rotting hand pointed toward the vault of heaven, while their skeletal hand touched the earth.]

[It was half rotten, half bone, seeming to smile and cry at once—compassionate yet ferocious.]

[I suddenly understood and let out a great sigh. So that was it.]

[At the beginning of Year One Hundred Eighty-Four, I finally reached Perfection. I entered the level of "He Observes as I Should Be."]

[My Mental Spiritual Realm descended into reality.]

[Another twenty-three years passed. I continued seeking upward, yet could not see the road ahead. But in that process, I gradually understood why Master called this realm of Perfection the road to Heaven Above.]

[Year Two Hundred Seven: I wished to keep climbing upward and glimpse the path beyond "He Observes as I Should Be."]

[What I saw was a shackle reaching from heaven to earth. I naturally understood that shackle was called the "Great Limit."]

[I sighed softly.]

The two hundred and seven years ended there.

The white bones sat upon the bed and sighed softly.

"Three hundred years in all, before and after."

The decayed, ancient aura around him was so dense it nearly overflowed, yet under the Contract Book's tremor, it was swiftly swept clean.

"I... succeeded." The white bones made a hoarse sound.

The entire little hotel suddenly fell into an unknown place. Beneath it stood seventy-two snowy mountains; above it hung a blazing, violent sun.

Frost and snow howled as the great sun shone brilliantly.

An instant later, the little hotel and its still-shaken travelers all broke free from that unknown place.

"I succeeded." The skeleton transformed into a delicate, frail-looking youth.

He stepped down from the bed, crouched, and wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth.

Then, lightly and slowly—

He pinched up a snowflake from the floor.

A snowflake that truly, genuinely existed, brought from those seventy-two Great Snow Mountains.

Nearly half the hotel was buried in snow.