What had they called it at first?
"...Please enlighten me, Speaker."
The Speaker didn't answer at once. He smiled faintly, then drifted toward the spirit mountain.
The middle-aged Dao Integration cultivator hurried after him.
Soon, the Speaker's voice reached his ears.
"What do you think is the ultimate pursuit of us cultivators?"
"To strengthen the Righteous Alliance!" the middle-aged Dao Integration cultivator replied without hesitation, his voice ringing with conviction.
Yet his answer drew no response.
The Speaker looked back at him with a strange expression, then gently clarified, "I mean, what is the personal pursuit of a cultivator?"
A cultivator's personal pursuit?
"To... repel our foreign enemies?"
After reaching Dao Integration, he had learned many more things.
For instance, on the Far Side of the Starry Sky, the surviving members of the Cang Race watched like tigers eyeing their prey. They were always trying to defeat the Human Race and return to the Central Continent.
"What else?"
"And... to live longer?"
When all was said and done, the prospect of a longer lifespan was what drove cultivators to brave every obstacle in pursuit of the Great Dao.
"Exactly. Repelling foreign enemies and living longer—in other words, greater power and a higher realm." The Speaker's voice grew increasingly ethereal. "But what we seek can be summed up in just eight characters."
The middle-aged Dao Integration cultivator listened intently.
"Long life and immortality, attaining the Dao and becoming an immortal."
They were eight familiar characters, known to everyone. Yet now, as they fell upon the ears of the middle-aged Dao Integration cultivator, who had just witnessed the Blade Venerable's awe-inspiring presence, they seemed like a bright lamp, guiding him through the final veil of mist.
"..." After a long silence, the middle-aged Dao Integration cultivator spoke with a slight tremble in