Observing for Eight Hundred Years

Dinner was eaten at a restaurant called "Miyue" on the Chang University campus. The dishes there were not expensive, costing about the same as any outside eatery, but the flavor was famous among both students and faculty.

When Huang Tian and the other two arrived at the restaurant, it was already filled with young students. Feng Zechun, familiar with the routine, found a corner seat and ordered eight dishes: potato and beef brisket stew, luffa with clams, dry-pot pork intestines, spicy squid, minced meat egg custard... most were heavy, hearty dishes, though the flavor profile was a bit intense for Xu Kaizhi, who hailed from Su Province.

However, having stayed in Gan Province for a long time, Xu Kaizhi could barely manage the salty and spicy flavors, though he had to drink water constantly, which drew quite a bit of teasing from Feng Zechun.

After dinner, the three parted ways. Huang Tian took a taxi back to his apartment after leaving school. As for the thesis, it wasn't submitted immediately; Feng Zechun still had to help revise the formatting.

The most annoying part of the submission process is that reviewers often nitpick the formatting and prose. Even if the thesis has no errors or omissions, they might still send it back for revisions. Feng Zechun himself served on the editorial board of a domestic journal and was intimately familiar with these details; once he revised it, the formatting and prose were essentially bulletproof.

Back at his apartment, Huang Tian washed up briefly, then sat cross-legged, his consciousness returning to the Late Han Dynasty World.

In a palace chamber within Luoyang.

Huang Tian slowly opened his eyes, and a sense of fulfillment immediately welled up in his heart. With a flicker of thought, he looked inward at his sea of consciousness and discovered that the purple orb of light was radiating a harmonious and natural charm.

"Eight months have passed since the four provinces of Jing, Yang, Yi, and Jiao nominally submitted to the Dao Court. In these eight months, all thirteen provinces of the world have truly been unified under the Dao Court. No wonder this orb has reached perfection..."

"It is time to see what exactly this thing is!" Huang Tian thought to himself.

His consciousness gently touched the purple orb. In an instant, an immeasurable amount of purple radiance erupted, flooding Huang Tian's sea of consciousness like a surging, turbulent ocean.

Huang Tian felt his vision blur for a moment. A seed engraved with mysterious runes leaped out from his sea of consciousness, drifting in mid-air with a faint purple glow. Then, the seed burst open, transforming into a stream dozens of miles long. The stream grew longer and wider, its waters roaring, until it finally became a vast, mighty river of infinite white foam stretching for hundreds of millions of miles.

Huang Tian felt himself grow thousands of feet tall, sitting cross-legged above the mighty river like the Jade Emperor of the heavens, bowing his head to quietly observe everything within the river.

He saw the river surging endlessly, with figures and scenes emerging one after another.

The first to appear was the scene of Huang Tian bestowing the Dharma and preaching to Zhang Jiao and the other nine. Following that, Huang Tian broke through the tribulation and "ascended," leaving this world amidst the respectful send-off of countless people.

After he left, Zhang Jiao, as Huang Tian's only nominal personal disciple, practiced while using the knowledge Huang Tian had left behind to govern the world. In a mere sixty years, the Dao Court's technologies in iron smelting, papermaking, gunpowder, and animal husbandry saw tremendous improvements.

Farmers across the land could afford iron tools, the use of iron plows and ox-drawn cultivation became increasingly widespread, and paper was no longer a rare treasure only the nobility could afford, but slowly entered the homes of ordinary people.

Zhang Jiao's governance was highly effective, but by then, he was nearly one hundred and twenty years old and frail. He could never cross the threshold from the ninth level of Qi Refining to the Dao Foundation realm.

This could not be blamed on a lack of diligence; it took sixty years to reach the ninth level of Qi Refining, exhausting his blood, energy, and spirit. The key was that before Huang Tian ascended, he had only passed down the first six levels of the Qi Gathering chapter of the Mountain-Suppressing Spirit Scripture; the final three levels simply did not exist!

Thus, over the decades, practitioners across the world inevitably encountered obstacles after reaching the sixth level of Qi Refining.

And what to do when there was no path forward?

They had no choice but to forge one!

Numerous practitioners gathered in Luoyang, studying, exploring, and discussing the subsequent cultivation methods of the Mountain-Suppressing Spirit Scripture day and night. It took them a full twenty years to barely complete the first nine levels of the Qi Gathering chapter, and Zhang Jiao was delayed by these twenty years as a result.

With his body withered and death drawing near, and with successors firmly established in the Dao Court's governance—Zhuge Kongming, Zhou Yu, He Ting, Qin Xun, and Xun Yu all serving in the Political Academy, each possessing immense talent for statecraft—Zhang Jiao felt at ease and decided to make one final gamble to break through to the Dao Foundation realm!

The result was as expected.

He failed.

As his spiritual power dissipated, his meridians severed, and his internal organs decayed, Zhang Jiao laughed several times and ordered his insights from the attempt to be recorded for the benefit of those who would come after.

After Zhang Jiao passed away, his younger brother Zhang Liang served as the Great Virtuous Teacher. However, he only held the position for ten years before passing it to He Ting, wishing to break through to the Dao Foundation in the final stage of his life.

He Ting was the youngest son of Commander He Yi. He was born intelligent, able to recite poetry at seven. After receiving the immortal cultivation methods, he devoted himself to practice, only to tragically discover his aptitude was extremely poor. Disheartened, he focused on researching governance strategies and achieved significant results.

After taking the burden of the Great Virtuous Teacher from Zhang Liang, he worked diligently and created a new situation. Literature and culture flourished throughout the land, the imperial examination system completely replaced the variant of the recommendation system, and the channels for the Dao Court to select talent became broader and more comprehensive...

In the cultivation world, Zhang Liang, Zhang Bao, He Yi, Huang Shao, Tian Feng, Lu Zhi, and others all fell at the natural chasm of the Dao Foundation, while many with even worse aptitude never even had the chance to see the chasm.

In this atmosphere of silence, the hundred-year-old Zhuge Kongming, after reading the notes and insights left behind by Zhang Jiao, Zhang Liang, Tian Feng, and others who had failed their breakthroughs, felt a stirring in his heart. His soul reached into the void, and he sat in silence for a night. As the dawn broke, he suddenly let out a long whistle, breaking through to the Dao Foundation realm and becoming the world's first Dao Foundation ancestor!

After his breakthrough, Zhuge Kongming did not keep his knowledge secret, preaching and teaching in Luoyang to the benefit of many. Ten years later, Zhou Gongjin successfully broke through, becoming the second Dao Foundation ancestor. He also preached and taught in Luoyang, drawing praise from the world and leading people to refer to Zhuge Kongming and Zhou Gongjin together as "The Yu and Liang of the Age."

With the experience passed down by the two, the number of people breaking through to the Dao Foundation realm increased over the next three hundred years, and various cultivation methods and Daoist arts gradually enriched. Xie An compiled the Water Origin Mysterious Scripture, Tao Yuanming created the Spirit Wood Azure Brilliance Scripture, and Liu Yu established the Great Evolution Sharp Metal Qi...

Of course, the one who created the most cultivation methods, Daoist arts, and immortal techniques was still Zhuge Kongming: the Heavenly Evolution Eight Trigrams Formation, Spirit Puppet Mechanism Art, Spirit Sealing Grand Formation, Minor Art of Moving Clouds and Spreading Rain, Introduction to Talismans...

It could be said that Zhuge Kongming, by his own strength, pioneered most of the cultivation system of this world. Unfortunately, no matter how talented he was, he ultimately fell before the mysterious realm of the Golden Core.

Over the centuries, practitioners who followed one after another failed to break through to the Golden Core, and the notes they left behind filled several palace chambers...

Until one day, an old man named Wu Daozi wielded his brush to paint what later generations would call an immortal masterpiece, the "Portrait of Sovereign Yellow Absolute Descending to the World as a Divine Infant," entering the Dao through painting and proving the Golden Core!

On the day he achieved the Golden Core, practitioners from all over the world gathered in Luoyang to celebrate. Wu Daozi sat high on the clouds, his painting of the Dao displayed beside him. His clear voice resonated for dozens of miles, rosy clouds obscured the sun, and he manifested as if he were an immortal or a god...

The waves of the river of time pushed forward, and another two hundred years passed. The Profound Dao flourished; there were five great Golden Core masters in the world, hundreds of Dao Foundation ancestors, and over ten thousand minor Qi Refining practitioners.

Together, they authored mysterious laws and profound scriptures: nine chapters on the Golden Core, three hundred on the Dao Foundation, and countless on Qi Gathering...