This was how the world worked. Many Fourth Rank Sects could strive for more than a dozen generations and still never get a chance to advance to Third Rank.
For cultivators, cultivation below the True Lake Realm was simply the continual growth of one's own strength. As long as one had sufficient aptitude and resources, it was not too difficult. But advancing from True Lake to Divine Sea was an enormous threshold, because it involved the transformation of the soul.
There were quite a few Divine Sea Realm cultivators in the Nine Provinces, but they had all accumulated generation after generation. For sects below Third Rank, producing even one Divine Sea Realm cultivator was often as difficult as ascending to the heavens.
It was not as though there were no exceptions. There were countless sects in the Nine Provinces, and sect ranks were assessed once every three years. Every few decades, a Fourth Rank Sect would rise to Third Rank. Whenever that happened, it meant that a Divine Sea Realm cultivator had emerged within that Fourth Rank Sect.
The Yunlang Sect was the sect most likely to advance to Third Rank in recent years, because it had produced a genius named Si Nan.
He was a Spell Cultivator, but he also cultivated the Formation Dao, and his talent in it was exceptionally high. Some Myriad Demon Ridge Cultivators had compared him to Lu Ye, unanimously believing that among this generation of cultivators, he was the only one capable of contending with Lu Ye in the Formation Dao.
Naturally, Si Nan had heard this assessment as well. He dismissed it with disdain.
By judging him so, the Myriad Demon Ridge Cultivators had already placed him in the weaker position. What he wanted was not to contend, but to surpass.
He had