Nine Revolutions Longevity

Only upon seeing this did Ling Qing understand what it meant to have neither good nor evil, only the Dao; what it meant to illuminate one's heart and see one's nature without asking after morality.

What Lin Lingsu had done—saving the world and rescuing people—was secondary. His sole purpose was to proclaim the Dao in his heart. Proving the Dao through cultivation was the true goal.

Ling Qing did not know the details of how one should cultivate after becoming a heavenly immortal.

But after experiencing that gathering of sages debating the Dao during the Warring States period, he could vaguely understand.

Heavenly immortals stood beyond the Three Realms, outside the Five Elements.

To them, the good and evil of this world no longer mattered so greatly.

All they needed was a world through which to test whether the Dao they sought conformed to the true Dao.

Truly, the sage was not benevolent; he treated the common people as straw dogs.

It was not that sages were unkind. Rather, they saw Heaven and Earth treating all things as straw dogs, regarding them all equally. Thus, they followed the Dao and used it to prove their own.

Just like the world Tian Yong had encountered before, where righteousness and evil clashed.

No cultivators interfered with the imperial court there, yet tragedies still unfolded among mortals.

The calamity of this world had not arisen because immortals and demons had taken part.

Rather, only after calamity came did immortals and demons arrive, using that worldly disaster to verify their own Dao.

Devils were drawn there by the sins and karma of the human world, while immortals came to subdue demons and vanquish evil, thereby proving their own Dao.

Were the people of this world detestable?

They were. They had failed to cultivate themselves