Cultivation Breakthrough, System Settlement

And so, Lin Hanzhou began to spend more of his time walking through the prosperous age he had forged, living as an ordinary man.

He watched the farmers in the fields, their hearty laughter ringing out in celebration of a bountiful harvest.

He observed the lively markets, where merchants turned red in the face arguing over a few coins.

He listened to the children in the schoolhouse, reciting in unison, "At birth, man is inherently good."

He also heard the storytellers in the teahouses, spinning legendary tales of him, the Enlightened Sage Emperor.

This is the mortal world.

It is filled with the seven emotions and six desires, with birth, old age, sickness, and death, and with the mundane necessities of life.

These were two worlds entirely different from the numbers and words he had seen in memorials over the past eighty years.

As he experienced the myriad facets of the human world, his state of mind began to undergo a transformation without him even realizing it.

A month later, the state funeral for Lin Yuan concluded, and all matters were settled.

Lin Hanzhou summoned the Crown Prince Lin Qi, whom he had raised himself, and entrusted the entire Great Sui Dynasty to him.

Now over forty years old, the prince was steady and capable, proving himself a qualified monarch.

Afterward, on a clear morning, Lin Hanzhou gathered the civil and military officials to publicly announce his abdication and the passing of the throne to the Crown Prince.

He knew that his mission in this world as "Emperor" was complete.

It was time to let go.

Once the news broke, the entire nation was in an uproar.

Countless commoners and officials knelt spontaneously outside the palace gates, weeping and begging the Enlightened Sage Emperor, who had brought eighty years of prosperity to the Great Sui Dynasty, to stay.

But Lin Hanzhou's will could not be shaken.

A grand and solemn abdication ceremony was held as scheduled.

Lin Hanzhou personally placed the Imperial Seal of State, the symbol of the empire's supreme power, into the hands of the Crown Prince.

He himself retreated behind the scenes, becoming the Retired Emperor of the Great Sui Dynasty.

From that day on, he vanished completely from the public eye.

He lived in seclusion in the area of the palace with the densest spiritual energy, devoting all his time and energy to cultivation.

After a month of such practice, his cultivation remained stuck at the peak of the first rank, unable to make any progress.

Lin Hanzhou had clearly anticipated this result.

He knew that to break through to the second rank, he would need a large amount of heavenly treasures, preferably second-rank ones.

Yet, during his reign, even after exhausting the nation's resources to search, he had found no second-rank treasures.

After all, the spiritual energy in this world was too scarce; even first-rank treasures were as rare as phoenix feathers and unicorn horns, let alone second-rank ones.

Realizing he could only rely on such treasures to break through, Lin Hanzhou changed his strategy.

He chose to leave the palace and head into the deep mountains to track down signs of heavenly treasures.

To make things easier, he lived directly in the mountains.

Although he was nearly a hundred years old, he had maintained his health well over the years, and his strength had barely declined.

For this reason, he could roam the deep mountains at will, forcing even tigers to give him a wide berth.

Ten more years passed this way; Lin Hanzhou grew increasingly aged, yet he still found no trace of second-rank treasures.

He had only managed to find five first-rank treasures.

These five were clearly insufficient for his breakthrough, so Lin Hanzhou chose not to harvest them, waiting for them to advance in grade instead.

Thus, his daily routine gained a new task: checking on these five spiritual herbs every day.

Finally, hard work paid off. In the thirteenth year of his seclusion in the deep mountains, he found a second-rank spiritual herb.

After confirming its effects, Lin Hanzhou swallowed it immediately and used the medicinal power to break through.

Without any bottleneck, his cultivation reached the first level of the Qi Gathering Realm almost instantly.

Feeling the surging spiritual energy within his body, Lin Hanzhou felt a sense of relief he hadn't experienced in a hundred years.

The bottleneck that had plagued him for decades had finally been broken at this moment.

The benefits of the breakthrough were visible to the naked eye; his aged face became ruddy, and his entire being felt much more spirited.

In the days that followed, Lin Hanzhou did not search for herbs on a large scale, choosing instead to spend more time enjoying life.

Since he couldn't make any real progress in cultivation after reaching the second rank, and spiritual herbs were once-in-a-century finds, he decided to just let things be.

If he ever felt truly bored, he would fight a tiger to pass the time.

Forty more years passed in this manner, and Lin Hanzhou reached the age of one hundred and fifty-one.

He knew clearly that his time was running out, as ordinary second-rank martial artists only lived to be a little over a hundred.

With little time left, he returned to the imperial palace, hoping to see Lin Qi one last time.

However, he discovered that the former Crown Prince Lin Qi had already passed away, and it was now Lin Qi's son, Lin Mu, who had ascended the throne.

Upon learning this news, he could not help but marvel once again at the formidable power of time.

His heart was a complex mix of emotions as he recalled the fragments of the past.

At this moment, Lin Mu heard that the Retired Emperor had returned and hurried over to meet him.

He bowed respectfully to Lin Hanzhou, his eyes filled with awe and reverence.

Lin Hanzhou looked at the young emperor before him, as if seeing his own reflection from years ago.

After confirming that Lin Mu's abilities were sufficient, he politely declined the young man's entreaties to stay and began to use his final moments to truly observe the mortal world.

Standing on the bustling streets of the Capital City, watching the surging crowds, he felt a sense of both familiarity and estrangement.

This scene was identical to the Capital City of a century ago; it seemed to have changed, yet remained exactly the same.

In the end, as the sun dipped below the horizon, Lin Hanzhou passed away in the depths of the imperial palace.

Before his final breath, he vaguely remembered that when he had first transmigrated here, it had also been such a sunset.

The sunset is infinitely beautiful, only it is near dusk.

Thinking of this classic verse from his past life, Lin Hanzhou's consciousness plunged into darkness.

Just then, a long-lost system notification rang out in his mind.

[Ding, the host has survived in the Dream World of the Great Sui Dynasty for one hundred and forty years. Dream transmigration concluded.]

[Conducting final settlement...]

[Host Identity: Eleventh Prince of the Great Sui Dynasty, Enlightened Sage Emperor.]

[Core Achievement I: Defying Fate to Ascend. Changed one's own cannon fodder destiny and successfully reached the pinnacle of imperial power. Rating: Excellent.]

[Core Achievement II: Cleansing the Clans. Used thunderous means to annihilate the Five Great Clans, eradicating the empire's thousand-year malignancy. Rating: Outstanding.]

[Core Achievement III: Founding a Prosperous Era. Implemented new policies, reformed the world, and created the Enlightened Prosperity Era, bringing national strength and people's livelihood to their peak. Rating: Outstanding.]

[Core Achievement IV: Martial Arts Innovation. Promoted a brand-new martial arts system, raising the overall martial arts level of the world. Rating: Excellent.]

[Final Fate Alteration Assessment: The original national destiny of the Great Sui Dynasty was three hundred years. Due to the host's intervention, the national destiny has been significantly extended to eight hundred and thirteen years; the world's trajectory of fate has been drastically diverted!]

[Comprehensive Evaluation: S+ (Perfect Grade)]

[Distributing rewards based on comprehensive evaluation...]

[Congratulations to the host for completing the novice trial. Obtained: Dream World cultivation feedback! 1,000 points! System shop unlocked! Dream talent function unlocked!]