A Fellow Daoist Devoted to the Western Lands, Willing to Toil Far and Wide—Truly a Person of Great Vows and Great Virtue

Zhunti's actions not only spared him from ridicule, but also won the respect of quite a few great powers.

Everyone knew that the Western Lands were barren. Beyond Mount Sumeru, there were scarcely any resources left. For Zhunti to travel through the eastern lands on behalf of the Western Lands, making friends everywhere, was truly no easy task.

Taiqing Daoist personally raised his cup.

"A fellow Daoist devoted to the Western Lands, willing to toil far and wide—truly a person of great vows and great virtue."

Though everyone present possessed abundant foundations and found it difficult to truly empathize, they could not help but admire Zhunti's courage.

Shangqing Daoist glanced at Zhu Yin and smiled.

"Fellow Daoist Zhunti, you have taken in a fine disciple. As expected, master and disciple come from the same mold—both are people of heart and ambition."

Zhu Yin's face reddened slightly at those words.

He knew that he was far inferior to his master in terms of great vows. He preferred to keep to himself and disliked drawing attention.

His master, on the other hand, was willing to run all over the world for the Western Lands. Even if misunderstood by others, he never regretted it, even living himself into the "joke" others saw.

That courage and bearing were what Zhu Yin admired.

After the banquet ended, Zhunti and Jieyin returned to Mount Sumeru with Zhu Yin.

The moment they set foot there, thunderous booms came from the horizon...

Blood clouds blanketed the sky, and Sha Qi soared into the heavens.

Though the Heavenly Court had been established, the storm of the Primordial Wilderness had only just begun!

Boom...!

Above the Nine Heavens, deafening thunder resounded through heaven and earth as killing intent swept forth.

The great war between the Witch Clan and the Demon Race had finally erupted.

The Heavenly Court's once resplendent, immortal-realm-like palaces had long since become shattered ruins. Immortal mountains collapsed, spiritual qi dispersed, and broken walls littered the ground.

Watching from afar through a water mirror, Zhu Yin saw Zhunti sighing secretly. Clearly, he too felt deep regret.

In the sky, the four great rulers of the Heavenly Court were locked in fierce battle with the twelve ancestral witches.

The Demon Race's divine abilities collided with the Witch Clan's laws. Every strike shook heaven and earth and twisted the void.

With the River Diagram and Luo Scripture above his head, Dijun manifested mountains, rivers, and stars. A Solar Golden Wheel illuminated all directions as he battled Dijiang without pause.

Taiyi wielded the Eastern Sovereign Bell. Its chimes shattered heaven and earth, sending time and space surging. Facing six opponents alone, he did not fall even slightly behind, his might peerless.

Nuwa transformed into rosy radiance and held the Heavenly Blade. Reversing the laws of creation, she displayed astonishing divine abilities, holding back three ancestral witches alone—her heroic spirit rivaled any man's.

Fuxi played his zither, its lingering notes like the manifestation of Dao sound, trapping two ancestral witches. The scene was magnificent beyond compare.

Zhu Yin stared, dumbfounded.

Though he had not personally entered the battlefield and only watched through the water mirror, he felt as though he stood within it himself, his heart profoundly shaken.

Through deduction, many great powers also came to understand the cause of the matter...

The Witch Clan considered themselves descendants of Pangu's bloodline and had never submitted to anyone.

Now that the Demon Race had established the Heavenly Court and sought to command the mandate of heaven, it had struck directly upon the Witch Clan's reverse scale.

This time, they would no longer endure it. The entire clan marched against heaven!

"The Primordial Wilderness was opened by Pangu. Only my Witch Clan may rule it—the Demon Race must perish!" The ancestral witches roared like thunder, shattering stars.

The Witch Clan had been born for battle. The more they fought, the braver they became, driving the Demon Race back step by step.

Seeing the situation turn unfavorable, Dijun decisively activated the Primordial River-Luo Grand Formation, hoping to stabilize the battle.

Who could have expected that the ancestral witches would refuse to be outdone, bringing forth the Twelve Heavenly Gods Baleful Fiend Grand Formation?

As the formation activated, a phantom of Pangu appeared between heaven and earth...

He stood with his head against the heavens and feet upon the earth, his eyes like sun and moon, his spine like Buzhou Mountain. Wielding a phantom Pangu Axe, he brought it down with one strike, and the Demon Race's grand formation instantly collapsed!

The entire Heavenly Court was nearly destroyed in a single blow. Demon gods at the Zenith Heaven Golden Immortal level fell in droves, while Dijun and the others were gravely wounded and coughed blood!

Just as life and death hung in the balance, Hongjun Dao Ancestor appeared!

With a single finger, he manifested the Three Thousand Great Daos and collided with Pangu's phantom, shattering it. He then left behind the verdict, "Demons rule the heavens, witches rule the earth," before turning and departing. He came and went like the wind, unfathomable and mysterious.

Within Mount Sumeru.

Zhu Yin witnessed the first half of that world-shaking battle through the water mirror.

Nuwa's power to reverse creation in particular struck him like a thunderbolt, granting him sudden enlightenment.

Though the image became blurred and impossible to see after Pangu's phantom appeared, this was already enough.

This battle not only laid down the future pattern of "the Heavenly Court belonging to the Demon Race and the Primordial Wilderness belonging to the Witch Clan," but also shook the entire cultivation world.

Countless great powers entered seclusion to comprehend the Dao. The Three Pure Ones did so, and Zhunti and Jieyin were no exception.

Naturally, Zhu Yin also took the opportunity to enter seclusion and cultivate within the Immaculate Hall.

A thousand years later.

Zhu Yin slowly stepped out of the hall. Still dressed in azure robes, his aura was steady, yet a restrained sharpness different from before shone between his brows.

His cultivation had advanced once more, reaching the peak of Late Golden Immortal. He was only one step away from completion.

More importantly, through his insights, he had created a divine ability of his own... the Withering-and-Blooming Life-and-Death Profound Light, greatly increasing his combat strength.

Now, he was cultivating spiritual plants.

He took out the innate fruit pits he had collected at the Heavenly Court banquet, along with those Zhunti had given him, and planted them in carefully prepared spiritual soil.

He cast Vitality Divine Light into them and watered them with innate spiritual water. Even the fertilizer was made from top-grade materials he had specially prepared.

The one he focused on most was the Starfruit pit.

It had come from the Astral Fruit Tree. This was an innate spiritual fruit supplied exclusively by the Heavenly Court to Quasi-Sage experts, ripening only once every nine thousand years.

To a Golden Immortal, such a spiritual fruit was simply a rare heavenly treasure.

If he could cultivate an Astral Fruit Tree, then even if it did not become an innate spiritual root, merely becoming a high-grade acquired spiritual root would be enough to raise Spirit Platform Mountain's foundation by another level.

Of course, he understood that trying to grow an innate spiritual root from a fruit pit was little more than wishful thinking.

Even a great power like Jieyin had spent countless years nurturing that Ninth-Grade White Lotus before successfully raising it to the level of a high-grade spiritual treasure.

He was merely casting a wide net and trying more possibilities. He carefully tended the other fruit pits as well; if he could grow even one, it would count as a success.

Even if they failed, they could still be used as nourishment for spiritual herbs, so they would not go to waste.

Another hundred years passed like this.

Zhunti and Jieyin still had not emerged from seclusion, and Zhu Yin's life returned to tranquility.

Every day consisted of cultivation, tending grass, brewing tea, and taking walks.

But one day, as he stood before the Immaculate Hall and watched the sun rise and moon set, a ripple stirred within his heart.

"I have come to this world for tens of thousands of years, and studied under my master for thousands more, yet my range of activity has never extended beyond Mount Sumeru and Spirit Platform Mountain. Even my trip to the Heavenly Court was merely a fleeting glimpse..."

"It is time to go out and take a look."

A trace of anticipation appeared in Zhu Yin's eyes.

He decided to travel through the Western Lands.

In the Primordial World, on the Western Continent.

A figure in azure robes emerged from Mount Sumeru.

He traveled among the Western Lands' mountain ranges, sometimes drenched by heavy rain, sometimes walking beneath starlight. At times he burrowed deep into mountains, while at others he appeared upon the surface.

That person was Zhu Yin.

The Western Lands were terribly poor. Their earth veins were severed, and spiritual qi was thin.

Zhu Yin's travels were not only to broaden his horizons and seek heavenly treasures. At the same time, he repaired shattered earth veins, gathered spiritual qi, cultivated and comprehended the Dao, and accumulated merit.

For every nine hundred years he spent repairing earth veins, he would travel for one hundred years.

Whenever he repaired an earth vein, he would take a small portion of its fortune in return. It counted as repaying karma, and ensured that neither side owed the other anything.

He traveled like this for a full six thousand years.

In total, he repaired six earth veins and walked six hundred thousand li.

But as he walked, his feelings grew increasingly complicated.

He had long known that the Western Lands were poor, but he had never imagined they could be this poor.

Across six hundred thousand li of mountains and rivers, he encountered fewer than several tens of thousands of cultivators. Most were acquired lifeforms, while innate ones were few enough to count on one's fingers. More places either had not a blade of grass growing and no spiritual qi at all, or appeared passable at first glance but actually contained pitifully few spiritual herbs and medicines.

As for spiritual lands, even low-grade ones were scarce, while mid-grade ones were rarer still. He had not seen a single high-grade one. Not to mention immortals or powerful clans—the entire Western Lands seemed as though the whole Primordial Wilderness had cast them aside.

He had previously heard Master Zhunti say that Golden Immortals were already considered very powerful in the Western Lands. He had only half believed it before, but now he did.

Over six thousand years, he had not encountered a single Golden Immortal.

There had only been a scant handful of True Immortals, Heavenly Immortals, and Mysterious Immortals combined.

At that moment, he finally understood why his master had run all over the Western Lands, forming connections everywhere. He also understood why Zhunti and Jieyin could become sages, and why the Buddhist Sect could rise in the Western Lands.

Besides their good fortune and their grasp of the Western Lands' destiny and Great Dao, there was another crucial reason: after the Dao-Demon War, Hongjun Dao Ancestor owed the Western Lands an immense karmic debt.

To repay that karma, heaven and earth also needed Zhunti and Jieyin to repair the earth veins and restore spiritual vitality. And they truly possessed perseverance, grand vows, and merit.