Ten Lives, Past and Present

Yuan Tian woke groggily, as though he had just slept for ages. His thoughts felt slightly muddled. Just as he habitually tried to raise a hand to rub his eyes, he suddenly realized he could not feel his hands. No—not even his body, his senses, his sense of touch... he could not feel anything at all. What was this? Yuan Tian wanted to roar in shock, yet found that he could not make a sound. It was as if his entire body had lost all sensation.

"No, I was cultivating when a book that came out of a black hole hit me. What? Did I die? No way, heavens, don't mess with me. Who gets killed by a book? Even if someone were killed by a book, it couldn't be an expert like me."

"Maybe I really am dead. If I'm dead, am I a soul now? Right, I can use my divine sense."

As one of the few experts on Earth, Yuan Tian knew how to use divine sense. Before he could spread his divine consciousness outward, countless things seemed to suddenly appear in his mind. Thus, Yuan Tian honorably fainted again.

When Yuan Tian woke up once more, he had already sorted through and absorbed everything in his mind.

It turned out that after Yuan Tian was sucked into the black hole, he had somehow borrowed the power of heaven and earth to unlock the memories of his previous nine lives. That was why his mind had felt filled with so many things.

Every one of Yuan Tian's previous nine lives had been a top-tier expert of the world. These experts were not from the Mortal Realm, but from the Primordial Wilderness and the Cultivation World that emerged later.

In his first life, Yuan Tian had been one of the first members of the Human Clan. His innate talent had been extraordinary. Less than ten thousand years after his birth, he had already reached the peak of the Zenith Heaven Golden Immortal realm. Even in the ancient Primordial Wilderness, he could be considered a formidable expert.

Yet Yuan Tian's first life had been born with an interest in formations. Of all times, he chose the Witch-Demon War to rush onto the Witch-Demon Battlefield and study the two great formations of the Primordial Wilderness—the Twelve Heavenly Gods Baleful Formation and the All-Heavens Star Formation.

Yuan Tian's first life truly had been a genius. He had comprehended seventy to eighty percent of the two great formations of the Primordial Wilderness in merely a thousand years. But just as he was preparing to leave the Witch-Demon Battlefield, the Demon Clan discovered him and mistook him for an ally of the Witch Clan. Thirty-six Demon Sages gathered to surround him. After a bitter battle, they blasted Yuan Tian's first life to death. Although Yuan Tian had also made all thirty-six Demon Sages accompany him to the grave, he was still finished just like that. Or rather, they had perished together.

Yuan Tian's second reincarnation had unexpectedly been a witch-human. By a fortunate coincidence, he awakened his Witch Clan bloodline and gained the ability to cultivate the Witch Clan's inherited technique, Nine Revolutions Profound Technique. During the era of the ancient Three Sovereigns, he achieved the body of a Great Witch. A Great Witch's body was supposedly immortal, but of all things, Chiyou of the Witch Clan and the Yellow Emperor fought for supremacy over the world. Yuan Tian's second life was unlucky enough to die in their struggle. It could truly be said that he had lived without greatness and died in utter frustration.

Yuan Tian's third life was reincarnated into the Human Clan. At that time, the Human Clan's Mystic Sect was flourishing. Through a fortunate coincidence, Yuan Tian's third life obtained the Mystic Sect's guardian divine art, Nine Revolutions Origin Technique, and thus embarked upon the path of cultivation. Relying on his exceptional talent, he attained the Dao Fruit of a Zenith Heaven Golden Immortal during the early Shang Dynasty. Because of Nine Revolutions Profound Technique, he became entangled in karma with the Mystic Sect. As a result, he was finished during the war between the Dao Sects—the Investiture of the Gods War. That life ended just like that as well.

Yuan Tian's fourth life was reincarnated into the Demon Clan. With astonishing luck, he acquired the Demon Clan's two supreme arts: the Heavenly Demon Immortality Art, which cultivated the physical body, and the Demon Emperor Immortality Art, which cultivated the Primordial Spirit. During the early Great Tang, his cultivation reached the realm of a Demon Sage and Zenith Heaven Golden Immortal. But the Buddhist Sect was then spreading westward, and in the process, it intended to strike at the Demon Clan. Yuan Tian, who was highly renowned among the Demon Clan and possessed Demon Sage cultivation, naturally became a thorn in the Buddhist Sect's side. Thus, the Buddhist Sect first sent eighteen Bodhisattva- and Buddha-level experts to besiege and kill him. Unexpectedly, Yuan Tian wiped out all eighteen Buddhist Sect experts by himself.

This enraged the Buddhist Sect. When had it ever suffered such a tremendous loss? Nor could it afford such humiliation.

Thus, the Buddhist Sect dispatched all its experts: a total of one hundred and eight Bodhisattva- and Buddha-level experts, led by a Buddhist master at the Quasi-Sage level. After Yuan Tian slaughtered the Buddhist Sect experts, he knew that the Buddhist Sect would certainly send more. Therefore, Yuan Tian broadly invited Demon Clan cultivators from across the world to join him in destroying the enemy.

All the Demon Clan experts invited by Yuan Tian came, and even many who had not been invited came as well. There was no helping it. If the Buddhist Sect destroyed Yuan Tian today, it might very well destroy them tomorrow. Even these old demons who had lived for countless thousands of years understood something as simple as shared survival.

Thus, when the Buddhist Sect experts arrived, Yuan Tian's side had gathered sixty-four Demon Clan experts. Although they were fewer in number than the Buddhist Sect's forces, the strength of both sides was evenly matched.

That battle darkened heaven and earth. The two sides fought for more than a hundred days. Finally, when the Buddhist Sect's Quasi-Sage-level expert erupted with power, the Buddhist Sect achieved a miserable victory at the cost of ninety-seven experts. On the Demon Clan's side, aside from six great Demon Sages who escaped with severe injuries, all other fifty-eight died. Regrettably, Yuan Tian was among those fifty-eight fallen Demon Clan experts. Then again, if Yuan Tian had not died, the Buddhist Sect could not have called it a miserable victory—it would have been a defeat.

Although the Buddhist Sect won miserably, it had finally removed the greatest obstacle to Journey to the West and paved a broad road for it.

Yuan Tian's fifth through eighth lives were all top experts of the Cultivation World. Some were Dao Sect experts, some were Alchemical Grandmasters, and some were Artifact Refining Grandmasters. There was no need to explain each one in detail.

What was worth mentioning was Yuan Tian's ninth life. In that life, he cultivated Dao, demon, and Buddhist arts together. In other words, he simultaneously cultivated the techniques of the Dao Sect, Demon Sect, and Buddhist Sect: Nine Revolutions Origin Technique, Heavenly Demon Soul-Refining Art, and Eight-Nine Profound Technique. All were top-tier techniques of the three sects.

As the number of cultivators increased, the innate spiritual energy between heaven and earth had long since transformed into acquired spiritual energy. The deeper one's cultivation became, the more time it required. In order to break through to a higher realm more quickly, whenever Yuan Tian was about to undergo an Immortal Tribulation, he split off most of his Primordial Spirit to cultivate as a Loose Immortal, while his main body continued cultivating.

Whenever his own cultivation was about to reach the point of undergoing an Immortal Tribulation, Yuan Tian would divide off part of his Primordial Spirit for cultivation.

By the time this unconventional method of cultivating as a Loose Immortal had reached the ninth division, Yuan Tian could no longer continue. His magical power had already reached the peak of the tenth level of the Loose Immortal realm, and he could no longer suppress it.

Thus, Yuan Tian gathered his scattered Loose Immortal Primordial Spirit incarnations back into one body and prepared to undergo the tenth-level Loose Immortal Tribulation.

Yuan Tian did not care about his Loose Immortal Tribulation at all, because his current strength was ten times that of an ordinary tenth-level Loose Immortal. If an ordinary Loose Immortal could reach the initial stage of Zenith Heaven Golden Immortal after overcoming the tribulation, then Yuan Tian could at least reach the middle stage, perhaps even the late stage or peak.

But Yuan Tian had not expected that his unconventional cultivation method would mutate the already near-impossible tenth-level Loose Immortal Tribulation, increasing its power a hundredfold. Thus, without any preparation at all, he was finished once again.

Fortunately, Yuan Tian possessed the Great Dao's rare treasure, the Great Dao Secret Record. The Great Dao Secret Record suppressed his fate and kept it from dispersing, allowing Yuan Tian to preserve a wisp of his soul beneath the tenth-level Loose Immortal Tribulation. Otherwise, he would truly have been finished for good this time.

His tenth life—his current life—was a reincarnation of a wisp of his ninth life's soul, so his innate limitations were immense. Unless something unexpected happened, he would be unable to cultivate to the immortal level in this life. If Yuan Tian wanted to regain the talent he possessed in his previous life, he would likely need to reincarnate at least ten more times.

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