"That won't do. Don't set your sights too high. Those great powers survived because they were formidable. If we tried to imitate them, we'd just be courting death."
The listener nodded repeatedly. "You're right. Of the three Divine Venerables, wouldn't the Mist Mountain God Venerable's path to advancement be the easiest to follow?"
"...Then first, you'd have to join one of the Five Major Sects."
Well, that brought the conversation to a swift end.
In truth, of the three, only Jun Zhaoying had come from a relatively good background—and only compared with the other two. She was born into a minor branch of a small Aristocratic Clan. Her parents died young, and an uncle from another branch raised her. Everyone had thought she had no Spiritual Root and would eventually be married off to forge an alliance. Instead, she ran away from home, joined the Hehe Sect, and became a disciple of a major sect in one stroke.
The marriage alliance was naturally abandoned. From then on, the sky was wide open for her to fly.
Their names alone offered a clue: of the two people and one dragon, she was the only one with a surname. Of the other two, one was a Half-Dragon who had drifted from place to place since childhood. Fortunately, he possessed an innate divine ability and had been the terror of the streets even before he began cultivating. Later, a twist of fate led him onto the path of cultivation, where he befriended two members of major sects and traveled with them. He did not enter Yonglu Mountain, however, until after reaching Nascent Soul.
The Mist Mountain God Venerable was far more mysterious. Even the recent "A Mountain-Surnamed Divine Venerable Discusses Demon-Slaying over Wine" said only that a Sword Venerable of the Heaven-Shattering Sword