Meng Chuan chatted with Ruthless for a while longer and sensed another subtle shift in her attitude since the last time he had been injured and nearly died.
He could not say exactly what had changed. Otherwise, why would he call it subtle?
"Great Emperor, when are you going to live out your Ninth Lifetime and become a Red Dust Immortal?" Meng Chuan asked as the thought occurred to him.
"I feel there is still more to accumulate. I have not reached Perfection yet. It will take some time," Ruthless replied. That "some time" would probably be very long—longer than Meng Chuan had left to live.
Meng Chuan was a little disappointed. Ruthless did not know how to play along at all. He had hoped she would say, "Today."
"That's fine. More accumulation is a good thing." Meng Chuan smiled gently.
Only a little over two hundred thousand years had passed since Ruthless's Attainment of the Dao. Going from mortal to Eighth Lifetime Red Dust Immortal in that time was blisteringly fast.
But after moving so quickly through the earlier lifetimes, she might need far longer in the Eighth Lifetime, the stage of accumulation and ascension.
When Shi Hao had traveled against the flow of Years to the era of Emperor's Fall, for instance, it had taken him hundreds of thousands of years to reach the Eighth Lifetime. Yet he had reached the Ninth Lifetime very quickly.
Just like that, he had done it.
Sometimes, the necessary years of tempering simply could not be skipped.
"Great Emperor, I have something rather important to tell you. Afterward, you will need to make your own choice."
Meng Chuan looked at Ruthless gravely and said,
"The Nine-Lifetime Red Dust Immortal is not the pinnacle beneath Immortal King. A cultivator can undergo one more