Time flew like an arrow, the sun and moon shuttled past like a weaver's shuttle, and before anyone knew it, the year 2516 of Incense Accumulation had arrived.
Eight hundred years was an entire lifetime for a Foundation Establishment cultivator.
As the Immortal Sects secluded themselves in quiet cultivation, hoping to weather the tribulation, almost no one in the mortal world had encountered cultivators in recent years, apart from envoys dispatched to slay demons or recruit gifted talents. Talk of immortal cultivation and seeking the Dao had vanished. People had nearly forgotten that such beings existed, believing them to be nothing more than legends passed down since ancient times.
As for the wilderness cultivators who were largely unaffected by the prohibitions, they had naturally vanished long ago because of the withering of the immortal root.
There was no helping it. Spirit stones kept soaring in value, and finding pure spiritual energy untouched by foul, turbid contamination had become far too difficult.
Grassroots rogue cultivators retreated into remote mountains and ancient forests, or places of strange perils, living by guarding materials rich in spirit resonance or rare treasures that yielded a single portion only once every few years. Gone were the days when they could simply buy and sell such things on the market.
Opportunities to advance in cultivation grew ever scarcer. As the older generation died of age before they could pass on their legacies, even cultivation manuals that had once been plentiful became precious rarities.
Naturally, there could no longer be flourishing rivers and lakes of wandering cultivators, nor cultivators who taught themselves to success.
No single cause could have produced this effect. It arose from many factors intertwining and reinforcing one another.
Yet at this moment, within the Que Luo Immortal Abode at the Incense Accumulation Sect's Mountain