Old Ancestor Yellow Cloud True Person was a true Core Formation cultivator, possessing more than three thousand years of cultivation and dharma power. Although she had yet to attain Nascent Soul, her youth never faded, and neither heat nor cold could assail her. She would not grow old or fall ill like an ordinary mortal.
Now, an urgent message had suddenly arrived from the Skycloud Sect, announcing her critical illness as though she belonged to a mortal lineage. The implication was plain.
This was no ordinary illness, but an illness of cultivators. A cultivator's illness lay in calamity and tribulation, hence its other name: the old calamity and illness tribulation.
This was a final tribulation that cultivators had to undergo before death, unavoidable and impossible to resist. It resembled what Buddhists called the five declines of celestial beings. Even in the mortal world, some dialects referred to someone's death as "growing old." Old age and death-once old, one must die. This was the Great Dao of heaven and earth.
Li Ling and Mu Qingsi thus packed their belongings, made the necessary arrangements, and secretly departed toward the Mystic Continent.
This time, they neither used the Merchant Association's teleportation array nor traveled aboard an Immortal Vessel or Treasure Ship. Instead, they journeyed more than two hundred thousand li as ordinary rogue cultivators, circled around to the eastern side of the Mystic Continent, and entered the Skycloud Sect directly from the East Sea coast.
By the time they finished this journey, more than half a month had passed.
Amid blue skies and white clouds, the boundless void seemed shrouded in swirling mist.
Through the currents of void energy flowing there, they could faintly glimpse mountains shining with spiritual light like mirages, with colorful clouds, radiant sunset hues, and jade palaces appearing from