What were Ancient Cultivators?
The Spirit-Taming World, and indeed all the Heavenly Realms today, used the First Year of the Dharma-Ending Era to divide ancient times from the present. Those who had still been able to cultivate the Dharma Dao before the Dharma-Ending Age, gathering the mighty power of Heaven and Earth into themselves, were Ancient Cultivators.
What were Survivors?
Those who persisted in cultivation after the Dharma-Ending Age, seeking through heaven-defying power to rewrite their fate, ignoring the exhaustion of Dharma Power and the decline of spirit veins, forcibly prolonging their lives and clinging to their last breaths until today-these were the so-called Survivors!
In truth, this was an extremely broad and vague designation. Throughout history, there had been no shortage of people who pursued the Dharma Dao and sought to restore ancient ways, or who, like Wu Lianyi and his companions, spared no effort in researching Dharma Lineages and modifying Warriors to realize their ideal of Everyone Like Dragons. All of them seemingly could be placed in this category.
Strictly speaking, however, their guiding principles and methods all belonged to the people of the present and were constrained by the current age. They were not true Survivors of the Ancient Cultivators.
The true Survivors of the Ancient Cultivators had acquired a unique significance through the changing eras and the interweaving of history.
Most of them had already cultivated beyond the Dao Realm before the Dharma-Ending Age. They had foreseen the future and used all manner of means to escape calamity, clinging to life until the present.
When such beings appeared in the world, it often meant the existence of a corresponding means of prolonging life and preserving oneself, or a lost tradition and inheritance.
An innocent man became guilty merely by possessing a precious jade. Their pursuit of