[Li Yan passed away in seated meditation, leaving one more Heavenly Monarch position vacant in the Human Realm.]
[Nascent Soul late-stage Grand Cultivators began competing once again.]
[Compared to several thousand years ago, pressure from the Demon Abyss Realm had brought most of the Human Realm's factions together. They exchanged and studied numerous inheritances, resulting in far more Nascent Soul late-stage Grand Cultivators than two or three thousand years before.]
["Heavenly Monarch Azure Origin's dao companion... has passed away..."]
[The other Heavenly Monarchs of this age all looked toward Heavenly Sword Peak.]
[There were only so many Heavenly Monarchs in the Human Realm. Whenever one passed away, the others generally knew.]
[You surveyed the Human Realm for a while before returning to your cave abode.]
,??
[Even in the final moments of your lifespan, you never stopped cultivating and contemplating, preparing for your next simulation.]
["The Dao of Alchemy... and Puppetry..."]
[You looked thoughtful. Both skills had reached the peak of fifth-tier lower-grade. All you needed was an opportunity or a moment of enlightenment to cross that threshold into fifth-tier middle-grade.]
[By comparison, your Formation Path and Divination skills remained some distance from the peak of fifth-tier lower-grade.]
[Your Divination skills, in particular, had hit another bottleneck, making further progress difficult.]
["In the next simulation, I could exchange for that Zhou-Tian Book of Changes raw stone again and see whether I can gain another insight."]
[You thought to yourself.]
[In theory, each Diviner could only gain insights from a Zhou-Tian Book of Changes raw stone once. Even if they obtained a second raw stone, contemplating it again would have little effect.]
[But in the next simulation, after skill inheritance, "everything" would be reset, including drug resistance and so on. Perhaps that would also include your experience of contemplating the Zhou-Tian