Three days earlier

Immortal Card

Staring at the little red piece of metal on his abdomen, Wang Yan murmured, dumbfounded, "What's going on? Didn't Wang Ziling kill me? What is this thing?" With that thought, he reached out and tried to pry off the triangular metal piece. But it seemed to have grown into his abdomen; he could not find even the slightest gap. Instead, his picking only made his belly hurt. Had this thing actually become part of his flesh?

Wang Yan had only just awakened and was still struggling to make sense of his situation. He could not help recalling what had happened...

About three days earlier...

Amid a vast stretch of overlapping mountain peaks...

The mountains rose steeply, covered everywhere with towering trees whose trunks would take several people to encircle. Faint, terrifying roars of wild beasts drifted through the wilderness. Even the clash of weapons could be heard ringing out, as though people were fighting somewhere.

On one enormous mountain a thousand zhang tall, the slopes were especially sheer. A blue-gray figure climbed nimbly up a cliff midway up the peak. Below lay a drop of several hundred zhang, with nothing visible but mist-shrouded treetops stirring in the wind.

It looked terribly dangerous. An ordinary person would probably have grown dizzy just looking at it.

A closer look revealed that the blue-gray figure was not particularly tall or broad. He was actually a boy of thirteen or fourteen. Bandages covered several places on his body, with traces of blood seeping through, yet he climbed upward at astonishing speed.

On that precipitous rock face, he moved as nimbly and lightly as though he were walking on level ground.

Faint wisps of blue light flowed around the boy's palms and feet. When his hands gripped the rock, they seemed to stick to its surface. No wonder he could climb such a sheer cliff.

Just what wondrous thing was that blue light?

Looking more closely, however, the boy had an ordinary, slightly pale face. His expression showed fierce resolve as he gritted his teeth and persevered. Both hands were smeared with blood, and his clothes were riddled with small holes. Clearly, climbing such a steep cliff was far harder than it looked. A short sword rested on his back, giving off threads of cold blue light; one glance was enough to tell it was no ordinary weapon.

Yet the boy kept gritting his teeth and pushing on, panting heavily as he muttered, "I have to succeed... I have to..." As he spoke, it was as though strength flooded his entire body, and he climbed with astonishing speed!

This boy was Wang Yan, a boy with an utterly ordinary name. But the way he moved across that steep, slippery cliff as though it were level ground, the faint blue glow around his hands and feet, and the softly glowing short sword on his back all made one thing clear: Wang Yan was no ordinary boy...

Wang Yan was indeed no ordinary person. He was a member of the Wang Household, an immortal-cultivating lineage on Azure Spirit Mountain whose name was renowned for thousands of li around.

An immortal cultivator?

Could this boy actually have been an immortal?

Of course not. If he truly were an immortal, he would not have needed to climb this precipitous mountain with his bare hands. A single spell would have carried him to the top. Why go to all this trouble?

To be precise...

The Wang Household was what the cultivation world commonly called an immortal-cultivating lineage. It was a fairly well-known cultivating household within the surrounding thousands of li, with a history said to stretch back seven or eight hundred years. Rumor had it that its patriarch was already a mighty cultivator in the legendary core condensation realm, a figure like an immortal who could fly on a sword and do anything.

Of course... those were only rumors.

To true immortal cultivators, the core condensation realm hardly counted as a lofty level of cultivation. Within the many immortal sects, it was merely middling.

Immortal cultivators had distinct cultivation realms. These were said to be the cultivation realm, core condensation realm, Golden Core Stage, nascent soul realm, divine communion realm, grand void realm, heaven and earth realm, great power realm, and immortal tribulation realm. In the end, one could even attain the Dao and become an immortal, a true immortal of legend, all-powerful and everlasting.

Within the Wang Household, however, the patriarch was already more or less its strongest cultivator...

The strongest cultivators Wang Yan had ever heard of were those in the Liang Kingdom's three great sects, which the Wang Household's cultivators longed to join. They were said to have reached the nascent soul realm and to have lived for over a thousand years. Such a lifespan was truly astonishing. To mortals, it was enough to leave them speechless. Living for a thousand years-what did that even mean?

Wang Yan, meanwhile, stood at the very bottom of the Wang Household's cultivators. His aptitude was poor indeed. After four or five years of cultivation, he had only reached the initial attainment stage of the cultivation realm. Otherwise, he would never have been thrown into the Wang Household's triennial Back Mountain Trial.

The Back Mountain Trial, also called the Last Chance Trial by the Wang Household's younger disciples, was a trial designed to select disciples worth nurturing within the Inner Clan.

It was not a trial prepared for every Inner Clan disciple. More precisely, it was a brutal trial for cultivators under thirteen who had not yet advanced to Minor Completion of the Cultivation Realm.

Each major cultivation realm was divided into four lesser stages: initial attainment, minor attainment, major attainment, and perfection. Anyone who reached thirteen without attaining Minor Completion of the Cultivation Realm had little hope of advancing further unless supplied with vast quantities of miraculous pills and medicines. Naturally, the household had no intention of continuing to nurture them.

That was why the Wang Household's younger disciples called it the Final Trial. Those who failed could only be sent to branch households in various places as outer disciples, to toil like oxen and horses for the Wang Household, conducting worldly business and the like. They might even be expelled from the household.

As already mentioned, this trial was prepared for disciples under thirteen who had not yet reached Minor Completion of the Cultivation Realm.

The internal reason for holding this trial was, naturally, that the lineage's cultivation resources were limited. It could not squander them on disciples with limited aptitude.

There was also an external reason. Within the surrounding thousands of li, besides the Wang Household, there were two other immortal-cultivating lineages of roughly equal strength: the Lü Household and the Wu Household. The Wang Household had to face the threat of these two lineages at all times. If it could not nurture stronger fighters among its descendants, sooner or later it would be swallowed up by the Wu Household or the Lü Household. This was another major reason behind the Back Mountain Trial.

There were exceptions, however. Anyone with special talents in certain areas could become an inner disciple of the Wang Household without passing the trial. Those who had achieved something in artifact refining, pill refining, the Way of Formation, and similar disciplines did not need to take it.

Of course, lineage disciples who had already reached Minor Completion of the Cultivation Realm before thirteen naturally possessed excellent aptitude and did not need to participate in the Back Mountain Trial either.

What left Wang Yan seething was that the children, nephews, and grandchildren of the elders who held power in the lineage were not much better in aptitude. Yet with miraculous pills and medicines supplied by their elders, they easily reached Minor Completion of the Cultivation Realm by thirteen and never had to participate in this so-called Back Mountain Trial.

Wang Yan was merely an ordinary member of the lineage. His parents had died in the year he was born. His only connection to them was the utterly ordinary name they had left him: Wang Yan.

Had Wang Yan not been born with an immortal root, he would probably have been expelled from the lineage long ago and left to live or die on his own.

To cultivate toward immortality, one had to possess an immortal root. Only with an immortal root could a person sense the spiritual energy of heaven and earth, and only by sensing that energy could they cultivate. Every cultivator's immortal roots consisted of attributes of the five elements, divided into the five basic immortal roots: metal, wood, water, fire, and earth.

A cultivator with a single immortal root attribute possessed a heavenly immortal root. When practicing a cultivation method corresponding to that root, they could all but march forward singing triumphantly, progressing at astonishing speed. Such cultivation geniuses appeared only once in a thousand years. Those with two immortal roots possessed two attributes and were also rare cultivation prodigies, seen only once in a hundred years. Most ordinary cultivators had three immortal roots. Four or five immortal roots were considered false immortal roots. Yet although a five-attribute immortal root was considered false, it was even rarer than a heavenly immortal root. Its bearer could sense the spiritual energy of heaven and earth, but their progress was astonishingly slow.

Beyond these were immortal roots mutated from the fusion of two or more attributes, also called mutant immortal roots. Examples included the wind immortal root formed from water and fire, and the thunder immortal root formed from fire and metal.

Whether a person possessed an immortal root had nothing to do with their morals, appearance, intelligence, upbringing, or anything of the sort. It followed no discernible pattern. The chances were simply much higher among immortal-cultivating lineages, owing to the immortal-root bloodlines of cultivators.

These immortal-cultivating lineages, aristocratic clans, and sects would ordinarily scour the world for mortals with immortal roots. By every means available-swindling, deceiving, abducting, or stealing them away-they brought such people back into their lineages to nurture and train, or gave them names and made them members of the lineage or sect...

After all, if cultivators relied solely on births within their own lineages, where would so many members with immortal roots come from? Nurturing cultivators under thirteen required hardly any cultivation resources. They only needed food and cultivation methods. Those who could reach Minor Completion of the Cultivation Realm before thirteen through perseverance and aptitude alone possessed quite good talent. Naturally, they would be accepted into the lineage as Inner Clan disciples, adding to its strength.

Those who could not reach minor attainment before thirteen, or show achievement or talent in auxiliary disciplines, could only be thrown into the Back Mountain Trial. If they passed, they too could join the Wang Household's Inner Clan and continue cultivating.

Although Wang Yan was called a descendant of the main household, in reality he was no different from an outsider disciple. All he had was his unwavering determination to cultivate and grow strong.

The Back Mountain Trial did not actually take place on the Wang Household's own back mountain, but in a mountain range behind Azure Spirit Mountain, where the household resided. Participating disciples could pass by obtaining ten spiritual herbs at least ten years old or the inner cores of cultivation-realm Demon Beasts in those mountains. Breaking through to Minor Completion of the Cultivation Realm during the trial also counted as passing. The time limit was one month.

It was already the twenty-sixth day. Although Wang Yan had worked very hard, he had failed to obtain enough demonic cores and pills, and had not managed to break through to Minor Completion of the Cultivation Realm either.

Now!

Wang Yan had only one hope left: information he had obtained from a senior of the lineage at considerable cost.

There were quite a few spiritual herbs on this mountain peak. If he could gather all ten he needed, he would be able to pass the trial.