As of that day, a full hundred-odd years by the Heavenly Court's calendar had passed since Li Dequan attained the Dao and became an immortal.
One day in heaven was one year on earth.
Converted to time in the Mortal Realm, that was more than thirty-six thousand five hundred years.
Over those long years, who knew how many dynasties had risen and fallen in the Mortal Realm? Even several great mountains in Southern Jambudvipa had been leveled and risen anew.
Yet Li Dequan still held his steady post in the Heavenly Soldier Camp.
Back in the Mortal Realm, he had been quite the figure himself. He drew qi into his body at three, reached Foundation Establishment at fifteen, and achieved core shattering and nascent soul formation before turning a hundred. With a single flying sword, he roamed the four seas, his name resounding throughout the region.
He had been a genius cultivator through and through. Even the patriarchs of his sect treated him like their own patriarch.
In those days, Li Dequan had brimmed with ambition.
When he weathered the ninth-ninth heavenly tribulation and ascended in broad daylight, he had been calculating how, once he reached the Heavenly Court, he ought to become a Heavenly Lord at the very least and accomplish something that would shake heaven and earth.
And then.
Reality dealt him a solid, ringing slap across the face.
At the Heavenly Court's Ascension Pool, he had barely climbed ashore before discovering that even the old gatekeeper responsible for handing out Standard Daoist Robes to newly ascended cultivators had a higher cultivation than his.
He asked around. The old man was a True Immortal.
He asked a little more. In the Heavenly Court, the Child Attendants who swept the floors were innate Dao embryos raised on Immortal Pills,