Someone had once said that flowers could bloom again, but people could never be young once more.
Even cultivators of great attainment, who could remain undying and imperishable, forever untouched by age, were no exception.
When they looked back on the past, their hearts had weathered too much to recover that first stirring of emotion. Only regret and sorrow remained.
A certain Heavenly Emperor who loved beast milk more than anything had once felt this deeply. Even after reaching the end of the path, wandering the river of time, and revisiting those bygone years, he still had to sigh. He had been happiest in his youth, yet everything had flowed away like water, never to return.
Perhaps even the mightiest cultivators had regrets about their lives and longed to start everything over, to walk a different road.
-If heaven gave me another chance...
Life was like this, and so was cultivation.
Viewed from different heights, cultivation offered different perspectives, revealing different worlds.
A foundation that seemed flawless to an Immortal Second Realm Mighty Figure might be riddled with weaknesses in a Saint's eyes. Those weaknesses linked together, ultimately becoming an impassable chasm on the road of cultivation ahead.
Many cultivators reached a certain height and then could not advance another inch, spending the rest of their lives trapped at a single bottleneck. This was generally why.
Even if they regretted it, they could do nothing. The timber had already been made into a boat!
In short-this character build was ruined!
Salvage a ruined build?
Reset the points and train again.
Be reborn through nirvana, begin a new lifetime, and break free of the original course!
But how difficult was that?
So difficult it beggared belief and imagination, utterly beyond the reach of the vast majority of living beings!
Feng Jiu, however, was not among them.
That was because he had obtained the Reincarnation Treasure. A Lotus Seed had taken root in his heart, dancing with the cycle of life and death, growing little by little. Though still a seedling, it had already revealed its extraordinary nature.
It was a kind of... endless restarting!
The birth and decline of the Dao, the waxing and waning of all things, worlds decaying and reviving-the very essence of existence laid bare. Everything was nothing more than a cycle!
Because it was a cycle, there could be similar people, similar events, and similar scenes!
Flowers could bloom again, and people could be young once more!
It seemed that, if he only wished it, he could make the entire world enter the cycle and restart, reverse time, return to the past, and begin anew while carrying on!
It was... rebirth!
In Feng Jiu's previous life, this would have been the opening of an urban rebirth novel-reborn ×× years ago; this time, I would reclaim everything I had lost...
Here, however, it was called Reflection!
Of course, ideals were beautiful, but reality was bare-boned.
The lotus was a seedling.
The man was a rookie.
Even if Feng Jiu were wrung dry, he could not condense heaven and earth's dark and yellow essence or traverse the universe's Primordial World. A couple of hops on the spot were about all he could manage.
Yet even that was already enough to defy heaven.
He could not reverse heaven and earth, but he could revisit his own life.
He could not change the world, but he could change himself.
Like a medicine for regret that never failed, it allowed him to retrace his cultivation path again and again, relive his past cultivation, and make adjustments and changes wherever he had overlooked something. He could elevate his foundation and, in the end, even choose to bring those gains back to the present!
Feng Jiu's body was merely a Mortal Body, with no special constitution to speak of. But so what?
He was confident that, within the same realm, his foundation and understanding of cultivation's fundamentals were absolutely the strongest in history!
This was strength at the most fundamental level. He needed no flashy constitutions or manifestations. The plainest expansion alone was enough for him to look down upon countless prodigies in the mortal world!
Clang!
A streak of cold light illuminated the mountains and rivers, even stealing the radiance of the blazing sun above, as though it had become the only thing between heaven and earth.
It was a Killing Sword, spanning the firmament and bringing down a tribulation of slaughter. Hundreds upon thousands of killing techniques had been condensed into a single strike, bearing the imposing assurance that there was no one in the world it could not kill!
The sword's edge pointed at a man who looked like an immortal descended to earth. His expression changed. "An assassin from the Heavenly Court?"
Boom!
Dazzling saint light erupted as the Yaoguang Holy Land's peerless art bloomed. Wherever the Primordial Saint Light shone, no technique could invade and no tribulation could destroy. "The eighth minor step of the Second Heaven of the Immortal Platform?"
The Yaoguang Holy Land's Candidate Saint Son barked coldly, "I stand within the eight prohibitions, at the perfection of Immortal Two. Who can kill me!"
He abruptly thrust out his palm. Saint light blazed like flames, transforming into divine rays of order that slashed toward the heavens, intent on shattering and refining the Killing Sword that seemed to have replaced the sun!
"You're precisely the one I'm here to kill!"
A soft laugh rang out, far too relaxed and casual. It was as though this were not a bloody battle fought against a superior realm, but a spring outing taken on a whim. He paid no heed whatsoever to the Candidate Saint Son of a holy land.
That remained true even though his opponent's cultivation was higher and his prohibition count stood at the pinnacle beneath the divine prohibition-the eight prohibitions!
Saint flames burned the heavens, and sword light split the world. The two collided, erupting like twin suns into hundreds of millions of rays, so dazzling that even the cultivators in the nearby Saint City were left reeling.
"What happened?" A low-level cultivator who knew nothing of the situation trembled.
"Heavens, an assassin from the Heavenly Court has made a move! He's assassinating the Yaoguang Holy Land's Candidate Saint Son!" An old man privy to secret matters paled.
"What nerve! Openly assassinating a prodigy in broad daylight! The Heavenly Court grows more brazen by the day. Aren't any elder experts going to rein them in?"
"Save it. Which elder expert who's lived to old age doesn't know how to judge the winds? Bullying a few low-level cultivators without powerful backing is one thing, but going head-to-head with an assassin organization?" Someone else snorted. "Whatever you have to say, go say it to the Heavenly Court's Killing Saint!"
"It's not as if no holy land has ever been razed for offending the Heavenly Court!"
"They say the Heavenly Court possesses an unsurpassed Secret Technique that embodies the ultimate extremity of movement. Not only does it grant the greatest speed in the world, but it also lets them leap into the Nine Heavens and penetrate the Nine Netherworlds. There is nowhere they cannot go!"
"Innate formation patterns cannot trap them, supreme Dao arts cannot block them, and even a Ten Directions Absolute Formation cannot stop them from passing through!"
"Many holy lands seal their sects with endless formation patterns, yet still cannot keep out Heavenly Court assassins accomplished in this Secret Technique..."
"So you can imagine why ordinary holy lands don't dare provoke the Heavenly Court. Aren't they afraid a Heavenly Court Killing Saint will break through their Saint Formation overnight and slaughter every last member?"
A burly man sneered. "A holy land once refused to believe it, and you can imagine the result. Its Saint, along with every cultivator at the Immortal Platform realm or above throughout the holy land, died in a single night. They couldn't even escape!"
At this, a delicate, immortal-like youth sighed. "Such heavy killing intent. Such imposing might..."
The youth was breathtakingly beautiful. His face would have made many women beneath the heavens ashamed of their own looks. His elegance was unrivaled, his whole body crystalline and flowing with divine radiance, nearly perfect.
He was like an immortal blossom fallen into the mortal world, united with the Dao in
truth, extraordinary beyond compare.
"I wonder whether this Secret Technique could still run so rampant if an Emperor Formation barred its way and an Emperor Artifact descended to suppress and kill?"
The youth spoke softly.
The burly man froze, then hesitated. "That... I really don't know."
"First, apart from a true Ancient Great Emperor, who could lay down an Emperor Formation?"
"Second, Emperor Weapons are used by those Extreme Dao Holy Lands to secure their deepest foundations. How could they deploy them lightly?"
"Third, the Heavenly Court's assassins really have never carried out an assassination inside an Extreme Dao Holy Land..."
"Assassin organizations tailor the dish to the diner, too!"
"They never accept contracts on anyone important enough to drive an Extreme Dao Holy Land mad and make it take an Emperor Weapon to dig three feet deep across the Eastern Wasteland..."
"Oh, is that so?" The youth understood, a faint smile resting at the corners of his mouth.