[You took a bite. Juice spilled everywhere, and the sweetness was just right.] [More importantly, that warm current was more than ten times stronger than the green jujubes'!] [A warm current surged from your stomach and raced through your meridians. Wherever it passed, the hidden injuries left by years of cultivation began to warm faintly, as though someone were massaging you with warm water.] [You hurriedly sat cross-legged and circulated your cultivation technique. Two hours later, you opened your eyes, shock filling them.] [This single jujube was worth three months of arduous cultivation!] [You looked up at the tree, laden with at least two or three hundred jujubes, and your hands trembled.] [You'd struck it rich. You'd really struck it rich!] [As luck would have it, someone at Liu Family Ferry was heading to Gathered Worthies Manor, so you entrusted him with a letter for Old Woman. You knew you couldn't mention this sort of thing in a letter, so you only invited her to Liu Family Ferry for a chat, urging her to be sure to come.] [The messenger accepted the silver and left in high spirits. You returned to the house and continued cultivating!] [With the jujubes' help, your cultivation advanced at an astonishing speed.] [Two years passed before the messenger finally returned, but he brought your letter back with him.] [You had paid him generously, and he had been conscientious, making thorough inquiries. "Old Woman passed away some years ago. I heard she died peacefully of old age, so all I could do was bring this letter back unopened."] [You tucked the letter into your robes and saw the messenger off with a smile.] [The moment you closed the door, your smile vanished. Standing beneath the jujube tree, you reached up, plucked a jujube, and popped it into your mouth.] [The jujube was as sweet as ever, yet the longer you chewed, the more bitter it seemed.] [You had found a chance to defy heaven and change your fate. Your cultivation was advancing faster, and the Houtian Seventh Level was within reach. But the people you most wanted to invite over for jujubes, the people you most wanted to share them with, were all gone.]
Reading this, Jiang Mi couldn't help sighing.
Fortunately, however, these were all events within the simulation. None of it had actually happened yet; she had merely learned the outcome in advance.
[In the thirty-ninth year, at fifty-four, you broke through to the Houtian Seventh Level.] [In the forty-sixth year, at sixty-one, you reached the Houtian Eighth Level.] [In the sixty-first year, at the advanced age of seventy-six, you officially entered the Houtian Ninth Level.] [You looked at your body, tempered through nine levels by spiritual energy, scarcely able to believe your eyes.] [A crippled spirit root? So what if you had a crippled spirit root?!] [With enough resources, even a crippled spirit root could take flight! It just couldn't fly very high.] [The gulf between the Xiantian Realm and the Houtian Realm was like a heavenly chasm. Now that you had reached the Houtian Ninth Level, you had truly reached the limit of a crippled spirit root. Unless some fortuitous encounter came your way, this was as far as you would ever go in this life.] [You stood beneath the jujube tree, looking down at the ground you had trodden for more than a decade, and finally made up your mind.] [Dig. You would dig tonight.] [You looked up at the sky. The sun had already set, leaving one last streak of orange-red on the horizon. In another hour, it would be completely dark.] [You returned inside to pack. Cultivation manuals, banknotes, loose silver, and dry rations for the journey all went into a bundle, which you slung over your back. The Azure Frost Sword hung at your waist, while the cultivation and martial technique manuals you had bought from the Peerless National Arts Pavilion, along with Old Woman's Cloud-Treading Step, were all tucked securely against your body.] [If you really stirred up serious trouble, you could flee at any moment.] [With your preparations complete, you returned beneath the jujube tree and began to dig.] [The shovel swung, and dirt flew.] [With your Houtian Ninth Level cultivation circulating at full strength, each shovelful dug out ten times the usual amount.] [In less than an hour, you had dug more than ten feet down.] [Standing at the bottom of the pit, you looked up. The opening overhead was only the size of a millstone. Moonlight slanted in, casting a deathly pale patch of light on the ground. Densely tangled roots, thick and thin, were visible along the walls, like countless snakes burrowing into the soil. The sight was rather unsettling.] [You caught your breath and kept digging.] [Twenty feet, thirty feet-a faint barrier appeared before your eyes, like some sort of seal.] [Your guess had been exactly right. For some unknown reason, a crack had opened in the seal, and a thick root from the jujube tree was wedged into it, nourished by the spiritual energy that continually seeped out.] [You didn't dare touch it, afraid it might carry some restriction that would bring someone descending from the sky to kill you the moment you touched it.] [You had to storm the Marquis's Household and avenge Nanny. You absolutely could not die here!]
Jiang Mi understood: with little time left, her simulated self intended to stake her life on it.
Cultivators were few and far between in the Five Nations of the Northern Region, and even martial artists in the Xiantian Realm were rare.
The nations had therefore long held a tacit understanding: anyone whose cultivation was above the Houtian Realm was forbidden from entering the battlefield, to avoid excessive losses.
Thus, even the strongest person in the entire Marquis's Household, the old Dingbei Hou himself, had only been at the Houtian Ninth Level.
By this point, the old marquis had already passed away, and the current master of Dingbei Marquis Manor was the Heir Apparent whose position had been established at birth.
If the Jiang Mi in the simulation no longer feared even the old marquis, why would she fear this newly succeeded Young Marquis?
Dingbei Marquis Manor was indeed nothing to fear, but how was attacking Dingbei Marquis Manor any different from rebellion? The Imperial Court would not spare her, nor would Haoji Palace, Great Xia's foremost immortal sect.
Xiantian martial artists were everywhere in the Imperial Court, and Haoji Palace even had genuine cultivators.
Jiang Mi lowered her eyes.
In truth, if she could still take control at this point, she would certainly have wanted the Jiang Mi in the simulation to stay and see just what was buried beneath the jujube tree.
Could something capable of making an ordinary jujube tree bear spiritual fruit possibly be ordinary?
Even if her simulated self lacked the strength to hold on to it this time, gaining more information for her future self would still be good.
Unfortunately, the more years her simulated self experienced, the more independent she became, and the less she listened to the opinions of the self outside.
I still had choices in the earlier years. Now it won't even let me choose.
Jiang Mi grumbled inwardly, then felt that it made sense.
She hadn't received much care from others in this life, but she had in her previous life.
Jiang Mi knew perfectly well how good Nanny had been to her simulated self.
People were not grass and trees; who could be without feeling?
If the Jiang Mi in the simulation couldn't give Nanny an accounting, she probably wouldn't have the face to meet her even after death, would she?
[You climbed out of the pit and stood beneath the jujube tree, taking one last look at the little courtyard where you had lived for decades.] [Moonlight flowed like water over the crooked jujube tree, over the fallen leaves carpeting the ground, and into the pitch-black pit you had dug thirty feet deep. You bent down, covered the pit with the wooden boards you had prepared, then spread a layer of earth over them. Only after arranging everything until no trace of digging remained did you turn and walk into the night.] [Nanny's grave was still on that hillside.] [Although you hadn't visited over the years, you had hired someone to tend it for you. At least Nanny's grave didn't look like an abandoned, untended mound.] [You crouched before the grave, pulling out the newly sprouted weeds one by one, then piled the collapsed earth back up.] [Only after finishing did you kneel and kowtow three times.] [After one last look at the headstone bearing Nanny's surname, you rose and headed down the hill.] [Dingbei Marquis Manor.] [You circled around to the side of the marquis's manor and found the high wall you had thought of climbing over when you were sixteen.]
Before you continue