Ancient Road

Biodata

Geography and Structure

• Branching network: The Ancient Road resembles tree roots or branching rivers, drawing countless planes into routes across the World Sea. Langyu Qingming Heaven is only one branch 504 515.
• Desolate Realms: These realms occupy its branching pathways and screen prospective entrants from surrounding worlds. Their arrangement is compared to veins spreading across a leaf 515 521.
• Inhabited stages: The road is not a continuous physical highway. Its passages transport travelers into worlds where they must accumulate Karma before advancing to another world 536 539.
• Middle section: Langyu Qingming Heaven belongs to the road’s middle section. Its entrance most commonly sends travelers to the Origin Realm 539.
• Upper endpoint: The road bridges the abyss of the World Sea and leads toward the upper realm’s Immortal Gate 581.

Known Locations

Entry and Guardian Trials

Initial Selection

The Desolate Realms conduct the road’s first selection: a candidate must defeat a royal-clan prodigy of the same cultivation level 515.

• Karmic qualification: Possessing Karma alone is insufficient; it must be substantial enough to condense into a visible karmic form 522.
• Sacred Mountain assessment: Climbing the mountain gives entrants’ Karma a tangible manifestation. The mountain is a projection of an ancient upper-realm divine mountain, itself a karmic treasure once used to anchor a superpower’s fortunes 522.
• Ancient Road marks: At the summit, Minglang seals the mountain and announces that defeating its guardians earns an Ancient Road mark and qualification to enter 523.
• Physical danger: Ordinary cultivators attempting to reach the Desolate Realm are repelled by the pressure of the intersecting realms. Bai Yi later judges the passage itself dangerous enough to kill a weaker Spirit Transformation rogue cultivator 516 536.

The Guardians’ Advantage

• Royal-clan participation: Desolate Realm prodigies can enter the Ancient Road after reaching Nascent Soul, while also serving as gatekeepers for their associated worlds 521.
• One-sided opening stakes: Guardians can seize newcomers’ Karma by defeating them. Because those newcomers have not formally entered the road, a guardian’s defeat in this preliminary trial does not strip the guardian’s Karma 521.
• Recovery of lost Karma: Royal-clan prodigies who suffer defeats elsewhere on the road can use the entrance trials to replenish their losses 521.

Opening the Passage

• Minghuang’s acknowledgment: Successful candidates receive a strand of his Golden Law as proof of passing. It protects them from Karma loss caused by two defeats 535.
• Restoration: Dao Resonance from the Sacred Mountain’s stele heals the candidates’ battle injuries before departure 535.
• Portal: Minghuang splits the stele to produce a deep, oval vortex through the chaos 535.
• Commitment: He warns that entering means staking one’s own Karma, with no retreat 535.

Karma and Advancement

The Road’s Central Contest

Karma is the stake underlying the Ancient Road’s battles. It includes aspects of a prodigy’s innate talent and determines their prospects of continuing along the Dao Path 517.

• Accumulation: Treasure hunts, secret-realm opportunities, magical combat, and victories over other prodigies provide Karma 539.
• Loss: Defeat can diminish a contestant’s Karma and seriously damage their future prospects. Further victories can replenish it 521.
• Dao Bodies: Qin Fu states that prodigies must continually use Karma to condense their Dao Bodies to reach the final path 517.
• Karma Dao Fruit: Accumulating enough Karma within a world and condensing it into a Karma Dao Fruit provides a chance to enter the next world along the road 539.
• Spirit Transformation: A dragon-form karmic manifestation gives a prodigy hope of competing for a Dao Fruit and using it to enter Spirit Transformation with a perfected foundation 539.

Karmic Forms

The Ancient Road recognizes the following ascending sequence 522:

Karmic form reflects strength only to an extent. Karmic treasures can suppress its outward manifestation, as demonstrated by Li Changhe and Qin Minmin 522.

Sect Fortunes

• Collective Karma: Sects and other powers compete for Karma just as individual cultivators do 549.
• Flourishing fortunes: Strong sect Karma encourages the appearance of talented disciples and successful breakthroughs 549.
• Decline: A sect whose Karma wanes can deteriorate even if it retains enough strength to avoid immediate destruction 549.
• Karmic treasures: Relics steeped in Karma can bring heaven and earth’s favor to the lineage or sect that obtains them 599.

Cultivation Environment

Great Dao and Spiritual Energy

• Clearer Dao: Bai Yi immediately notices more stable space and a much clearer Great Dao source after arriving from Langyu Qingming Heaven 536.
• Higher cultivation baseline: Abundant spiritual energy and stronger Dao manifestations support cultivators whose average cultivation and talent exceed those of the lower realms 541 548 566.
• Unified techniques: Cultivators incorporate cultivation methods and protective arts into their own Great Dao, making those techniques fuel for their chosen path 548.
• Resources: Secret realms are plentiful. Dao Resonance Fruits remain rare, but are not exceptionally difficult to obtain compared with their scarcity in the lower realms 531.

Dao Fruits and Divine Abilities

History

Ancient Origins and Later Control

The Ancient Road dates to antiquity. According to Qin Fu, even the families controlling it in the present era originally rose through the road themselves. They subsequently exploited it for private gain under the pretext of guarding it 517.

The Desolate Realm royal clans descend from peoples sent down from the upper realm to guard the road. Their inherited cultivation combines powerful bloodlines with strong comprehension of the Great Dao 529.

The Great Upheaval

Before the upheaval became visible, major sects reported losing contact with prodigies who had ventured deep into the road. Only younger disciples previously expelled by the Desolate Clan remained accounted for 504.

The disturbance then shattered space and shook all of Langyu Qingming Heaven. Previously visible only across the Desolate Realm, the road pierced through that barrier and appeared before the world’s cultivators like a descending heavenly road 513.

Nearly thirty Mahayana Sages attempted to investigate. Minghuang obstructed their view, and Li Daoyuan’s heaven-scrying mirror returned only a muddled blank. The gathering dispersed without establishing the cause 514.

Qin Fu explained that the road’s controlling families could now barely protect themselves. Their weakening allowed its original contest for Karma to return, causing the upheaval and renewing ancient karmic manifestations among prodigies across the lower worlds 517.

Story Role

Escape from Langyu Qingming Heaven

The Golden Crow lineage, Three Immortals Sect, and Ten Thousand Demons Grotto secretly sent prodigies onto the road to investigate Heavenly City’s harvesting of Langyu Qingming Heaven’s cultivators and seek a way to break its control. Earlier discoveries brought severe reprisals against all three lineages 537.

During the current upheaval, Xiang Kuang and allied dormant Sages offered themselves as sacrifices to secure an opportunity for Bai Yi and the others. Xiang Kuang’s arrangements bought them five hundred years 537.

Bai Yi’s Journey