[Retaining the memories of your previous life, you reincarnated in the Seven Wonders World.]
[After your birth, you observed your surroundings and realized that you had crossed over into another world. By learning its language and culture, you began to understand it. It turned out to be a wuxia world. Your family was a famous martial arts clan, and your father was a renowned martial elder at the Xiantian grandmaster level.]
[As a transmigrator, you were awestruck when you saw your father blast a small mountain to rubble with your own eyes, and you set your heart on learning martial arts. Before long, you turned seven, old enough to begin.]
[You now had two choices: one, tell your parents that you wanted to learn martial arts. Two, travel alone to True Spirit Mountain, the Long Kingdom's martial arts holy land, and seek a master.]
"One," Zhou Qing said without hesitation.
A seven-year-old traveling a thousand miles to seek a master? That was courting death.
Leaving aside the bandits on the road, his simulated self couldn't even scrape together enough money for the journey.
Still, his simulated self didn't seem to have realized he was in the world of Desolate Era yet.
As Zhou Qing pondered, the simulation continued.
[Born into a martial arts clan, you made your father very happy when you took the initiative to ask to learn martial arts. He personally taught you basic martial knowledge, such as meridians and acupoints. He also had you soak in the family's secret medicinal concoction, day after day for years. As a result, you possessed tremendous strength even before you began learning martial arts.]
[Only three years later did your father begin teaching you the family's martial arts, the Supreme Harmony Art and the Golden Light Palm. When you heard that the realm above Xiantian was Zifu, you paid it no mind, because Zifu had become a dime a dozen in novels.]
[Thanks to the solid foundation you had laid early on, your martial arts advanced a thousand miles a day, and you entered Xiantian at sixteen. After reaching Xiantian, you had a choice: one, continue cultivating in seclusion at home. Two, venture out into the Long Kingdom's martial world.]
"Two," Zhou Qing chose after a moment's thought.
A Xiantian grandmaster was already a renowned martial elder and a regional powerhouse in the Long Kingdom. There was no need to be as timid as before.
Besides, the sooner he ventured out, the sooner he could encounter true immortal cultivators.
[You left home to venture out. With the strength of a Xiantian expert, you challenged masters everywhere and championed justice. Before long, you became a young grandmaster renowned throughout the Long Kingdom's martial world.]
[On one occasion, you discovered a band of tomb robbers who had roamed from place to place. They knew no bounds, not only stealing valuables from tombs but also opening coffins, mutilating corpses, and desecrating the dead. Outraged, you caught the whole lot in one sweep.]
[Afterward, while taking stock of the loot the tomb robbers had left behind, you unexpectedly discovered a copy of Tianhezi's Travels and a token made of an unknown material. After reading Tianhezi's Travels, you discovered that it had been written by a Zifu cultivator named Tianhezi. It recorded not only the mountains, rivers, geography, people, and customs of the Seven Wonders World, but also mentioned the cultivation realms above Zifu. Myriad Manifestations True Person, Primal Daoist, Earth Immortal of the Void Return-upon hearing the names of these realms, realization dawned on you, and you understood at once that you had come to the world of Desolate Era.]
[After discovering that you had come to the world of Desolate Era, ambition immediately rose in your heart. Your goal was no longer to dominate the martial world, but to attain the Dao and become an immortal, or even become Eternal Undying.]
[Thus, you began using your family's resources to search for traces of immortal cultivators, but even after spending several years on the search, you found nothing.]
[Seeing that your search for immortals had become an obsession, your father told you a secret that had circulated in the Long Kingdom for many years, hoping to distract you.]
[It turned out that whenever someone in the Long Kingdom broke through Xiantian and became a Zifu great grandmaster, they would vanish without a trace within a year. People speculated that these great grandmasters had all left the mortal world for the immortal world.]
[Your father advised you to focus on the martial Dao and break through to Zifu sooner rather than search everywhere for immortals. That way, an immortal would naturally come to guide you. Faced with his advice, you had a choice: one, heed your father's suggestion and focus on the martial Dao. Two, disregard it and continue searching for traces of immortal cultivators.]
"One," Zhou Qing chose.
No matter what, cultivation was more important.
A Xiantian grandmaster lived no more than two hundred years. If he wasted too much time searching for immortals, he would be in trouble if he reached old age with no hope of attaining Zifu.
After breaking through to Zifu, he would have a lifespan of five hundred years, giving him ample time to search for immortal cultivators.
[Heeding your father's advice, you devoted yourself entirely to cultivation. But after reaching Xiantian, a martial artist's progress was slow. Only after refining more than half of your family's essence stones did you break through to Middle Xiantian. You were twenty-five that year.]
[At this time, the Long Kingdom's emperor died, throwing the court and the country into chaos. Seeing this, the neighboring Jing Kingdom took advantage of the crisis, its armies bearing down on the Long Capital. To preserve her realm, the Long Kingdom's empress dowager opened the imperial treasury and recruited martial artists from across the kingdom to defend the throne.]
[To repel the invading kingdom and obtain cultivation resources, you persuaded your father and led your family's forces to the capital to defend the throne.]
[At first, you and your father handled the Jing Kingdom martial artists' harassment with relative ease. But when a Peak Xiantian martial artist joined the fight, you were immediately hard-pressed to keep up.]
[Faced with a crisis of life and death, your potential was unleashed. Your palm art reached One with the World, and you killed the invading enemy.] (Desolate Era's realms of skill: basic, One with the World, Heaven and Man Unity, True Meaning of the Dao, Domain Realm of the Dao, Complete Dao.)
[Afterward, your strength greatly increased, you charged into the enemy army and slew several of the Jing Kingdom's Peak Xiantian generals in succession, single-handedly routing an army of one hundred thousand.]
"One with the World?" Zhou Qing shook his head.
The Seven Wonders World's foundations were extraordinarily poor. In the Three Realms, Heaven and Man Unity, or even the True Meaning of the Dao, was standard for a genius at the Xiantian realm.
Yet in the simulation, his palm art at One with the World had been enough to leave no one in the Jing Kingdom able to stand against him. That alone showed how poor the Seven Wonders World's Xiantian realm was.
[You had defeated the Jing Kingdom's army almost single-handedly. To win you over, the Long Kingdom's upper echelons gave you a large quantity of essence stones and spirit medicines.]
[With the help of these resources, you cultivated to Peak Xiantian at twenty-six, only one step away from entering Zifu.]
[Afterward, you traveled through various kingdoms, continually sparring with their experts to temper your martial Dao, while also gathering a large amount of resources for breaking through to Zifu.]
[In the blink of an eye, ten years flew by. After using a large number of essence stones, you finally opened your Zifu at thirty-five and became a great grandmaster.]
[Just as the secret your father had told you said, a middle-aged man riding clouds and mist soon came looking for you.]
[The man introduced himself as Adept Taiyan, a guide from the Three Immortals Palace, responsible for bringing cultivators who had reached Zifu in the mortal world to the immortal world. Faced with a genius like you, who had reached Zifu before forty, he decided to invite you to join the Three Immortals Palace.]
[Faced with Adept Taiyan's invitation, you had a choice: one, accept. Two, refuse.]
"One." After a moment's thought, Zhou Qing ultimately accepted Adept Taiyan's invitation.
Clearly, Adept Taiyan had taken a liking to his simulated self, a fine piece of uncarved jade, and wanted to keep him within the Three Immortals Palace.
If he refused now, there was no guarantee this Myriad Manifestations True Person wouldn't turn hostile.
After all, if it came to a fight, his simulated self was no match for a Myriad Manifestations True Person as he was now.
[Seeing that you had accepted his invitation, Adept Taiyan immediately became affable. Then, in accordance with custom, he gave you a year to settle your affairs in the mortal world.]
[After spending five months putting your family affairs in order, you bid your father farewell and set out for the place Adept Taiyan had named.]
[After crossing mountains and rivers, you arrived at True Spirit Mountain, the martial arts holy land in the southern Long Kingdom. According to Adept Taiyan, it was the Three Immortals Palace's stronghold in the mortal world.]
[Then you followed Adept Taiyan through the Three Immortals Palace's teleportation array to the unknown immortal world.]
[Upon arriving in the immortal world, you were utterly shocked to discover that the world essence Qi everywhere was ten times as dense as in the mortal world.]
[Only later did you learn that this so-called immortal world was a vast spatial secret realm called Pure Yang Heaven.]
[Within Pure Yang Heaven, there were three forces: the righteous, the demonic, and the monsters. The Three Immortals Palace was the leader of the righteous path.]
[Through Adept Taiyan's introduction, you successfully joined the Three Immortals Palace and became an inner disciple.]
[After joining the sect, you felt there were a thousand loose ends to sort out and didn't know what to do first. You had a choice: one, bury yourself in cultivation. Two, accumulate merit to exchange for an advanced cultivation technique.]
"Two," Zhou Qing said without hesitation.
Bury himself in cultivation?
He was already at Early Zifu. If he continued cultivating and happened to break through, his foundation would be set, and his prospects would be bleak.
His most pressing task was to exchange for a Qi cultivation technique of at least the immortal grade and widen his Zifu to perfection. Only then could he strive for higher realms.
[After joining the Three Immortals Palace, you continually completed sect missions and accumulated merit, all so you could find a profound cultivation technique in the scripture repository.]
[Finally, five years later, you had accumulated enough merit to select a technique from the scripture repository. After sifting through the options, you found an immortal-grade Qi cultivation technique suited to you, the Thousand Grain Sutra.]
[To your surprise, the scripture repository held no Fiendgod Body Refining inheritance.]
[Unwilling to give up, you went out to make inquiries and discovered that there was no information on Fiendgod Body Refining in the entire Seven Wonders World.]
[Time passed unnoticed in the mountains. After switching to the Thousand Grain Sutra, you cultivated diligently while completing sect missions, finally reaching Peak Zifu at the age of sixty.]
[During this time, your palm art reached the Heaven and Man Unity Realm, and a Myriad Manifestations elder of the sect selected you as a personal disciple.]
[Just as everything was going smoothly, the sect suddenly sent word that the Pure Yang Immortal Mansion, which opened once every ten thousand years, would open in a few days.]