In the end, Ning ChenKun decided against joining us, and I couldn’t blame him. We weren’t willing to tell him anything about what was really going on, and even if we did, I knew it would be hard to accept. However, before he left, he shared some valuable information.
According to ChenKun, the advice I had gotten about ascending as a Lord was on point. As long as all the karmic energy ...
2024-09-13 12:00:13 +0000 UTC
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There was a lot to fix in NanLu City, but before anything else, I had to work on its defenses. If I tried to improve my citizens’ quality of life first, hungry Lords from the surrounding lands would swoop down and destroy all my hard work.
My first impulse was to find a way to construct viable fortifications out of the area’s abundant sandstone deposits. However, after a week of exper...
2024-09-12 12:00:09 +0000 UTC
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As it turned out, I was being a bit rash. Lord Hao was not, in point of fact, Lord Hao. Grandmaster Hao had yet to reach such a lofty position.
This was unfortunate, but I wasn’t going to allow it to delay us. After conferring with Yan, I chose to purchase the title to NanLu City, located on the south bank of the YaLu River. The north side of the river was Lord Hao’s dom...
2024-09-11 12:00:12 +0000 UTC
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Choosing the path we would walk on our way to Yellow City was more complicated than I had originally imagined.
For LiTing, Yan, and Meng LuYao, the path that made the most sense was the Path of Soul. They had sufficient knowledge of high-level martial and profession skills, so the other two paths would be easy as long as their cultivation levels were sufficient. However, while they ...
2024-09-10 12:00:09 +0000 UTC
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Upon leaving the Metal Peak, I found JiaQi standing near the Gateway Plaza and waving at me. After a quick greeting, she led me to an apartment complex where everyone else had already settled in.
Upon entering, I said nothing to my friends and immediately set to laying out a formation that would protect us from eavesdroppers. I also wanted to lay down a powerful defensive formation,...
2024-09-09 12:00:08 +0000 UTC
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Author's Note: Change Kang LuYao to Meng LuYao. Sorry for the confusion.
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In the brief time I had before the sect’s Entrance Exam, I quickly raised my cultivation level as much as I reasonably could, reaching Martial Grandmaster 4. I wasn’t able to catch up with my friends, but I closed the gap.
Knowing the sect held poten...
2024-09-06 12:00:16 +0000 UTC
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Author's Note: Change Kang LuYao to Meng LuYao. Former was too close to the name of a real person, and thought it would be best to create more separation as the character's role has expanded.
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System Alert: A novel cultivation technique has been created. Please name your technique.
I collapsed to the ...
2024-09-05 12:00:09 +0000 UTC
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If I wanted my ambitious ideas for this life to come to fruition, I had a lot of work to do. Designing the cultivation technique I had in mind was far beyond anything I had done before, and it would require all the time and effort I could give it.
Still, one of my main reasons for returning to the sect was to spend more time with my friends. I had work to do to achieve my goals, but I cou...
2024-09-04 12:00:12 +0000 UTC
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After appearing in an alley in South Gate City, I headed directly for the area of town with the Blue Wind Pavilion. When I found an inn that looked nice but not too fancy, I went inside and booked a room.
Before anything else, I needed to get cleaned up and make myself presentable. After all, it wouldn’t do to enter the Pavilion in the ratty robes of a Su Clan orphan.
Once i...
2024-09-03 12:00:11 +0000 UTC
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I woke up in a carriage, and my first thoughts were of being savaged by a wild dog, but I quickly squashed them. I had work to do, and I needed to get it done.
My 100-year plan was basically at an end. I was using a technicality in the rules I had created for myself to allow me one last go, but once I started, that would be that. If I messed up and died, the run would be over. I would nee...
2024-09-02 12:00:22 +0000 UTC
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I only had four years before I needed to die and reset.
After laying everything out to my friends and allies, I dedicated myself wholeheartedly to reaching Peak Emperor before this deadline, but it didn’t take long for me to understand the difficulty of raising my cultivation base so high in such a short timeframe while ascending properly. Simply gathering enough qi to advance was diffi...
2024-08-30 12:00:14 +0000 UTC
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After passing through the final opening, we were teleported somewhere new. While we were still standing in the middle of a cloud bank, our visibility had improved, and we could now see up to a dozen meters away.
In the middle of the clearing, Ning ChenKun stood rigidly with his hands clasped behind his back. To his left, Yan’s group smiled and waited for us to join them.
We walked...
2024-08-29 12:00:16 +0000 UTC
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Our meeting with ChenKun was brief and to the point.
He had five spots for subordinates. Two would go to others, one would go to Yan, and one would go to me. He offered the last spot to LiTing, but having thought about it over the past several years, she declined and allowed it to be given to someone else.
Yan would take JiaQi and Cai XiaoYu as his two attendants, and I would take L...
2024-08-28 12:00:12 +0000 UTC
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Even though I now had a better understanding of what I needed to do to make my dreams for my storage space a reality, I had to set that task aside for the moment.
The scroll given to me by Emperor Shen included instructions for both carving a formation into one’s soul and removing such a formation. Upgrading a soul formation would necessitate cutting out chunks of my soul and wait...
2024-08-27 12:00:08 +0000 UTC
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A day after we arrived, Ning ChenKun’s deathsworn and two of the students who had been traveling with him joined us in Earth City. The other two who had left Profound City with us had fallen on the Path of Soul. Adding in the one we lost on the Path of Mind, half of our students had failed in their attempt to ascend the mountain.
According to the survivors, this Path of Soul was far dea...
2024-08-26 12:00:12 +0000 UTC
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I had two options for which set of tests I could take, formation specialist or alchemist. As a member of the Earth Peak, I should take the formation specialist route as it had been made clear in my last life that walking a path other than the one connected to my peak would negatively impact my position within the sect.
However, I wasn’t overly concerned with my position an...
2024-08-23 12:00:12 +0000 UTC
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Before rejoining the School of the Great Teacher, my martial and formation skills were already reaching the limit of what I could accomplish with my current cultivation level, so beginning my star there, I shifted my focus more toward alchemy. When I did, my sizable boost in comprehension showed its effects, and I was able to rapidly absorb the information in Emperor Li’s books.
It wasn...
2024-08-22 12:00:11 +0000 UTC
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What should I do to assist the School of the Great Teacher? That question had been running through my mind constantly over the past year.
If they were only facing an internal crisis of confidence, I would have considered not intervening. Such crises can lead to a strengthening of resolve and are a potent way to nourish the souls of everyone involved. Interfering in such a developmen...
2024-08-21 12:00:13 +0000 UTC
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Out in the wilderness with students who knew nothing about soul cultivation, maintaining the appearance of the ‘Great Teacher’ hadn’t been too difficult. I had several libraries worth of books at my fingertips, and I could use them to address any questions or concerns my students raised. This allowed me to maintain a pretense of knowledge and understanding that I didn’t truly possess.
2024-08-20 12:00:10 +0000 UTC
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I was about to lose my largest backing in this world, and if Ning ChenKun had any ulterior motives, this would be the perfect time to put them into action. He had said he wanted me to join the Ning Clan, but how sincere had he been?
More importantly, by the way I was acting, he would be able to guess a few important pieces of information. He might not know about the Earth-Rank fire seed, ...
2024-08-19 12:00:11 +0000 UTC
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As I was sitting alone in a cultivation cave working on breaking through to Martial Lord 5, I received a visitor who I had hoped to not meet again until I had more power to defend myself.
An old, emaciated man walked into my cave. He wore robes of a stunning light blue, and a small gold circlet around his head. His ill-fitting clothing hung limply about his decaying frame.
The...
2024-08-16 12:00:11 +0000 UTC
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I stared at the message I had left for myself.
Torture. Were they torturing everyone during the Exam Trials? Was that the true reason we weren’t allowed to remember anything that happened inside? What was the point of it all?
I had to trust that if I had learned the reason for it during the Exam, then I would have at least written something about it. If I didn’t know wh...
2024-08-15 12:00:11 +0000 UTC
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Stepping through the stone arch caused my surroundings to flash, but it appeared as if I hadn’t moved. The only changes of note were that the stone arch had vanished and there was now a large desk in the middle of the road with an elderly man sitting behind it. A quick check with energy vision confirmed that this was all an illusion, similar to when I was leaving the Path of Min...
2024-08-14 12:00:21 +0000 UTC
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Hello everyone,
Not sure how many this might impact, but just want to put it out there to make sure everyone is aware and warned. Patreon is doing something with iOS pricing, so if you subscribe through the iOS app, you will be charged an extra 30%.
Not too sure on how this differs from the past, and most of you have probably gotten an e-mail about it, but I figure an extra post her...
2024-08-14 01:28:08 +0000 UTC
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For several days after meeting those young men, my life with LiTing alone in the forest continued as normal as we cultivated our souls while discussing philosophy. Unfortunately, the peace and tranquility of our seclusion was broken when an alarm formation alerted me that a large group was approaching our location.
I went outside to investigate and saw seven people, four men and thr...
2024-08-13 12:00:10 +0000 UTC
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After entering the Path of Soul, I didn’t feel even a twinge from the soul pressure that I was supposed to be under. With the defenses provided by my soul cultivation technique, this level of pressure was entirely meaningless.
LiTing, on the other hand, wasn’t doing quite so well. Even though she could withstand the pressure of this first section well enough, I knew her current ...
2024-08-12 12:00:17 +0000 UTC
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The Path of Body that led to Yellow City looked very different from the one on the way to Earth City. Instead of being a dense jungle, this one was more like a rocky wasteland.
The entrance to the path was a stone arch that made my space affinity tingle, so I couldn’t be sure the path was truly located on the mountain. When we passed through the arch, our surroundings didn’t change, b...
2024-08-09 12:00:15 +0000 UTC
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With 100 stages to complete, I needed to be extremely efficient. I had reason to believe I could complete 50 in one day, but I didn’t believe for a moment that the second 50 would be as easy as the first 50.
My quickest and most stamina-efficient way to take down the Trial’s constructs was by piercing them with a thread of my wood-based spirit fire. My most qi-efficient and least ment...
2024-08-08 12:00:08 +0000 UTC
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I was Grandmaster 7 and LiTing was Grandmaster 4, but before leaving Mortal City, we both needed to reach Peak Grandmaster.
We could have tried to rush through Yellow City as quickly as possible in an attempt to evade Lord Hao, but doing so would have been reckless. If we did that and found ourselves in a dangerous position, it would be hard to survive.
Instead, I wanted us to...
2024-08-07 12:00:12 +0000 UTC
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After escaping through the forest and returning safely to Golden River City, our group quickly made its way back to the sect.
As we had killed our ambushers, we wouldn’t be getting any contribution points for the mission, but I still needed to report the details of what happened to the Hall. We could have tried to hide the deaths and just reported a clean completion of the mission, but ...
2024-08-06 12:00:10 +0000 UTC
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