In the darkness, lines of glowing text appeared one after another alongside shifting scenes.
[You returned to Anchor Year 1. In your ecstatic state, you acted somewhat out of line and were nearly forced by your aunt to drink warding water procured from the village witch.]
[With half a year left until the provincial examination, you studied hard at home day and night. Having already known the examination questions, you appeared full of confidence. Though your aunt often grumbled about you in daily life, she consistently supported your studies.]
[The village head's younger brother coveted your family's ancestral fertile farmland and pressured your household in secret. Being an ordinary woman, your aunt strove to resist him, but her strength fell short. With a simple stratagem, you settled the matter completely. From then on, your aunt regarded you in a new light.]
[Half a year later, you sat for the provincial examination. Although you placed near the bottom in the thirties, you ultimately passed as a juren, bringing honor to your ancestors.]
[Anchor Year 2: You traveled to Xuanjing to take the metropolitan examination. Having prepared for the exam questions well in advance, you naturally passed with flying colors. In the subsequent palace examination, you performed brilliantly, placing in the second class and being conferred the status of jinshi.]
[You pulled strings throughout Xuanjing and finally achieved your wish, obtaining the post of magistrate of Wen County in Jiangnan.]
[Anchor Year 3: After fetching your aunt from home, you took office in Wen County. You began secretly cultivating your trusted inner circle. That same year, you led your men into the deep mountains and located several mineral deposits from the memories of your previous life.]
[Anchor Year 4: You successfully manufactured a batch of gunpowder and matchlocks. In their first trial, your musketeer unit wiped out and absorbed a nearby band of mountain bandits.]
[Anchor Year 5: A severe drought struck Jiangnan, and displaced refugees roamed everywhere. Because you had undertaken water conservancy projects and built waterwheels to divert flow well beforehand, Wen County under your governance suffered no major impact. That same year, a mob of refugees rebelled and stormed the Prince of Langya's estate. Arriving in time with your troops, you saved the Prince of Langya and his family. The Prince of Langya was immensely grateful to you.]
[Anchor Year 6: You were promoted to Prefect of Jianghuai Prefecture. That same year, you took the daughter of the current Vice Minister of Personnel as your wife.]
[Anchor Year 7: A sudden plague of locusts struck Jiangnan Circuit, causing poor harvests. Only the territory under your administration saw minimal impact. That same year, your wife gave birth to a son.]
[Anchor Year 8: Your subordinates successfully produced flintlock muskets.]
[Anchor Year 10: The Princess Consort of Langya gave birth to a son. You visited in person to offer congratulations and presented a meticulously prepared gift.]
[Anchor Year 15: The emperor was struck by a sudden, virulent illness. Before his demise, he summoned the Prince of Langya to the capital and passed the throne to him. The Prince of Langya ascended the throne and adopted the reign era Xuanjing.]
[Anchor Year 16: Emperor Xuanjing summoned you to the capital and promoted you to Vice Minister of War. That same year, rebellions of various sizes erupted simultaneously across the realm. Emperor Xuanjing ordered you to lead troops to quell them.]
[Anchor Year 18: You hurried from region to region and finally swept the rebel forces clean. Upon your return to the capital, Emperor Xuanjing revoked your military authority, promoted you to Minister of War, and appointed you Grand Preceptor to the Crown Prince.]
[Anchor Year 20: The empress was suddenly implicated in a witchcraft conspiracy. In his fury, Emperor Xuanjing relegated her to the Cold Palace. The crown prince sought your help in private, and you agreed without hesitation. Through discreet inquiries and investigations, you uncovered evidence that Consort Xi had framed the empress, clearing the empress's name. Emperor Xuanjing executed three generations of Consort Xi's clan, yet he did not release the empress from the Cold Palace.]
[Anchor Year 21: Someone secretly accused you of treason, submitting evidence that you had illicitly mined mineral deposits in earlier years and covertly commanded an armed force. Filled with immense dread, you submitted a memorial pleading guilty. Emperor Xuanjing stripped you of your ministerial post, leaving you only to instruct the crown prince.]
[Anchor Year 23: During the spring hunt, Emperor Xuanjing was struck by a sudden whim and decided to revisit the Prince of Langya's former estate in Jiangnan Circuit.]
[Anchor Year 24: Emperor Xuanjing made his first southern tour to Jiangnan and ordered you to accompany him. While touring the scenic landscape of Jiangnan, he also dropped by the several mines you had once privately excavated.]
[Anchor Year 25: Emperor Xuanjing made his second southern tour to Jiangnan. Only this time, he did not take you along. Three months later, you received secret word that someone had reported your clandestine visits to the Cold Palace to see the empress. That same year, Emperor Xuanjing was assassinated on his return trip to the capital. When word reached the capital, the court was shaken. The officials escorted the empress out of the Cold Palace, after which the crown prince succeeded the throne under the reign era Kangning.]
[Anchor Year 26: You were granted the title of Grand Preceptor and concurrently appointed Grand Academician of the Deliberation Pavilion, reaching the pinnacle of a subject's power. The emperor was young and relied heavily upon you. Seizing this opportunity, you eliminated rivals and formed your own faction, establishing your inner circle in the imperial court.]
[Anchor Year 27: Your aunt passed away. The thought of seeking immortality arose in you once more, so you dispatched men across the realm to search for traces of immortals.]
[Anchor Year 28: The emperor reached adulthood. Yet your power and influence grew by the day, until the court became almost entirely your personal domain.]
[Anchor Year 30: The people of the realm knew only the Grand Preceptor, not the emperor.]
[Anchor Year 31: The Empress Dowager became pregnant and urgently summoned you to the palace to deliberate on a solution. Overjoyed, you secretly received the Empress Dowager into the Grand Preceptor Manor to care for her properly. That same year, the Empress Dowager bore you a son.]
[Anchor Year 33: When entering the court alone, you were ambushed by trusted guards Emperor Kangning had trained in secret. Fortunately, aided by a strange treasure, you managed to escape with your life. Infuriated, you intended to execute the emperor and enthrone yourself. Under the bitter pleas of the Empress Dowager and the counsel of the officials beside you, you stayed your hand. You executed all of the emperor's close confidants. From then on, Emperor Kangning remained emperor in name only, stripped of all real power.]
[Anchor Year 38: Emperor Kangning died in despondency. You enthroned his eldest legitimate son as emperor, changing the reign era to Longchang.]
[Anchor Year 40: The Empress Dowager died of illness. Your desire to seek immortality grew increasingly urgent.]
[Anchor Year 45: Your wife passed away.]
[Anchor Year 46: Your eldest son passed away from illness.]
[Anchor Year 48: After many years of fruitless searching, you abandoned the idea of seeking immortals.]
[Anchor Year 50: Two immortals came from the east across the Ruins Abyss and laid waste to Xuanjing, destroying it utterly. You narrowly escaped with your life.]
……
[This simulation has concluded.]
[You may select one of the following options to retain:
1. An item possessed by yourself in this simulation.
2. Your cultivation realm in this simulation.
3. The simulation memories of one person who shared a close relationship with you in this simulation. These memories may be inherited by that person.
4. Forgo the above choices to accelerate charge progress.]
Li Fan regained consciousness and found himself back in his humble study.
Looking around at the familiar yet strange surroundings, the decades of past experiences flashed through his mind one by one. Li Fan could not help feeling a surge of emotion. "Did reality turn into an illusion, or was it all a simulation whose sheer realism created this delusion? Or perhaps, once a certain point is reached, there is no boundary between the false and the true."
Yet Li Fan was not one to indulge in sentimentalism. Soon, he steadied his mind and focused his attention on the four options.
The first and second options needed little thought. Had he stepped onto the path of cultivation, either of them would have been of immense help. Unfortunately, in his previous life, he had been nothing more than an ordinary mortal. He had no cultivation realm whatsoever.
As for the most valuable item he possessed, it was probably the Imperial Jade Seal of the Realm.
That was equally useless, and keeping it would only invite disaster.
As for the third option, granting someone the memories of this simulation…
That did make Li Fan's heart stir.
For a moment, several figures flashed through his mind.
In the end, however, he shook his head.
After all, the human heart was the most unpredictable thing. No one could tell what a person would become after gaining decades of memories.
Right now, True Reversion had not finished charging, and he was still a frail scholar without the strength to truss a chicken. He had no capital to start over if things went wrong.
Therefore, prudence had to come first in all things.
That left only the fourth option.
Accelerating the charge progress.
True Reversion's ability to turn reality into illusion required charging.
According to the experience Li Fan had gathered in his past life, this charge progress could only increase naturally with the passage of time. It took about twenty years to become fully charged.
Once the charge reached a maximum of 200%, it would no longer increase.
At the same time, whenever Li Fan suffered a fatal blow, True Reversion would consume its charge to automatically protect him. That was precisely how Li Fan had narrowly survived several brushes with death in his past life.
Thus, the fourth option was by far the safest choice.
Having made up his mind, Li Fan hesitated no longer and made his choice mentally.
Immediately, the lines of glowing text scattered into specks of light before swiftly rearranging into several fresh lines of characters:
Name: Li Fan
Realm: Mortal
Physical Age: 20/86
Mental Age: 166/1,056 ↑
Reversion Charge Progress: 30%
"Three lifetimes lived, one hundred and sixty-six years. So I have already lived for this long. As for the upper limit of my mental age, I recall it was only nine hundred-odd years in my previous life, but now it has grown to over a thousand. It seems this increases alongside my experiences. That relieves some of the anxiety in my heart."
Just as the physical body had a limit to its lifespan, mental endurance also had a threshold.
Carrying too many memories would become a spiritual burden. Once that burden grew too heavy, it would completely crush a person's soul.
This was the so-called "wear of the years."
However, the upper limit of mental age would expand as one's psychological endurance grew stronger.
For now, Li Fan did not need to worry about this.
"As long as I set foot on the path of cultivation, none of this will be an issue. Now that I am starting anew, wealth, glory, fine carriages, and beautiful women are no longer what I seek."
"I want only immortality!" The agony of watching his beloved family and close friends fade away one by one in his past life, combined with the helplessness and dread brought on by his own aging body, made Li Fan's resolve firmer than ever.
"My goal for this life is to learn the secrets of cultivation from those two immortal cultivators. Fifty years from now, they will descend upon Xuanjing. Striking with deliberate preparation against an unsuspecting foe, even if they are so-called Foundation Establishment experts, I may not be without a chance of victory."
"Perhaps what I can rely on, aside from firearms and gunpowder, is the immortal-mortal miasma they mentioned…"
"Furthermore, over these fifty years, I cannot simply wait idly. They came from the Ruins Abyss to the east. Perhaps I can send men deep into the depths of the Ruins Abyss ahead of time to investigate."
……
What a person feared most in life was having no purpose. In his past life, waking up in the middle of the night from the Empress Dowager's bed, Li Fan had often felt an overwhelming emptiness and aimlessness.
In that life, he had already stood at the very pinnacle a mortal could reach.
He had been the teacher of the Son of Heaven and held command over the armies of the realm. Eight or nine out of ten court officials were his trusted confidants.
He could depose and enthrone emperors, and even the Empress Dowager had catered to his every whim.
He could climb no higher.
Even with another lifetime, it would be the same.
Was he to do the exact same thing in the next simulation?
If so, what meaning was there in cycling through reincarnation life after life?
Power and pleasure, once repeated often enough, became utterly tasteless.
Perhaps, without an unexpected turn of events, after a certain reincarnation, Li Fan would have given up on his own accord and chosen to end his life.
However!
The appearance of those two immortal cultivators showed Li Fan an entirely new realm of possibility!
It showed him an unfamiliar, alluring world beckoning to him.
It ignited immense ambition and purpose within him.
He would cultivate!
He would achieve immortality!
No one would stand in his way!
Li Fan pushed open the door of his room and strode outside with his head held high.
His steps were resolute!
Chapter 2