"Is the figure behind the Great Tribulation that sun?" Qi Yuan asked, gazing at the sun thoughtfully.
"Right now in the Canglan Realm, two suns hang high in the sky."
Sitting in his wheelchair, Old Man Wutian's gaze was profound.
"Alas, the second Great Sun is too small. Otherwise, if the two were to clash, our Canglan Realm might stand a chance of breaking free from the Great Tribulation."
Qi Yuan was rendered speechless. He glared at Old Man Wutian. "You're the small one!"
He had always hated being called small.
Old Man Wutian seemed not to hear Qi Yuan, murmuring instead, "Born in the Canglan Realm, we are constrained far too greatly by the Great Tribulation."
"If we smash the sun in the sky to pieces, wouldn't the Great Tribulation be gone?" Qi Yuan asked earnestly.
Old Man Wutian chuckled. "The Great Tribulation itself is already invincible in this world. Even if all the Great Venerables of this realm joined forces, they would be no match for it. And... to slay the sun in the sky, one would need to be at least in the Yang God realm. Without ascending to the Upper Realm, breaking through to Yang God is utterly impossible. Yet the moment we ascend to the Upper Realm, we people of the Canglan Realm become meat on its platter."
Generally speaking, cultivators in the Yin God realm had the chance to ascend to the Upper Realm. The worldly laws of the Upper Realm were more complete, and its world origin was far more abundant. To advance to the Yang God realm, one had to be in the Upper Realm; it was impossible to advance to the Yang God realm in the lower realm.
"After sitting withered through endless ages, this old man finally found a path to life." Old Man Wutian's wheelchair rolled forward, coming to a halt before a jade slip. He picked it up.
"What path?"
"That we... become nourishment for the Great Tribulation and are marked by that Great Sun is entirely because the cultivation methods we practice... are flawed," Old Man Wutian said heavily.
Hearing this, Qi Yuan showed a look of surprise.
Qi Yuan had long known that the cultivation methods were flawed.
Yet this was the first time he had heard a native of the Canglan Realm point it out.
Even the Yin Gods he had encountered before hadn't mentioned this, and Qi Yuan had discovered that the methods they cultivated were all flawed as well.
For a Purple Mansion to bring it up was indeed interesting.
"If one can pioneer a new method, cultivate it to the Yin God realm, and ascend to the Upper Realm, one can... evade the Great Tribulation," Old Man Wutian said, his voice raspy. "However, a new method is far, far too difficult to create."
A sudden thought occurred to Qi Yuan. "If someone cultivated a method passed down from the Upper Realm to the Canglan Realm, wouldn't that be free of problems?"
"Not so," Old Man Wutian said. "According to ancient records, that peerless powerhouse back then received a cultivation method imparted in a dream by a Yang God and cultivated all the way to the Great Venerable realm. Yet he was still... nourishment for that sun. The Great Tribulation has even influenced the Heavenly Dao will of the Canglan Realm. Even if a method came from the Upper Realm, cultivating it here inadvertently turns one into nourishment."
Hearing this, Qi Yuan was astonished inside.
This Great Tribulation truly sounded insurmountable.
Fortunately, although cultivating his Qi Yuan Scripture came with a few minor quirks, it wouldn't actually turn him into nourishment.
"Alas, though I have spent all my years to this point, I have failed to create a new method that truly breaks free from the Great Tribulation." Old Man Wutian sighed deeply, his voice laden with endless desolation.
His very purpose in founding the Ascending Heaven Pavilion was to create a new method and evade the Great Tribulation.
Qi Yuan said instead, "Even if a new method were created, at most only one or two cultivators would evade the Great Tribulation. If the new method were spread and caught the attention of the Great Tribulation and that Great Sun overhead, wouldn't the Canglan Realm still... sink into ruin? Therefore, I believe the Great Tribulation cannot be avoided. Running away solves nothing. We must face the difficulty head-on, take the initiative, and resolve the Great Tribulation!"
Qi Yuan spoke impassionedly.
With his strength surging and having just swept through a succession of Origin Cores and Divine Infants across the Eastern Lands, plus receiving endless flattery in the Divine Flower Society, he had gotten a little carried away. He felt as though he could command the world and no hero would dare disobey.
Old Man Wutian looked at Qi Yuan and pointed into the distance.
"The Great Tribulation should be in that direction. Traveling for three months will bring you there. Is Great Venerable Wangyue certain he wishes to go have a look at the Great Tribulation?"
Qi Yuan immediately looked that way.
Instantly, his right eyelid began to twitch wildly.
Left eye twitches for wealth, right eye twitches for disaster.
If the right eye only twitched a little, one could brush it off as wealth too. But it was twitching way too furiously!
Even Qi Yuan couldn't lie to himself.
"Forget it, I'll spare the Great Tribulation for now." Qi Yuan decided not to go looking for trouble with the Great Tribulation until he broke through to the Divine Infant realm.
"May I make a copy of all the methods here? It won't be a problem, will it?" Qi Yuan asked.
Once he emptied the Ascending Heaven Pavilion's collection of methods, he could return to Seven Colors Peak in peace and play his game in peace.
The game icon had almost finished loading, needing only a few days of preparation before he could enter.
Qi Yuan intended to memorize all the cultivation methods now so that once he entered the game, he could continue deducing the Qi Yuan Scripture in his spare time. Otherwise, if he didn't acquire enough methods to advance the Qi Yuan Scripture, his cultivation would increase inside the game, but without sufficient technique, his real-world self wouldn't be able to rapidly advance his cultivation.
"Please do as you wish, Great Venerable Wangyue," Old Man Wutian said, wheeling himself away.
Qi Yuan remained inside the Ascending Heaven Pavilion, collecting all the methods.
***
Seven days later.
Aboard a spirit boat, Kang Fulu wore a proud expression. "In the Eastern Lands Prodigy Battle, your senior brother stood tall against the crowd of heroes and didn't let down the prestige of our Five Lights Holy Method! When prodigies from major sects stood before me, I didn't feel a sliver of fear. I defeated them fair and square! Now, I rank 498th on the Eastern Lands Heavenly Pride Roll. It's a shame you didn't participate in the battle, or else you would have witnessed your senior brother's heroic bearing."
Looking at the few extra strands of white hair on Kang Fulu's head, Qi Yuan knew he had exerted tremendous effort to achieve this result.
After departing the Ascending Heaven Pavilion, Qi Yuan had left brief instructions for the Blood-Robed Alliance, announced he was entering closed-door seclusion, switched back to his identity as Qi Yuan, and returned to the Divine Light Sect with Qi Jianjun.
Coincidentally, he had run into Kang Fulu on the journey back and traveled alongside him.
"Regrettably, I failed to break into the top hundred of the Eastern Lands Heavenly Pride Roll, so I couldn't bring back the treasure the sect master needed. Lately, I've been making inquiries in secret to find out who took that treasure, but unfortunately came up empty-handed." Kang Fulu looked disappointed.
Qi Yuan smiled faintly at his words.
If Kang Fulu actually managed to find out, that would be a real problem.
"Sigh, you rascal. You disappeared for just a short while—how come your daughter is already so big?" Kang Fulu looked at Qi Jianjun beside Qi Yuan with utter curiosity.
Qi Jianjun was currently playing chess with another little girl on the spirit boat. Hearing Kang Fulu's voice, she turned her head and glanced over.
"The past is beyond pursuit," Qi Yuan replied, too lazy to explain.
Looking at the sect gates approaching ahead, Qi Yuan said to Kang Fulu, "Senior Brother, I won't accompany you to see the sect master. I need to return to my peak."
He waved a hand, and Qi Jianjun ran over.
Hearing this, Kang Fulu said, "I understand, I understand."
He patted Qi Yuan's shoulder and said earnestly, "Junior Brother, don't blame yourself. There are disparities between people. Given some more time, you will surely make it onto the Eastern Lands Heavenly Pride Roll as well."
Kang Fulu was thrilled.
Making it onto the Eastern Lands Heavenly Pride Roll this time was already an extraordinary performance for him.
Returning to the sect, he would surely dazzle his master and the sect master, wouldn't he?
After all, an impoverished backwater like Great Shang had finally produced a true dragon like him.
***
Atop Seven Colors Peak.
Holding Qi Yuan's hand, Qi Jianjun looked around with curiosity in her eyes. "Is this Daddy's home?"
"Mhm." Returning to Seven Colors Peak once more, Qi Yuan felt a wave of tranquility wash over his heart.
Stirring up trouble in the outside world was dashing, to be sure, but home was the true haven for the soul.
"The scenery looks quite lovely, suitable for seclusion," Qi Jianjun remarked.
Qi Yuan shot his daughter a sideways glance. Wasn't that just a polite way of saying it was remote and desolate?
Qi Yuan and Qi Jianjun landed before the brick-and-tile house.
He glanced toward the wooden cabin next door, his gaze turning puzzled. "Where is Junior Sister?"
Suddenly, his expression shifted.
He sensed a dense, frosty aura radiating from inside his junior sister's wooden cabin.
He stepped inside, and several talismans immediately burst into flames, forming a formation that barred his path.
Whenever his junior sister cultivated, she would often place protective talismans around herself.
The power these talismans unleashed was close to that of a Divine Infant cultivator.
In Great Shang, they certainly counted as top-tier protective talismans.
Qi Yuan swept his gaze over them, and the top-tier protective talismans instantly shattered.
He shifted his body and immediately saw Jiang Lingsu lying on the bed, scantily clad.
Draped in a layer of light gauze, her exposed, lotus-root-pale arms and snow-white neck were coated in a faint layer of frost.
Her brows were furrowed, looking as though she were enduring immense agony.
"Junior Sister?" Qi Yuan's heart tightened.
He had always known there was an issue with her body, which required a Purple Mansion cultivator with a water-attribute Heavenly Spiritual Root to resolve.
Unfortunately, even after establishing the Blood-Robed Alliance and practically dominating the Eastern Lands, he hadn't found any Purple Mansion cultivator with a water-attribute Heavenly Spiritual Root.
He reached out and took hold of Jiang Lingsu's arm.
A scalding heat swept forth in that instant.
Qi Yuan refined qi using the qi of the five elements. Though he couldn't eradicate the root of Jiang Lingsu's affliction, he could alleviate her pain.
Heat waves rolled through the wooden cabin. Beads of sweat broke out on the forehead of Jiang Lingsu, who had been covered in frost just moments before, and the frost on her body had completely melted away.
She weakly opened her eyes, a trace of pleading vulnerability in her gaze. "Eldest Senior Brother..."
She seemed to be thanking Qi Yuan.
"Don't speak," Qi Yuan said, continuing to channel spiritual energy to dispel the chill in her body with this clumsy method.
Jiang Lingsu kept her eyes open, her slender arm trying to move, wanting to pull at something.
"Don't move around," Qi Yuan said, holding her arm still to stop her.
His junior sister, this wealthy patroness, had helped him immensely; he needed to take good care of her so as not to let down her kindness.
"Tell me what you want to do, and I'll help you," Qi Yuan said with a deep sense of responsibility.
A blush crept across Jiang Lingsu's snowy face. She turned her head away, unwilling to look at him.
Qi Yuan was baffled.
What was wrong with her?
"Daddy, I think this sister wants you to help pull up her clothes," Qi Jianjun piped up from the side, her tone teasing.
Lying on the bed, Jiang Lingsu's skin showed faintly beneath the pink gauze. Even lying down, it could hardly conceal her voluptuous, slender figure like ripe fruit on a delicate branch—and right now, one of those ripe fruits had escaped halfway, dazzlingly white.
Seeing this, Qi Yuan gave a gentle puff of air, and the hem of Jiang Lingsu's garment instantly fluttered up to cover her.
Feeling the warm breath Qi Yuan exhaled, Jiang Lingsu flushed an even deeper shade of crimson.
Who helps someone adjust their clothes like that?
Yet Qi Yuan was quite pleased with himself, feeling that his emotional intelligence was shining brightly today.
As the saying went, men and women should not touch; he hadn't used his hands, avoiding touching anything he shouldn't have, and had chosen to give a gentle blow instead.
"No need to thank me, Junior Sister." Seeing Jiang Lingsu's complexion improve, Qi Yuan let out a sigh of relief.
By now, Jiang Lingsu seemed to have recovered considerably. Clutching her chest with one hand, her eyes still held the fragile weakness of a sickly beauty. "Eldest Senior Brother, thank you."
"Your condition is growing more severe," Qi Yuan said, looking at her.
When dispelling the icy chill in her body just now, he had felt that the frost had been accumulating for half a month.
Evidently, Jiang Lingsu had been enduring that torment alone for half a month.
For the past two weeks, she had lain alone in bed suffering the pain with no one to talk to.
This made Qi Yuan sigh inwardly: even a wealthy lady had her own woes.
"I'm fine. I'm used to it," Jiang Lingsu said, seemingly taking it in stride with a relaxed expression. "Senior Brother, what was the outcome of your trip to the Eastern Lands Heavenly Pride Roll?"
"Fortunately, I did not fail the mission and made it onto the Eastern Lands Heavenly Pride Roll."
"Really?" Delight broke out across Jiang Lingsu's face. "Senior Brother truly is amazing!"
To make it onto the Eastern Lands Heavenly Pride Roll meant truly entering the big stage in the Eastern Lands.
Even if Eldest Senior Brother visited her Jiang Clan, he would receive solemn respect from a great clan like hers.
If it were the previous Eldest Senior Brother presenting a visiting card at the Jiang Clan, he likely wouldn't even have made it past the front gate.
"Have any major events occurred in the Divine Light Sect or Great Shang recently?" Qi Yuan asked.
"If we're talking about major events, there are two." Speaking of this, Jiang Lingsu gave Qi Yuan an odd look. "Two Purple Mansions from the Blood-Robed Alliance came to our Divine Light Sect and even executed an elder of the Red Sword Sect."
At first, Jiang Lingsu had always suspected that the Blood-Robed Sword God was an alternate identity she had given her senior brother.
Later, however, she discovered the Blood-Robed Sword God was simply far too strong.
The two couldn't possibly be the same person.
Now, the Blood-Robed Alliance established by the Blood-Robed Sword God had sent people to the Divine Light Sect, and back then Senior Brother had sent word that two subordinates were arriving, which couldn't help but ignite her imagination.
Yet when she recalled how approachable Eldest Senior Brother was when talking with her, lacking the terrifying aura of a monstrous archdemon, and how he reacted completely normally whenever she threw a small tantrum, she felt she was overthinking things.
Nevertheless, Eldest Senior Brother definitely had a deep connection with the Blood-Robed Sword God.
Could it be that Master was the Blood-Robed Sword God?
Only that made more sense.
Of course, a sliver of suspicion that Eldest Senior Brother was the Blood-Robed Sword God still lingered in her heart.
"What about the other event?" Qi Yuan asked.
He already knew about the Blood-Robed Alliance.
"Internal strife broke out within the Demonic Desire Sect. The Shen clan suddenly staged a coup, suppressing the Ji clan and slaughtering every single member of the Ji clan. The Demonic Desire Sect is now ruled by the Shen clan," Jiang Lingsu said seriously.
Qi Yuan was rather surprised to hear this.
He had planned to deal with the Ji clan of the Demonic Desire Sect on this return trip.
Now, without him even having to lift a finger, his enemies in the Demonic Desire Sect were gone?
Truly, the world was unpredictable—one wild turn after another.
"Eldest Senior Brother, who is..." Only now did Jiang Lingsu scrutinize Qi Jianjun closely, curiosity in her eyes.
Earlier, she had vaguely heard the little girl call Eldest Senior Brother "Daddy."
"This is my daughter, Qi Jianjun."
"Daughter?" Jiang Lingsu's eyes widened. "Senior Brother, if I recall correctly, you're not even twenty this year. How could you have such a big daughter?"
"I play a game; she's my daughter in the game," Qi Yuan said.
Jiang Lingsu was completely dumbfounded.
She recalled that in her clan, some people played game jade slips and adopted "older brothers," "older sisters," or even "daddies" and "daughters."
But that was all... roleplay for romance!
How could Qi Jianjun be this young... what on earth was going on?
"All right, Junior Sister. Since you're awake, I'll head back. I need to keep playing my game. It's been so long since I last played, I can barely contain the itch." With that, Qi Yuan hurried off.
Inside the room, only a perplexed Jiang Lingsu remained.
"Could that little girl be an orphan Eldest Senior Brother adopted? How pitiful," Jiang Lingsu thought, a surge of maternal affection welling up inside her.
She stood up. Having stayed bedridden for so long, her body felt somewhat stiff.
However, she was a Foundation Establishment cultivator after all, and the discomfort vanished in an instant.
Suddenly, something occurred to her, and her expression turned odd.
"Where are the talismans I placed by the doorway?"
Before entering seclusion, she always set up talismans around her to protect herself.
Now, the talismans were gone.
"How did Eldest Senior Brother bypass my talismans?" Jiang Lingsu wondered in astonishment, her expression strange.
***
Mortal Heart Realm.
Qingshui Village.
A throng of sallow, emaciated villagers shuffled back, bearing visible injuries.
Village Chief Yulei was a stooped little old man with his pant legs rolled up to his knees, revealing hemp-stalk-thin legs.
"We lost the village battle! What a disgrace!"
A fat man cried with a crestfallen face, looking exceedingly sorrowful.
"Shijia Village has no honor! They actually worship a New God!" A scholarly-looking man spoke up, expressing utter contempt for Shijia Village's worship of a New God.
At the mention of the New God, everyone present looked grim.
For villages like theirs, ensuring favorable weather and good harvests required offering worship to a deity.
The Foxtail Grass God worshipped by Qingshui Village had not shown any response for decades.
According to the divine official Shentu, the Foxtail Grass God had likely starved to death.
It sounded absurd, yet completely reasonable.
After all, Qingshui Village had always been dirt-poor with nothing to offer to the Foxtail Grass God.
"Without a deity's blessing, we simply can't beat Shijia Village!" a man said.
Qingshui Village's overall strength originally surpassed Shijia Village's.
However, Shijia Village had a New God that could bless its villagers, resulting in Shijia Village far outmatching Qingshui Village in strength.
In this clash over the water source, Qingshui Village had suffered heavy losses.
"Even if the Foxtail Grass God blessed us, we still wouldn't be a match for Shijia Village. Their New God is far too powerful!"
At the mention of the New God, apprehension showed in the eyes of all the villagers present.
"How about... we worship a New God too?" a villager asked tentatively.
"No!" Village Chief Yulei, who had remained silent until now, spoke up. "No matter what, our Qingshui Village cannot worship a New God! Absolutely not!"
The crowd fell silent.
They all knew why the village chief had reacted so strongly.
Unlike the Old Gods, the sacrifice demanded by a New God was humans!
The New God of Shijia Village devoured a boy each month.
Such an atrocity was something the people of Qingshui Village could never accept.
"Furthermore, we are descendants of the Ancient Clan! How could we possibly worship a New God?" Yulei said.
Hearing the words "Ancient Clan," pride flashed in the eyes of the villagers present.
The Ancient Clan was known for being unyielding and indomitable.
Long ago, when the heavens were blind, the great gods of the Ancient Clan dared to challenge the heavens above.
Now that New Gods brought chaos to the world, how could they defect to a New God just to drag out an ignoble existence?
"We of the Ancient Clan dare to challenge the gods! Even in decline, our spines must never bend!"
"Dare to battle the heavens! Dare to right the world's injustices! The Ancient Clan shall not be disgraced!"
"Wuwu, I'm so hungry! Goudan, give me a cornbread bun to eat!"
"Your Ancient Clan bloodline is so pure, yet you have the nerve to beg me for a cornbread bun?"
Chapter 170