The morning sun began to rise, casting its first light upon Xiushui City, which had just witnessed its very first sunrise since its founding. At the same time, Lingxian Sect was also preparing to welcome its first batch of guests.
These guests, however, couldn't enter directly through the Path of Inquiry to reach the core of the Lingxian Sect. Instead, they were directed to a newly constructed road leading through the back valley of Qingyun Peak. This road connected directly to the sect's main plaza and was created specifically by Lin Xiao to facilitate future external meetings and events.
With this new route, outside guests could participate in Lingxian Sect's external gatherings without passing through the Path of Inquiry. Whenever this road was opened, the sect's protective array would temporarily isolate the main plaza, offering it the highest level of protection while still maintaining a basic defensive capability. During such events, only sect members holding official identity tokens could pass between the plaza and the inner sect areas, ensuring that outsiders had no access to the sect's core.
Today, many guests had arrived.
Aside from the sects personally invited by Lingxian Sect, the royal family of Pusi Kingdom had also helped extend invitations to numerous righteous royal families and sects from other nations. All the invitation slots had been filled, and each guest group had used their full allotment of five representatives.
The only exception was the Tianxin Sect of Tuiyan Kingdom.
Tianxin Sect was powerful and held a prominent reputation among cultivators in the Mortal Realm. Naturally, the Li royal family couldn't risk making an enemy of them and sent an invitation to avoid conflict with Lingxian Sect. However, much to everyone's surprise, not even a single representative from Tianxin Sect had shown up.
Li Zhanying, who had been seated in the guest area of Lingxian Sect's plaza, had been keeping an eye on the entrance. Other sects and royal families, regardless of their status, had at least sent messengers ahead to present gifts and inform the hosts of when their leaders would arrive. But Tianxin Sect was nowhere to be seen.
Sighing inwardly, Li Zhanying suspected they would not show up.
Shaking his head subtly, he reflected on how, a century ago, Tianxin Sect's leader, Zhi Yu Zunzhe, had reached the peak of the Nascent Soul stage. Tianxin Sect had been growing ever since, with ambitions to rise above the other sects in the Mortal Realm and become the dominant force. However, when Xunfang Zunzhe of Chixiao Sect in Juhui Kingdom also advanced to the peak of the Nascent Soul stage, it helped balance things out, preventing Tianxin Sect from overwhelming the others.
Still, Chixiao Sect lacked Tianxin Sect's ambition for expansion, so in the eyes of many, Tianxin Sect remained the stronger power.
But now...
On the surface, Li Zhanying calmly sipped his tea, but inside, he was deeply unsettled. From the moment he sat down, he had sensed a faint, almost imperceptible pressure. It wasn't overpowering—so subtle that if he hadn't paid close attention, he might not have noticed it at all. Yet, when he focused on it, he found it impossible to muster any resistance to this presence.
In all his centuries of cultivation, this was the first time he had ever experienced something like this.
Even when dealing with Zhi Yu Zunzhe of Tianxin Sect or Xunfang Zunzhe of Chixiao Sect—both of whom were at the peak of the Nascent Soul stage—he had never encountered such a phenomenon.
Could it be that someone even more powerful than them...?
Though he had never personally encountered a cultivator at the Divine Transformation stage, Li Zhanying's instincts told him with absolute certainty that what he was sensing was the pressure of a Divine Transformation cultivator!
But after this realization, a wave of doubt crept into his mind. Ever since he could remember, there had never been a Divine Transformation cultivator in the Mortal Realm. Even looking back through the history of the Mortal Realm, which spanned thousands of years, there was no credible record of anyone reaching that level.
If Lingxian Sect truly had a Divine Transformation cultivator, Tianxin Sect's ambitions would have to be reined in immediately. He wondered how Zhi Yu Zunzhe would react upon learning this.
Chuckling softly to himself, Li Zhanying gazed at his tea cup, his mind wandering.
For over seven hundred years, he had been cultivating relentlessly. From the moment he had started, it seemed that cultivating, protecting the peace of Pusi Kingdom, and maintaining the stability of the Mortal Realm had been inseparable from his identity. Whenever he heard news of a fellow cultivator breaking through to the next stage, he felt an urgent need to catch up.
The Li family needed a cultivator capable of supporting them.
Back when his mother was still alive, the pressure hadn't been as intense. But after her death, Li Zhanying had never been able to relax.
The gap between one Nascent Soul cultivator in the Li royal family and the next could not be too long. Otherwise, the family would lose its influence and privileges. In that case, he would no longer enjoy the comfortable cultivation environment he currently had, though compared to the resources he had recently gained from trading with Lingxian Sect, his earlier conditions might not seem so luxurious after all.
That was why he had never dared to slack off in his cultivation.
It wasn't until he had finally reached the Nascent Soul stage that he felt a sense of relief. Further advancement wasn't as urgent anymore. In his understanding, Nascent Soul was the limit in the Mortal Realm. Even a genius like his mother had perished while attempting to ascend to the Divine Transformation stage.
For Li Zhanying, the Nascent Soul stage, or even the peak of it, was the ceiling for Mortal Realm cultivators. He believed that no one could break through this barrier.
Beyond this, cultivation was simply a means of extending his life. The longer he lived, the longer he could protect the Li family and train the next generation.
At least, that's what he had thought.
But now, he wasn't so sure.
A wave of confusion and uncertainty washed over Li Zhanying. Yet, along with it came a sense of understanding and curiosity.
Could it be that the Mortal Realm could produce a Divine Transformation cultivator?
What would reaching Divine Transformation truly feel like?
...
"Please come this way, Senior. Our gathering will begin in fifteen minutes. For now, please enjoy some spiritual tea and fruit," came the voice of a young disciple nearby.
Li Zhanying looked up and saw the disciples of Lingxian Sect attending to their guests at the next table.
The Li royal family had long investigated these disciples. While he didn't know every detail about their lives before joining the sect, he knew enough to get a sense of their backgrounds. For example, the young disciple currently serving the guests had been nothing more than a beggar before joining Lingxian Sect.
Yet, in just a few months, this former beggar had already reached the ninth level of Qi Refinement!
From the moment Li Zhanying had sat down, less than half an hour had passed, but he was already numb from shock.
If this were just one or two particularly talented disciples, he might have chalked it up to exceptional natural talent, perfect timing, or the sect's abundant resources. That would have been understandable.
But in the entire half-hour he'd been observing, he hadn't seen a single disciple below the fifth level of Qi Refinement!
He couldn't help but think of a disciple he had taken in a few years ago, a rare genius with a mutated Thunder Spiritual Root. And yet, even now, that disciple, Niu Xiaoxue, was only at the sixth level of Qi Refinement...