The seasons turned without any fanfare or ceremony. Spring's gentle, life-giving rains gave way to summer's heat, which then faded into autumn's crisp, clear air, and before she knew it, a full year had slipped quietly by.
At the heart of the East Sea Immortal Sect, Su Min stretched her limbs, her joints letting out a series of soft, satisfying pops. It had been an uncharacteristically regular and routine year for her, working from dawn to dusk in her alchemy lab and artifact forge. She had used the time to properly stabilize her new Divine Transformation cultivation, solidifying her foundation. The steep, arduous path to Dao Comprehension was a mountain she did not need to climb just yet; she was in no rush.
"This fleeting moment of leisure is over," she murmured to herself, looking out at the tranquil sect grounds. "Now it is time for the Sect Conference."
She was genuinely curious about the event, and she had several good reasons to attend. She decided to lead the delegation herself, though her role was mostly symbolic, a figurehead to project strength. The actual logistics and negotiations did not require her personal touch.
Her disciple, Tian Yinzi, would be accompanying her. Sending Su Min alone, a solitary Divine Transformation cultivator, would look sparse and unbalanced, even arrogant. A major sect needed to show a depth of strength, with powerhouses at multiple levels, to command real respect at a prestigious conference like this.
But their sect was in a far better position than, say, the struggling Heavenly Yin Sect. Su Min was a recognized sixth-grade alchemist, a title that now carried immense weight and reverence across the entire continent.
She had plenty of resources and a vast web of connections. Many powerful rogue cultivators had sworn allegiance to her after her highly publicized return. She had not accepted them all, being selective, but the ones she did take in had significantly bolstered the sect's high-end ranks. The lineup they were bringing to the conference this time was genuinely impressive.
For the Divine Transformation stage, Su Min herself was more than enough. If a serious fight broke out, she was confident she could handle a small group of peers by herself. For the Nascent Soul stage, they were bringing five experts, with the strongest among them already at the late stage.
This particular expert was not an original disciple of the sect. He was one of the refugees, a seasoned cultivator who had come seeking her patronage after hearing of her prowess. He had a clear and pragmatic understanding of his own limits and had willingly given up the arduous, near-impossible path to Divine Transformation. Instead, he had begged a powerful pill from Su Min to forcibly push his strength to the late Nascent Soul stage, trading future potential for immediate, usable power.
His combat prowess was decent, reliable. He was not on Su Min's monstrous level, nor could he compare to a true prodigy like Hui Xing, but he was a solid, veteran fighter. If Su Min was considered Tier 0 and Hui Xing was Tier 1, this man was a dependable, capable Tier 2.
In the current cultivation world, anyone who could reach the late Nascent Soul stage was undoubtedly capable and had seen their share of battles. Whether he would advance further was a question for the future, maybe in a hundred years with another lucky break, or maybe never.
"This Sect Conference is being held in the central region of Great Luo Tian Province," Tian Yinzi explained as they made their final preparations. "Aside from the reclusive Buddhist sects, every major faction with at least one Divine Transformation cultivator will be in attendance."
"Great Luo Tian…" Su Min felt a faint, distant tug of nostalgia. "It has been a while."
"Grand Elder, have you been there before?" Tian Yinzi asked.
"Once, a long time ago," Su Min replied, her gaze turning momentarily distant. "I went to gather some rare alchemical materials, back before I moved your ancestors to settle in Eastern Mulberry."
The fact that she could traverse the once-sealed realms was not a secret she bothered to keep anymore. The special flying shuttle she had once relied on was now gathering dust in the sect's treasury. After the realms connected and travel became commonplace, it was not such a rare treasure. She had left it out for other disciples and artificers to study.
"Everyone, board the ship," she instructed the group assembled behind her. "It is still a long way to Great Luo Tian."
With a wave of her hand, she summoned a magnificent, spirit-wood flying vessel from her storage ring.
It was a Cloud-Soaring Ark, a low-tier Earth-grade artifact she had crafted herself during the past year. It was a high-end, luxurious transport that operated based on the user's cultivation power and spiritual energy input. At its maximum size, fueled by a Divine Transformation cultivator, it was practically a small, flying fortress.
Now that she was firmly at the Divine Transformation stage, crafting Earth-grade treasures was finally within her comfortable reach. She felt a quiet, genuine flicker of pride looking at the elegant, powerful vessel.
"Let's set off."
The moment the ark leaped into the sky, startled cries erupted from the younger disciples on board. The scenery around them began to change in a disorienting, jarring way. Everything became a series of jumps, the world outside the windows skipping frames as each spatial step carried them thousands of meters in an instant.
For the Golden Core cultivators, the sensation was terrifying, a nauseating lurch of reality itself. This was a high-level divine movement technique integrated into the ship, Shrinking the Earth to an Inch. It was a principle similar to the legendary somersault cloud of Sun Wukong, though Su Min's version was far less powerful and required a vessel as a focus. Still, it was more than enough for their travel needs.
A journey that should have taken weeks, covering millions of miles, was completed in less than seven days. When they finally descended and set foot in the Great Luo Tian Province, a place Su Min had not seen in centuries, her expression softened just a little at the familiar, yet changed, landscape.
But the moment they crossed the provincial border, her entire body went rigid, and she froze in place.
"Tian Yinzi, take everyone to the pre-arranged guest quarters first," she said, her voice suddenly clipped and distant. "There is an old acquaintance I need to meet."
Since traveling within the province was straightforward, if much slower without the spatial jumps, she handed control of the ark to Tian Yinzi and, without another word, leaped from its deck.
In the blink of an eye, she vanished from their sight. When she came to a stop again, propelled by her own immense speed, she found herself in a serene, hidden paradise of lush, green mountains and a placid, mirror-clear lake. And there, sitting calmly by the water's edge as if waiting, was a painfully familiar figure.
Yao Xian'er.
The woman who had once pushed Su Min to her absolute limits during the Golden Core Avenue trial, the one who had inspired both awe and a healthy dose of fear. After that ultimate contest, Yao Xian'er had disappeared without a trace, which was not surprising given they were from different, disconnected realms. The immense rewards from the trial had likely given her all the resources she needed to reach Nascent Soul effortlessly, so long-term seclusion was the logical next step.
But seeing her now, Su Min was truly taken aback.
Yao Xian'er had not just reached Nascent Soul. She had already ascended to the Dao Comprehension stage.
Her progress was even faster than Kong Hui's, and Kong Hui had the advantage of being sealed in time. But considering Yao Xian'er's true nature, a being who had once far surpassed the Mahayana stage in a past life, this blinding speed was not actually shocking. For her, this was merely retreading a path she had already walked to its end; she was just reclaiming her lost power.
And though her cultivation was only at the early Dao Comprehension stage, her actual combat power was undoubtedly terrifying. With her legendary mastery of ten thousand arts and boundless battle experience, even the powerful dragon princess would likely be outmatched in a serious fight.
"May I ask why the esteemed Yao Xian'er seeks me out?" Su Min sat down unceremoniously on the soft grass opposite the enigmatic young woman. The moment she had entered Great Luo Tian, she had distinctly sensed Yao Xian'er's powerful aura subtly guiding her, pulling her here. Resisting the deliberate pull of a Dao Comprehension expert was pointless, so she had come willingly. "Given your supreme capabilities, you must have prepared everything you needed before you reincarnated. You have no need for my services."
Yao Xian'er did not answer immediately. Instead, her deep, ancient eyes swept over Su Min from head to toe, assessing her with an unnerving clarity. "Early Divine Transformation stage. Not bad progress at all for the time given. And you have already obtained the Northern Water's Profound Origin. It seems you have found the path to completion for your Holy Body."
It was true that Yao Xian'er had left herself ample resources from her past life. Her participation in the Golden Core Avenue had mainly been for the lifespan extension reward, a crucial resource for any reincarnator. She was practically the only person of note who had never once sought Su Min's alchemical services. She clearly had her own methods and no need for those pills.
Su Min's expression turned serious and guarded. Yao Xian'er's strength and cultivation now far surpassed her own. Even with the temporary boost from Xie Yingying's blood essence, Su Min knew she stood no chance in a direct fight against this ancient monster.
Then, Yao Xian'er's lips curved into a slight, knowing, almost imperceptible smile.
"I came to talk about your little wife."
Su Min blinked. The words hit her with the disorienting force of a physical blow. Her expression shifted through a rapid series of subtle changes, surprise giving way to deep wariness, and then a tight, controlled tension settling behind her eyes.
"How do you... What do you mean?" she managed, her voice tighter than before.
Yao Xian'er chuckled softly, a low, melodic sound. "Relax. Even if you have never made it public, I have lived long enough to recognize the signs." She paused, her voice laced with a quiet, amusement. "You do not spend that long looking at someone like she is the moon itself incarnate without giving yourself away, Su Min."
Su Min averted her gaze, just slightly, a rare show of being flustered. "We have been through a lot together. It creates a bond."
"Mhm," Yao Xian'er hummed, a simple sound that carried a world of understanding and experience. "I can tell. The bond is real, deep, and spiritually intertwined. You have both touched inheritances that transcend single lifetimes. How could I not see it?"
Su Min's expression sobered completely, all pretense dropping away. "She is not in the sect. She left for a secret realm in the far north, hundreds of smaller realms away. I have not heard from her in years." A slight, uncharacteristic waver entered her voice. It was not fear, not quite, but a tightly clenched thread of profound unease was clear beneath the carefully spoken words.
Yao Xian'er grew quiet, the amusement fading from her face. When she spoke again, her tone was cooler, more distant, like a historian recounting a tragic tale. "Then listen carefully. You must understand, the current world we inhabit is incomplete, broken. The Mahayana stage is the hard limit. No matter how hard you try, you cannot summon the Heavenly Tribulation to ascend to the true Immortal Realm. You can only live as long as the heavens and the earth will allow, trapped."
"I see," Su Min said, nodding slowly. She was not surprised by this revelation. She knew that after Mahayana, since the Heavenly Tribulation was inaccessible, cultivators could only grow stronger within the confines of the world, reaching for the originally nonexistent Transcendence stage. That was the final stop for all living beings here. Legend said that only after transcending could one achieve true immortality, reaching the so-called Ascension Realm. But so far, in recorded history, almost no one had ever accomplished it.
Yao Xian'er, in an era long past, had been one who could be called an Emperor, the Spirit Emperor. Unlike other Emperors, she had been the last sovereign before the world's steep decline into this twilight of cultivation. Even the ancient Great Thunder Temple and the Ancient Lamp Monastery now referred to her in their texts as a Mythical Being. The secrets she knew were beyond counting.
Su Min was aware of some of this history. After all, the final trial in the Path of Immortality game was facing a fallen immortal. She knew the Immortal Realm had shattered for unknown, cataclysmic reasons, and nearly all the immortals had perished. The one who remained was barely clinging to a half-life. But after defeating that final boss, the ending cutscene showed the shattered Immortal Realm descending, with countless terrifying, ancient beings gazing greedily at the mortal world from the void.
Just thinking about it sent a visceral chill down her spine. This was the lurking, existential dread in her heart.
Right now, the Dark Blood Era had only just begun. The most powerful Fallen had yet to emerge from their slumber. And behind those Fallen stood these very fallen immortals, greedy, cruel, and sinister. They sought to shatter the world and absorb its foundational essence to sustain their own wretched existence.
But Su Min knew almost nothing concrete about their current existence or plans. The only thing she was certain of was that the final, tragic fate of past Emperors was tied to them.
Because the two worlds, the mortal and the shattered immortal, were separated by an immense, natural barrier, crossing between them came at a tremendous cost. There were also powerful restrictions based on cultivation level. But if those beings ever found a way to break through in force, they could annihilate dozens of provinces in moments. This was a threat on a completely different, apocalyptic scale from the Fallen. And the only ones capable of stopping them were those who had reached the Emperor level.
This was also Su Min's own destined path. She knew there was no escape from this responsibility. Once her cultivation reached a certain world-shaking level, she would become like a beacon in the night, impossible to hide. She would inevitably become their primary target.
"It seems the legacy of the Five Elements Emperor told you quite a bit," Yao Xian'er said, pulling Su Min from her dark thoughts. Her gaze turned inward, as if staring into the echoes of another lifetime. "Then I will cut to the chase. In my era, there was another Lunar Sovereign Body. A brilliant, proud woman who stood by my side as my closest companion. But no matter how high she reached, how fiercely she cultivated, she could never quite outshine me."
Her tone grew soft, contemplative. It was not fond, exactly. It was deeply, profoundly mournful.
"She tried. Desperately. Until her pride turned to a bitter obsession, and that obsession gave birth to powerful inner demons. In the end, she… she fell."
Su Min's breath caught in her throat. "You mean..."
"She became like the Fallen of today," Yao Xian'er confirmed, her eyes distant, seeing a battle fought millennia ago. "She sacrificed the entire population of the Great Luo Tian Province in a doomed, monstrous attempt to force open the path to Transcendence. I chased her across the continent. I fought her for days under the frozen, bleeding sky. And I… I killed her in the glaciers of the far north."
A cold, mournful wind swept through the secluded valley, stirring the leaves around them as if in sympathy.
Su Min stood up without thinking, her body tensed like a drawn bowstring. "She went there. Yingying, she must have gone to that very place!"
Yao Xian'er sighed, a sound of infinite weariness, then reached out with one hand with impossible speed and pinched the back of Su Min's collar before she could bolt away. "Will you sit down?" Her tone was pure, unadulterated exasperation. "Honestly. You are even worse than I was back then."
Su Min froze, caught in the effortless grip of a Dao Comprehension cultivator as easily as a kitten held by the scruff. She slowly, reluctantly, sat back down, but her eyes remained sharp and burning with urgency. "Then what happened? Why would you let such a dangerous place still exist?"
"Because before she died," Yao Xian'er said, her voice dropping to a near whisper, "she came back to her senses. Just for a single, fleeting moment. She begged me, with her last coherent breath, to preserve the remnant of her true soul. Not all of it. I used a forbidden art to split it into two. One part was the good, the penitent part, the woman I once knew. The other, the hatred and the madness, the Fallen taint, I sealed away deep within the northern ice."
Su Min finally let out a breath she did not realize she had been holding. "Whew..." If Yao Xian'er herself had been the one to set the seal, then there was probably no immediate, catastrophic danger. The seal would be formidable.
"I created a separate, hidden secret realm to house the good half, to let it rest in peace. I think your little wife, sharp and spiritually attuned as she is, must have sensed its unique resonance with her own Lunar Sovereign Body. She is there now, likely communing with it."
But the moment of relief was short-lived, shattered by Yao Xian'er's next words.
"In ten years," Yao Xian'er continued, her voice becoming hard and precise, "the seal on the evil half will break. It will awaken, and it will be hungry."
Su Min's fingers twitched on her knees, but she said nothing, her face a mask of grim acceptance.
"When that happens," Yao Xian'er said, watching her closely, "you will need to be there. To end it, properly and finally. If you fail, the soul will fully corrupt, merging with the lingering Fallen energy. And the one who will suffer the most, who it will seek to possess and consume first, will be the one closest to it spiritually."
That made Su Min's heart lurch violently in her chest. "Yingying."
"She will be fine for now," Yao Xian'er said, her tone shifting to something slightly more gentle. "The good remnant will not harm her; it may even help her. But if you let that evil thing fester and break free..." She let the sentence hang in the air, the unspoken, horrific consequence clear as day.
Then, with a faint, rueful smile that did not reach her eyes, she added, "Look at you. I never thought I would see the day when the future Emperor of the Five Elements Holy Body was so completely, utterly tethered by a thread of moonlight."
Su Min cursed inwardly. Why did these ancient powerhouses always leave such messy, world-ending problems behind for others, trusting blindly that "future generations would handle it"?
Yao Xian'er only smiled wider, seeming to read her frustrated thoughts perfectly. "Cheer up. If you succeed in destroying the evil remnant, it will convert into a pure, incredibly potent origin force. A once-in-a-lifetime harvest for a master alchemist like you. Consider it a… troublesome gift from the distant past."
Su Min exhaled, a long, slow breath that carried the weight of the new burden placed upon her shoulders.
"Troublesome," she echoed dryly. "That is putting it far too lightly."
===
Little wife. Little Wife. Little wife.
Important things must be said three times. BTW, Su Min is not correcting that title. LOL
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Hi, it's me. I work on another novel that already available on this account. True Heir of Chaos: From Villainess to Empress. In this novel, the MC basically Su Min's level up. You can see the true power or potential of "Chaos" wielder in here, as both of them possess "Chaos" and they also chose "Time" as their "Law". There's also not have good or evil in Dao or Demon cultivator, making it much interesting than usual troupe. This also become the very reason why I often feel uncomfortable when the lore depict demon cultivator as the 'evil' ones as in my opinion "evilness" is mostly depend on person itself, not what they practiced. This novel also one of cultivation novel that I read 'first', making it more memorable and have great impact on me. Or maybe because Jian Dan 'signature' is white magnolia and manjushahua that coincidentally also my fav flowers. Hmm
I can't say that Jian Dan is stronger than Su Min, because their background, environment, and rules are different. For Jian Dan this is her 2nd life, she is also cultivator in her 1st life and already reach Divine Transformation stage. While Su Min is recently graduate student that just work as programmer. So their knowledge reserve gap about cultivation, technique etc in general are too vast.
Even if both of the world also facing extermination crisis threat, it fundamentally different. In Su Min's case, the Heavenly Dao take damage when repelling the Fallen Ones, it then cap the 'Cultivation stage' to early Golden Core on this world to take the reserve qi to heal it self. Making 'Heavenly Decay Curse' descent on this world. All cultivators who beyond early Golden Core their lifespan is losing rapidly, the higher the cultivation the faster their lifespan lost.
Many promising and or powerful cultivators sealing themself, some sect even destroyed and gone because of this restriction (like Yingying sect). This is one of the reason why opportunity to gain knowledge on cultivation is very hard to do as casual or rogue cultivator. Remember that Su Min is essentially one of them, and she build her sect alone and she often complained about the incomplete method and technique in her sect.
Jian Dan in other hand, the Heavenly Dao (of Cultivation realm's) just restrict the cultivator and making them unable to ascend to Immortal Realm. The effect is almost negligible to majority cultivators, also because it very hard to reach the top, this information is not known to the world either.
Anyway if you like this novel, maybe you also like the new ones. So give it a shot, review, and add to your library~