[After repaying the favor, you return to your rundown old cave dwelling. Just as you’re about to enter secluded cultivation again and focus on breaking through, a message from your eldest senior brother causes you to abandon the idea.]
[As the saying goes: reading ten thousand books is not as good as walking ten thousand miles. The same applies to cultivation—studying countless techniques cannot compare to witnessing the mortal world with your own eyes.]
[Although you’ve reached mid-stage Qi Refining, you’re still a complete novice in the world of cultivation.]
[Your hands are unstained by blood. Your battles have been solo acts with no real combat experience.]
[This trip down the mountain is officially to assist your senior brother in slaying demons and eliminating evil. But you can clearly tell—he’s just letting you farm weaklings for experience.]
[Your senior brother injures a demonic cultivator with one strike of his sword. You follow up with a spell and blast the enemy into a bloody mist.]
[You both successfully complete the sect’s mission.]
[On the way back to the sect, you grow bored and start chatting with your senior brother about demonic cultivators. As usual, your mouth runs faster than your brain.]
“…Junior brother, I don’t think demonic cultivators are quite as dark as you make them out to be.”
Staring at the innocent-looking boy in front of him, Zhang Yi—who had slain countless demons and was born in the closing years of the great war between righteous and demonic factions decades ago—suddenly felt that his cultivation heart might not be as unshakable as he had believed.
He was genuinely disturbed by the world his junior brother was painting with words.
Zhang Yi couldn’t imagine how someone could be so terrifyingly cruel.
What did he mean by “just a few pills and some mortals could yield an endless stream of living souls?” What was that about “maximizing the value of a mortal: their soul for vengeful spirits, their blood for talismanic ink, and their flesh reanimated into zombies as disposable foot soldiers?”
These suggestions weren’t just inhumane—they were nightmare-fuel levels of horror.
At least the demonic cultivators from decades ago had some shred of humanity.
What this junior brother described didn’t sound like anything a normal person could conceive.
“But, Senior Brother, don’t you think the resource efficiency is actually really high?”
Su Bai looked at him with a perfectly innocent face.
Zhang Yi opened his mouth to reply, then quickly shut it.
If he didn’t know for a fact that demonic cultivation had been completely wiped out decades ago, he would’ve seriously suspected that his junior brother had been possessed by a demonic overlord.
He hastily raised his hand to cut Su Bai off.
“Junior Brother, calm down. We’re righteous cultivators. There’s no good end to walking the demonic path.”
“Of course I know that. I’m just talking theory,” Su Bai shrugged nonchalantly.
“Haha…” Zhang Yi laughed awkwardly, trying to lighten the mood.
“With that kind of… imagination, your talent and insight are truly extraordinary. If you’d been born a few decades earlier, you’d have been a guaranteed demonic golden core cultivator.”
“Golden core? Too humble. If I ever turned to the demonic path, I’d start at Nascent Soul or Deification. I’d call myself Lord Demonic Sun. Anyone who sees me would have to respectfully greet me as Demonic Sun Heavenly Venerable.”
Su Bai’s flair for outrageous commentary showed no signs of stopping.
***
[Your senior brother finds your views on demonic cultivation way too extreme. He even says that if the war between righteous and demonic factions hadn’t ended so decisively years ago, he would’ve cut you down on the spot for sounding exactly like a future demonic overlord.]
[You don’t take his words to heart. After returning to the sect, you go back into seclusion to focus on your cultivation.]
[Time passes swiftly like a white steed galloping past a crack—four years go by in a blink. You spend most of that time in closed-door cultivation, though you keep up with the world’s happenings.]
[You pay a few spirit stones to a registered disciple, instructing him to report monthly updates: things like “a noble clan under sect protection wiped out by demonic cultivators,” “a spirit herb field attacked, prices of medicinal herbs soaring,” or “entire villages suffering from the Bone Night Calamity, forced to relocate.”]
[After four years, you successfully break through to late-stage Qi Refining. You choose to keep this terrifying progress a secret and begin training in aura-concealment techniques.]
[You spend a year perfecting the Breath-Concealing Technique.]
[Afterward, you continue your secluded cultivation.]
[Partway through, a large amount of cultivation resources is delivered to your cave residence.]
[When you ask your senior brother about it, you learn that it is part of the inheritance from your third senior brother and fourth senior sister.]
[During the years you spent in seclusion, your third senior brother dies while exploring an ancient cultivator’s cave, and your fourth senior sister perishes on a mission summoned by the Immortal Alliance.]
[Your first senior brother consoles you and reaffirms the superiority of your sect’s master-disciple system. When one generation falls, the next inherits their will—a system far superior to the bloodline-based structures of the other four domains.]
“If one day I fail to form my Foundation,” he says with a proud smirk, “you’ll inherit my legacy too.”
[You notice his confident expression. Clearly, he thinks his breakthrough to Foundation Establishment is all but guaranteed.]
***
[Time passes quickly.]
[Another three years fly by.]
[You have now reached the peak of the Qi Refining stage, only a single step away from forming your Foundation.]
[One day, you emerge from seclusion—only to receive terrible news.]
[Your first senior brother, Zhang Yi, has failed to form his Foundation. His body perished and his soul returned to the heavens.]
[The shock is so great that your nominal master vomits three mouthfuls of blood and nearly loses consciousness.]
[When you visit her, you see an aged, withered figure—a person at the very end of her life. In that moment, you realize that your master’s time is nearly up.]
[In the cultivation world, it’s common knowledge that Qi Refining cultivators live up to 100 years, while Foundation Establishment cultivators can reach 200.]
[While some longevity methods exist, they have nothing to do with you.]
[What does concern you is the fact that without a Foundation-level cultivator like Elder Cang Yue, your branch of the sect can no longer stand independently. You will all be merged into another branch.]
[You return to your cave and go into seclusion once again.]
[This time, your goal is Foundation Establishment.]
[No Foundation Pill.]
[No senior cultivator protecting you.]
[No one to pass on their experience.]
[Only a cultivation technique gifted to you by a Cultivation Simulator.]
[You, Su Bai, are going all in.]
[After simulating twenty-five years of cultivation, you finally break through to Foundation Establishment.]
“So much for that ‘flawless version’—why the hell do I look so feminine after breaking through?!”
Su Bai stood in his plain white robe, long hair tied back with a jade crown.
His brows were elegant like distant mountains, and his androgynous face held an ethereal beauty.
A faint, unplaceable charm lingered in the upward curve of his eyes.
He stared into the thin water mirror floating before him, clearly displeased.
‘Handsome, I can accept. But feminine? Absolutely not.’
He looked like one of those pretty boys on a talent show.
“Tch, whatever. I should go check on my master.”
Muttering curses at the simulator in his heart, Su Bai dispersed the mirror and flew toward his master’s mountain peak.
***
[Your sudden appearance catches Cang Yue off guard, but she still allows you to enter. She explains that when her life ends, you and the remaining registered disciples will be merged under the care of one of her old Foundation-stage friends.]
[You wouldn’t be targeted, but a reduction in resources is inevitable. It’s an unspoken rule within the sect.]
“You gave a faint smile. ‘Then I’ll just establish my Foundation.'”
Cang Yue was stunned.
“You’ve only been in the sect for a few years, and you’re already talking about Foundation Establishment?”
She was about to give you a stern lecture when suddenly—your aura shifted.
You stopped concealing your cultivation base.
Foundation Stage!
For a moment, Cang Yue was speechless.
You couldn’t help feeling a little smug. If nothing else, your poetic flair should earn you some credit. Before you could say anything, Cang Yue’s eyes went wide.
She grabbed your shoulders and shouted three words in succession: “Good! Very good! Excellent!”
“You are truly my disciple!”
That night, the two of you talked at length.
Cang Yue reverted to the role of a teacher, explaining in great detail all kinds of insights and mysteries you had encountered on your cultivation path.
Through that conversation, you also learned her real name—Niu Aihua.
She came from an unnamed village.
“Cang Yue” was merely her Dao title.
You didn’t know why she was suddenly so talkative in her final days.
Maybe she just wanted someone to remember her.
To remember that, on this long path of cultivation, there was once a Foundation-stage cultivator named Niu Aihua—known in the world as Cang Yue.
***
[After twenty-five simulated years, with the only surviving elderly Golden Core cultivator in the sect as witness, the formal handover of power is completed.]
[Cang Yue passes on her legacy, laughs three times, shouts to the heavens that her disciple Su Bai has the makings of a Golden Core cultivator, and then quietly passes away.]
[You, now the Foundation Establishment cultivator of your lineage, become a rising star within the sect—an influential elder with promising potential to reach the Golden Core realm.]
[Yet in private, you remain deeply troubled by your increasingly feminine appearance.]
[Oh, right. After forming your Foundation, you are finally qualified to take a Dao title.]
[You choose—”Qingyang.”]
..