Several thousand meters in the air, Ji Qianlin’s body was falling.
The sound unique to a flying shuttle pierced through the clamorous wind, reaching Ji Qianlin’s ears, clear and distinct.
Her mother had ultimately left.
Ji Qianlin clenched her fists.
Frustration and anger gave her strength, but they couldn’t solve her confusion and powerlessness.
Mother wouldn’t listen to her.
Her eyes were filled with nothing but Ding Nan.
“Ah…”
A sorrowful sigh escaped her.
Her physical descent accelerated.
She took no action, simply gazing at the azure sky.
This vast expanse of sky was nothing but empty, tinged with a pale lake-blue, monotonous and void.
The speed of her fall increased.
Before long, she crashed through layers of branches and twigs.
With a resounding thud, her body slammed straight into the ground, splattering mud and scattering fallen leaves.
Thanks to the formidable physique of a Soul Transformation Stage powerhouse, Ji Qianlin wasn’t injured.
Instead, she left a human-shaped crater in the ground.
Ji Qianlin looked up at the green hole in the canopy above, watching as dense layers of leaves gradually obscured it, shrinking the large opening to a small one.
Patches of light fell on her face.
Dark green leaves swayed in the breeze.
She felt as if a massive boulder were pressing on her chest, making it hard to breathe.
She lay there, gasping for a while.
Sadness spread through her heart, nearly forcing tears from her eyes.
This continued until a junior sister from the Xishan Sect approached.
“First Disciple? Why did you fall from the sky?”
The junior sister asked.
“It’s nothing…”
Ji Qianlin forced her tears back into her eyes and slowly rose to her feet.
She didn’t brush off the mud and leaves clinging to her clothes.
She didn’t address the confused junior sister behind her.
She simply began walking forward, step by step.
A despondent, dejected figure.
The now-adult junior sister could see Ji Qianlin was in low spirits.
The junior sister didn’t follow Ji Qianlin.
There were few things that could make Ji Qianlin this upset, and even fewer ways a junior disciple could help a Soul Transformation Stage cultivator.
Ji Qianlin stepped into the air, tore through space, and in an instant, arrived before the main gate of the Xishan Sect.
Surrounding junior brothers and sisters all bowed respectfully to their First Disciple.
Distracted, Ji Qianlin gave a simple nod in acknowledgment before instantly teleporting to the Xishan Sect’s port.
After registering and paying the Spirit Stones, she boarded the first-class cabin.
Inside the first-class cabin of the flying boat, aside from Ji Qianlin, all the other seats were empty.
First-class cabins generally didn’t have many passengers anyway, and she usually didn’t ride in them either.
No matter how many entertainment facilities were added to a flying boat, they couldn’t compare to the various entertainment venues and establishments on the ground.
It wasn’t a good place for reading either.
But right now, she wanted to sit in first class.
She wanted to be alone and quiet.
A ship attendant, a Xishan Sect disciple working part-time, brought Ji Qianlin the first-class meal set and then left.
The first-class meal set wasn’t much different from the home-cooked food of ordinary families.
After all, conditions on the flying boat were limited.
Ji Qianlin had no appetite.
She merely picked up the bamboo cup and drank the affordable lemonade inside.
The flying boat stocked a lot of lemonade because it sold very well, especially to cultivators prone to seasickness.
A cup of lemonade was not only cheaper than motion sickness medicine but also quite tasty.
The sour, slightly sweet lemonade slid down Ji Qianlin’s throat.
The refreshing sensation made her feel slightly better.
But then, the thought of her mother’s words—
“If I took you along, I’d have to split my attention to take care of you”—returned, and her mood darkened once more.
A burden… Mother’s words were no different from calling her a burden.
What was even harder to bear was that her mother hadn’t lied.
She was a burden.
The gap between each major cultivation realm was already a vast chasm, and the divide between the Soul Transformation Stage and the Tribulation Transcendence Stage was an insurmountable abyss.
To advance from Soul Transformation to Tribulation Transcendence, one not only had to meet material conditions but also spiritual ones.
Tribulation Transcendence, Tribulation Transcendence—it was called the Tribulation Transcendence Stage because it was the threshold before a cultivator’s ultimate destination, seemingly within reach of becoming an Immortal.
Cultivation, cultivation.
In the later stages, it becomes the elevation of one’s very life essence.
Starting from the Nascent Soul stage, all of a cultivator’s life information and energy converge into their soul body.
Following the Heavenly Immortal Path meant further strengthening this soul body, making it as substantial as a physical body or creating a new one.
The Earth Immortal Path involved gradually transforming the physical body during the Soul Transformation Stage to become a suitable vessel for the soul body.
Though the paths differed, both Earth Immortal and Heavenly Immortal converged on the same point: the sublimation of the soul.
The soul is precisely the cultivator’s own heart.
This was also why the Nanyang Academy’s entrance exam involved writing essays.
The topics over the years were either philosophical propositions or summaries of life’s purpose.
To become an Immortal, one must question their own heart.
Where does the heart point?
Where does the heart yearn to go?
A cultivator must have clear, unobstructed thoughts—understand what kind of person they are, what path they walk, and for what they live.
Without a goal, there is no direction. Merely existing is no different from a stubborn rock, naturally equivalent to dry bones.
Seeking the path of immortality would be utterly meaningless.
But what if things unrelated to seeking immortality became entangled?
One could easily lose their original intent, become impure.
What then?
How could one advance further?
When one’s will conflicts with itself, the light consequence is melancholy; the severe consequence is deviation into demonic cultivation, a Qi deviation.
Otherwise, over the years, the two Elders in her sect wouldn’t have remained stuck at the peak of the Soul Transformation Stage.
They were both disciples personally taught by the Xishan Ancestor.
Their talent and comprehension weren’t inferior to Mother’s.
Their accumulation of Spiritual Qi had long met the standard for Tribulation Transcendence.
However, the two Elders had yet to find a path that truly resonated with them, which was why they hadn’t broken through.
As for Ji Qianlin, she had long vaguely touched the threshold of the Tribulation Transcendence Stage.
But because she had always been without desire or ambition, she couldn’t refine her Spiritual Qi to the required purity to break through.
The flying boat stopped.
Ji Qianlin disembarked.
The surroundings were desolate.
Lush flowers, grass, and trees obscured the sky.
It was cool and pleasant under the tree shade, echoing with the calls of various birds.
There was no trace of human presence.
This place was located outside the Xishan Sect, adjacent to its territory.
It was a buffer zone between sects, a forest that remained uninhabited year-round.
Feeling stifled, Ji Qianlin sought this place where she could vent freely.
The sect was crowded with prying eyes and lacked space for her to unleash her emotions, so she came here.
But she wasn’t here to hunt.
The forest was home to all sorts of wild beasts or, occasionally, low-intelligence Monsters that had gained a spark of sentience.
The latter, however, were few in number.
Most Monsters that gained sentience would soon transform into Demon Race cultivators and seek out their Monster Kingdom.
Within areas of human activity, Monsters were inherently scarce.
Hunting in the wilderness, one could only find wild beasts.
Although beasts possessed a hint of spiritual aura, they were ultimately just beasts, relying solely on size and brute strength.
Even someone in the Body Tempering Realm could easily kill them.
For a Soul Transformation Stage cultivator like Ji Qianlin, those beasts were like stationary targets—useless to consume, boring to hunt.
If only there were news of evil cultivators or Demonic Cultivators within the sect’s territory…
However, evil cultivators and Demonic Cultivators were even rarer than Monsters.
Evil cultivators were either madmen or idiots.
They were worse than the thugs and ruffians in the cities, like rats scurrying in the streets—disorganized and chaotic.
Their intelligence was insufficient to understand anything beyond themselves, or they possessed some bizarre, shocking wisdom and peculiar ways of thinking.
They dabbled in evil arts that harmed both others and themselves, often ending up neither human nor ghost.
All evil cultivators kept their tails tucked, hiding in places unseen by non-cannibals to consume human flesh.
The moment they showed their heads, they would be surrounded and blasted to death by the collective.
Most evil cultivators hid in war-torn regions or served as high-ranking officials in certain corrupt nations.
Demonic Cultivators were even more of a rarity.
To become a Demonic Cultivator, one first had to be an obsessive fanatic, similar to a woman driven mad by love—a yandere.
Among the Demonic Cultivators she had seen, the one that left the deepest impression was a pervert who called every little girl he saw ‘Mommy’—this person was normal in every other way, except for his obsession with calling little girls Mommy.
It was utterly bizarre.
Most people just muddled through life, not obsessing over any one thing too much.
Therefore, the number of Demonic Cultivators was even smaller than that of evil cultivators.
Ji Qianlin drew her sword.
At first, her movements were slow and deliberate, like the calisthenics called “Taiji Fist.”
However, her heart was not calm, and her body followed her heart’s turmoil.
Then, she unleashed a set of the Sunset Sword Technique.
Sharp Spiritual Qi exploded from a small forest stream, sending water splashing several meters high and leaving a deep scar in the shallow creek bed.
Sword energy swept across the forest.
A swath of green trees was severed at the waist, the cuts smooth and glaring.
Towering stumps could no longer block the sunlight.
The vast, seemingly boundless forest was suddenly bald in a large patch.
Her sword slashed toward the sky.
The white clouds in the firmament were cleanly split by a trail of sword energy.
Ji Qianlin leaped from the ground.
Facing a mountain peak several kilometers away, she threw punches and pushed out palm strikes.
In an instant, dust and rubble tumbled down the distant cliff face, and several deep imprints of fists and palms were left on the mountainside.
Stepping, sword shadows, leaping thrusts.
The sword was invisible, yet it had a sound—a clear whistle-like resonance.
Cliffs cracked merely from the shift of her foot.
The earth compacted under her falling steps, leaving a series of footprints several inches deep.
Her heart was in chaos, so her breathing gradually became ragged.
She thought of Fairy Jade Frost. She remembered Fairy Jade Frost being defeated in Qingquan City.
Fairy Jade Frost, a figure of high virtue and prestige, at the mid-stage of Tribulation Transcendence.
She devoted herself wholeheartedly to healing and saving lives, personally involved in every case.
For over six hundred years, she had been engrossed in the medical arts, living a simple, almost saintly life.
For over six hundred years, she had never changed.
Not a single person had ever stirred her heart.
How could someone like that simply fall for a country bumpkin, a greenhorn like Ding Nan?
Money, cultivation, family background, knowledge… besides his looks, what else could she possibly see in him?
Surely not his personality?
When did Lin Yue’er meet Ding Nan?
If Ding Nan knew Lin Yue’er, given Lin Yue’er’s profound understanding of the human body, how could Ding Nan be completely ignorant of his own loss of cultivation?
“What a noble person, going to Qingquan City to investigate the cause of Mother’s illness!”
Ji Qianlin exclaimed loudly.
And then Lin Yue’er was defeated.
Even though it was just a clone, and Lin Yue’er didn’t die, it was still the “fall” of a mid-stage Tribulation Transcendence powerhouse!
Her sword danced swiftly.
She recalled the lovestruck, infatuated expression on her mother’s face.
She couldn’t understand it.
She truly couldn’t understand why her mother had become like that.
Witchcraft, gu sorcery, the Soul-bewitching Technique… various evil arts flashed through her mind.
Her eyes gradually turned bloodshot, veins filling with crimson.
She clutched her head with both hands.
For the first time in her life, she felt such a profound, deep-seated craving—a craving for power!
She knew she shouldn’t use such thoughts to transcend her tribulation.
But her mother’s smiling face and gentle voice were imprinted in her mind, forming a stark contrast with the mother who had slapped her.
She needed, power!
The previously clear sky responded with flashes of lightning and rumbles of thunder.
Gritting her teeth, pressing her lips together amidst the roaring thunder and flashes of lightning, she threw her head back and let out a furious roar.
“Ding Nan… Ding Nan! I swear I will kill you! I swear I will kill you!”
A storm was coming.