The so-called "Immortal Mortal Divide" wasn't a lightning tribulation from the heavens, but the quiet, inevitable heartbreak of watching loved ones age and wither like fallen leaves while you remained unchanged. It was an emotional hurdle every long-lived being eventually faced, a slow erosion of the soul.
For someone like Su Min, who considered herself unattached and free of worldly ties, it shouldn't have been a personal issue. Yet, as she walked the mountain paths, she often found her fingers drifting to the jade pendant at her waist—the only tether she had to someone who wouldn't turn to dust. But for others who formed deep bonds with those of shorter lifespans, she couldn't say how they would fare in the face of eternity.
"In the decade you were in seclusion, the island's population grew by another fifty thousand," the Peacock King reported, her voice echoing in the crisp morning air. "I have had the spirit beasts help establish new settlements along the western coast. As for the sect, we have added thirty more qualified youths. However, none have shown the foundational capacity for Heavenly Foundation Establishment yet. Forcing it upon them would only break their potential before they even begin."
"Tch." Su Min could only sigh in response, the sound lost in the rustle of the golden leaves. Heavenly Foundation Establishment required an innate, intangible capacity that was impossible to artificially create. Those who achieved it were virtually guaranteed to reach the Golden Core stage at a minimum, becoming the pillars of any faction.
"Who will you take as your personal disciple?" the Peacock King asked, her multicolored eyes searching Su Min's face.
"No one yet," Su Min replied, her gaze drifting toward the horizon. "But I will remain here, periodically entering dormancy until the Golden Core Avenue opens." She gazed down at the bustling settlement below, where smoke rose from a thousand hearths.
Their cultivation progress was slow; even with the pills she had stockpiled, they had only just reached the Qi Refining stage after more than a decade of effort. But she wasn't worried. As generations passed, their descendants, born and raised in this rich environment, would naturally grow stronger, their bloodlines tempered by the island's spiritual mist.
"I still don't understand your criteria," the Peacock King said, her tone carrying a trace of disapproval. "The overall quality of the people you brought is... lacking."
When Su Min first proposed bringing humans to the island, the spirit beasts had been thrilled. The Path of Divine Flames was originally designed for their kind, after all. Just look at the Four Symbols, the pinnacle existences who had mastered it. But the Peacock King hadn't expected Su Min to recruit poverty-stricken refugees. Among tens of thousands, only a handful had even reached the Body Refining stage.
"We have time," Su Min said simply, her voice carrying a quiet certainty. "With this island's environment, each new generation will be stronger than the last. We are planting seeds for a forest that will stand for ten thousand years."
With that, she descended the stone steps to walk among her people. As the sect master, she couldn't remain completely absent, or her founding purpose would be meaningless. Moreover, her path to immortality meant she would never decline, eternally retaining her prime while those around her succumbed to time. But she wasn't idle. She had a greater task ahead of her—elevating her life-bound spirit treasure to Mystic-tier high-grade.
This would take decades, perhaps even centuries of focused refinement. Unlike her past battles where she had overwhelmed opponents with a sheer advantage of rank or preparation, the coming trials in the Golden Core Avenue would demand true prowess and the best tools she could forge.
Years flowed by like water over smooth stones as Su Min gradually refined her weapon between intermittent periods of seclusion. The island's abundant resources meant she didn't need to expend her rarest, most precious materials all at once, allowing the blade to drink in the spiritual energy of the Fusang tree slowly.
She had named her sect the East Sea Immortal Gate, though she was the first to admit she was terrible at naming things. It was functional, if a bit uninspired.
Under her steady care, the gate grew into a sprawling complex of jade and timber. But she wasn't just a sect master; she was the governor of the entire Eastern Mulberry Island, which was now home to nearly ten million people after a full century of migration and natural growth. Even so, this was only a fraction of the island's vast, unexplored land. The sect's disciples numbered in the hundreds, their growth deliberately controlled by Su Min's strict standards. She understood that true cultivation was brutally difficult and couldn't be rushed by those seeking shortcuts.
Like now, as the sun dipped below the peaks.
"Sect Master, this old man comes to bid farewell." A white-haired elder stood before her, his back slightly bent. He was one of the original seven children she had selected, the boy who had once fought lizard monsters with a rusty spear. He was now among the sect's most senior members, second only to her and the Peacock King. All of the first seven had reached Foundation Establishment, and all had stalled there, unable to cross the next great divide into the Golden Core realm.
The Immortal Mortal Divide wasn't easily crossed. If ten to twenty percent of Qi Refining cultivators reached Foundation Establishment, a mere zero point one to zero point two percent ever advanced to Golden Core.
This elder had achieved a solid Earthly Foundation Establishment. Su Min had even prepared special, tribulation-resistant gear for him, yet the ferocious Triple Nine Heavenly Tribulation had remained insurmountable for his talent.
"A pity," Su Min said, her voice soft and carrying a hint of genuine sorrow. "With your talent, reaching Foundation Establishment was already a great achievement. Your grandson may yet reach Golden Core, but that's thirty years away. You won't live to see it."
She could only sigh. This was precisely why she had always kept a certain emotional distance from her mortal disciples; she didn't want to become accustomed to the smell of death.
"As for you, Master, centuries have passed, yet your immortal grace remains undimmed," the elder said, bowing his head in reverence. "I resign as sect leader and will retreat to the rear mountains."
After the first century, Su Min had stepped down from the day-to-day leadership. With her frequent seclusions and the Golden Core Avenue approaching, she had gradually transitioned to a revered Elder status, delegating authority to those she had raised. Now, this elder, who had led the sect ably for decades, was yielding his position as his own vitality faded.
"Granted," Su Min said, her hand resting briefly on his shoulder. "Join the elder council henceforth. You have earned your rest."
The sect now operated smoothly without her constant oversight. To most outsiders and newer disciples, she was always "in seclusion," a convenient cover for her agelessness. The current lack of Golden Core experts didn't worry her. Even the ten-thousand-year-old sects of the Great Luo Tian State had very few active Golden Core cultivators in this era. Most of their top talents were still sealed away, waiting for the world to change.
And with the heavenly suppression still in place, tribulations were unusually harsh. Once it was lifted, the difficulty of the Triple Nine Tribulation would drop slightly, though the Six Nine and Nine Nine Tribulations would remain as deadly as ever.
"Thank you, Master." The elder bowed deeply and withdrew, his footsteps heavy on the stone.
Su Min turned back to her work, rekindling the forge and tossing in another rare, spiritual metal that glowed with a faint violet light. Forging a Mystic-tier high-grade weapon demanded monstrous resources and an iron will. Without the sect's steady, centuries-long supply effort, she would never have gathered enough to complete her sword before the Golden Core Avenue opened.
Finally, as the flames died down and the last rune was carved into the hilt, the finished product hovered before her, vibrating with power.
[Nanming Lihuo Sword (Mystic-tier High-Grade)]
[Effects:]
[① Boosts fire/wood attribute damage.]
[② Armor Penetration: Strong defense-ignoring properties.]
[③ Cremation: All attacks inflict burning effects.]
"At last," she whispered, a wave of relief and satisfaction washing over her as she gripped the hilt. The blade felt like an extension of her own arm. "With this, I won't be completely outmatched in the Golden Core Avenue."
Over the centuries, she had systematically upgraded her entire arsenal, relegating her old gear to become rewards for outstanding sect members. But one persistent problem remained—she had found no worthy successor in alchemy. The best she had found were second-rate alchemists, no better than Prince Yong's old retainers, and nowhere near her own exacting standards.
The sky above the sect was a calm, shimmering gold, the sunlight bathing the mountain peaks in a serene warmth. Stepping out from the main pavilion, Su Min's robes rustled gently in the breeze. At her waist, the jade pendant Xie Yingying had given her pulsed once—a faint but insistent sensation that made the skin of her hip tingle. She lowered her eyes, her fingers brushing against the familiar, cool shape of the jade.
"...Has it been that long already?" she murmured to the empty air.
The voice that slipped from her lips was softer than usual, carrying a wistful tone she didn't quite recognize as her own. She often found herself thinking of the ancient cultivator, wondering if the black-robbed girl was dreaming of the moon in her frozen slumber.
"Yingying said she would reach out a decade before the Golden Core Avenue opened, and yet, centuries have flown by."
She lingered at the edge of the veranda, letting the wind play with the loose strands of hair at her temples. Somewhere in the valley below, disciples laughed during their training. Birds circled lazily above the courtyard. But Su Min's gaze was not on them. It was fixed on the distant horizon, where clouds curled and shifted like rising incense smoke, pointing toward the place where she had last seen that stubborn, beautiful girl.
That memory, of a sealed mansion beneath a silver moon and the quiet warmth of Yingying's presence, surfaced in her mind with startling clarity.
How long had it been since they had parted without a proper word? The silence between them felt like a weight she hadn't realized she was carrying.
She allowed herself a single, deep breath. Just one.
"The sect will be fine without me for a while," she said quietly, the words sounding like a farewell to the life she had built here. "The Azure Dragon and the Peacock King can handle things. There's nothing left here that requires my direct protection."
A flicker of light enveloped her, and she vanished from the pavilion, a streak of light shooting into the sky with a speed that blurred the landscape below.
"Much has changed," Su Min observed, flying over the familiar landscape of Yu City. It was her first stop from centuries ago, and the closest place to a hometown she had in this world. Wei Wu Province had clearly grown, the cities more sprawling and the roads better paved.
She could sense a Golden Core level aura pulsing near the imperial capital, belonging to a new expert unrelated to anyone she had known. People like Cao Yuanmu and the other officials from her time had long since turned to dust, their names likely forgotten by all but the historians.
"I wonder how Hui Ming is faring," she thought. "With his Mortal Foundation Establishment, even if he reached Golden Core, he wouldn't qualify for the Avenue."
As Xie Yingying had once explained, only those who achieved Heavenly Foundation Establishment or survived the Six Nine Tribulation stood a real chance there. Everyone else was merely cannon fodder for the ancient freaks.
The jade pendant at her waist pulsed again, more urgently this time, a sharp heat radiating through her clothes.
Su Min's expression shifted, her eyes narrowing as they became sharp and alert. This was not a simple call or a friendly greeting. It wasn't a simple call. It was a warning.
Fluctuating qi. Seal destabilization.
Her heart tightened in her chest, a sudden, cold dread washing over her.
"Is she in danger?!"
There was no hesitation in her movements. Her speed exploded, ripping across the sky as a barely visible streak of crimson flame that left a trail of scorched air in its wake. She didn't care about being seen or drawing attention anymore.
She clenched her fists until her knuckles turned white. Beneath the roar of the wind and her incredible speed, her face was an unreadable mask of focus, save for a flicker of something raw, urgent, and deeply protective in her eyes—
Worry.
A deep, gnawing worry for the only person who truly understood the weight of being left behind by time.
-
A normally desolate mountain peak now teemed with hundreds of cultivators, all at least at the Foundation Establishment stage, their auras clashing and creating a chaotic storm of energy. Wei Wu Province's larger population and head start in the new era had indeed produced more experts than her own East Sea Island.
"Hahaha! To think such a treasure trove was hidden here!" a brawny man at peak Foundation Establishment bellowed, his voice carrying for miles. He was the leader of the Blood Bone Sect, a power second only to the imperial family's Golden Core ancestor. "By right of discovery, it belongs to us! Anyone who disagrees can speak to my blade!"
"Earth Demon Old Ghost, heaven's treasures favor the destined, not just the loud," the leader of a rival faction sneered, his fingers twitching over his sword hilt. "We won't yield today. Not for a find of this magnitude."
A third voice joined the fray, sharp and authoritative. "Hah! This land falls under the domain of Great Yong." It was a group of imperial envoys, their golden armor gleaming. "As representatives of the court, we claim priority over all ancient relics. Disperse now, or face the Emperor's wrath."
This forced the other two factions to hesitate. Since Su Min's departure, the court's authority had waned, until a lone Golden Core expert emerged from their ranks, restoring a tense, brittle balance of power.
Now, all three groups had their eyes locked on the valley's center, where a massive, crystalline structure was slowly becoming visible as the earth cracked. Had this scene played out centuries earlier, someone might have recognized it. But those who could were long dead and buried.
Inside the crystalline palace, the air was frigid and heavy. Xie Yingying's face was pale, her black hair spilling over her shoulders like a frozen waterfall. This self-imposed seal, unlike the one her sect had used before, had inherent flaws that she hadn't been able to account for. While it preserved her lifespan perfectly, it couldn't fully suppress the natural, relentless growth of her power over such a long time.
Now, she was at a critical juncture, her cultivation on the verge of an uncontrollable breakthrough.
Fighting outside would trigger her tribulation prematurely. The Three Nine Heavenly Tribulation she could handle, even while battling others. But the Six Nine? That was a different beast entirely. Her ultimate goal was the legendary Nine Nine Heavenly Tribulation, and these intruders had cornered her at the worst possible moment of vulnerability.
Unlike her last awakening, when only Su Min and the demon prince were at the Foundation Establishment stage, she now faced hordes of cultivators at the same realm, all hungry for the secrets of an ancient sect.
"Everyone, ready yourselves!" the Earth Demon Old Ghost shouted, licking his lips in anticipation. "The spatial fluctuations suggest a vast treasury inside! Kill the owner, and we plunder everything for ourselves!" In this era, it was common knowledge that no sealed realm housed active Golden Core experts, making such raids low-risk and high-reward in their greedy minds.
And if the occupant was merely a wealthy Foundation Establishment cultivator?
That was even better.
===
If you forget: Golden Core Avenue=Golden Core Path=The Heavenly Pride (Tianjiao) Road
BTW, you know what? Until now, Su Min always call her "Yingying" if she alone, and call her Xie Yingying when she with her or with other people. What a tsundere