Some time ago...
A feminine figure floated in the void between worlds.
Her presence radiated cold authority that made space itself seem to freeze around her.
She existed in a realm where mortal eyes could never reach. A place where reality bent to her will with barely a thought.
The veil did nothing to hide her beauty.
Even covered, her features were striking enough to make emperors weep. Perfect proportions that seemed carved by the heavens themselves.
Eyes that held the coldness of eternal ice behind thin silk. Her entire being emanated an aura that demanded reverence.
She stood at the edge of a spatial tear she had created moments before. Below her stretched a mortal world that looked small and insignificant from this height.
Her robes were pristine white without a single wrinkle or speck of dirt. Phoenix patterns were embroidered across the fabric in golden thread.
Those patterns seemed to move on their own as if alive. They shifted and danced with every slight movement she made.
Her cold eyes surveyed everything below with detached interest. The world. The people. The pathetic struggles of mortals. All of it meant nothing to her.
Fairy Yue Lianxing. That was the name mortals would use if they knew who she was.
A cultivator from the Azure Heaven Upper Realm. One of the nine great upper realms that existed above the middle and lower cultivation worlds.
She had descended to this particular mortal world after sensing something unusual. Her divination techniques had pointed her here.
To this place called the Crimson Leaf Mortal Plane.
An opportunity for breakthrough waited somewhere below.
It was highly unusual. Breakthroughs in cultivation normally came from two sources.
Either intense dedicated cultivation that pushed through bottlenecks through sheer effort and comprehension.
Or fortunate encounters in spiritual lands rich with heavenly treasures and natural formations.
Not from descending to a world so barren of spiritual energy that most inhabitants could only practice crude martial arts.
Mortal worlds like this one were considered worthless by most cultivators. There was nothing here that could help someone at her level advance.
Yet her divination had been absolutely clear. Crystal clear in a way that left no room for doubt.
Her opportunity waited here. In this backwards mortal plane.
The Crimson Leaf Mortal Plane was one of countless mortal worlds scattered throughout existence.
They existed beneath the cultivation realms like forgotten islands in an endless ocean. Spiritual energy here was so sparse that true cultivation was nearly impossible for anyone born in this place.
Most people here lived and died as ordinary mortals. They never even knew that cultivation existed.
A rare few with exceptional talent or fortune managed to practice martial arts to high levels. They could shatter stones with their fists and live slightly longer than normal humans.
And only the truly exceptional, perhaps one in ten million, could somehow leave this mortal world behind.
Every hundred years the barriers between worlds weakened slightly. During those brief windows, the strongest martial artists could attempt to break through into the cultivation worlds above.
Most died trying. The few who succeeded found themselves at the bottom of a new hierarchy where they were considered trash.
Yue Lianxing had no interest in such mundane matters. The struggles of mortals and weak martial artists meant nothing to her.
She was here purely for her breakthrough. Once she obtained what she needed, she would leave this world behind and never think of it again.
She stepped forward. Her foot moved through empty space as if walking on solid ground.
She passed through the spatial tear and began her descent toward the world below.
Then something impossible happened. Something that made her freeze mid-step.
The heavens shifted.
It was subtle. Just the slightest change in the natural order. Most beings would never notice such a thing even if they stared directly at it.
But someone at her level of cultivation could sense these changes clearly.
The fundamental laws that governed reality had just moved. Adjusted themselves in response to something.
Yue Lianxing's eyes narrowed behind her veil. She stopped her descent immediately and hung motionless in the void.
Her consciousness extended outward like an invisible wave. Her divine sense spread across hundreds of miles in an instant.
She searched for the source of this phenomenon. What could possibly cause the heavens themselves to shift?
Then her phoenix star constellation reacted.
The reaction was violent. More violent than anything she had experienced in three hundred years.
Inside her sea of consciousness where her soul resided, stars that represented her cultivation path suddenly blazed with brilliant light.
The phoenix constellation that she had spent centuries nurturing. That represented her destiny, her dao, her very existence as a cultivator.
All of those stars burned brighter than they ever had before.
They were pointing. Showing her a specific direction with absolute certainty.
The constellation was connecting to something below. Something in this mortal world.
Yue Lianxing's face went completely blank behind her veil.
All expression vanished as understanding crashed into her mind like a tidal wave that swept away everything else.
There was a man destined for her.
'How this possible?!' she thought.
Somewhere in this mortal plane. And that person was directly connected to her breakthrough opportunity.
'This...'
Her destined partner. The one the heavens had marked for her.
"It can't be," she whispered. Her voice was cold as winter ice despite the genuine shock she felt coursing through her.
This shouldn't be happening. Couldn't be happening.
She had never desired such an encounter. Never wanted a destined partner or dual cultivation companion.
Her path was one of solitary cultivation. She walked alone through the heavens by deliberate choice.
She had rejected countless marriage proposals from powerful young masters of supreme sects.
Turned down alliances with ancient clans that would have given her enormous benefits.
She walked alone because that was how she wanted it. Her cultivation was hers and hers alone.
But destiny didn't care about personal desires. The heavens made their judgments without asking for permission or preference.
And she needed this breakthrough desperately. That fact overrode everything else.
Her cultivation had been stuck at her current realm's peak for three hundred years now.
Three hundred years of attempting to break through and failing repeatedly. Her situation is currently not very good.
Surrounded by enemies, if she doesn't breakthrough then her fate could be worse than death.
Perhaps another century remained at most.
One more major failure and her time would be up. She would face a life she would rather die than experience.
If that's the case then maybe getting a Dao Companion seems not irritating to her as it would in the past.
Yue Lianxing sighed as her thoughts became a bit chaotic.