Chapter 426: The Passing of Decades
As the years continued to pass, the atmosphere of the Cultivation World became increasingly tense.
Yet strangely enough, the secular world seemed to have returned to its former tranquility.
For mortals, fifty years was an extremely long period of time, nearly half a lifetime.
A child who had just learned how to walk might become an old man within those fifty years, and a young woman who had just married might already have great-grandchildren.
Generations would rise and fall, cities would change, and dynasties would prosper and decline.
Countless ordinary people would live their entire lives without ever knowing that above their heads, an unprecedented calamity was quietly approaching, merely treating it as a legend.
And perhaps, that was for the best.
After all, what could mortals do in the face of a catastrophe involving Immortals and Gods?
There was nothing they could do, they did not even understand what an actual Immortal Deity truly represented.
All they could do was live their own lives and wait.
Thus, while the cultivation world entered a state of unprecedented preparation, the secular world continued according to its own rhythm.
Children played in the streets, merchants traveled between cities, and farmers worked beneath the sun.
People married, gave birth, grew old, became sick, and eventually died.
Life continued as if nothing had changed.
However, beneath this seemingly peaceful surface, countless cultivators were silently making preparations.
Array Formations and dharma restrictions began appearing throughout the Mortal World.
Across mountains, rivers, cities, dynasties, even entire regions, as long as there were mortals in a unprotected place, there were various means set down by cultivators.
There were defensive formations, concealment formations, teleportation formations, evacuation formations, and countless other arrangements.
Most of them were completely invisible to mortals; they only knew that occasionally, some strange light would flash across the sky, sometimes a cultivator would suddenly appear in the distance, and other times an ancient mountain would glow for an instant before returning to normal.
They only understood it as the Immortals preparing for the legendary catastrophe fifty years from now, building temples for the various cultivators endlessly.
The cultivators, on the other hand, had decided that if the Cleansing truly descended, then they would have to protect as many mortals as possible.
Even if ninety-nine percent of the world was destined to perish, they would still protect the remaining one percent, because that was all they could do.
After all, mortals were powerless, while they had the power to do something at the very least.
As a supreme being once said, with great power comes even greater responsibility.
At the same time, something even more unusual began happening within the cultivation world.
The fighting and killing that symbolized the cultivation world actually decreased drastically.
The countless conflicts that had existed for millions of years gradually became fewer, sects stopped fighting over minor resources, families stopped competing over insignificant opportunities, some ancient grudges that had continued for generations were temporarily put aside, and even enemies who had wished for each other’s deaths for hundreds of thousands of years chose to stop.
There was simply no longer any meaning in fighting over a spirit mine, a secret realm, or a great inheritance.
What use were these things when the entire Lower Realm might be destroyed in fifty years?
Even the most greedy cultivators understood this logic.
Thus, something that had almost never happened before in the history of the Mortal World began to occur.
The major factions started opening their treasuries, ancient cultivation techniques that had been kept secret for countless years were released, incomplete inheritances were repaired and distributed, rare medicinal formulas and array diagrams were shared, some sects opened their forbidden cultivation grounds to outsiders, Dharma Artifacts that had been considered priceless were distributed to younger generations, precious spirit herbs that had been stored for millions of years were refined into pills, and some ancient families even emptied their private collections.
They no longer cared about preserving their foundations for a hundred million years from now; they might not even have a hundred years left, so what was the point of preserving everything?
If the world was going to be destroyed, then they would rather use everything they possessed now to increase the strength of the Lower Realm by even a little.
Perhaps that little bit would allow someone to survive and become stronger, perhaps that someone would protect another person, and perhaps that person would eventually protect another.
Just like that, perhaps a civilization could survive.
This was the thinking of countless cultivators.
As a result, the entire cultivation world began operating at full speed.
Dao sermons were held almost every day.
Ancient experts who had secluded themselves for hundreds of thousands of years emerged from their retreats and began preaching their understanding of the Dao.
Some spoke about cultivation, some about combat, some about Array Formations, some about Alchemy, some about Artifact Refinement, going from the most popular of the hundred arts to the most obscure ones.
There were no longer any secrets, at least, not as many as before.
Powerful cultivators willingly stepped forward to share many of those secrets.
They knew that by teaching others, they were delaying their own cultivation and that every hour spent preaching was an hour they could have spent cultivating.
But they did it anyway.
Raising the strength of one strong person by a small amount was useful, but raising the strength of thousands of weaker people by a small amount could sometimes be even more important.
The atmosphere gradually became one of shared urgency, and it was precisely within this environment that countless geniuses began emerging one after another.
It was almost as if the heavens had begun pouring out their accumulated fortune.
Someone comprehended an ancient cultivation technique after meditating for three months while someone else awakened a dormant bloodline.
In the Southern Continent, a young cultivator who had been considered mediocre suddenly broke through several minor realms.
In the Central Continent, an ancient divine physique appeared.
In the Eastern Continent, a rare Heavenly Spiritual Root appeared.
A cultivator who had remained trapped at a bottleneck for tens of thousands of years suddenly achieved enlightenment.
Even some cultivators who were once considered ordinary began displaying astonishing potential.
The entire Mortal World seemed to be changing, and it wasn’t limited to the Second Great Mortal World alone. Every Great Mortal World was experiencing the same phenomenon.
No one knew the exact reason why, and neither did they have the luxury of investigating it.
Everyone was busy preparing, how could they have the leisure for anything else?
At the same time, the younger generation of the Second Great Mortal World gradually began gathering together.
It was Yao Qiuyue who first established contact with the Eternal Peak and contacted Tian Yongheng, or rather, his clone who was still active.
From there, the news reached Yan Jingfei, and after receiving it, Yan Jingfei did not hesitate in the slightest.
She led the younger generation of Eternal Peak and began meeting with the supreme prodigies of the various major factions.
People who once stood on different sides, competing for opportunities and regarding one another as rivals, now sat together discussing the same matter.
It was an alliance entirely built upon necessity, yet perhaps because of that, it was far more stable than many alliances built upon friendship.
Everyone understood that if they fought among themselves, the Upper Realm would not even need to intervene, they would destroy themselves first.
Even Jiang Ruyin participated in the various meetings.
Yan Jingfei really did not like her. There were valid reasons for that.
Jiang Ruyin had once targeted her without any apparent reason, that alone was enough to make Yan Jingfei wary.
However, she did not allow personal feelings to interfere with the greater matter.
The world was facing destruction, whatever grievances existed between them could wait.
Jiang Ruyin herself seemed to understand this.
Although the two remained distant, neither deliberately caused trouble for the other.
However, Yan Jingfei also never lowered her guard.
She had seen many strange things happen around Jiang Ruyin; there was something about that woman that made her instinctively uncomfortable.
And Jiang Ruyin... she was equally cautious.
After all, only she knew that the world she had once read about in a novel had already deviated beyond recognition.
The original protagonist was no longer the center of everything, and the original plot had long since collapsed.
Jiang Ruyin sometimes wondered just how much the future had already deviated.
Perhaps everything had already changed long before her transmigration.
She did not know, but she did know one thing:
The Cleansing was real, and this world was real as well.
Thus, whatever thoughts she once possessed had become secondary.
If they survived, there would still be plenty of time to act upon them.
Meanwhile, within Eternal Peak, Tian Yongheng continued cultivating.
Forget participating in outside matters, he did not even leave his cave abode all these years.
His clone had also been continuously preaching the Dao outside the Eternal Peak to countless cultivators.
Year after year, the pressure radiating off him became more and more terrifying, and the Dao rhymes surrounding him became increasingly profound.
Fire, Wood, Water, Metal, Earth, Wind, Thunder, Ice, Light, Darkness, Void, countless natural elements began to gather at the top of his crown.
Tian Yongheng sat cross-legged within his cave abode with a tranquil expression, his breathing steady and consciousness completely immersed in cultivation.
Fifty years was the deadline he had given the Lower Realm, and it was also the deadline he had given himself.
He needed to become much, much stronger than he was now.
Earth Immortal Realm was the bare minimum requirement for him to achieve within these fifty years.
After all, even he did not know what would happen once the passage between the Lower Realm and Upper Realm truly opened.
How many Earth Immortals would descend, or perhaps Heaven Immortals?
Maybe something even more terrifying.
The information he had obtained from the Upper Realm only guaranteed that the Cleansing would descend, it did not guarantee exactly who would descend, not to mention the seventy million year advancement of the Cleansing had already changed everything.
Thus, he could not gamble in the slightest.
As he continued cultivating, outside the Dao Field, the seasons began to change.
Year after year passed as the fifty year deadline gradually approached.
The Mortal World became increasingly quiet, the kind of silence that appeared before a storm.
Even ordinary cultivators could sense that the Heavenly Dao seemed increasingly distant even as the cultivation environment reached its absolute peak.
The Lower Realm Spirit had completely awakened by this point, Spirit Qi filling the entire world as the natural elements, worldly laws, and heavenly rules became increasingly active.
Ancient inheritances awakened one after another as more and more powerful cultivators appeared.
However, the connection between the Lower Realm and Upper Realm remained completely severed, as if it did not exist from the beginning.