Mortal: I really didn't want to be reborn as Zi Ling!

Inside the cave.

Wen Siyue stood at the door of the secret room, her hands tightly gripping the handkerchief that had been crumpled beyond recognition.

Her eyes were fixed on the tightly closed stone door, and she even forgot to breathe.

The light shining through the cracks in the stone door grew stronger and stronger, and the blue and purple intertwined spiritual light shone on her face, making her tense face appear to be in and out of focus.

For the past year, she has been guarding the secret room day and night, never daring to leave.

Every day was spent in fear and anxiety, and every night I fell asleep in prayer.

She was afraid something would happen to her young lady, afraid she would fail, afraid that when the door opened, she would see a disappointed face.

But at this moment, feeling the powerful aura surging from behind the stone gate, her eyes uncontrollably reddened.

"Miss--"

She bit her lip, trying hard not to let her voice tremble, but the heart that had been hanging in suspense for a whole year finally settled down and began to pound violently in her chest.

-

At the same moment, on the fifty-ninth floor of Tianxing City.

In the pavilion of the Miaoyin Sect's residence, Zhou Yuan was holding a cup of spiritual tea and sitting opposite Fan Jingmei, discussing matters.

She had just opened an account book when her fingers suddenly froze in mid-air.

A familiar aura was rising from a certain level below.

She suddenly stood up, the teacup slipped from her knees, and shards of porcelain splattered all over the floor.

The scalding tea soaked her skirt, but she was oblivious, staring intently at the floor beneath her feet, as if she could see through the countless layers of white jade bricks and the figure charging through the barrier in the secret chamber.

"lady?"

Fan Jingmei also stood up, a look of surprise flashing across her face.

She sensed that aura as well. Despite being separated by dozens of layers and weakened by the city's protective array, she was certain that there was a certain quality contained within that aura that she would never mistake.

That was Zi Ling's spiritual energy fluctuation.

It is many times more magnificent than it was sixty years ago, yet it still retains the same aura.

"Ning'er..."

Zhou Yuan's fingers gripped the edge of the table tightly, her knuckles turning an unnatural bluish-white.

Her lips trembled slightly, and her eyes instantly filled with tears.

"She succeeded!!!"

Fan Jingmei reached out and supported the lady's arm, her lips moved as if she wanted to say something, but she found that she couldn't utter a single word.

More than seventy years of cultivation, more than sixty years of waiting, from that little girl who was just learning to speak to the most beautiful woman in the Chaotic Star Sea, from the age of twelve when she established her foundation to the present day when she successfully formed her core.

She had witnessed Zi Ling's journey firsthand and knew how much hardship and pressure she had endured.

Now, sensing this aura, she felt as if something was stuck in her chest, making it hard for her to breathe.

-

Tianxing City, 70th floor.

Jin Kui sat cross-legged on a futon in the main hall, his eyes slightly closed, his body enveloped in a faint golden halo.

Nearly seventy years have passed, and although his cultivation has not yet broken through that bottleneck, the aura emanating from his body is more solid and substantial than it was back then, with a faint sense of imposing authority.

If there were a Nascent Soul stage cultivator here, they probably wouldn't even dare to breathe loudly.

Suddenly, he opened his eyes and instantly pierced through layers of restrictions, landing directly on the slowly dissipating vortex of spiritual energy above the thirty-ninth floor.

The spiritual light within the vortex was continuously pouring into the cave below, like a whale sucking in water.

Jin Kui's pupils suddenly contracted when he saw this scene.

"He's formed his core?"

Jin Kui's tone carried an undisguised astonishment.

"Only sixty-nine years?"

He subconsciously did some calculations with his fingers, and his brows furrowed even more.

"This girl is only eighty-one years old this year?"

Before he finished speaking, his expression turned strange.

He understood better than anyone what the age of eighty-one, the age of Core Formation, meant in the Chaotic Star Sea.

The two saints were eighty years old when they achieved the Golden Core.

Zi Ling was only one year behind the two saints.

But what kind of treatment did the two saints receive back then?

The entire Star Palace spared no effort in providing for it, with rare and precious materials at your disposal, and spiritual veins and caves to choose from at will.

And what about this cheap apprentice?

With the meager resources of the Miaoyin Sect, they're not even worthy of carrying the shoes of the Xing Palace.

Although he had also bestowed some resources, they were merely a drop in the ocean, not even a fraction of what the two saints had enjoyed back then.

"Doesn't that mean this girl's talent surpasses that of her senior brothers and sisters?"

The moment he reached this conclusion, Jin Kui's expression became extremely complex.

This has been a settled matter in the cultivation world for thousands of years.

At the age of one hundred, one can form the elixir; the formation of the infant spirit is expected in the future.

One can form the Core Formation before the age of 120, and has a chance to reach the Nascent Soul stage, but most stop at the early or middle stages.

He was stuck at 115 years old back then.

Only by forming the Golden Core before the age of eighty can one glimpse the late stage of the Nascent Soul realm and have a slight chance of breaking through to the Divine Transformation realm.

Transformation into a deity.

Jin Kui's eye twitched.

If it were an ordinary cultivator, he would only find it absurd.

But Zi Ling is no ordinary cultivator; her dantian is three times the size of a normal person's.

With a three-times-larger dantian, the time and resources required for cultivation are three times that of an ordinary person.

If her dantian is normal, wouldn't she be able to form a core at the age of sixty or even fifty?

Jin Kui could no longer sit still.

He rose and took a step forward, his figure disappearing from the hall.

The next moment, he appeared in a secluded pavilion on the thirty-ninth floor, standing with his hands behind his back, gazing at the cave at the foot of the mountain shrouded in spiritual light.

He did not barge in rashly, nor did he notify anyone.

He stood in the pavilion, his expression complex, watching the cultivators who had rushed over upon hearing the news gather in twos and threes at the entrance of Zi Ling's cave.

Cultivators who can reside in Tianxing City for a long time will generally have excellent eyesight.

Centered on the thirty-ninth floor, the restrictions on the nearby cave dwellings were activated one after another.

Divine senses emerged from all directions, intertwining and colliding in mid-air, probing each other to discover the identity of this Core Formation cultivator who had triggered such a terrifying phenomenon.

Some speculated that he was a descendant of one of the elders of the Star Palace, while others suspected that he was a descendant of a reclusive family. But no one thought of the name that had been the subject of much discussion more than six or seventy years ago.

Just as everyone was discussing, a streak of azure light swept in from afar and landed steadily in front of an inconspicuous cave.

The light dissipated, revealing a cultivator wearing a blue robe with an unremarkable appearance.

He looked up at the sky above his cave dwelling—which was located at the edge of a vortex of spiritual energy, where a few wisps of pale golden spiritual energy that had not yet dissipated were slowly drifting over his roof.

Han Li's brows furrowed at first, then relaxed:

"Fortunately, I still need six months to prepare. If we had collided, the probability of achieving Core Formation would probably have been reduced from 100% to less than 50%."

He glanced sideways at the cave dwelling next door, which was shrouded in spiritual light, his expression incredibly complex.

The transaction from over sixty years ago is still vivid in his mind. Back then, he was a cultivator in the early stages of Foundation Establishment, but now the other party has already stepped into the Core Formation stage ahead of him.

Han Li pursed his lips, withdrew his gaze, and pushed open the stone door of his cave.

As the stone door closed, he glanced one last time at the cave dwelling where the spiritual light was gradually fading, and for some reason, he felt a bitter taste in his mouth.

"No, we can't delay any longer; we must go into seclusion to form our core!"

Han Li originally wanted to disperse his power again, but what happened today really stimulated him.

-

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