To the south, the border between the State of Yong and the State of Zhuang was divided save for a small stretch of shared frontier, with most of the boundary walled off by the Qichang Mountain Range.
To the northwest of Yong, there lay a small nation called Chen.
Though Chen was diminutive, it harbored within its borders a notorious place of peril known as No-Return Valley.
No one could say precisely where the danger of No-Return Valley originated. But as its name foretold, those who entered never came back.
In the morning mist, a woman with hair that fell past her shoulders walked through the haze and into the valley.
She wore a mask with no facial features whatsoever — an eerie thing to behold. Yet her figure was strikingly beautiful.
The interior of the valley was open and spacious, nothing like the menacing place of legend.
On the contrary, the atmosphere was serene. Exotic flowers vied in bloom, and a brook babbled over stones.
At the center stood a small wooden cabin.
The stream ran just before the cabin's door. On the bank, a few chickens strolled at leisure, and a yellow dog lay curled upon the ground.
The woman stood before the cabin and shouted: "Boss!"
Her voice was so loud it startled the yellow dog into a leap and sent the chickens flapping their wings.
A stretch of silence followed. No movement from inside.
She seemed accustomed to this and was about to shout again.
The door creaked open, and a white-haired elder stepped out.
His hearing appeared to be poor, and speech came to him with difficulty.
"You're here? Yanzi."
"I'm here!" the woman shouted. "Stop calling me Yanzi!"
The white-haired elder nodded. "Yanzi, Little Bear sent me a letter a while back. It had a dog drawn on it. Is he... does he want to eat dog meat?"
The yellow dog whimpered and darted behind the cabin, tail tucked.
"Don't even know which year you're talking about." The woman sighed, then raised her voice: "Xiong Wen has been dead for ages!"
"Xiong Wen is dead?" The old man seemed not to have registered it.
"Boss! He's been dead for months! The Maple City Domain is gone!"
"Xiong Wen is dead, then I should go visit, I should go visit..." The old man's lips trembled for a moment, then he said: "Yanzi, you go take a look."
"I just finished running your errands!" the woman muttered through clenched teeth, but in the end she called out brightly: "Got it, Boss!"
She was nothing like this doddering elder. She stamped her foot and launched herself into the mist in a flash.
The morning fog dispersed, then gathered once more.
The white-haired elder stood motionless for a long while before scratching his head. "What was I going to say just now?"
"Forget it." He abandoned the thought decisively, turned, and shuffled back into the cabin.
"Sleep well while you're alive, so you don't sleep poorly when you're dead."
...
Time marches forward without pause.
The Small Cycle was constructed to achieve the Zhouyi realm.
The rotation of the Grand Cycle marked one's entry into the seventh-grade Heaven-Piercing realm.
After many days of travel — passing through several nations along the way, which need not be recounted — Jiang Chen had now entered the State of Qi.
Upon a great boulder in a nameless mountain, he sat cross-legged in meditation.
Within the Heaven-Piercing Palace, nine Star River Dao Vortexes spun ceaselessly. Grouped in sets of three to form a Small Cycle, they hung at the upper, middle, and lower positions of the palace.
The first Small Cycle contemplated sun, moon, and stars — the heaven and earth stretching endlessly, the cosmos without bounds.
The second Small Cycle reflected upon mountains, rivers, and earth — and the passage of ages through them.
The third Small Cycle turned inward, to himself. Why had he walked this far? Where was he going?
After ten thousand miles of journeying, his Dao heart had been honed like a blade.
He saw clearly, utterly, what he thought, what he sought, and what he would become. And he would walk that path without deviation.
Heaven was the stars. Earth was the mountains and rivers. Man was himself.
The Grand Cycle condensed this vast vision, uniting the three essences of being, cycling as the heavens cycle.
At last — Heaven-Piercing!
Though the sky was clear as far as the eye could see, he heard a rumbling like thunder.
Listening closely, it was not the thunder of heaven and earth. It was a roar emanating from some unknowable place.
Behind him, in the shimmering void, a tall, shadowy gate appeared. It was the mirror of the physical body, the milestone on the road of cultivation!
Between heaven and earth, there stands a gate — and man is that gate.
The year was 3918 of the Dao Calendar, the third day of the third month.
Jiang Chen's cultivation reached perfection. He achieved the Grand Cycle and formally stepped into the Heaven-Piercing realm.
Heaven-Piercing meant exactly what it said. Only upon entering this realm could one reach the Gate of Heaven and Earth.
For many cultivators, consolidating the Grand Cycle, perceiving oneself clearly, and finding the direction toward the Gate of Heaven and Earth was a long and arduous process.
Even one as formidable as Zhao Lang had struggled to find the path forward, lingering for years in the Heaven-Piercing realm and refining his techniques over and over.
But Jiang Chen's Grand Cycle was constructed with flawless perfection, built upon an immense foundation.
The very instant he achieved the Grand Cycle, he had already perceived the Gate of Heaven and Earth.
...
Jiang Chen rose from the stone platform. Though he had glimpsed the Gate, it did not mean he could push it open and advance to the Soaring Dragon realm.
He had only caught his first sight of it. The details of the Gate had yet to materialize.
Moreover, the leap from perceiving the Gate to pushing it open was yet another qualitative transformation.
Besides, the Heavenly Abode Secret Realm he was about to enter permitted only cultivators below the sixth-grade Soaring Dragon realm.
Any strong practitioner who had pushed open the Gate — no matter what secret arts they used to mask themselves — would cause the passage to collapse the moment they entered.
This was something Zhen Wudi had impressed upon him repeatedly.
Jiang Chen now knew Zhen Wudi's true name. The fat man was a scion of the illustrious Chongxuan clan of the State of Qi, bearing the single given name Sheng.
Before, Jiang Chen had been in the far-off State of Zhuang, isolated and ignorant. But as he traveled, even before reaching Qi's borders, the Chongxuan clan's reputation had been thunder in his ears.
It had shown him what a true noble house looked like — something far beyond the so-called three great families of Maple City or the Lin family of Wangjiang.
Upon reaching the Heaven-Piercing realm, the capacity of the Heaven-Piercing Palace expanded once more, allowing the inscription of another instant-cast technique.
But Jiang Chen had to shelve this for now.
In terms of offense, he had the Blossomfire for technique work and the Violet Dawn for swordsmanship.
For defense, he relied entirely on the Four Spirits Body Tempering Art to endure brute force. In the matter of escape arts, he had achieved little.
The Bone Path evasion technique was formidable, but he dared not use it again.
The problem was this: though he possessed the Deduction Platform and had accumulated merit, he lacked suitable techniques or cultivation methods as a foundation for deduction. Even the most skilled housewife cannot cook without rice.
This was one of the prices of losing a stable environment.
He no longer had a teacher to answer his questions, no predecessors' techniques left for him to choose from.
But no matter how difficult the road ahead, nothing could stop him from pressing forward.
He had already set a time with Chongxuan Sheng through the Ethereal Realm.
After breaking through to the Heaven-Piercing realm, he wasted no more time. He passed through cities without entering them, bypassed inns without stopping, and pushed toward the meeting point at maximum speed.
...
In the coastal prefecture of the State of Qi, there was a small city called Tianfu City.
It had originally been nothing more than a fishing village. Ever since the Old Man of Tianfu had left his secret realm here, cultivators poured in from all directions whenever the realm opened its gates.
In the beginning there was naturally chaos, with everyone displaying their own methods and a great deal of disorder. Eventually, the Qi authorities established rules and allocated quotas for each party, bringing the process under order.
The small fishing village had grown through years of accumulation into what was now Tianfu City.
The State of Qi boasted a thriving commerce that traded with the world, and its officialdom operated with a correspondingly polished touch.
The Heavenly Abode Secret Realm, each time it opened, offered a total of fifty slots. Qi put ten of those slots directly up for foreign contenders.
Any cultivator from abroad who obtained something of value within the secret realm would be approached by Qi for recruitment. Even if they declined, they were treated with courtesy and seen safely out of the country.
Year after year, any who gained a harvest within the Heavenly Abode Secret Realm — so long as they did not perish early — invariably rose to become formidable figures.
Even those who did not join Qi generally retained a favorable disposition toward the state.
...
Ten li north of Tianfu City, on the main road, a figure on horseback galloped at breakneck speed, trailing a plume of dust behind him.
A gust of wind swept by and coiled the dust into a knot.
When the dust settled, the rider had vanished from the saddle.
The horse galloped on for a stretch before realizing its back was bare.
It didn't know whether to go left or right.
Lowering its head, it sniffed for a while, then wandered off the road on its own.