Ning Qing sat upright on the worn-out meditation cushion. After making all the necessary preparations, he gathered his energy into his dantian and got ready to break through the first stage of Qi Refining.
The innate spiritual energy in his dantian had already been accumulating for years…
If it were any other cultivator, even one with the worst aptitude, they would have easily broken through to the first stage of Qi Refining by today.
But for Ning Qing… no matter how he tried to draw up the energy to break through his current realm, the innate spiritual energy in his dantian was like a caged beast. It kept slamming against its confines but was unable to find even the slightest opening.
Ning Qing knew that if he kept trying to force the breakthrough… not only would he fail to reach the first stage, but his dantian might be destroyed by the rampaging energy instead.
So he chose to withdraw, suppressing the energy back into his dantian, and slowly opened his eyes.
As soon as his eyes opened, Ning Qing flipped the wooden table in front of him in a burst of fury and shouted toward the ceiling:
“Damn you, heavens! Fuck you!”
The outburst came straight from the heart. By his count, it had already been eighteen years since he arrived in this world…
As a member of a collateral branch of the Great Li Dynasty, even though his family had fallen from grace… his background and potential were still far better than someone starting out in some remote mountain village!
Ning Qing admitted his spiritual root aptitude was poor, but come on…this was just the first stage of Qi Refining! The very first stage!
It was the entry point to the path of cultivation. As long as you had even a hint of spiritual roots, after eighteen years of training, breaking through the first stage should’ve been easy.
But Ning Qing… had been cultivating since the age of eight….ten full years! And in all that time, he had been completely, utterly stuck at the first stage of Qi Refining!
According to his own meticulous records, Ning Qing had attempted to break through a total of 1,374 times over the past decade. It was an average of once every three days. And without exception, every single attempt had ended in failure.
What infuriated him the most wasn’t that he lacked the ability, but that his failure was due to the limitations imposed by the damn heavens. Or rather, the so-called trials of the Heavenly Dao.
In this world, every cultivator who set foot on the path of cultivation would face countless trials laid down by the Heavenly Dao.
From the very first stage of Qi Refining, the Heavenly Dao would assign each cultivator a unique set of trials.
These trials were divided into two types. Lifelong trials that followed a cultivator throughout their journey, and breakthrough trials that had to be completed to advance to the next realm.
The former lifelong trials were exceedingly rare. It was said that the Heavenly Dao would continuously grant rewards and opportunities for completing them, but throughout the entire realm of the Nine Provinces, only a handful of such cases were rumored to exist. Their very existence was more legend than reality.
The latter breakthrough trials were unavoidable. Every cultivator, at every realm, had to complete these in order to break through. Only after passing the trial could they advance, and often, the Heavenly Dao would even grant special rewards for their effort.
But the problem was… all the fellow cultivators Ning Qing knew who were at the Qi Refining stage had been given trials like:
“Do a good deed.”
“Practice horse stance for a month.”
“Chop green bamboo in the forest every day for ten days.”
Simple, straightforward tasks that even a ten-year-old could accomplish with some patience.
And Ning Qing?
With a wave of his hand, he summoned his own Heavenly Dao trial. A line of pale golden text floated in the air before him:
“Win the favor of Jiang Qinglian, the current sect master of Qingxuan Sword Sect, and become her Dao companion.”
After reading the entire trial word for word and the very first trial on his path of cultivation….Ning Qing silently reset the overturned table in front of him… and flipped it over again.
“This is fucking bullshit! Dammit, heavens….if you don’t want me to cultivate, just say so!”
Ning Qing was now so furious with the Heavenly Dao that he was clutching his stomach from the waves of pain. It literally hurt just to endure the anger.
The Qingxuan Sword Sect was the foremost sword sect within the Great Li Dynasty’s territory. In fact, it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to call it the number one sword sect under the heavens.
Just to barely set foot inside its gates, Ning Qing had spent almost every last bit of what little he had, nearly bankrupting himself a year ago, only to gain a spot as a registered outer-sect servant disciple.
But even after joining the Qingxuan Sword Sect… the one the Heavenly Dao had specifically named for him to woo was none other than the current sect master who was renowned as the wielder of the world’s greatest “World-Severing Sword”….Jiang Qinglian!
This sect master wasn’t just some renowned figure. She had been in the Great Ascension stage for years and had even withstood three tribulations of heavenly lightning. She was a cultivator ranked among the most powerful across the Nine Provinces!
Ning Qing, a pitiful lowly unnamed servant disciple… forget pursuing her romantically….he hadn’t even seen her once in the entire year since joining the sect.
And yet, to break through to the first stage of Qi Refining, the damn Heavenly Dao had given him this absurd trial….not only to court this otherworldly woman, but to become her Dao companion! Only then would the trial be considered complete!
“I might as well just slit my throat and reincarnate with a new character at this point!”
Right now, Ning Qing truly felt like shouting at the heavens: “Screw this, I quit!”
But he had family in this world, people he couldn’t bear to leave behind. Dying wasn’t an option. Not one he could take lightly.
And yet, in this vast land of Shenzhou where cultivators filled the earth, someone like him…a mere Qi Refining Stage One rookie would be treated like livestock, a pig waiting to be slaughtered, wherever he went.
He refused to accept this.
He really, really couldn’t accept this. If he had failed because of poor talent or lack of effort, fine. That would be his own fault.
But to be stuck like this, at a dead end because of this ridiculous trial from the Heavenly Dao…
The sheer frustration kept him awake night after night. Every morning, the first thing he did was curse that damned heaven.
Perhaps, at last, the Heavenly Dao was moved by Ning Qing’s relentless, day-after-day persistence.
As he reset the overturned table once again, a line of golden text suddenly appeared before his eyes.
[Congratulations, fellow Daoist. As of today, you have reached the age of eighteen and are now considered an adult. In celebration, you are granted a rare opportunity: the chance to modify your Heavenly Dao Trial.]
What the hell? A chance to modify the Heavenly Dao Trial?
Ning Qing immediately sat up straight the moment he saw this reward.
Over the past eighteen years, Ning Qing had come to know quite a few fellow disciples at the same cultivation stage and even several senior brothers at the Foundation Establishment stage.
But he had never heard of the Heavenly Dao granting something like “a chance to modify one’s Heavenly Dao Trial”.
In this world, once the Heavenly Dao issued a trial, not even those at the peak of the Great Ascension Realm could defy it. One had to obediently complete the trial if they ever wanted to survive the Heavenly Tribulation and ascend to immortality.
But Ning Qing didn’t think too deeply about it. His first thought was that he could finally change this ridiculous, screwed-up Heavenly Dao Trial of his into something a bit more manageable.
Seriously…what kind of Heavenly Dao Trial sends a rookie Qi Refining cultivator, fresh out of the sect, to go seduce one of the most powerful figures in all of Shenzhou?
It wasn’t just a death sentence…it was utter nonsense, pure fantasy. A complete and total joke.
Change it! He had to change it to something easier! Ning Qing was already pondering whether he could revise his trial to something like “Take a nap” or “Eat a good meal”…
But just then, Ning Qing noticed something… something incredibly alarming.
The opportunity he had just received…the one that let him modify a Heavenly Dao Trial wasn’t limited to his own trial.
It could… be applied to someone else’s.
“Haaah… huh?!”
Ning Qing sucked in a sharp breath. With a swipe of his fingertip, he discovered something even stranger. In his original Heavenly Dao Trial “Win the favor of Jiang Qinglian, current Sect Master of Qingxuan Sword Sect”…the name Jiang Qinglian appeared to be clickable.
When Ning Qing tapped on it, a flood of golden Heavenly Dao trial entries immediately appeared before his eyes.
All of them were trials this unparalleled female Sect Master had completed throughout her thousand-year cultivation journey. These were an endless series of trials issued by the Heavenly Dao.
Starting from her Qi Refining days, there was even a trial like, “Chop down ten green bamboos each day in the Xuanming Bamboo Grove for one month straight.”
From there, it progressed to her Nascent Soul trial, “Venture into the sea and slay the man-eating flood dragon, restoring peace to the fishing villages of the southwest.”
Then came the Great Ascension stage, “Found a sect and ensure the Qingxuan Sword lineage endures for at least seven generations!” as well as “Slay the Poisonous Witch God of the Southern Witch Nation and wipe out the ghostly miasma plaguing the lands of Shenzhou”, and other trials brimming with heroic grandeur…
Over the span of a thousand years, Jiang Qinglian endured countless hardships, breaking through who knew how many obstacles set by the Heavenly Dao, before finally establishing the peerless First Sword Sect that now shook all of Shenzhou.
Yet this unparalleled female Sect Master had failed her tribulation for the fourth time just two days ago, suffering severe injuries and retreating into seclusion to recuperate.
At present, rumors were spreading throughout the Qingxuan Sword Sect that the Sect Master still had one final Heavenly Dao Trial left incomplete, which was why she had failed multiple tribulations and been unable to ascend to immortality.
As a result, all the elders of the Qingxuan Sword Sect were now gathered outside the mountain gate where the Sect Master was in seclusion, attempting to seize a glimpse of heaven’s secrets together and confirm whether the rumors were true….that the Sect Master truly had one last Heavenly Dao Trial remaining.
Now that it had fallen into Ning Qing’s hands… he could be certain that the sect’s speculation was correct. This peerless female Sect Master really did have one final Heavenly Dao Trial left unfinished.
But when Ning Qing peered into the final trial the Heavenly Dao had set for her, he felt an overwhelming chill run through him, as though his hands and feet had turned to ice.
That final trial was precisely “Slaughter all seven hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants of Zhenzhou City, severing all mortal ties completely!”
Zhenzhou City! That was the very city where Ning Qing’s family lived in the mortal world…
Seeing this, Ning Qing couldn’t help but curse once again, “Damn you, Heavenly Dao!”
What now? Ning Qing fell into deep hesitation…
Once the Qingxuan Sword Sect and that female Sect Master finished probing this final Heavenly Dao Trial, would they really take action? As the foremost righteous sect of the Great Li Dynasty, would they truly do it?
Ning Qing didn’t dare gamble… he didn’t dare wager the lives of mortals on the obsession these cultivators who stood far above the mortal world had with ascension.
Change it! It had to be changed!
Ning Qing no longer had the luxury of worrying about modifying his own Heavenly Dao Trial into something absurdly easy like “sleeping” or “eating”, the kind of condition that would let him break through while lying down…
Instead, he focused his attention on the final Heavenly Dao Trial that this female Sect Master, the supreme power of Shenzhou, had to complete before ascending.
So… what should it be changed to?
Ning Qing pondered briefly, then cast another glance at his own cursed Heavenly Dao Trial….”Win the favor of Jiang Qinglian, the current sect master of Qingxuan Sword Sect, and become her Dao companion.”
In the end, Ning Qing gritted his teeth and waved his hand, forcibly modifying the final Heavenly Dao Trial of this woman whose strength towered over all life in Shenzhou into…
“Enter into a romantic relationship with Qingxuan Sword Sect’s servant disciple, Ning Qing.”
Changing it like this shouldn’t get him… killed on the spot, right?
Still uneasy, Ning Qing added three more words out of sheer anxiety: “without breaking up.”
And thus, for the female Sect Master of the world’s number one sword sect to ascend and become an immortal… the condition set by the Heavenly Dao became:
“Enter into a romantic relationship with the Qingxuan Sword Sect’s servant disciple, Ning Qing without breaking up.”
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