aircannonsinc Chapter 1101 The Liu Family
Chapter 1101 The Liu Family
Wang Yu paused upon hearing this, picked up the wine pot and took a sip, then said calmly, "The rules for asking me to refine a treasure are very simple: bring your own spiritual materials and kill a cultivator of the same level from Tianrui Palace."
"Your physical body is comparable to that of a demon saint. If you want me to refine your treasure, go kill a Nascent Soul cultivator from Tianrui Palace and bring me his head."
Chen Yuan was taken aback, his brows furrowing: "Senior, could you please make an exception? I am willing to offer you a treasure to ask for your help."
Wang Yu glanced at him, then picked up the wine pot and took a sip, saying indifferently, "Do you think I look like someone who lacks treasures? Even Mahayana cultivators who ask me to refine treasures follow the same rules."
Chen Yuan felt helpless. Tianrui Palace was not someone to be trifled with. As the number one sect in the Spirit Realm, it had an incredibly deep foundation and no fewer than thirty Nascent Soul cultivators. It acted extremely domineeringly.
At this time, Yu Qingzi, the head of Tianrui Palace, is in charge of Fatian Pavilion. There are no fewer than ten Mahayana sects with deep ties to Tianrui Palace, and Tianrui Palace cultivators can be found in most parts of the Spirit Realm.
Although Chen Yuan was confident that he was not afraid of any cultivator of the same level, he did not want to provoke such a behemoth.
He had originally intended to reforge the Cangming Halberd, truly elevating this handy spiritual weapon to the level of a Heaven-Reaching Spiritual Treasure, but now it seems he has no choice but to abandon that idea.
Seeing that he remained silent, Wang Yu said calmly, "If you have nothing else to do, you can go back first and come back to collect this treasure eighty years later."
Chen Yuan got up to take his leave. Master Fu had specifically instructed in the jade slip that Wang Yu was not allowed to allow anyone to watch him refine the treasure, not even the owner of the treasure.
He had never failed in refining treasures in the past, and even heaven-reaching spiritual treasures were easily obtained, which is why he made a great name for himself in the spirit world.
Wang Yu sat there, showing no intention of getting up to see his guest off, while the pretty young woman looked at Chen Yuan with reluctance.
Chen Yuan instructed the girl to follow Wang Yu's orders, then bowed to Wang Yu with clasped hands, fulfilling all the proper etiquette. He then turned around, passed through the courtyard, and arrived at the main hall of the blacksmith's shop.
Li Xiaoyao was still forging iron, but the sounds of hammering were somewhat chaotic, clearly indicating that his state of mind was affected.
Seeing Chen Yuan approach, Li Xiaoyao paused in his hammer swing, but immediately remembered his master's instructions and continued to smash, only nodding to Chen Yuan.
Chen Yuan smiled and gestured, then walked out of the blacksmith shop amidst the thunderous sound of forging. With a flash of light, he soared into the air, ignoring the passersby on the street.
Eighty years is too long; he cannot wait in this small town.
Wang Yu had never failed in refining Heavenly Treasures, so there was no way he could fail in repairing the Profound Yin Armor. Chen Yuan was not worried.
He flew for several days, returning to the market he had passed through on his way here. After taking out the spirit stones, he entered the short-distance teleportation array.
Short-distance teleportation arrays do not consider cultivation level, and the Foundation Establishment cultivator guarding the teleportation array was unaware that the white-robed cultivator wearing the pine and cypress mask was a powerful cultivator at the peak of the Void Refinement stage.
The Foundation Establishment cultivator lazily accepted the spirit stones, took out a talisman and handed it to Chen Yuan, allowing him to pass through the array curtain surrounding the teleportation array.
For small markets like this, teleportation arrays are an important source of income for earning spirit stones.
A flash of white light, and Chen Yuan's figure vanished.
……
Of the four continents in the Spirit Realm, Mingze Continent is the least noticeable.
Calling it a continent is a stretch; it's half the size of the smallest of the other three continents, Star Ruins Continent, and only a quarter the size of Dao Fallen Continent, with a total of only eight spirit domains.
Mingze Continent is also the most barren continent in the Spirit Realm. There are only three Mahayana sects, and more than half of the eight spirit domains do not have Mahayana cultivators stationed there. They can only be jointly governed by Fatian Pavilion and local medium-sized sects, resulting in constant disputes and chaos.
However, Mingze Continent also has an advantage, namely that it is located on the edge of the Spirit Realm, where the spatial barrier is the weakest.
For some weaker realms, this is undoubtedly a huge disaster. Otherworldly cultivators or void beasts can easily break through the fragile spatial barrier and descend upon this realm, where peace will never be restored.
However, no other realm dares to invade the spirit realm; it is only the spirit realm that invades other realms.
The Spirit Realm is also protected by the Taixu Juntian Axe, which prevents powerful void creatures from breaking through the spatial barrier. Weaker void creatures are actually treasures to the cultivators on the Mingze Continent.
Even the weakest continent in the spirit realm surpasses all the lesser worlds, and is even comparable to some weaker greater worlds.
In a small world, the birth of a Mahayana cultivator depends on opportunity and luck. The highest cultivation level in most small worlds is the Perfect Integration stage. Even if an Integration cultivator occasionally advances to Mahayana, the lineage cannot be stably passed down.
The Spirit Realm conquered countless minor worlds, yet only one in a hundred of them gave birth to Mahayana cultivators.
In this vast world, there must be Mahayana cultivators, and often there is more than one.
Even a powerful world like the Burning Demon Realm, with its thirty-seven Great Saints, was not completely conquered by the Spirit Realm even after hundreds of thousands of years of effort.
There are five Great Thousand Worlds currently at war with the Spirit Realm. Two of these worlds are similar in strength to the Burning Demon Realm, while the other two are somewhat weaker.
There is also an ancient demon realm, a powerful realm comparable to the spirit realm. The two sides occasionally have friction, but have not engaged in a large-scale war.
Three of the spatial passages connecting the five great worlds are located on the Mingze Continent. When major sects want to send cultivators into other worlds or return to the Spirit World, they all have to pass through the Mingze Continent, and they can always leave behind some spirit stones and treasures.
In addition, there are numerous fragments of the interface, large and small, attached to the fragile spatial barrier of the Mingze Continent, far exceeding the number of the other three continents.
There are also space fragments on other continents, but in smaller quantities.
Most cultivators choose the safer option of hunting low-level demonic beasts or following large and medium-sized sects to conquer other worlds for more stable gains. Only a minority of cultivators explore spatial fragments.
However, 70% of the cultivators on the Mingze Continent are mainly exploring spatial fragments, which has also attracted cultivators from three other continents, bringing more chaos, but also creating a somewhat abnormal prosperity.
The cultivators of Mingze Continent are most skilled at exploring spatial fragments, and their understanding of spatial fragments far surpasses that of cultivators from the other three continents.
Cultivators on this continent often enter spatial fragments to search for treasures after reaching the Foundation Establishment stage. The vast majority either return empty-handed or perish due to the remaining dangers within the spatial fragments.
However, a very small number of cultivators have obtained tremendous opportunities, their cultivation has advanced by leaps and bounds, and some have even established a family or sect based on this, becoming respected senior masters.
The Liu family of Chishui City in Huazhou, Fengling Domain, is such a cultivation family that was born from a spatial fragment.
More than 5,000 years ago, Liu Xu, the ancestor of the Liu family, was just an ordinary rogue cultivator. After more than 150 years of hard work, he was only at the mid-stage of Foundation Establishment. Seeing that there was no hope of forming the Core, his path to cultivation was about to come to an end.
Like countless other rogue cultivators on the Mingze Continent, after reaching the Foundation Establishment stage, he ventured into spatial fragments in search of treasures, hoping to defy fate and change his destiny.
Unfortunately, he was not very lucky. He entered the space fragment seventeen times and gained very little. Only once did he gain a lot, which helped him break through the bottleneck of the mid-stage Foundation Establishment. The rest of the time he could only return disappointed, and he even almost lost his life several times.
But Liu Xu did not give up. For a rogue cultivator of his mediocre talent, from the moment he embarked on the path of cultivation, he knew that ascension was just a dream, and even forming a core or a nascent soul was likely a luxury.
But so what? The Great Dao is fifty, the Heavenly Evolution is forty-nine, and one is lost. No matter how difficult the path is, there is always a glimmer of hope for achieving the Dao.
What kept Liu Xu going, besides the fear of death that all cultivators share, was the legendary cultivators who started as rogue cultivators but eventually cultivated to the Void Refinement, Body Integration, or even Mahayana stages, and some even ascended to the Immortal Realm.
Those resounding names inspired him to embark on the path of cultivation, even if he eventually collapsed halfway through, it would be good if his cultivation could be improved by even one more point and his lifespan extended by one more day.
Just as Liu Xu entered a miniature spatial fragment for the eighteenth time, his opportunity finally arrived, and he found a top-tier magic treasure that was extremely precious even to a Nascent Soul cultivator.
Liu Xu sold or gave this high-level magic treasure to a Nascent Soul cultivator from Zhuxinzhai in exchange for a large amount of cultivation resources, and more importantly, he gained the protection of Zhuxinzhai.
Zhuxinzhai is a medium-sized sect that controls the entire Huazhou. Its sect leader is only at the early stage of the Integration Realm, and the entire sect only has this one Integration Realm cultivator. In the other three continents of the Spirit Realm, it can only be barely called a medium-sized sect, and it may be replaced by other sects at any time.
However, on the Mingze Continent, there are only three Mahayana sects. A few medium-sized sects can jointly control a spiritual domain, wielding immense power.
Maple Spirit Domain is one of the most barren spirit domains on the Mingze Continent, and Huazhou is an even smaller border state. Zhuxinzhai is already a behemoth, deeply rooted in Huazhou, and firmly controls the Huazhou cultivation world.
Liu Xu no longer needed to explore the spatial fragments. He settled down in Chishui City, successfully formed his core, married and had children, and later even formed his nascent soul, establishing a cultivation family.
Liu Xu's cultivation level eventually stopped at the mid-Nascent Soul stage. By the time he passed away, the Liu family had already firmly established itself in Chishui City.
At this time, the Liu family had three Nascent Soul cultivators. Although they were still insignificant in the cultivation world of Huazhou, their descendants were no longer rootless and helpless rogue cultivators.
More than five thousand years later, the Liu family has been passed down for nine generations and is still one of the three major families in Chishui City.
The current patriarch, Liu Tingfeng, has gone even further than Liu Xu, becoming the first great cultivator in the Liu family's five thousand years of history, and is showing signs of becoming the number one cultivation family in Chishui City.
Like other cities where cultivators gather in large numbers, Chishui City was built amidst towering mountains.
Spiritual veins often rely on earth veins. Where spiritual energy gathers, the terrain is often uneven, and cities can only be built on mountains.
Only cities built purely by ordinary people are mostly constructed on plains and riverbanks, facilitating farming, trade, and prosperity.
However, mortals and cultivators in the spirit world have close ties. Even immortal cultivation families select those with spiritual roots from among mortals for training. Therefore, there is no shortage of mortals in Chishui City.
Cultivation families in the past had already warned that if they relied solely on their family bloodline to cultivate cultivators, they would fall behind other families, gradually decline over time, and eventually disappear into the long river of time.
To this end, the three families opened up a passage connecting the inside and outside of the mountains. The flat road was large enough to accommodate eight carriages traveling side by side, and several canals were also built with smooth water and sails.
Whenever the three major families test their spiritual roots, mortals from all directions gather here.
Those with exceptional talent will be sought after by three families. Amidst the envious gazes of others, they will be taken into the main lineage. Upon reaching adulthood, they can become Daoist partners with the eldest daughter of the family, achieving a status equivalent to that of the direct descendants of the family, and may even change their surname directly.
This day happened to be the day when the three major families were recruiting members from outside their clans, and the city of Chishui was bustling with people.
Travel-worn parents, with their children, rode in carriages and sailboats, gazing longingly at the magnificent scenery they had never seen before, and nervously entered this majestic city, marveling at the grandeur of the buildings lining the streets. The boys who came to undergo spiritual root testing were at least thirteen years old, at which point the spiritual roots within mortal bodies were fully condensed, making the testing most convenient; even Qi Refining cultivators could complete it.
If the age is even younger, the spiritual root is more hidden, making it much more difficult to detect. High-level cultivators can tell at a glance, but Qi Refining cultivators are powerless to do so.
Although the three families have their own conflicts, they have lived in the same city for many years, sharing a spiritual vein, and even marrying each other frequently, so they are unlikely to break off relations easily.
The conditions they offered to mortals with spiritual roots were roughly the same. Only exceptionally talented young people could compete for them based on their own abilities, but they could only be lured with treasures, not forced.
Since Liu Tingfeng advanced to the rank of Great Cultivator, the Liu family has been subtly overshadowing the other two major families in recent years, becoming increasingly assertive and renowned.
The Liu family had the largest number of teenagers coming to have their spiritual roots tested, and several long queues formed outside the main hall.
These are just ordinary people near Chishui City. In more distant ordinary cities, there are cultivators sent by three major families who are specifically responsible for testing the spiritual roots of eligible teenagers in the city.
In addition to the Qi Refining cultivators who tested spiritual roots, the Liu family also sent many martial artists without spiritual roots to maintain order on both sides of the queue and strictly prohibit noise.
Chishui City is built against the mountains, and there are many peaks in the city, including the ancestral lands of the three major families, which naturally divide Chishui City into several different areas.
Liu Tingfeng stood atop a mountain peak on the edge of the Liu family's territory, hands behind his back, his clothes fluttering in the wind.
He looked down at the long line of teenagers below and a smile appeared on his lips.
Hundreds of feet apart, the figures of these teenagers were as small as ants, but they were still clearly visible to Liu Tingfeng.
Looking at their vibrant faces, Liu Tingfeng felt that his family had successors. His calm and uneventful state of mind, which had been calmed by meditating and cultivating all day long, was also stirred by a slight ripple.
The Liu family cultivators certainly wouldn't have expected that their usually dignified patriarch would show such a kind smile.
In fact, Liu Tingfeng would always observe silently whenever the family recruited disciples from outside the clan.
The cultivators of the Liu family were proud of their family's prestige, but what they didn't know was that the Liu family was no longer the same Liu family it once was.
Liu Tingfeng had read the family genealogy and found that only 40% of the main branch of the Liu family truly inherited the Liu family bloodline. The other 60% were either members of different surnames who changed their surnames or members of remote collateral branches who joined the main branch.
The Elder Hall, which controls the specific affairs of the Liu family, has a total of twenty-five Core Formation Elders, nine of whom do not have the surname Liu.
Of the remaining sixteen elders surnamed Liu, five were cultivators who changed their surname after marrying into the Liu family.
The Liu family is actually a sect in name only, since the Liu family bloodline is not special and does not contain a powerful true spirit bloodline like the legendary true spirit families. The descendants of the Liu family are not necessarily better than those of other clansmen.
The family cannot simply allocate cultivation resources to the Liu clan. There is more than one cultivation family in Chishui City, and there are countless small forces in the Huazhou cultivation world.
Without a Nascent Soul cultivator to oversee them, the Liu family is at the bottom of the minor powers. If they continue to mistreat members of other clans, they would probably have already declined long ago.
It's not just the Liu family that's like this; the number of non-Liu family members in the Sun and Shang families is also increasing, which is almost the fate of all cultivation families.
Liu Tingfeng was helpless about this, since the spiritual energy in the spirit world was so abundant that on average, one in a hundred mortals possessed a spiritual root.
Although the vast majority of cultivators are four or five spiritual roots, those with three or more spiritual roots are one in ten thousand, and cultivators with earth or heaven spiritual roots are even rarer, the sheer number of mortals means that some exceptionally talented cultivators will inevitably emerge.
Only the legendary True Spirit Clan possesses the advantage of bloodline, but that is far removed from the Liu Family.
Liu Tingfeng could only go with the flow and try his best to get people from other clansmen to accept the Liu family and truly integrate them into the clan.
Instead of sowing resentment in their hearts, which could lead to a future split with the Liu clan, causing the Liu family to disintegrate or even become a separate sect.
Fortunately, four hundred years ago, he followed a Nascent Soul cultivator from Zhuxinzhai to conquer another world. He made great contributions in the war, was rewarded with treasures, and advanced to the late Nascent Soul stage. His prestige surpassed that of previous family heads, and his control over the family reached a new level.
If he can break through the bottleneck and successfully transform into a deity, he will have an additional three thousand years of lifespan, and he will be confident that the Liu family will continue to exist as a family lineage forever.
However, the Nascent Soul stage is hundreds of times more difficult than the late Nascent Soul stage, and Liu Tingfeng had no confidence at all.
He dared not explore the interface fragments or seek opportunities in other worlds.
Over the past four hundred years, the Liu family has become stronger than ever before because of the existence of this great cultivator, but this has also made the Sun family and the Shang family increasingly dissatisfied, and even caused conflicts with two other minor forces within tens of thousands of miles.
Four hundred years ago, Liu Tingfeng perished, and the Liu family only needed to change its head of the family.
Now he is the pillar of the Liu family, and he can no longer take risks as he did in the past. If he were to fall, the entire Liu family would face annihilation.
As Liu Tingfeng watched the queue below gradually shorten, the smile on his lips slowly faded, and he let out a soft sigh.
In the eyes of the Liu family members, he was the head of the family whose word was law.
To outsiders, he was a majestic and imposing cultivator, whose every move could stir up a storm in Chishui City.
But his vision had long since expanded beyond the small city of Chishui. In Huazhou, in Fengling Domain, and in Mingze Continent, he was merely a minor Nascent Soul cultivator, a slightly stronger ant.
In his youth, he was arrogant and ambitious, dreaming of traversing countless worlds. Later, he thought it would be good to cultivate to the Integration Realm, and then to the Refinement of Emptiness, the Transformation of Spirit, the Nascent Soul... Now he only thinks about how to maintain the family's heritage and let the Liu family continue for hundreds of years.
Ancestor Liu Xu established the Liu family by seizing an opportunity from a fragment of the interface. He also used the opportunity from the fragment to raise his cultivation to the late Nascent Soul stage, making the Liu family the number one family in Chishui City.
But he dared not take any more risks. Where would the Liu family's next opportunity lie, and what would become of them in the future?
Liu Tingfeng fell into deep thought. The sun gradually set in the west, and a line of crimson blood stained the sky. The young men queuing below had all entered the main hall to undergo the test of their spiritual roots.
Liu Tingfeng sighed, turned around, and froze in place.
Not far from him, a man stood with his hands behind his back, quietly watching Chishui City below the mountain. He was dressed in white, his eyes as deep as an abyss.
Liu Tingfeng's eyes twitched slightly, and a deep chill rose in his heart.
When did this person in white appear?
He spread his divine sense and focused it on the white-robed man in front of him, but saw nothing.
The man in white was clearly standing in front of him, but his consciousness was completely empty, as if the man did not exist at all.
Liu Tingfeng knew that the white-robed man's cultivation was too high, far surpassing his own, and his late-stage Nascent Soul spiritual sense couldn't detect him at all.
He took a deep breath, suppressing his fear and unease, and bowed deeply to the man in white: "Junior Liu Tingfeng greets this senior."
The composure he had cultivated over many years of wielding power in the Liu family finally calmed him down.
The man in white was able to approach him silently and could have easily killed him, but he didn't take his life immediately, so he probably had no ill intentions.
"You are the head of the Liu family?" The man in white turned around and looked him up and down.
"As the patriarch of the Liu family, if there is anything you need me to do, please feel free to give the order, and I will do my best," Liu Tingfeng replied respectfully, though he felt increasingly uneasy.
This is the tragedy of low-level cultivators. Even though the man in white showed no malice, just his presence alone made Liu Tingfeng feel terrified.
At this moment, his life was completely in the hands of the man in white, and the strict rules of the Fatian Pavilion seemed so pale.
Those powerful beings may indeed want to protect lower-level cultivators, allowing them to burn themselves out in the process of conquering other worlds, but this still cannot change the fact that lower-level cultivators are just ants.
The man in white said calmly, "You don't need to be nervous. I'm not here to cause trouble for the Liu family. I just want to ask you about someone."
"Please enlighten me, senior. I will answer any questions you may have." Liu Tingfeng perked up.
Have you ever heard of the name Liu Kaiyang?
Liu Tingfeng racked his brains, recalling the family tree, but he couldn't remember this person at all. He asked cautiously, "Is the 'Liu Kaiyang' you mentioned a cultivator from the Liu family?"
"good."
Liu Tingfeng clasped his hands and bowed: "I beg your forgiveness, senior. There are over a thousand cultivators in the Liu family, and I cannot know them all. May I consult the family genealogy before reporting back?"
The man in white nodded slightly, and Liu Tingfeng secretly breathed a sigh of relief, but was still a little worried. He said respectfully, "Checking the family genealogy will take some time. Would you please come to the clan's residence for a while, senior?"
"Lead the way." The white-clad man's voice remained calm.
Liu Tingfeng was secretly pleased. Although he did not know the purpose of the man in white in inquiring about this "Liu Kaiyang", he had neither killed anyone nor searched his soul for torture, and was even willing to visit the Liu family. Although his expression was indifferent, these actions revealed a trace of goodwill.
If a high-level cultivator is willing to treat a low-level cultivator with even a little equality, it is already a great act of kindness.
Perhaps this mysterious man in white is not a calamity for the Liu family, but rather the next opportunity he has been waiting for for hundreds of years.
"This way, senior." Liu Tingfeng was even more respectful as he led the man in white toward the clan.
The Liu family cultivators who were flying along the road saw their patriarch going out and hurriedly bowed respectfully.
But when they straightened up, they saw the usually imposing patriarch bowing slightly, a humble smile on his face, leading the way for a strange young man in white. They were stunned, completely unable to believe their eyes. (End of Chapter)