System Granted Me Immortality; I Outlived Everyone

Chapter 14: A Justified End for the Lightning-Struck Wood; The World Turns

Taking a few breaths to recover from his shock, Qingfeng finally spoke.

“This Five Elements Formation lineage you mentioned… I believe I’ve heard Master speak of it.”

“It was the signature technique of a certain Sect two centuries ago, though it was eventually phased out.”

“If that’s the case, the Scripture Repository should only hold the absolute basics and a brief introduction to the Five Elements Formation.”

“You managed to unravel Master’s grand formation with just that?”

“Of course not.” Chen Changsheng shook his head. “As I just said, Master inherited his legacy from the Shangqing Temple. He isn’t exactly skilled in formations.”

“Under those circumstances, the odds of Master creating his own custom formation from scratch were practically zero.”

“Therefore, his entire repertoire of formation skills must have originated from the Shangqing Temple’s Scripture Repository.”

“During my second year as a Novice, Master showed me that piece of lightning-struck wood.”

“To crack the core formation he left guarding it, I spent a year scouring every single formation manual in the Scripture Repository.”

“After cross-referencing them all, I identified the array Master had laid down.”

“It was an amalgamation of the Nine Palaces Eight Trigrams Formation and the Big Dipper Formation, sprinkled with a few of Master’s personal modifications.”

“I made numerous attempts back then, but the barrier held firm.”

“Just like that, Master’s array stalled my progress for a full five years.”

“Later, I stumbled upon the texts detailing the Five Elements Formation in the Book Tomb, along with the author’s personal insights into array mechanics.”

“With that missing link, I finally comprehended how Master had fused those two distinct formations together.”

“He had piggybacked off the underlying principles of the Five Elements Formation.”

“Once I understood the structural layout, I resumed my efforts. It took another year and a half to pry the formation open.”

“Finally, ten days ago, I finished crafting the coffin.”

Hearing Chen Changsheng deliver this meticulous breakdown, the group fell dead silent.

Qingfeng shot Master Yuanshen a look of profound pity, as if to say:

“Master, your lightning-struck wood met a highly justified end.”

Master Yuanshen was caught between the urge to weep and the urge to laugh.

This lunatic had dedicated eight consecutive years of his life just to turn a priceless treasure into a wooden box for a corpse.

He honestly didn’t know whether to applaud his disciple’s sheer tenacity or strangle him for his stupidity.

Eight years. Even in the realm of Cultivation, that was not an insignificant chunk of time.

The mortal limit barely breached a century. A Foundation Establishment cultivator maxed out at two hundred years.

Golden Core granted five hundred. Nascent Soul sat around eight hundred. Only a Soul Formation ancestor could crack the thousand-year mark.

Yet this disciple of his had squandered eight whole years on a carpentry side-project.

He truly did not possess a single ounce of anxiety regarding his own lifespan!

……

Boundless Secret Realm.

Descending slowly from the clouds, they found the entrance to the Boundless Secret Realm already swarming with various Sects, both great and small.

“Well, well, well!”

“If it isn’t Master Yuanshen.”

“Fifty years without crossing paths, and you’ve actually managed to scrape your way into mid-stage Nascent Soul. My deepest congratulations!”

The moment Chen Changsheng’s group touched the ground, Zhao Dezhu, Sect Leader of the Linglong Sect, strutted over with a painfully bright smile.

Master Yuanshen, however, met this radiant enthusiasm with a face like thunder.

“Speak if you have words, fart if you only have gas. This poor Daoist has no desire to socialize with a vulgar brute like you.”

Zhao Dezhu clutched his chest in mock sorrow. “Daoist Yuanshen, you are a man of the cloth. How can your temper remain so atrocious?”

“I know my cultivation realm is a tiny bit higher than yours, and my disciples are a tiny bit more competent than yours…”

“…But you can’t let petty jealousy ruin your mood all day!”

“I know you’re green with envy over the prodigy I took in.”

“Not even two centuries old, and already at the late-stage of Nascent Soul. The entire Daqian Dynasty has never seen such talent.”

“If decent disciples weren’t so dreadfully scarce, I’d have scoured the earth to find one for you, purely out of the goodness of our lifelong friendship.”

“Bah!”

“Who gives a damn about your insufferable disciple?!”

“I have a far better one! Your little prodigy reached late-stage Nascent Soul before two hundred, right?”

“My disciple will smash into late-stage Nascent Soul before he even hits a hundred! Just you wait and see!”

Spitting those words, Master Yuanshen stormed off, furiously dragging Chen Changsheng and the others in his wake.

Zhao Dezhu simply smirked. Clasping his hands behind his back, he strolled toward the perimeter seal of the Boundless Secret Realm, humming a cheerful little tune.

……

“Unacceptable. The more I think about it, the angrier I get!”

“Qingfeng, take your Junior Brothers inside when the time comes. I’m going back to give that bastard Zhao a piece of my mind.”

Barely a few minutes after their dramatic exit, Master Yuanshen’s simmering rage boiled over, and he marched right back to pick another fight.

Watching his Master stomp away, Qingfeng just smiled and let it happen.

Zhao Dezhu and Master Yuanshen had fought life-and-death battles side-by-side. Qingfeng had been watching them bicker like an old married couple for a hundred and fifty years.

At that moment, Chen Changsheng, who had been quietly surveying the chaotic crowds, spoke up.

“Senior Brother, doesn’t the Linglong Sect have a peerless genius known as ‘Immortal Maiden Changsheng’?”

“Why do I not see her here?”

“Immortal Maiden Changsheng deployed to the border of the Daqian Dynasty. And she wasn’t the only one; even Chan Master Yixiu from the Heavenly Buddha Temple went.”

“Yixiu… is a Chan Master now?”

Hearing that familiar name appended with such a weighty title, Chen Changsheng voiced a question from the very depths of his soul.

Qingfeng assumed his Junior Brother simply hadn’t heard of the man’s growing legend, so he offered a helpful explanation.

“Chan Master Yixiu is the designated successor of the Heavenly Buddha Temple. He ranks strictly second among all the prodigies in the Daqian Dynasty, right behind Immortal Maiden Changsheng.”

“He is barely a century old, yet he has already solidified a late-stage Golden Core.”

“Rumor has it he’s the only individual with a realistic shot at eclipsing her.”

Upon realizing that the timid, bleeding-heart little monk from his past had morphed into a heavyweight capable of holding up the sky…

…Chen Changsheng couldn’t help but feel a fleeting sense of melancholy.

Back in the day, that little bald head would badger him every few days for a Dharma debate, only to leave utterly defeated nine times out of ten.

The passage of time truly was the most terrifying ‘Cultivation method’ in existence. He had merely taken a nap, and the crying novice had blossomed into a grand Chan Master.

Shaking off his nostalgia, Chen Changsheng pressed the issue.

“Senior Brother, what are they doing at the border?”

“What else? They’re going to war against the Night Moon Country.”

“The Night Moon Country is a demon nation. Every two hundred years, like clockwork, they clash with the Daqian Dynasty. Our side wins most of the time, but we can never fully exterminate them.”

“Lately, heaven knows why, the Night Moon Country triggered the national war ahead of schedule.”

“It’s only been a hundred and seventy years since the last bloodbath. Kicking it off a full three decades early… it’s genuinely baffling.”

The casual half-smile vanished from Chen Changsheng’s face.

He had read the official historical records of the border wars between the Daqian Dynasty and the Night Moon Country down in the Book Tomb.

It was a meat grinder where cultivators and mortals alike were thrown into the blender. The sheer brutality recorded on those pages defied human language.

Even omnipotent Nascent Soul grandmasters carried a very real risk of Perishing in that mud.

Furthermore, this sudden, unnatural acceleration of the Night Moon Country’s war timeline… it planted a cold, gnawing unease deep in Chen Changsheng’s chest.