Chapter 61: Important Lessons

My blood burned with excitement at the thought of finally taking my vengeance. Finally, I could fulfill my goal.

I knew my homeland of the Dayun Kingdom down to its very bones. It was nothing more than a tiny, remote mortal dynasty enclosed within the towering shadows of the great mountains.

In a desolate border kingdom like that, cultivators who had even touched the basic Body Strengthening Realm were scarce enough to serve as royal garrison commanders or imperial general retainers.

As for the Qi Condensation Realm? True immortals who could condense spiritual mist into liquid qi simply didn’t exist there, and if one ever passed through, they were treated like living gods walking among insects.

Because of that, I held enough confidence in my blade. Even if unexpected obstacles arose or the corrupt prime minister had hired hidden mercenary squads, I would not falter.

I would not allow myself to be discouraged, I would simply grit my teeth, train harder, and calculate a strategy that tore their throats out.

There was nothing in this world that would stop me from my revenge. Except my Master, of course.

Initially, when Master agreed to escort me, I naively assumed he would summon his flying sword, lift me onto the widened jade blade, and pierce through the clouds to drop us directly into the capital of Dayun. That wasn’t completely out of window.

To be completely honest, a part of my heart secretly craved that journey. I adored standing on that soaring sword deck with Master positioned right behind me.

Up in the biting winds of the high heavens, his strong, warm arms would naturally wrap around my waist to steady my footing, and his broad chest would press against my back like an unshakeable fortress.

In those precious, fleeting moments, feeling his steady heartbeat against my spine, the cold terror of the mortal world melted away completely. I felt cherished, sheltered, and fiercely protected.

Yet, Master chose not to fly.

Instead, he guided us down to Cloudfall City and procured two towering Tier 2 Iron-Hoof Blood Stallions. He told me that rushing blindly toward vengeance was the mark of a fool, and that the path of cultivation demanded worldly experience, sharp eyes, and tempered battlefield instincts.

I embraced his decision without a single complaint.

Mounting the obsidian beasts, we rode out into the expansive valleys, covering hundreds of miles under the open sky. Before escaping my home, I had never once set foot outside the narrow border garrison walls.

And when I had crawled across these lands months ago, my mind had been half-shattered by grief, fever, and starvation, my vision had been glued to the dirt, searching for stale crusts while praying the imperial bounty hunters wouldn’t spot my tracks.

Now, sitting tall in the leather saddle beside the man I loved, the world revealed its true, breathtaking majesty.

It was utterly magnificent, a realm of living myth that far surpassed the wildest tales sung by travelling bards in mortal taverns.

I watched colossal, ancient pine trees whose canopies brushed the low clouds, their bark shimmering with crystalline resin that glowed like pale jade in the sunlight.

We trotted alongside roaring canyon rivers whose waters were as clear as liquid sapphire, tumbling over thousand-foot waterfalls that threw up perpetual, vibrant double-rainbows into the mist.

In the deep valleys, flocks of silver-crested crane spirits danced above fields of purple spirit-ferns that unfurled their glowing fronds to catch the morning dew, while massive, floating granite boulders drifted lazily above geothermal gorges, buoyed by the natural magnetic qi rising from the earth’s veins.

It was miraculous. A world so grand, so radiant, that it made my mortal heart ache with wonder.

Then, Master slowed his steed and spoke words that shattered my awe, teaching me a lesson that carved itself straight into my soul.

He told me that the world was fundamentally two-faced.

He reminded me that in my past, I had only ever stared into its darkest, filthiest abyss, the side drowned in blood, betrayal, starvation, and cruelty.

That nightmare was real, but so was the peerless beauty stretching before our eyes. Yet, he warned me never to be seduced by the spectacle, beneath every radiant waterfall and glowing grove lay the exact same ruthless law of the jungle.

Those floating boulders crushed careless beasts, those glowing ferns hid venomous vipers, and the tranquility of nature was bought with endless, silent predation.

Listening to his calm, effortless voice, a shiver ran down my spine. His words were so deceptively simple, yet they contained the profound, overarching truth of existence, the very cosmic balance that ancient cultivators spent centuries meditating in dark caves to comprehend.

Yet, Master gave it away to me like casual morning tea.

I dissected his words over and over, realizing their layered meanings. He wasn’t merely warning me about dangerous forests, he was warning me about people, about sects, and about the immortal path itself.

The grandest, most untouchable figures often hid the blackest malice behind celestial robes.

The depth of his wisdom terrified me in the best way possible. To possess such unfathomable insight while remaining so warm, relaxed, and gentle… how could anyone not revere this man?

I bowed my head toward him across our saddles, offering my deepest, most humble gratitude. It was a lesson of a lifetime, an anchor for my growing Dao Heart.

Then, the tranquility of the mountain gorge shattered.

From the dense brush burst a monstrous predator, a massive Tier 3 Thunder-Scale Shadow Tiger, crackling with arcs of violent blue lightning.

My breath caught in my throat as cold sweat chilled my palms. I knew enough about magical beasts to recognize the sheer, apocalyptic terror standing before us. A creature at the third tier possessed the physical mass and elemental power equivalent to a human Foundation Establishment cultivator.

If a single beast of this caliber had wandered into the borders of the Dayun Kingdom, mortal arrows would have shattered against its metallic scales, iron spears would have bent like reeds, and entire provincial garrisons would have been torn to bloody scraps. It could have wiped my homeland from the map in an afternoon.

The only reason mortal kingdoms could even exist within this mountain range without being devoured by the wild was entirely because of the great immortal sects.

The powerful cultivators patrolling the borders kept the ancient beast nests suppressed, maintaining an invisible barrier between civilization and primal slaughter.

In exchange for that eternal shield, the mortal kingdoms offered heavy annual tributes of grain, fine mortal crafts, and raw ores.

It was a delicate, symbiotic relationship, though heavily tilted toward the heavens.

Immortals barely glanced at mortal gold, their true currency was the spirit stone veins they mined themselves or leased to subsidiaries.

Master had casually explained the complex economics of the continent as we rode, and I had strained my brain to memorize every detail so I wouldn’t embarrass him in the future.

Yet, facing this kingdom-ending monstrosity, Master didn’t even draw a full breath.

He turned to me, telling me to step back and observe, before deliberately suppressing his own Late-Stage Golden Core cultivation base all the way down to the mid-stages of Foundation Establishment.

He reduced his power simply to make it a fair contest, or rather, to turn a lethal calamity into a live demonstration for his disciple.

What followed left me completely spellbound.

To Master, the roaring, lightning-clad beast that could have annihilated my ancestral city was nothing more than an overgrown kitten.

He didn’t rely on overwhelming brute force or flashy, world-shattering divine arts. He stepped forward with a relaxed posture, his white scholar robes fluttering in the wind, wielding a graceful, sweeping sword art that looked like a celestial dance.

His blade flowed like a weeping willow yielding to an autumn storm, effortlessly parrying thousand-pound paw strikes and lightning bolts with microscopic shifts of his wrists.

Every step he took dismantled the beast’s balance, every subtle turn of his blade left a precise, shallow cut along its armored joints. It was the most mesmerizing, beautiful display of martial elegance I had ever witnessed, elevated to perfection by the effortless grace of the man performing it.

He toyed with the beast for several minutes, deliberately repeating each transition so my eyes could track the movement of force from his heels to the blade tip.

Then, when he had shown me every nuance of the form, he grew bored.

FLASH.

A single, blinding arc of emerald sword-light sliced across the gorge.

There was no struggle, no dramatic clash. In the span of a single heartbeat, the sword flickered, Master stood five paces behind the predator, and the massive Thunder-Scale Tiger collapsed heavily to the dirt, cleanly bisected from head to tail.

Standing behind the granite boulder, clutching my chest as the wind settled, I stared at his pristine, untouched back.

My heart hammered violently against my ribs, not from terror, but from absolute, intoxicating adoration. To command such devastating, absolute lethality while moving with the elegance of an immortal scholar… this was the man who had pulled me from the mud, and this was the man I would follow into the heavens themselves.