The sound of clashing swords echoed through the forest.
Two figures moved between the trees, their blades colliding in the darkness. Each strike sent sparks into the night, briefly illuminating the cold mist that covered the ground. Neither man showed any intention of retreating.
They were cultivators, and both knew that only one of them would leave this place alive.
One of them was Liang Yifei.
He stood with his sword held loosely at his side, his long black hair moving in the night breeze. His dark robes were stained with blood, but his breathing remained steady. Across from him, his opponent struggled to stand, one hand pressed against a wound that refused to stop bleeding.
Liang Yifei watched him without expression.
"Is that all you have?"
The wounded man gritted his teeth and raised his sword again.
Liang Yifei sighed.
A moment later, another clash rang through the forest.
Then everything went quiet.
The man's sword fell to the ground, followed by his body. Liang Yifei glanced at the corpse before walking over to collect the belongings scattered around it. He checked each item carefully, keeping anything of value and leaving the rest behind.
He had been doing this for six hundred years.
There was nothing unusual about killing another cultivator. People fought over resources, techniques, treasures, and opportunities to advance. Sometimes they had good reasons. More often, they simply wanted what someone else possessed.
Liang Yifei had never concerned himself with the distinction.
If something could help him become stronger, he would find a way to obtain it. If someone stood in his way, he would deal with them accordingly.
He had no interest in being remembered as a righteous cultivator, nor did he care what others thought of him. Reputation was useful when it served a purpose, but there was little point in risking one's life to protect a name.
After finishing his search, he looked down into the valley.
The mist had grown thicker, hiding most of the forest below. Above him, countless stars shone across the night sky.
For a moment, he remained still.
Six hundred years.
That was how long he had spent pursuing cultivation, and yet he was still trapped in the Nascent Soul Realm.
He had tried everything he could think of. He had studied ancient scriptures, explored dangerous ruins, fought other cultivators for their inheritances, and spent years searching for opportunities that might allow him to advance. Some attempts had brought him valuable gains. Others had nearly cost him his life.
None had changed the result.
His cultivation had reached a bottleneck that he could not overcome.
Without a breakthrough, his lifespan would eventually run out. No matter how powerful he had become compared with ordinary mortals, he would still die when his time came.
Liang Yifei found the thought irritating.
He had not spent six centuries clawing his way out of mortality just to accept death at the end.
His journey had begun long before he understood what cultivation truly meant.
Six hundred years ago, he had been a ten-year-old boy living in a small village. His life had been unremarkable, and he had never imagined that the world beyond his home could contain beings capable of destroying mountains with a single strike.
Then two cultivators fought above his village.
Their battle lasted only a short time, but the destruction it caused was beyond anything he could comprehend. Flames swallowed the surrounding land. The earth split apart, and buildings collapsed beneath the force of their attacks. By the time the fighting ended, the village where he had grown up had become a wasteland.
Liang Yifei survived because he had been away from the village when the battle began.
When he returned, there was nothing left to return to.
The two cultivators had killed each other. Their bodies lay among the ruins, along with the belongings they had carried into battle.
Liang Yifei was too young to understand why they had fought or what they had wanted from each other.
But he understood one thing.
The power they possessed had placed them far beyond the reach of ordinary people. They could destroy everything around them, and no one in his village had been able to stop them.
He searched through the ruins and collected whatever he could find from the dead cultivators.
Among those belongings were cultivation techniques and resources that would eventually change his life.
He began cultivating soon afterward.
His talent was mediocre. Compared with those born into powerful clans or blessed with extraordinary spiritual roots, he had little advantage. Progress came slowly, and many times he had to risk his life for opportunities that others might have obtained without effort.
He learned to be patient. He learned to observe before acting and to avoid battles that offered little reward. When he had to fight, he fought to win.
Over the centuries, those habits carried him further than his talent ever could have.
Eventually, he reached the Nascent Soul Realm.
To ordinary mortals, he was already something close to an immortal. His strength was enough to determine the fate of entire nations, and few people could threaten his life without paying a terrible price.
Yet the higher he climbed, the more clearly he understood how far he remained from the peak.
There were still realms beyond his reach, cultivators he could not defeat, and opportunities he had no way of obtaining. Even after six hundred years, he was nowhere near the level of those two cultivators whose battle had destroyed his village.
And now, with his cultivation stagnant, he was running out of time.
Liang Yifei looked at the corpse behind him, then at the belongings he had collected.
Everything he had done over the centuries had brought him to this point. Every battle, every risk, and every compromise had been made for the sake of advancing further.
Sometimes he wondered whether it had all been worth it.
The thought came and went.
It was a useless question. The past could not be changed, and regretting his decisions would not help him break through his current predicament.
Besides, he had not spent all those years relying on luck.
He had been preparing for something.
For centuries, he had searched for a way to escape the limits of his cultivation. The plan he had devised was dangerous, and even he could not be certain of its outcome. Failure would cost him everything he had accumulated over six hundred years.
But doing nothing would lead to the same end.
He had already made his choice.
Liang Yifei raised his head and looked at the stars.
"Power is nothing more than a fleeting illusion."
The words came out quietly, without the slightest hint of emotion.
He had seen enough to understand how quickly strength could disappear. Cultivators who once stood above the world could die in a single battle, leaving behind nothing but their possessions for someone else to collect.
Perhaps, one day, the same thing would happen to him.
He did not particularly care.
An illusion was still worth pursuing if it allowed him to reach a place he had never been before.
Liang Yifei turned away from the valley and began walking through the forest.
He had spent six hundred years climbing toward a destination he had never seen, and he was not about to stop now.
Whether the path ahead led to another breakthrough or his death, he would find out soon enough.