I Temper My Mortal Body to Attain Immortality

On the Tianyu Continent, spiritual energy is as thin as mist.

Body Tempering, Qi Gathering, Sea Condensation, Core Formation, Origin Condensation, Nascent Soul, Incarnation, Unity, and Heavenly Human: the nine great realms are like nine towering barriers.

I was born in Blackstone Village, on the edge of the Eastern Region. At fifteen, I was chosen by an “Immortal Master” and thought I was on my way to the heavens.

Who knew that the outer sect of the Xuanyin Sect would be the starting point of endless hard labor?

A thousand years passed. My fellow disciples withered away, and several generations of stewards died.

I still languished in the Body Tempering realm, hauling cold stones from the Decaying Bone Pool every day and chopping ghostwood in the Yinwind Ravine.

New disciples called me a “living fossil,” their eyes full of either pity or mockery.

Then, on the day the sect recruited new blood, I once again saw the familiar greed in the “Immortal Master’s” eyes.

He was speaking to another naïve country boy, saying the exact same words he had said to me a thousand years ago.

In that moment, my heart, numb for a thousand years, felt pain for the first time.

And... a trace of cold clarity.