Records of the Five-Element Eternal Sands

Shen Yan has a Five-Element Spirit Root. When he was fifteen, a diviner from the Xuanshui Sect declared that if he ever managed to establish his foundation in this lifetime, his ancestors' graves would practically be glowing. No one knew that beneath the clay statue in a ruined mountain temple, he had dug up a fragment of the Five Elements Divided Meridians, left behind by an ancient cultivator of the Five Elements. While others fought to be the first to claim secret realms, he spent three days at the foot of a mountain studying the terrain. When others faced off against powerful enemies, he simply turned around and fled with an Earth Escape Talisman in hand. He never tried to defeat enemies several major realms above him, and never took a risk unless he was sure of success. Starting as the lowest-ranked servant disciple of the Xuanshui Sect, he relied on a Five Elements cultivation method built around the cycle of mutual generation, along with five personal magic weapons that grew in step with him. One step at a time, he journeyed from the Qingcang Mountains to the Southern Continent, then ascended from the Central Earth Immortal Realm to the Immortal Realm. No god-tier System descended from the heavens, and he had no overpowered cheat from the start. An utterly ordinary cultivator with a Five-Element Spirit Root carved out a path to immortality spanning the mortal and immortal realms through a lifetime of careful, steady progress.