62: Chapter 62 The world is in chaos.

Although this Secret Realm did not leave you with any items related to Cultivating, this information is invaluable to you.

The Realms of Aperture Opening, Qi Cultivation, and Foundation Establishment are quite similar to what you knew in your previous life, but what is this so-called source fruit? Is it something similar to a Foundation Establishment Pill?

You stayed in the stone chamber for another whole day, turning over every corner.

Aside from that bronze mirror and a few broken porcelain shards, there was nothing useful.

You put the bronze mirror away and walked out of the mausoleum.

At thirty-seven, you received news at a post station in a small town that your mother had passed away.

After Supreme Elder Su Chenyuan sent people to bring her from Yunjin City to the Cangyun Sect, she had been living in the backyard of West Peak, with someone taking care of her daily needs. On the night she passed away, she said to the maid looking after her: "Why hasn't Shuang'er come back yet? The steamed buns are cold."

Then she went to sleep.

You sat in the room at the post station for the entire night. When dawn broke, you stood up, washed your face, and continued your journey.

At thirty-eight, news of Supreme Elder Su Chenyuan's death arrived.

With cultivation at the Late Stage of Great Grandmaster, his Lifespan was exhausted, and he passed away quietly in the cultivation room on West Peak. It is said that before he left, he left a letter for the Sect Head, asking people to continue taking care of the grave of your tiger and your mother's spirit tablet.

The letter from the Cangyun Sect also included two lines that Supreme Elder Su Chenyuan had left for you.

"In this life, I have taken seven disciples. You are the last one, and also the one who worries me the most. Remember to eat on the road; don't always go hungry."

You folded the paper, placed it under the cloth tiger, and kept them together against your chest.

Nine years passed in a flash.

On this day.

You crawled out of the tomb entrance, looking disheveled and covered in dust, with cobwebs and dirt in your hair, and a tear in your lapel from something.

You sat down on the mound next to the grave and brushed the dust off your sleeves.

It was empty again.

This was the seventeenth suspected Immortal Cultivator ruin you had cleared in these six years. The vast majority were ordinary Ancient Tombs, which you discovered after opening the coffins to be merely the burial places of some local wealthy landlord or washed-up official. The only ones truly related to Immortal Cultivators were the mausoleum on Funiu Mountain and the cave on Yandang Mountain.

"It seems that the graves of Immortal Cultivators are really not that easy to find," you muttered.

Your individual strength was ultimately limited. Just traveling through the ten prefectures and thirty-six counties of Great Qing would take more than a year. To investigate every mountain, every cave, and every legend—even if you didn't eat, drink, or sleep, a lifetime might not be enough.

"If only I could get the whole world to help me look," you said to yourself.

After this thought popped up, you were stunned for a moment.

Then, the more you thought about it, the more feasible it seemed.

But to make the people of the world do things for you, you first need the ability to make them listen to you. With your current strength...

Early Stage Great Grandmaster, with an injury to your Dantian, and cultivation at a standstill.

Not enough; it is far from enough.

You stood up from the grave mound and brushed the dirt off your backside.

It was getting dark. The evening wind blew across the desolate hills, carrying the dry smell of autumn grass. You looked up at the setting sun in the distance; the afterglow burned half the sky a dark red.

You are now thirty-nine years old.

Almost forty.

You looked down at your hands. Your fingers were still slender and strong with distinct joints, but your skin was no longer as fair and tight as it was in your early twenties. Time had not left too many wrinkles on your face; the cultivation of a Great Grandmaster made your aging speed much slower than ordinary people. However, the lines around your eyes and brows had softened, and the angles of your jaw had rounded out. Your entire being had slowly settled from the cold, piercing beauty of your girlhood into a rich, composed charm.

This led to a problem that gave you a headache: every time you arrived in a town, there would always be some old geezer trying to approach you.

A middle-aged merchant holding tea, smiling from ear to ear: "This young lady... ah, no, Madam, it's hard to travel alone. I have a carriage; I wonder if it might be possible..."

A certain wandering swordsman puffed out his chest: "My saber technique is somewhat well-known. If you do not mind, Madam, I am willing to escort you..."

There was even a county magistrate who sent a legal advisor, saying that the magistrate saw that you had an extraordinary bearing and wanted to invite you to his residence as a guest.

There were a few times when those wealthy merchants really wouldn't listen to reason and insisted on stuffing things into your hands to show their eagerness to please, and you could only tearfully accept.

Of course, there were also many who thought they were tough; as it happened, you also liked tough ones.

Just like that, you saved up a considerable fortune.

You were silent for a while, calculating in your heart.

Wei Feisen once said that the "Immortal" who took away his childhood sweetheart back then came from beyond the heavens. Since an Immortal had come once, it was possible they would come a second time. That woman was only seventeen when she was taken away. If she had truly embarked on the path of an Immortal Cultivator, with the Lifespan of an Immortal Cultivator, she would definitely still be alive now. After all, Immortal Cultivators in this world seemed to be able to live for nearly two hundred years just by reaching the Qi Cultivation stage.

And before she left, she was in the territory of the Black Tiger Gang.

Therefore, if she were to return to visit her old haunts, the place she was most likely to appear would not be these desolate graves and wild ridges you were digging up, but the place where she had once lived.

You figured it out.

Instead of digging through dead people's graves one by one in the wild mountains, it would be better to find a place where she might appear and wait there.

A living Immortal Cultivator is far more useful than these piles of bones that have been dead for who knows how many years.

Moreover, nine years have passed since that business with Wei Feisen; the rumors from back then should have long since dissipated. Even if you stood face to face, no one would recognize you as that "Righteous and Valiant Sword Immortal."

You made your decision: stop digging graves and return to Linyuan City.

It is closest to the former headquarters of the Black Tiger Gang and was also the core area of Wei Feisen's sphere of influence back then. If that old acquaintance of the Immortal Cultivator were to return, that area would be the most probable region.

You turned around and walked west.

The return journey took a month.

The road was not peaceful.

In recent years, you have been shuttling between deep mountains and forests and remote small towns, only knowing a rough idea of the general trends in Jianghu. On this journey back, you realized that the world had already descended into complete chaos.

The first piece of news was heard in a post station in Yanzhou.

Two men who worked as escorts were sitting in a corner drinking, their voices not soft.

"That Old Ancestor of the Martial Dao Sect, is he really dead?"

"Nine times out of ten. Think about it: if the Old Ancestor were still alive, would those petty thieves dare to make such a ruckus? Last year, the Green Flood Dragon Sect from the Southern Border ran into the Martial Dao Sect's territory and snatched a cold iron mine, and the Martial Dao Sect just shrunk back into their mountain gate without a peep. If this were ten years ago, the entire Green Flood Dragon Sect would have been wiped out long ago."

"I heard it was because he fought that Black-robed man from the Black Tiger Gang back then, which damaged his Foundation, and he died a few years after returning."

"Tsk, that was an Earthly Immortal, the only one in Great Qing. Now that he's dead, who else can keep things under control?"