36: Chapter 36: I came, I fought, I won!

Time flowed on, and eighteen full years had passed since the Qianlong Su Family completely took over Qingmu Market.

This year, Su Yu was one hundred and eighteen years old.

Inside an independent courtyard in the back residence of the Qianlong Su Family mansion.

Su Yu sat in a grand chair under the eaves, covered by a thick animal hide blanket.

Most of his hair had long since fallen out, and the few remaining strands were gray and withered like dry grass.

The age spots on his face were like cracks in parched earth, clearly declaring that this physical body was nearing its end.

The Five Decays of Heaven and Man had arrived, and his life force was severed.

Su Yu could feel with extreme clarity that the Ninth Layer of Qi Refining true essence in his dantian, which had once surged like a river, was dissipating in an irreversible manner.

Even his once extremely keen spiritual sense was becoming dull and murky.

His time had come.

Logically, a cultivator at the Ninth Layer of Qi Refining should have a lifespan of one hundred and fifty years.

But Su Yu had failed when he forcefully attempted to break through to the Foundation Establishment Stage years ago, shattering his meridians and damaging his foundational vital energy.

Therefore, he only had a lifespan of one hundred and twenty years.

Facing the approach of death, Su Yu felt no ripples in his heart, nor did he have any greed or fear regarding immortality.

He had lived long enough.

Two lifetimes as a human, two hundred years of time.

Moreover, as long as the bloodline was not broken, he could be reincarnated.

"Cough, cough..."

Su Yu coughed lightly twice, the white mist he exhaled quickly dissipating in the cold wind.

Outside the courtyard gate, Su Yuan, who had been keeping watch, heard the movement and immediately walked in quickly.

Ninety-seven-year-old Su Yuan, relying on the nourishment of his Foundation Establishment Stage true essence, still maintained the appearance of his prime in his thirties.

The current head of the Qianlong Su Family was naturally Su Yuan.

He walked quickly to the grand chair and knelt on both knees.

"Father."

Su Yuan's voice was very low, permeated with an irrepressible heaviness.

As a Foundation Establishment master, his perception of the loss of life force was sharper than ordinary people.

He knew very clearly that his father's time was within these next two days.

"Are the people all gathered?"

Su Yu did not open his eyes, his tone calm and faint.

"Replying to Father, Third Son Su Lin, and several core elders of the third generation are waiting outside the courtyard," Su Yuan replied.

"Let them in."

A moment later, over a dozen figures walked into the courtyard with light steps.

Leading them was the current person in charge of the eldest branch, and also the eldest legitimate son of Su Cheng, Su Changqing.

There was also Third Son Su Lin, who, although a Mortal, was now gray-haired and knelt in the snow with the support of two servants.

Following behind them were all core elders of the third generation who possessed spiritual roots and had already entered the middle stage of Qi Refining.

These dozen or so people represented the highest power structure of the current Qianlong Su Family.

After more than thirty years of reproduction.

The Qianlong Su Family was no longer the exile group shivering in Black Wind Valley back then.

The number of cultivation descendants possessing spiritual roots had approached one hundred.

And the Mortal clansmen who had branched out in Dingzhou City and surrounding secular industries numbered over ten thousand.

The foundation of a first-tier high-grade spiritual vein, plus a Foundation Establishment ancestor sitting in town.

Such a foundation, placed within these thousand miles, was already as stable as Mount Tai.

Su Yu slowly opened his murky eyes, his gaze sweeping over the descendants kneeling before him.

"The core formation disk of the array was handed over to Yuan'er yesterday."

Su Yu spoke, his voice hoarse but his pronunciation still clear.

"The accounts of the treasury, as well as the roster for the deployment of secular industries, have also been sorted out."

"Father, you need not worry about these worldly affairs. We will definitely guard the family business well."

Su Yuan lowered his head, his eyes already red.

"With a large family and business, the thing to fear most is the loss of rules."

Su Yu looked at Su Yuan, his gaze filled with final sternness and admonition.

"After I am gone, you will be the only pillar of the Su Family."

"Remember, you are the bottom line of the family, and also the final deterrent."

"Unless the family reaches a critical moment of life and death, you must never act easily."

Su Yuan bowed heavily, his tone heavy.

"This child will remember."

Su Yu's gaze turned to Third Son Su Lin in the crowd.

"Third Son."

"Father, this child is here."

The gray-haired Third Son Su Lin responded tremblingly.

"The secular industries are the root of the villa, and also the capital for those clansmen without spiritual roots to settle down and make a living."

Su Yu admonished: "You Mortal branch must tightly grasp the trade routes of Dingzhou City in your hands."

"Do not be afraid of those cultivation descendants looking down on you. As long as the money, grain, and intelligence network are in your hands, the balance within the Su Family will not be broken."

"Eldest Brother gave the same instructions before he left. This child would not dare to forget even in death."

Third Son Su Lin was choked with sobs.

Finally, Su Yu looked at those core elders of the third generation.

These people didn't even dare to breathe loudly in front of him.

Most of them were born during the prosperous period of Hidden Dragon Manor and had not experienced the despair of being used as consumables to fill lives by the main branch.

"You people, born with spiritual rice to eat and Qi Gathering Pills to use."

Su Yu's tone became extremely cold.

"This is your blessing, but also a hidden danger."

"I don't care how high your cultivation is, or how majestic you are outside."

"The ancestral precept of the Qianlong Su Family has always only had one rule."

"Preserve the people and lose the land, both people and land are preserved. Preserve the land and lose the people, both people and land are lost."

"Family inheritance and bloodline reproduction always come first. Face, territory, or even the ethereal immortality are worthless in the face of family continuation."

"If you encounter a powerful enemy you cannot provoke, even if it means abandoning this Qingmu Market, even if it means crawling back into the mud holes of Black Wind Valley, you must preserve the bloodline!"

These words from Su Yu contained no reluctance or tenderness from a dying man.

They were only the extremely cruel survival warnings of a founder who had carved a bloody path in the cultivation world to his descendants.

"We will respectfully follow the ancestor's teachings, and never forget them until death!"

The dozen or so core elders bowed together, their heads knocking against the cold, snowy ground.

After giving these instructions, Su Yu seemed to have exhausted all his strength.

He waved his hand.

"All of you withdraw, let the people outside come in."

The courtyard gate was pushed open again.

This time, a dense crowd surged in.

Every Su Family descendant in Qingmu Market, regardless of their cultivation level, whether they were Mortal or cultivators.

Hundreds of people filled the large courtyard to the brim.

The crowd made no noise, only extremely suppressed, low sobs.

They knelt down in the snow in unison, paying the heaviest respect to the ancestor who had created the Qianlong Su Family under the eaves.

Su Yuan did not withdraw; he stood up and walked to the grand chair, silently tucking the slipped animal hide blanket tighter for Su Yu.

The snow fell even heavier.

Su Yu leaned against the back of the chair, his head slightly tilted, feeling the cold snowflakes falling on his face.

His gaze crossed the courtyard wall, crossed the pavilions of Qingmu Market, as if seeing an extremely distant past.

The final moment when life reached its end.

The martial arts myth of his past life, the Ninth-Grade Poor Talent of this life, two completely different yet equally long lives intertwined and overlapped in his mind.

He remembered the teenager who braved the scorching sun to cast the Lesser Cloud and Rain Spell in the outer spiritual fields of the Qingmu Su Clan.

He remembered the scene in the Internal Affairs Hall where he voluntarily handed over three low-grade spirit stones and was pointed at and called a coward by his peers.

He remembered the night when the red candles flickered, and the Mortal girl Song Qingwan helped him undress with awe—that was the first step he took to plant his bloodline at the bottom of the cultivation world.

He remembered the desolation when Su Cheng was born and tested to have no spiritual root, and the amazement of the whole hall and the rewards from the main branch on the day when Second Son Su Yuan had his full-month celebration and the spirit testing bead erupted with seventh-grade spiritual light.

He remembered the night Qingmu Market was destroyed, and the arrogant and selfish back of Su Hao.

He remembered the decisiveness of beheading a Qi Refining Stage 8 demonic cultivator with one sword in that dilapidated wooden house in Black Wind Valley late at night.

He remembered the mouthful of blood he spat when he sat in the secret chamber and forcefully cut off the backflow of Foundation Establishment when the great array collapsed.

All the forbearance, calculation, survival, and slaughter turned into passing smoke at this moment.

In this life, although he only had the most inferior Ninth Grade Spiritual Root and no background.

But he used the most secular means and the coldest rationality to achieve everything a person at the bottom could achieve.

The high and mighty Su Hao back then, for the sake of ethereal immortality, severed human bonds, used the whole clan to fill his path, and eventually turned into a pile of dry bones outside the barren mountains.

And the once prosperous Qingmu Su Clan main branch had also vanished into the long river of time.

And Su Tian.

That despised vicious dog of a side branch had lived to be one hundred and eighteen years old.

He sat on a first-tier high-grade spiritual vein, with hundreds of cultivators and ten thousand descendants under his command.

The Qianlong Su Family he established had already become the new master of this world.

"I failed to reach the Foundation Establishment Stage, failed to achieve immortality."

Su Yu looked at the dense crowd of descendants in the courtyard, looked at the brocade dharma robes they wore, looked at the heartfelt awe and grief on their faces for him.

"But..."

A faint yet extremely satisfied smile slowly appeared on the corner of Su Yu's mouth.

Able to go from an old farmer destined to die in the spiritual fields to an ancestor who established a sect.

Able to smash the shackles of fate in this cultivation world that eats people without spitting out bones, and leave behind a foundation that would be inherited for a hundred years.

In this human world, on this path to immortality.

He, Su Yu, had come, fought, and won.

"This life, I have earned enough."

The extremely low murmur dissipated in the wind and snow.

Su Yu slowly closed his eyes.

The rise and fall of his chest stopped completely, and that trace of an extremely weak heartbeat also returned to deathly silence at this moment.

The heavy snow was silent.

In the courtyard, Su Yuan knelt beside the grand chair, burying his head deeply, his shoulders trembling violently.

"Ancestor... has passed away!"

Su Changqing's sorrowful cry pierced the night sky of Qingmu Market.

Hundreds of Su Family descendants bowed their heads simultaneously, the sound of their weeping shaking the heavens and the earth.