Chapter 4: Taiyin Sect
The next day.
Above the moon.
The ancestral grounds of the Moon Palace within the Taiyin Sect, usually calm and undisturbed, suddenly began to be decorated with lanterns and festoons, alive with joy and celebration.
Many disciples who had returned from travels afar were initially at a loss, until they consulted their friends within the sect and learned the truth: True Monarch Ruiying, who had overseen the Moon Palace for over a millennium, was taking on an ascender as her final closed-door disciple.
Who was True Monarch Ruiying?
In the Taiyin Sect, which boasted a heritage spanning tens of thousands of years, she was one of the three core elders holding real power. She was a peerless powerhouse at the late-stage Earth Immortal Realm and the true master of the Moon Palace lineage.
The current Master of the Taiyin Sect, whose prestige had shaken East Tianzhou for over a millennium, was not only her fellow disciple under the same master, but also her younger brother by the same mother.
Under the leadership of this brother and sister pair, the sphere of influence and reputation of the Taiyin Sect had gradually reached its peak over the past thousand years.
Today, the Taiyin Sect visibly possessed one Heavenly Immortal Realm cultivator, six Earth Immortal Realm cultivators, nearly five hundred Primordial Spirit Cultivators, and countless disciples at the Golden Core Realm.
And this was merely their surface strength; their hidden foundations were truly immeasurable.
One must understand that the strength of a sect is not determined solely by its apparent might, but even more by the heritage and potential hidden behind it.
As one of the pinnacle figures of the Taiyin Sect, True Monarch Ruiying had lived in seclusion for nearly a thousand years, yet every move she made still drew the attention of countless people.
After all, this former female immortal, whose might had once shaken the world, not only possessed peerless beauty in her youth, but also unfathomable and astonishing cultivation.
Therefore, upon learning that True Monarch Ruiying was actually taking a disciple in public, the entire Taiyin Sect was thrown into a tumult.
Everyone knew that being favored and accepted as a disciple by such a legendary figure was not only a supreme honor, but also meant that their future path would be smooth and their achievements boundlessly limitless.
Consequently, regarding the upcoming ascender who was about to enter True Monarch Ruiying's lineage, the vast majority of Taiyin Sect disciples were filled with curiosity, even mixed with envy, jealousy, and hatred.
They were burning to know what kind of monstrous talent this person was, to actually win the favor of an Earth Immortal powerhouse and prompt her to break convention just to take her as a disciple!
A few more days passed in this manner.
Jiang Runyue, who had been cultivating alongside True Monarch Ruiying all this while, finally gained a preliminary understanding of the Tianyun Realm.
The vast realm of the Tianyun Great World was unimaginably expansive, far surpassing the Divine Land by countless margins. Across the four continents and five oceans, there were corresponding cultivation forces.
For instance, sects such as the Taiyin Sect, Fire Cloud Palace, Heavenly Sword Mountain, Star Palace, and Sanqing Mountain were rooted in East Tianzhou.
On Xizhou, where deserts and Gobi landscapes occupied the vast majority of the territory, there were also numerous Buddhist Sect sects such as the Saha Pure Land, Chan Sect, Tantric Sect, Prajna Sect, and Lanruo Temple.
Beizhou, with its treacherous terrain and harsh climate, was the world of the demon and barbarian races. The demon and barbarian cultivators living there were overwhelmingly fierce, brutal, and violent.
Nanzhou was scorching hot year-round, falling far short of East Tianzhou's abundance of natural treasures and spiritual energy. It was dominated by Demonic Sects and evil cults such as the Heavenly Demon Sect, Blood Demon Palace, Yellow Springs Ghost Domain, White Bone Gate, and Wushan Cult.
As for the Turbulent Sea located at the center of the four continents, it was said to bear the scars of the ancient war between immortals and demons. Originally, there had been no division into four continents; instead, it had been a single unbroken landmass floating upon the ocean.
In a distant age long past, a cataclysmic war had erupted in the Tianyun Realm, causing the core, most fertile region at the center of the continent to sink into the abyss. Once the gigantic void filled with seawater, it became the Turbulent Sea.
The Taiyin Sect was the premier sect of the Tianyun Realm. It originated atop the moon, initially just a nameless, inconspicuous third-rate minor sect.
Ten thousand years ago, a catastrophe swept across the entire Tianyun Realm, and none of the four continents were spared.
Decades of accumulated hatred and conflicts between humans and the demon-and-barbarian races, between humans and the sea clans, between the Daoist Sect and the Buddhist Sect, and between the righteous path and the demonic path—fomented by those with ulterior motives—burned continuously for hundreds of years.
The entire Tianyun Great World descended into utter chaos. In the span of a few short centuries, the accumulations of the past ten thousand years were completely exhausted, resulting in the fall of countless cultivators and the suffering of hundreds of millions of common folk.
In that turbulent era of mutual slaughter, the transcendent Immortal Changxi emerged into the world with invincible talent. She led a group of cultivators from the Taiyin Sect away from the ancestral grounds of the Moon Palace and into East Tianzhou, a land blessed with outstanding people and divine treasures.
Over the next century, Immortal Changxi advanced as if aided by divine providence, repeatedly defeating the many with the few and the strong with the weak. Coupled with her devastatingly breathtaking beauty and peerless personal charisma, she won the devotion of a multitude of top-tier cultivators, driving the demon, barbarian, and sea clans out of East Tianzhou.
Subsequently, she divided her forces and fought on multiple fronts, securing nine consecutive victories that drove the increasingly formidable armies of the Buddhist Sect and Demonic Sect back to Xifo Continent and the Southern Wilderness respectively.
From then on, Sect Master Changxi of the Taiyin Sect was revered by cultivators of all Daoist Sect sects as the foremost figure of the Daoist Sect in East Tianzhou.
After attaining the Heavenly Immortal Realm, Immortal Changxi further suppressed the Lord of the Buddhist Sect in Xifo Continent, the Master of the Demon and Barbarian Races in Beiman Continent, and the Sovereign of the Southern Heavens Demons in the Southern Wilderness, becoming the supreme figure of the Tianyun Great World. A single Taiyin Divine Saber of hers struck terror into the hearts of demons, ghosts, and monsters alike.
"It seems this Ancestor Changxi was either a transmigrator or a Child of Destiny!"
Jiang Runyue sat leisurely in a chair, holding a beautifully bound ancient scroll. As she flipped through the pages, she clicked her tongue in wonder, while a cup of spiritual tea sat steaming on the wooden table beside her.
Thanks to the status of True Monarch Ruiying, her days recently had been exceptionally pleasant. Every day consisted of reading and cultivating, or receiving personalized guidance from her new master, who privately taught her all manner of secret arts and immortal techniques. It simply couldn't get any better.
In the lesser chiliocosm where the Divine Land was located, Daoist inheritances and various foundational aspects of cultivation knowledge had long lost their essence. Arts such as evasion techniques, talisman talismans, and Tiangang-Disha spells had been lost for who knows how many years.
What Jiang Runyue lacked most was precisely this kind of comprehensive cultivation knowledge, particularly regarding combat, spellcasting, and esoteric Daoist arts; compared to the prodigies of this realm, she lagged far behind.
Previously, she had relied purely on her starter gift-pack cheat and her own exceptional combat talent.
True Monarch Ruiying's unreserved teachings happened to remedy this flaw, allowing her to grow rapidly.
After all, she had already attained the Primordial Spirit realm, and both her intellect and spiritual perception had risen to a level difficult for ordinary people to reach. Her speed in absorbing knowledge was utterly astonishing.
Throughout the entire Tianyun Great World, although Primordial Spirit Cultivators were numerous, they were the backbone that supported the facade even within a powerhouse-laden faction like the Taiyin Sect.
For beyond them lay the Earth Immortals—those who had condensed one of the three flowers of essence, Qi, and spirit, and were known as terrestrial true immortals.
Earth Immortal Realm cultivators were akin to nuclear weapons; they had transcended the scope of ordinary cultivators. Such top-tier powerhouses preferred not to move, but whenever they did, mountains crumbled, earth fractured, cities were slaughtered, and nations were wiped out.
Therefore, in an era where Earth Immortals rarely made a move, Primordial Spirit Cultivators constituted the highest tier of active combat strength.
It was often said that forming a Golden Core was easy, but condensing a Primordial Spirit was hard.
Yet, for a Primordial Spirit Cultivator to condense the flower of essence, the difficulty far exceeded that of forming the Primordial Spirit. Often, out of a hundred Primordial Spirit Cultivators, only one or two would ultimately succeed in condensing the flower of essence.
One must know that of the three flowers of essence, Qi, and spirit, condensing one made an Earth Immortal, condensing two made a Heavenly Immortal, and all three blooming fully made a Golden Immortal.
These were the six cultivation realms that had been passed down in the Tianyun Great World for hundreds of thousands of years.
The Three Realms of Man: Qi Refining, Golden Core, Primordial Spirit.
The Three Realms of Immortality: Earth Immortal, Heavenly Immortal, Golden Immortal.
Beyond these, there might perhaps be even higher realms. Unfortunately, after spending decades poring over ancient texts and scrutinizing the vast sea of ancient scrolls in the scripture repository of the Taiyin Sect, True Monarch Ruiying had only managed to unearth a few stray fragments of information.
According to her, the ancient history of the Tianyun Great World must have suffered some disruption, causing the higher-level inheritances of cultivation and Qi refining to become fractured across the river of time.
Of course, these were merely conjectures on the part of True Monarch Ruiying, and they had little to do with Jiang Runyue.
As a newcomer, she poured the vast majority of her focus and energy into studying various forms of knowledge, turning a complete blind eye to the disturbances of the outside world.
True Monarch Ruiying was all the more overjoyed by this.
She firmly believed that the disciple she had taken would undoubtedly achieve great things in the future, and perhaps even lead the Moon Palace lineage to prominence once again, just like Ancestor Changxi.