Two days later, Merin follows his master through a narrow passage that winds deep into the mountain.
At last, they stop before a sealed door, its surface bearing faint signs of careful cleaning.
His master turns, eyes solemn. "Go inside. There, you can learn about the Shenyuan Continent as it was five hundred years ago."
Merin's brows lift. "So the ancestor came here five centuries ago."
His master nods. "Yes."
Merin pushes the door open and steps into a silent chamber lit only by a single bright crystal stone.
Dust lingers in the air, yet the shelves of records are neatly arranged, preserved with care.
He draws out the first scroll, then another, and another—reading them one by one until the pile is gone.
When he finally lifts his head, his expression is serious.
The fragmented histories paint a clearer picture.
The Shenyuan Continent is vast, its lands sprawling with countless races, and the human race holds only a small corner of it.
And it bears a name whispered with reverence and fear alike—an Ancestral Rank Continent.
In this world, continents are divided by rank according to the density of their spiritual energy.
At the peak stands the Ancestral Rank, followed by Top Rank, Intermediate Rank, Small Rank, and, beneath them, scattered islands.
The higher the rank, the greater the size, the richer the resources, the harsher the struggles.
The Wild Continent, where Merin was born, is merely an Intermediate Rank continent—more than ten times smaller than the Shenyuan Continent, and correspondingly poorer in resources.
Now the records make sense to him.
It is precisely because of this disparity that the human race, though confined to less than five per cent of the Shenyuan Continent and beset by dangers on every side, never abandoned that land.
Within the Shenyuan Continent, the humans live beneath the structure of the Alliance, formed by sects and top families binding together for survival.
At its heart stand the ten most powerful sects: Purple Jade Sect, Sword Mountain, Holy Fire Sect, Mirage Water Palace, Yin-Yang Sect, Beast Mountain, Puppet Pavilion, Four-Season Tower, Shadow Blade Pavilion, and Demon Blood Mountain.
Among them, Purple Jade Sect shines as one of the pillars—and the Lanshan Sect here is but one of its countless branches.
Merin closes the last record slowly, realisation settling like stone in his chest.
When he steps onto the Shenyuan Continent, his identity will no longer be tied to the Lanshan Sect alone.
He will walk under the banner of the Purple Jade Sect.
But what grips him more is not the name of a sect, but the cultivation path itself.
The Qi Refiner system—his entire foundation—was not even meant for the Shenyuan Continent.
It was created so that humans could settle on the Wild Continent, a method designed to refine essence ceaselessly, crude yet effective, and most importantly, one that is little more than a mirror of the demons' own crude path, adapted for survival in a harsher land.
The Shenyuan Continent follows a completely different way.
The records lay it bare: first comes the Body Forging Realm, then the Inner Energy Realm, then the Spiritual Body Realm, followed by the Inner Palace Realm, the Star Induction Realm, the Ascendant Realm, and the Tao Space Realm.
Beyond Tao Space, the records grow vague, suggesting higher realms but leaving only fragments of names.
By comparison, his current level—the Qi Refining Grandmaster—corresponds only to the strength of the Inner Palace Realm.
And yet, because he has already formed his Spiritual Body, he holds a rare advantage: he can abandon the old system and step directly into the Shenyuan path, advancing to the Inner Palace once he secures a magic power.
That thought lingers with him as he sets the final record back on the shelf.
When he leaves the secret chamber, the crystal's light fades behind him, and by the time he returns to his room, his mind burns with a single conviction.
His journey in the Wild Continent is only a prologue.
The true cultivation road awaits him in Shenyuan.
Inside his room, he sits cross-legged and takes a slow, steady breath.
The thought gnaws at him: when will the alliance send someone to take him away?
Days? Weeks? Months?
Until then, he cannot waste time.
His spirit cultivation must advance.
But how?
Releasing his conscious spirit outside his body and letting the world's forces temper it has only made it resilient, not stronger.
Wind hardened it, yes, but did not raise its realm.
Fire will scorch it next, thunder will shatter it after—each step more dangerous than the last.
One mistake, and the damage would cripple him for months… or leave him dead on the floor of his cave, spirit scattered into nothing.
Too extreme.
Too fragile a road.
Merin narrows his eyes, thinking deeper.
If the path forward cannot be found by tempering alone, then perhaps it lies in imitation.
What is the strongest spirit he knows?
The answer comes like a whisper through his memories—the spirits of the world themselves, those vast and eternal embodiments of law.
Compared to them, his current spirit is but a flickering candle.
If he can shape his spirit in their likeness, borrow their principles, mimic their essence… then perhaps he can cross the barrier into the next realm.
He already has the Dream World, opened through the essence of Dream, and five elemental laws fused into it.
But what if he opens a small space made purely of spirit power, with his consciousness serving as its will?
If such a space can exist, then its gradual improvement would naturally strengthen his spirit.
Merin closes his eyes and sinks inward, entering the sea of consciousness.
It is a boundless black void, silent, with only his conscious spirit hovering at the centre.
Now the question burns in him: how to open such a space?
The first time, he relied on the Dream World's essence—it was not his own power.
The second time, he shaped the acupoint space, but that, too, was not creation; it was an improvement and expansion of something already present.
This time is different.
He must open a space from nothing, carve it into existence with only his spirit.
And that is the difficulty.
He is completely clueless about where to begin, for no guidance remains in the records, and no one has ever spoken of opening a separate space within the sea of consciousness.
Yet the idea refuses to leave him.
He wonders if he should imitate Pangu and hack his sea of consciousness apart to open a separate space.
The next moment, as soon as the thought comes, he shakes his head.
It is too dangerous.
One strike in the wrong place could shatter his sea of consciousness and leave him a hollow idiot.
Instead, a different thought stirs—what if he uses the law of illusion?
First, make his sea of consciousness believe there is a separate space, then reinforce that illusion until it becomes reality.
The method feels strange, but possible.
His conscious spirit releases its power, weaving it into shape.
An illusory small space appears within the black void of his sea of consciousness.
The first step is laughably easy.
But the next is where the difficulty begins.
The illusion space is fragile, a bubble that will vanish the instant he recalls his power.
And he cannot allow his conscious spirit to be endlessly consumed, for it must serve many other purposes.
So the second step is clear.
He must withdraw his power… and yet leave the illusion space standing.
For that, he needs to form a core within the illusion space, something that can maintain its existence without constant support.
The core must be made of spiritual energy, fused with the magic power of the illusion law.
He begins to channel spiritual energy into the fragile space, and the emptiness gradually fills.
The void turns pale, brighter and brighter, until the entire illusion space becomes white.
Then he starts refining the spiritual energy, compressing and shaping it while continuously weaving the law of illusion through every strand.
As the refinement deepens, the energy condenses further—first into denser spiritual essence, then atomises into a fine spiritual mist.
From mist, it thickens into spiritual liquid, and at last crystallises into a solid core.
When the crystal core forms, he carefully withdraws the power of his conscious spirit.
To his relief, the illusion space does not collapse.
Instead, his conscious spirit takes residence inside the crystal core.
From the core, the illusion begins to evolve, and within the space, a solitary mountain rises.
That mountain becomes the anchor, the heart from which a world might one day spread outward.
But to make the illusion mountain real, he must grant it a seed of truth.
It needs the essence of the law present in an actual mountain.
He is already within one, and so his spirit surges as he turns his mind toward the stone walls around him.
He does not need to fully comprehend the law of the mountain.
Only its foundation, the basic essence, is enough to breathe life into the illusion.
While Merin is immersed in comprehension, Lou Yuan falls into a dilemma.
He craves the spirit bead, yet it rests in the hands of his senior brother Ye Feng.
To steal it would be nearly impossible, for even the devil in his magic ring cannot influence Ye Feng.
Frustration twists his heart, and at last he speaks inwardly.
"Devil, is there another way? A path that can let me reach the Ascendant Realm within three years—so I can crush Jun Qing?"