Chapter 1: A Hundred-Year-Old Man with Heavenly Comprehension

Yuhua Sect.

Canon Pavilion.

An old Daoist sat cross-legged on a meditation cushion, cultivating in silence.

His hair and beard were snow-white. His eyes were gently closed as he breathed in slow, measured rhythms.

With each exhale, a long pause followed, and a faint stream of turbid air was expelled from his body.

Outside, wind drove snow through the mountain passes of Yuhua Sect, howling between the peaks before slamming into the great bronze bell that stood before the Canon Pavilion.

Dong!!!

The ancient, heavy bell — its age unknown — let out a deep, resonant echo that jolted the old Daoist awake.

Inside the room, a faint candle flame flickered, casting light across the deep wrinkles on the old man's face.

"Truly old now — to be startled out of meditation by nothing more than wind and snow."

Lin Jiufeng sighed and slowly rose to his feet. At his age, he was no longer the vigorous young man he had once been. Injury was the thing he feared most now.

Gazing out at the storm beyond the window, Lin Jiufeng's thoughts drifted back more than a hundred years.

Back then, he had just transmigrated into this world of cultivation.

It was a world where prodigies gathered in droves — where cultivators soared through the skies and burrowed through the earth, where immortals dwelled in hidden grottoes and pursued eternal life.

It was also a world of ruthless power struggles — where people killed for treasures, where war was brutal and death was commonplace, where every step could be your last.

The newly arrived Lin Jiufeng had been consumed by a single burning thought.

He had to cultivate. He had to live forever.

But reality struck him like a hammer.

He sought to become a disciple of the Taishang Sect and was eliminated in the very first round of selection.

He tried to join the Buddhist Order and was told he lacked the roots of wisdom.

He considered the Demon Sect, but feared being used as material for the Ten Thousand Soul Banner.

He never stumbled upon any Fortuitous Encounter or ancient ruin.

He didn't dare leap off cliffs in search of treasure — after all, he only had one life.

He wandered and drifted, running himself ragged, and came away with nothing.

His dream of becoming a prodigy shattered.

Only then did Lin Jiufeng see himself clearly: he was an ordinary man. No exceptional talent. No golden finger that Transmigrators were supposed to come with. And after years of traveling the world, he had witnessed the brutal side of the cultivation world firsthand.

Grudges and vendettas. Territorial disputes. A single wrong word and blades were drawn.

Strip away the glamour and glory, and this world of immortal cultivation was deeply hostile to ordinary people.

Having made peace with all of this, Lin Jiufeng's heart grew cold. He abandoned any thought of continuing to seek a master.

But then, by chance, he came across an old Daoist lying unconscious from his wounds.

The old man was an Elder of Yuhua Sect, gravely injured from a battle and on the verge of death when Lin Jiufeng found him.

After recovering, the Elder, grateful for the life-saving kindness, brought Lin Jiufeng to Yuhua Sect and accepted him as a disciple through an exception.

Time flew by. A hundred years passed.

The old Daoist who had brought him into the sect had succumbed to his worsening injuries some years ago and quietly passed away.

Lin Jiufeng, lacking in natural talent, had entered Yuhua Sect and practiced a Wood Element Cultivation Technique to extend his lifespan, which was how he had managed to live to the age of one hundred and thirty.

But in recent days, he had felt it with every fiber of his being — his end was near.

Looking back on his life, Lin Jiufeng let out a long sigh.

By any reasonable measure, living to one hundred and thirty was already more than enough.

But he was living in a golden age of cultivation, and he was a Transmigrator at that — yet he had amounted to absolutely nothing.

"Whatever happened to the golden finger every Transmigrator is supposed to get?"

All these years, Lin Jiufeng had never found anything that set him apart from anyone else.

He had been ordinary before transmigrating, and ordinary after. So what the fuck was the point of transmigrating at all?

Lin Jiufeng sighed, then slowly picked up a Daoist scripture and began to read.

Twenty years after joining Yuhua Sect, with cultivation essentially out of reach, and unwilling to leave the mountain, he had applied to become the keeper of the Canon Pavilion.

With nothing else to do, he read. Over eighty years, he had worked his way through most of the Daoist scriptures housed in the Canon Pavilion.

Some were simple and easy to understand. Some left him vaguely puzzled. Others were as incomprehensible as texts from another world entirely.

He picked up a book at random and began to flip through it.

He had read everything here before, but he still returned to them periodically — there was always something new to find, a different experience each time.

This particular book was a biography, chronicling the life of Zhou Sheng — a disciple of extraordinary brilliance who had once belonged to Yuhua Sect.

Zhou Sheng. The foremost disciple of Yuhua Sect over a hundred years ago. A peerless genius who had reached the Seventh Seal at a remarkably young age. He was hailed as the greatest talent in the cultivation world of his era, and the hope for Yuhua Sect's revival.

He had fought the Demon Sect, clashed with the Demon Race, and battled the savage peoples of the northern wastelands — never once suffering defeat. He had dominated every peer of his generation and even surpassed many of the older generation.

Yet his life lasted only forty brief years.

According to the book, this genius of Yuhua Sect had committed a grave transgression: he had married a woman of the Demon Race, which enraged the Taishang Sect — the foremost power of the righteous path.

The Taishang Sect fancied itself the leader of the righteous path, the upholder of justice in the cultivation world. A union between human and demon, they declared, was an affront to the natural order.

The Taishang Sect demanded that Yuhua Sect hand over Zhou Sheng, threatening sanctions if they refused.

Yuhua Sect naturally refused and fought to protect him, but the Taishang Sect's power was overwhelming. They imposed sanctions from every direction, crushing Yuhua Sect under relentless pressure.

Unwilling to drag Yuhua Sect down with him, Zhou Sheng announced his departure from the sect and slipped away quietly — then began to strike back.

On the Yellow Sand Ancient Road, wielding the cultivation of the Seventh Seal, he hunted and killed a Dao Ancestor of the Taishang Sect who had reached the Eighth Seal. The world was shaken.

Only then did people realize that in that battle, under the most extreme pressure, Zhou Sheng had re-derived the lost [Yuhua Ascension Scripture] of Yuhua Sect.

The [Yuhua Ascension Scripture] was the supreme technique passed down by the founding patriarch of Yuhua Sect. Cultivated to its peak, it allowed one to transcend and ascend — it was the most invincible cultivation method in the world.

But three hundred years ago, Yuhua Sect had been invaded by the forces of the Demon Sect. The casualties were devastating, and nearly the entire upper echelon was wiped out. The original [Yuhua Ascension Scripture] was lost, leaving only a corrupted, incomplete version that had lost much of its power.

In the years that followed, Yuhua Sect had tirelessly sought the original text, or tried to re-derive it from scratch — but no one had ever succeeded.

The [Yuhua Ascension Scripture] simply demanded too great a level of comprehension. Ordinary geniuses were simply not enough.

But Zhou Sheng had succeeded.

The battle on the Yellow Sand Ancient Road had astonished the world — and thoroughly enraged the Taishang Sect.

At that time, the Supreme Patriarch of the Taishang Sect, who had long been in seclusion contemplating the immortal path, emerged from his closed-door cultivation. With the overwhelming power of the Ninth Seal, he crossed three continents and, on the Luo River Banks, struck Zhou Sheng down in seven moves.

The author of this biography made no effort to conceal his grief. Every line was saturated with sorrow and regret.

Zhou Sheng's death left all of Yuhua Sect heartbroken and furious.

The Taishang Sect's overbearing tyranny silenced all who knew of it.

After finishing the biography, Lin Jiufeng murmured with a heavy heart: "Only forty years old — in the very prime of his life. He had even re-derived the complete [Yuhua Ascension Scripture], yet he was cut down by the Taishang Sect's jealousy and pettiness. And what a shame — the [Yuhua Ascension Scripture] had only just been recovered, only to be lost again."

A technique powerful enough to let Zhou Sheng at the Seventh Seal slay a cultivator of the Eighth Seal and withstand seven strikes from the Ninth Seal — and it had simply vanished from the world. What a waste.

When Lin Jiufeng had joined Yuhua Sect, Zhou Sheng had just been killed. A pity he had never met that extraordinary genius in person.

Lin Jiufeng set down the book, filled with regret.

Suddenly — ding — a golden radiance blazed to life inside Lin Jiufeng's mind, and a perfectly round golden elixir materialized within it.

Then the elixir cracked open, and a profound, ineffable energy surged into the space between Lin Jiufeng's brows.

In the next instant, two lines of text appeared before Lin Jiufeng's eyes.

[You have read Zhou Sheng's biography with great care and sincerity. Heavenly Comprehension has been activated.]

[Your Heavenly Comprehension stirs. You have comprehended the Yuhua Ascension Scripture.]

He stared at the words, stunned and overjoyed.

So this was his golden finger?

Heavenly Comprehension?

Lin Jiufeng felt like crying.

Over a hundred years late — but it had finally come.