Chapter 79: The Ancient Divine Shaman’s Unparalleled Brilliance—Transcendent Realm, Achieved!

Chapter 79: The Ancient Divine Shaman's Unparalleled Brilliance—Transcendent Realm, Achieved!

"The first city was not burned by her."

Lesser Shangqing gazed at the spot where his mother's lingering thoughts had dissipated, slowly clenching his fist.

Second Senior Brother had lied to her.

She had driven the Boundary Fire to the wastelands, but Second Senior Brother deceived her, telling her she had burned a city.

Heartbroken and adrift, she believed his lies.

The moment she handed the Star-Shifting Plate to him marked the beginning of all the mistakes.

He deliberately set fire to cities one after another; each heavy life became a grim token dragging Venerable Wuyang into the abyss.

Lesser Shangqing closed his eyes.

Now that the truth was out, he couldn't tell if he felt more pain or relief.

After a long while, he sighed, opened his eyes, and looked at Fu Yu.

Fu Yu was surrounded by scattered points of light.

She reached out her hand, and they drifted like fireflies, floating lazily toward her fingertips.

Her eyes shone brilliantly.

Closing her palm gently, all the ashes that had been flying chaotically around the tomb, carried by the resentment, gathered in her palm.

Fu Yu turned and looked at this group of oddly-shaped companions.

Suddenly, a random thought struck her.

Her face turned serious as she solemnly instructed: "This matter teaches us a lesson: making mistakes isn't terrible; what's terrible is losing the ability to think calmly after making a mistake, leading to repeated errors. Remember this well and take it as a warning."

The monkey and the scarecrow instinctively straightened their backs, nodding solemnly.

After nodding, the scarecrow and the monkey exchanged a glance, their eyes filled with shock—it was as if someone else was speaking through her!

Lesser Shangqing sighed and nodded: "Indeed, alas."

Li Xueke nodded in emphatic agreement: "Exactly!"

Wu He: "..."

A group of adults listening to a four-year-old child lecture was truly bizarre.

The Paper Effigy Boy had been rubbing its hands in anticipation for a long time. At Fu Yu's signal, it happily clapped its hands and loudly announced: "Secret realm—close!"

This time, the secret realm, which had turned a deaf ear before, finally deigned to close.

The void vanished, and the group stood before the coffin, right as the three sticks of incense burned down.

"Pfft."

The last three wisps of thin smoke rose, the resentment dissipated, transforming into auspicious clouds.

Aboard the Flying Ship.

Fu Yu possessed half of Qin Qianzhu's cultivation base.

Absorbing and refining it was enough to help her advance to the Transcendent realm—re-cultivating the old path, she would encounter no bottlenecks.

A battle broke out over who would guard Fu Yu during her cultivation.

The Foxtail Grass Spirit and the monkey refused to yield to each other.

First, they brawled noisily in the cabin, overturning the tea table and window ledge. Then, the Foxtail Grass Spirit extended its tentacle-like branches of withered wood, lashing out wildly, sending the carved ancient window, covered with a windproof barrier, flying.

Just as the monkey, in a fit of rage, was about to transform into its true form and rip the flying ship apart, Lesser Shangqing intervened in time. He snatched up one in each hand and threw the two strange creatures far away.

"Boom!"

The monkey swelled in size mid-air, its hundreds-of-zhang true form rising from the ground, blotting out half the light from the flying ship.

The Foxtail Grass Spirit cackled weirdly, shook its grassy blades, and transformed into a giant demon with crimson eyes.

"Bang!"

The monkey and the demon collided, fighting until the heavens darkened and the sun and moon lost their light.

Taking advantage of their fierce battle, Lesser Shangqing struck a pose of steady reliability and transcendent grace. He nonchalantly erected a barrier around the flying ship, raised his hand, and gestured: "Divine Shaman, proceed. I'll stand guard, have no fear."

Fu Yu: "..."

In the past, she had stumbled along alone, often holing up in some cave to break through in a frantic rush—if she were even a step slower, her enemies would corner her in a dog hole and attack.

To have a guardian? Such a luxury, she had never even thought of it.

Today, a group of people were actually fighting over it.

Fu Yu scowled: "In the past... forget it!"

She waved her hand, sat cross-legged, closed her eyes, and focused her spirit to enter meditation.

Foundation Establishment.

Back then, she achieved Foundation Establishment not long after her bloody purge of an underground black gambling den.

Immortals had arrived in the capital and, for some reason, wiped out the prime minister's entire family—Fu Yu didn't know what had truly happened behind the scenes at the time, nor did she know this event would involve her so directly.

She instinctively felt afraid.

If even the prime minister could die, an "Evil Spirit" like her, if discovered by Immortals...

Fu Yu fled the capital overnight.

She burrowed into desolate mountains and old forests, fighting tigers, wild bears, and mountain boars covered in thick pine resin armor, plundering their dying power.

She encountered a demon for the first time.

A demon's power was on an entirely different level from that of wild beasts.

It toyed with her effortlessly; it was malicious, but fortunately, it was malicious enough.

It didn't kill her immediately but slowly tormented and tortured her.

Fu Yu was in so much pain she wished for death.

But she inherited the Old Charlatan's scrappy, never-say-die attitude of "better a live coward than a dead hero," stubbornly refusing to die.

She didn't know how many bones she had broken.

Using the "advantage" of her body being able to contort grotesquely after the fractures, she ambushed the monster from an unexpected angle, driving the protruding bone shard from her forearm deep into its eye and piercing its brain.

She almost went down with it.

In the desolate mountains, with such severe injuries, she would either starve to death, die from pain, bleed out, or freeze to death when night fell.

Lying on the ground, she performed a divination with her fingers—sure enough, it was a hexagram of death.

Fu Yu laughed.

The Old Charlatan always predicted she would strike it rich, yet she never saw any wealth.

Only fools believe in fortune-tellers!

Dragging her limp, snake-like body, she struggled to crawl over and burrowed into the monster's carcass.

The demon's abdomen was warm and soft.

Closing her eyes felt like soaking in a dreamt-of hot spring, making her want to sink down and never get up.

On such a night, dying was easy, but living was a thousand times harder.

Fu Yu refused to die. Gritting her teeth, she used her only intact left hand to meticulously map every bone in her body, setting them one by one.

The excruciating pain made her aware of her meridians.

The moment she masochistically set all her bones, a sound like creation itself echoed within her.

Mortal body, shattered!

Her breakthrough from Foundation Establishment to Golden Core came on another stormy night.

Fu Yu couldn't understand why she always managed to offend people she had no business messing with.

Back then, her Incantation was hit-or-miss, and her martial skills were only passable. Yet, by sheer accident, she made a mortal enemy of a cultivation family backed by a Golden Core cultivator.

Years later, the details had faded, but she remembered a pair of twin brothers who were seriously twisted—they enjoyed eating people!

Eating people! That was intolerable.

Fu Yu killed one of them and was then hunted down by the entire family.

At the Foundation Establishment stage, she could ride a flying sword, but Fu Yu couldn't afford a spiritual sword, so she could only run on the ground.

They chased her on flying swords, whooshing through the air, while she crawled through dog holes, hid in drainage ditches, smeared herself with mud, and scrambled desperately.

After barely managing to deceive her enemies with a misdirection, she huddled in pitch-black sludge, surrounded only by rats, cockroaches, and earthworms.

If she didn't advance, she would die.

The moment light broke through, her enemies' figures also appeared in her sight.

Fu Yu, now at the Golden Core stage, turned the tables and killed them.

—Foundation Establishment, shattered!

—Golden Core, achieved!

Even at the Golden Core stage, Fu Yu still had enemies coming out of the woodwork.

She didn't understand why, as she grew stronger, the enemies she provoked grew stronger as well.

Throughout her Golden Core stage, she was still running for her life.

She could divine, calculate, and understand geomancy—wasn't it only natural for her to raid secret realms and make off with the treasures?

She had a keen eye for value—what was wrong with snagging ancient immortal artifacts at auction houses for a bargain?

She was just an ordinary Diviner, yet she repeatedly made it to the top three of some most-wanted list.

In short, what accompanied her throughout her Golden Core stage was always harsh winds, frost, and the glint of blades.

She was beaten all the way from the early Golden Core stage to the Great Perfection of Golden Core.

At the end of her rope, if she didn't advance, she would die.

Fu Yu refused to die, so it had to be others who died.

—Golden Core, shattered!

—Nascent Soul, achieved!

Advancing from Nascent Soul to Transcendent was quite a hassle.

She realized her original wild, unorthodox methods no longer worked. To advance to the Transcendent stage, she needed something mystical—something called "karmic affinity," or so she heard.

Fu Yu found it amusing at the time.

Karmic affinity, cause and effect, destiny, opportunity... weren't these just the buzzwords she used to fool her clients?

The Transcendent stage required this?

Fu Yu had no choice. She changed her name, altered her appearance, and infiltrated a major sect.

Ahem, it was none other than the Zhuotian Divine Sect.

She was also unlucky enough to have a protagonist's fate. Originally, she just wanted to sneak into the library to browse ancient texts, but she ended up stumbling right into trouble.

By sheer accident—truly by accident—she discovered the dark secrets of that sect.

They used living people to refine corpses, dabbling in the macabre.

The moment she discovered their secret, they discovered her.

In the corpse-refining secret realm, she was chased and beaten by an old Transcendent freak. The scene was too horrible to look back on.

Fu Yu crawled through mountains of corpses, swam through seas of blood, and even pretended to be a corpse.

Back then, forget about having a protector—she barely managed to seize a fleeting opportunity, hiding under the loincloth of the massive stitched-together corpse controlled by that old Transcendent monster to hastily break through.

—Nascent Soul, shattered!

—Transcendent...

On the flying boat, Fu Yu's continuously rising aura suddenly stalled.

Outside the cabin, the anxiously waiting crowd couldn't help but ball their fists. The Foxtail Grass Spirit and the monkey quickly retracted their auras, slipping back quietly, peering in with bated breath.

'Why's it stopped? Why's it stopped?'

'Is something wrong? Is the master going to die?!'

Fu Yu felt a stir in her heart, utterly astonished.

Back when she was advancing to the Transcendent realm, she'd been sure she would fail.

She was gravely wounded, her wounds infected with corpse poison, her skin and flesh turning a livid bluish-black, and even her meridians were affected.

Her dantian and qi sea ached as if being carved with knives, and each breath reeked of blood, corpse oil, and decay.

The divine sense of the Transcendent realm old monster prowled around her incessantly.

In such a wretched environment, how was she supposed to grasp any fucking karma?

Cornered with no way out, she only remembered that at the moment she was discovered, her mind flashed white with a thunderous boom. Risking her life, she shattered her nascent soul and ascended to the Transcendent realm, then projected her spirit and used dream magic to turn the tables and kill the corpse-refining old monster before her.

Now, with the past replaying itself, Fu Yu's keen eyes caught a sliver of the moonlight she had missed back then.

Clear and cold, it purified the filth.

She remembered—much later, she found out by chance that on that night, a Sword Immortal, famous from a young age, had for some unknown reason suddenly lashed out with a sword strike toward the southern sky.

A single sword strike shattered the Heavenly Gate, its frost chilling fourteen continents.

That sword strike ripped open a corner of the hidden corpse ground. The Zhuotian Divine Sect was too busy covering it up to pursue Fu Yu, allowing her to escape.

A sudden, understanding laugh escaped Fu Yu.

'So it was you, Jun Bu Du.'

Many years later, as she looked back at that fleeting glimpse of clear, cold moonlight in her memory, her heart quivered with unspeakable feeling.

Who could say this wasn't fate?

She pressed her lips together, her hand seals shifting.

Foundation Establishment, break!

Golden Core, break!

Nascent Soul, break!

Three stages broken one after another—Transcendent, achieved!

Fu Yu's heart swelled with passion as she slowly opened her eyes. She focused her brow, and her primordial spirit left her body, descending toward the glowing mote she'd flung from her palm.

By now, the night was deep, and the flying ship glided over a lake.

The water's surface mirrored a full moon, with a soft, clear light both in the sky and on the earth.

Amidst such pristine water and sky, motes of glazed light spun and condensed, gradually taking the form of a woman, ethereal yet tangible.

Bones of glaze, skin of jade, a soul of the bright moon.

"She" sat opposite Fu Yu, making a one-handed seal, like stunning mirror reflections of each other.

Every being aboard, human or otherwise, held their breath.

The Ancient Divine Shaman—peerless in elegance, fashioned from ashes, utterly horrifying!