Eternal Life from the Golden Needle Technique

Chapter 250: Chapter 247: 1 Year of Growth

In the past year,

nothing major had happened in the wider Immortal Cultivation Realm.

Perhaps this was because Master Wandering Dragon commanded enough respect. The various powers all restrained their subordinates, forbidding them from causing trouble nearby to avoid offending the promising Immortal Sect expert.

Or perhaps hidden rival forces had already figured everything out, even colluding with Master Wandering Dragon’s enemies,

but they were lying in wait, secretly building their strength for the day they would erupt onto the scene.

However, these high-level schemes had little to do with Shen Changchuan.

Although he was a Registered Disciple taken in by Master Wandering Dragon,

the low-key Shen Changchuan didn’t go around announcing it, with the result that most of the Dragon Cloud Sect Disciples from his batch were unaware of the matter.

A few of Master Wandering Dragon’s entry-level disciples did know about it,

but they didn’t interact much.

They had only met briefly at a gathering,

and his senior brothers and sisters had merely made verbal promises at a small gathering to look after their junior brother in the future, and had given him some gifts—

Magical Artifacts, Elixirs, Cultivation Techniques, and so on.

But that was about it.

Only a year had passed; for many Soul Emergence Realm Cultivators, a single session of closed-door cultivation lasted longer than that.

So naturally, there was no opportunity to deepen their bonds.

In contrast,

Shen Changchuan’s relationship with Wu Tianhao was actually much closer,

after all, they already had a history of helping each other out.

That’s how they had grown closer.

Over the past year,

Wu Tianhao would occasionally invite Shen Changchuan to get together, sharing stories of his own experiences and describing the wonders and strange tales of the Immortal Cultivation Realm.

This also broadened Shen Changchuan’s horizons considerably.

Of course,

some of what they talked about also involved him.

It was probably because his words back at the entrance examination, before the Heart Inquiry Gate, had been too arrogant and had drawn too much resentment.

As a result, this batch of new Disciples had been training with extreme diligence,

a level of effort Wu Tianhao had never even seen during his time at the Yuqing Immortal Sect!

They listened attentively during the monthly public lectures, asked probing questions, trained hard afterward, and even exchanged pointers with fellow disciples to advance together.

Even just within the Mountain Gate, you could feel the fervent, diligent atmosphere of study.

And the reason they were so diligent,

their goal was very simple:

to thrash him, Shen Changchuan, in the grand competition three years later and finally get some satisfaction.

When he spoke of this,

Wu Tianhao would look at Shen Changchuan with great interest, his gaze like someone eagerly waiting for a good show to start.

Shen Changchuan was left rather speechless by this.

Admittedly,

facing two to three hundred pairs of ravenous, wolf-like gazes, Shen Changchuan did feel a bit of pressure.

If they actually managed to catch up to him,

and then get publicly defeated at the grand competition,

then wouldn’t the badass line he’d copied from a fantasy novel in his past life—’I never give a second thought to the enemies I defeat...’—become the biggest joke of all?

The mere thought of a scene tantamount to social suicide,

even though Shen Changchuan didn’t care much for his reputation,

was something he wanted absolutely no part in experiencing.

And so,

over the past year, he had felt a greater sense of urgency and had put much more effort into his Cultivation.

Against this backdrop, Shen Changchuan devoted himself to his practice and made immense progress.

Although his Cultivation had remained at the Ninth Layer Peak Realm over the past year, without a breakthrough,

he had spent that time relying on the teachings from the Yuqing Immortal Sect to further solidify his own foundation.

His Magical Power, in both quality and quantity, had surpassed what it was a year ago by more than just a small margin!

Moreover,

perhaps because his Magical Power was now circulating in a complete and harmonious cycle, his physical Physique was also being nourished and reinforced by it.

And because of this,

although his Cultivation Realm had not seen a corresponding increase within the year,

the increase in his strength was still enormous!

It was only now that Shen Changchuan finally understood why his master, Master Wandering Dragon, had told him a year ago that his strength would only place him in the top one hundred among the Qi Introduction Realm disciples of the Yuqing Immortal Sect.

’Refined Magical Power, controlled by Divine Sense—they should be complementary, each elevating the other to its peak...’

’With that kind of synergy, and considering that the Qi Introduction Realm Cultivators accepted into the Yuqing Immortal Sect are all either prodigies with Heaven-defying Comprehension or have powerful backgrounds and no shortage of Cultivation Resources or profound techniques... it’s no wonder that the power they can unleash would be enough to take on a true Soul Emergence Realm Cultivator...’

Shen Changchuan couldn’t help but be filled with emotion.

He was, of course, self-aware.

True, in the Tian Nan Domain, it had been three hundred years since a prodigy had appeared who could kill someone in the Soul Emergence Realm while still in the Qi Introduction Realm.

This was why Shen Changchuan had caused such a sensation after slaying the Demon Cultivator Xu Ziming,

to the point where Cultivators in the Tian Nan Domain were vaguely touting him as the number one person of the current era in the Qi Introduction Realm.

But this was only limited to the Tian Nan Domain.

By comparison, the Southern Great Domain surpassed the Tian Nan Domain in both power and the prosperity of the Immortal Dao,

and the other thirty-five Small Domains had not suffered a devastating blow three hundred years ago as the Tian Nan Domain had...

The world is vast,

and people who could slay those in the Soul Emergence Realm while still in the Qi Introduction Realm—people with even more impressive records than his—truly existed.

It was just that they were too far away, and news was difficult to come by.

From the very beginning, he had never arrogantly believed that he was the strongest in the Qi Introduction Realm.

It was just that before,

he simply had a hard time imagining just how much stronger a Qi Introduction Realm Cultivator could possibly be!

Now, he was beginning to understand.

’As I am now, without using any trump cards or Treasure Artifacts, I could probably take down my past self from a year ago in a direct confrontation within twenty or thirty moves!’

Feeling the powerful strength he now commanded and comparing it to his self from a year ago, Shen Changchuan couldn’t help but feel supremely confident.

He felt that the gap between himself and the truly peerless Demons his master, Master Wandering Dragon, had spoken of should have narrowed somewhat.

As he was now,

using the Demon Cultivator Xu Ziming, whom he had killed a year ago despite being in a lower realm, as a benchmark,

he could now last for at least fifty moves and barely hold his own, even without using a Treasure Artifact.

This was the progress he had made after a year of diligent Cultivation, of solidifying his foundation and reforging his fundamentals!

And his progress over the past year,

wasn’t limited to just this!