Chapter 7
More than ten days later.
Jiang Chen awoke from his coma. Although his injuries had not yet healed, he had regained the ability to move.
He stretched lazily while sitting on the edge of the bed.
In this life, although he was the villain and his Core Formation was still destroyed, he felt extremely relaxed.
His gaze swept around the room, and he saw several translucent white pills on the wooden table, each emitting a halo of energy.
Without needing to look closely, Jiang Chen already knew the name of this elixir.
Fourth-grade Spirit Renewal Pill.
Its effect was to quickly restore spiritual energy and allow cultivators with shattered Core Formation to re-enter the Core Formation Realm.
“Master…”
A pang of inexplicable pain struck Jiang Chen’s heart.Through nine lifetimes, he would have his Core Formation destroyed by Xiao Hongyi, and in each life, Xiao Hongyi would personally leave several Spirit Renewal Pills before he awoke.
Jiang Chen had always known that his master truly cherished him.
Deep love, severe discipline.
When Xiao Hongyi was completely despaired, believing that her eldest disciple was beyond redemption, her reaction was very intense.
Jiang Lianyue and the other junior sisters and brothers simply despised him to the extreme.
But Xiao Hongyi. She destroyed Jiang Chen’s cultivation and expelled him from the sect.
She wouldn’t allow anyone to mention Jiang Chen’s name in her presence.
When she learned that Jiang Chen continued to commit evil deeds after leaving the sect, she even prepared to deal with it.
In terms of physical harm, Xiao Hongyi’s treatment of Jiang Chen was far worse than that of any junior brother or sister.
In every life, Jiang Chen was left with an unstable Dao heart and deep-seated frustration by his own master.
Yet all these frustrations would dissipate like smoke before death.
‘My disciple, I am not a good master. It is my failure to teach you well.’
Because every time Jiang Chen closed his eyes, he would see Xiao Hongyi rushing towards him in tears, her peerless face full of heartbreak, yet still holding him tightly in her arms.
“Master, don’t cry, this disciple will still save you in next life.”
Recalling all this, Jiang Chen’s heart ached as if a knife was cutting it.
The main reason he could endure, misunderstood, blamed, and killed by the protagonist for nine lifetimes… wasn’t it to save Xiao Hongyi’s life?
He was not a masochist.
But he couldn’t just watch his master die tragically! It wasn’t until the ninth life that Jiang Chen finally understood.
He couldn’t fight against the heavens.
In another sense, wasn’t his master and the many junior brothers and sisters also trapped in a cycle of nine lifetimes?
What was the same was that they were all trapped in this world, tormented over and over again, and then died.
What sets Jiang Chen apart is that he has memories, while others do not.
Rather than fighting the inevitable, he decided to make this life the final one.
Jiang Chen was tired, both mentally and physically.
Aside from his master and the Jiang family, he no longer wanted to care about anything.
He simply wished to quietly face the end and then ascend to another world.
In fact, he had other considerations.
If he could return to this world after ascending, he would make sure to tear the protagonist into a thousand pieces and feed him to the dogs!
Although the likelihood of this was extremely low.
“Sigh.”
Jiang Chen slowly exhaled a breath of stale air to calm his emotions.
He had to maintain his villainous persona and face his grand finale to ascend from where he was.
This also meant that he had to follow the plot whether he liked it or not.
In the original story, the protagonist Lin Feng’s apprenticeship was still a month away.
Now, what Jiang Chen needed to do was to quickly restore his cultivation level, establish his villainous persona, and gain some benefits from the system to ensure he could survive until the end.
Although relying on the system’s rewards to become stronger and thus torment the protagonist to change the world was a viable strategy, the consequences of failing the mission were unknown, and Jiang Chen did not dare to try anymore.
After nine cycles of reincarnation, he had had enough.
If he were to fall into the cycle again and lose the system, he would be completely trapped in this cycle of reincarnation! It would be an endless loop of suffering!
No longer indulging in wild thoughts, Jiang Chen picked up the Spirit Renewal Pill on the table and swallowed it.
Previously, he had been at the Earthly Origin, but his core had been destroyed, and his cultivation had plummeted to the lower four realms.
The core that had shattered in his dantian had devolved into a mere sea of spiritual energy.
This was the Sea Splitting realm of the lower four realms.
The lower four realms consist of Body Tempering, Spirit Induction, Qi Cultivation, and Sea Splitting.
To enter the path of cultivation, one must first use medicinal herbs for Body Tempering, then draw in spiritual energy through techniques for Spirit Induction.
As the spiritual energy becomes denser, it can be transformed into a force to manipulate various magical treasures and practice offensive secret techniques.
On this basis, cultivators need to constantly wash their dantian with spiritual energy, cultivating the spiritual bed into a sea, reaching the final realm of the lower four, the Sea Splitting realm.
To advance from the Sea Splitting realm to the Core Formation Realm, one must refine and compress the sea of spiritual energy until a core is formed in the dantian.
The Core Formation Realm is divided into four stages: Initial Formation, Human Origin, Earthly Origin, and Heavenly Origin.
For an average cultivator, it would take a hundred years of arduous cultivation to condense a core from the lower four realms. Even for those with excellent talent, it would take decades.
Jiang Lianyue reached Human Origin at the age of eighteen thus she was considered a potential empress.
Jiang Chen had been cultivating for over twenty years, a one-in-ten-thousand talent.
Although he was more advanced than Jiang Lianyue before his core was destroyed, his foundation was unstable due to frequent pill consumption, resulting in a less solid core.
However, this destruction of his core allowed him to solidify his foundation.
After ingesting the pill, the nearly depleted sea of spiritual energy in Jiang Chen’s body instantly became active, greedily absorbing the medicinal power like parched land welcoming rain.
As the medicinal power was consumed, the sea of spiritual energy became more and more full.
Seeing that there was little medicinal power left, Jiang Chen swallowed another Spirit Renewal Pill.
The two pills were quickly consumed, and after the last bit of medicinal power was devoured by the sea of spiritual energy, it was as vast and magnificent as an ocean.
Jiang Chen had planned to stop there, but then he remembered the system reward, the Breakthrough Pill.
This pill was also a fourth-grade medicinal pill, embodying the principle that there can be no construction without destruction, and it was an essential pill for cultivators in the lower four realms to condense their cores.
The medicinal pills in this world were divided into nine grades, with the first grade being the lowest and the ninth the highest. Each grade was further divided into low, middle, high, and perfect quality.
It was said that there were also superior and divine quality pills, but these had not been seen for a thousand years.
The Breakthrough Pill awarded by the system was of perfect quality.
The reason why perfect quality is called perfect is that it contains no impurities, not only is the effect stronger, but there are also no side effects.
After some thought, Jiang Chen swallowed the Breakthrough Pill.
At present, his strength was too weak. He would have no deterrent power at all if he were to reveal his cultivation level of the lower four realms in front of other disciples.
The original character in the story was well aware of this, which is why he secluded himself for over a month after his Core Formation was destroyed, only re-emerging in the Core Formation Realm on the eve of Lin Feng’s apprenticeship, ready to show himself to others.
Jiang Chen certainly didn’t want to waste over a month for no reason. He still wanted to work on establishing his villain persona.
Indeed, this action might change some of the plot, but that was of little consequence.
After all, his mission was to meet his demise with a villainous persona, not to avoid altering the plot.
He needs to reap as many benefits from the system as possible before ascending.
As long as Lin Feng didn’t die, he could complete his mission at the grand finale and ascend on the spot!
This was precisely what Jiang Chen was least worried about.
After all, if the Son of Destiny could die so easily, he wouldn’t have gone through nine cycles of reincarnation with each ending the same way.
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