Chapter 11
C.E. 2030.
After the first Gate opened, the history of humanity was rewritten.
Civilization collapsed beyond repair, and people died in such numbers that distinctions between nations and ethnicities became meaningless.
It was the cultivators who ended that threat of extinction.
Human civilization bloomed anew on Earth, built upon cultivation technology.
Thus, the Western calendar (西曆), a remnant of the old era, came to an end, and at last the age of the Immortal Path Calendar (仙道歷) began.
It is currently December 1, Year 469 of the Immortal Path Calendar.
“W-wait…!”
When Decia turned around, Nine was there, wrapped tightly in a blanket with only her eyes peeking out.
It looked as though she was doing everything she could to block out contact with the outside world.
The blanket covered her childishly tiny frame and legs trembling like an aspen.
“What is it, Older Sister?”
Seeing Nine, Decia felt her breath catch in her throat.
The feelings she was experiencing now were simple.
It was the bitter feeling of looking back at a cherished childhood doll and finding it terribly broken.
The realization that it had once been her whole world, but no longer mattered much now that she was an adult.
Nine spoke with her eyes fixed on the floor.
She clenched the blanket in her fingertips and forced open her tightly closed mouth.
She was scared, but she had to hear what Decia had to say.
Because it was about their mother.
“I-I didn’t hear anything about Mother’s Foundation Establishment Tribulation… W-when exactly is she taking it?”
“What? That can’t be.”
Decia realized she had misspoken.
The Foundation Establishment Tribulation was always held on the same day.
New Year’s Day, when one year ended and a new sun rose.
In other words, January 1.
“I made a mistake.”
“Huh…?”
“I failed to read Mom’s intentions. She probably didn’t want you to know.”
Decia replied indifferently as she took off her shoes.
She entered the living room and sank deep into the sofa.
“Eep.”
As Decia approached, Nine flinched and sucked in a breath.
But she suppressed her fear and moved toward the sofa.
At opposite ends of the sofa,
Nine and Decia sat apart.
“This year’s Foundation Establishment Tribulation is on January 1, of course. And Mom’s been reserved the fourth slot.”
“Reserved…?”
Decia turned her head and stared at Nine.
Intimidated by her gaze, Nine lowered her head.
Her white hair slid down like snow.
‘She keeps… doing this.’
Decia unconsciously treated Nine as her equal.
She took it for granted that since she knew something, her older sister must know it too.
Despite the vast gap between Nine, who was only at the Lifespan-Severing Stage, and Decia, who was at Great Perfection of Qi Refining.
The difference wasn’t just in their strength.
A Lifespan-Severing cultivator who hadn’t even entered the path of cultivation versus someone at the pinnacle of Qi Refining.
It was roughly the difference between an ordinary kindergartener and a distinguished professor at a top university.
The fame they enjoyed and the quality of information they could access were on entirely different levels.
Decia folded her arms and said,
“If you didn’t know, learn it now, Older Sister. Mom is a Golden Core prodigy. She’s in a different league from ordinary Foundation Establishment candidates.”
“Ordinary Foundation Establishment candidates…?”
Nine felt as if she’d been struck on the head.
The overwhelming air of the words was one thing, but more than that, Decia’s attitude was so utterly casual.
To call Foundation Establishment ordinary?
Among a hundred mortals, only one has spiritual roots and walks the path of cultivation.
And after the long years of Qi Refining, only one cultivator in ten thousand is chosen by the heavens and finally achieves Foundation Establishment.
One in a million. Foundation Establishment cultivators were geniuses in the top 0.0001%.
“Isn’t it pitiful? All those people staking everything on the Foundation Establishment exam, without knowing that every slot has already been reserved.”
A news report she’d seen recently flashed through Nine’s small mind.
[With the Foundation Establishment exam just over a month away, the number of Qi Refining cultivators registered for this year’s exam has exceeded two million……]
Nine felt as if she’d peered into an abyss.
Did that mean all those people were already destined to fail?
Decia’s pupils glowed faintly gold as she looked straight at Nine.
Nine flinched in surprise and met Decia’s gaze.
For some reason, her heart wasn’t pounding, and her thoughts weren’t tangling into a panic.
“Older Sister. You know the eligibility requirements for the Foundation Establishment exam, right?”
“Yeah….”
At Decia’s question, Nine obediently nodded and recited the eligibility requirements she’d memorized as a child.
“Third screening: reach mid-stage Qi Refining before age twenty-five.
Fourth screening: reach late-stage Qi Refining before age forty.
Fifth screening: reach Great Perfection of Qi Refining before age sixty.”
Decia’s eyes curved like crescent moons.
As if she’d heard something amusing, Decia lifted the corners of her mouth and gave a light laugh.
“Older Sister. All of that is a lie.”
“Huh…?”
“Just think about it. Ten thousand people are allowed to break through to Foundation Establishment each year. But fifty million ‘true humans’ are born every year.”
That was right.
Unless they were washouts like Nine, people passed the second and third screenings with ease.
The fourth and fifth screenings were a little harder, but even then, the pass rate was over two percent.
As a result, well over a million cultivators at Great Perfection of Qi Refining emerged every year.
There were simply too many of them to distinguish candidates by eligibility requirements alone.
Nine wondered why she’d only just realized this simple arithmetic.
Nine’s face was blank with shock.
Watching her expression, Decia chuckled.
She was genuinely enjoying seeing her older sister’s expressive face again after so long.
If her senior fellow disciples or master, who knew her usual expressionless self, saw this, they’d be shocked out of their minds.
“Then, then… what are the real conditions? There has to be some kind of condition, right?”
“I told you from the start. It’s not a Foundation Establishment exam, it’s a Foundation Establishment Tribulation.”
“Foundation Establishment Tribulation (築基劫)?”
“More precisely, the Seven Tribulations of Foundation Establishment (築基七劫). If you reach Great Perfection of Qi Refining before thirty, a government ‘examiner’ comes to find you. Then they ask you this.”
[Are you willing to be chosen by the heavens and enter Foundation Establishment?]
“Isn’t that ridiculous, Older Sister? Who are they to decide whether someone’s chosen by the heavens or not…”
Nine nodded too.
Decia was now right beside Nine, stroking her head.
‘What happened to make that pure child turn out like this?’
Nine found it rather burdensome to have Decia stroking her head.
She used to be such a sweet kid who followed right behind her everywhere…
Now, even just meeting her gaze, she gave off an air that made Nine feel like she might be devoured.
‘Ugh, if only it weren’t for this body.’
She was already overwhelmed by Decia’s aura, and with her body in such lousy shape, she couldn’t avoid having her head patted.
Thankfully, she hadn’t had another fit like the first time they met.
It was so humiliating that a tear slipped out.
“So the Foundation Establishment exam is actually a lie. The real candidates for Foundation Establishment have already been selected through the Seven Tribulations. Mom is exceptional even among them, and she’s already been provisionally earmarked for Golden Core.”
Still, the shame lasted only a moment.
Stories of that world so far above her, one Nine could never reach, were truly fascinating.
Someday, she wanted to face those secrets herself, with strength and ability she’d earned on her own.
‘Then I have a chance, too!’
Nine was only twenty.
Before, there’d been no hope. But with an overpowered golden finger like Pou, the time it would take to reach Great Perfection of Qi Refining was…
‘Three years at most. I can definitely do it in that time.’
In truth, even three years was a generous estimate.
Pou’s potential was beyond anything Nine could even begin to gauge.
‘Breaking through Qi Refining is something I could do even today.’
Even now, Talisman Dao spiritual power produced in her heart was steadily accumulating in her dantian.
She could break through right away by buying spirit stones with the proceeds from selling talismans and drawing more.
Then sell the talismans she drew, buy more spirit stones, and raise her cultivation…
The completion of an endless virtuous cycle built on genius-level talent.
Nine was afraid of her own potential.
It frightened her so much that she couldn’t help laughing.
“If Mom succeeds in the Foundation Establishment Tribulation, I’ll probably try next year, too. So, Older Sister…”
Decia’s expression shifted ever so slightly.
As she spoke, a memory she’d tried hard to forget came back to her.
The fact that Nine would certainly be exiled from Earth next year.
Buried feelings sprouted anew.
Maybe she’d known it all along.
Knowing her older sister wouldn’t pass the second screening, perhaps she’d closed her heart preemptively.
She was ten when she first sensed spiritual energy and reached the Lifespan-Severing Stage.
After that, she spent five years as a mortal, unable to sense spiritual energy.
So she’d forced herself to forget.
But breathing the same air and speaking shoulder to shoulder in the same room brought those repressed feelings back to life.
The name of that feeling she hadn’t understood as a child was, of course, familial love.
But Nine had already given up.
She wouldn’t pass the second screening anyway.
If she was exiled from Earth, they would never meet again.
Suppressing the ache that fact caused, Decia turned to look at Nine, sitting beside her.
And yet, when she looked at her…
“Heh, hehe.”
Nine was smiling.
With no fear or dark emotions whatsoever, she was simply and purely happy.
Nine’s snow-white eyes sparkled, filled with hope and ambition for the future.
It was as though the older sister from her childhood memories had emerged unchanged.
Decia’s mouth fell open slightly in surprise.