(This chapter is an extra set in the cultivation world between Chapters 70–99. It was selected by reader votes. Since it takes place before the survival world arc, it's being released first. If you're not interested, feel free to skip. Thank you.)
Ever since Zhou Yanxi developed the Many Children, Much Blessing Pill, countless sects and factions had their eyes on her formula.
Unfortunately for them, Zhou Yanxi was slippery as an eel. If anyone angered her, she'd promptly blacklist them and refuse any dealings.
What's more, Zhou Yanxi was known publicly as an unaffiliated rogue cultivator, so there was no family or sect behind her that others could pressure.
More crucially, Zhou Yanxi also wielded mysterious and unidentified poison pills. Going against her as an ordinary cultivator was essentially asking for trouble.
After the great war between the Immortals and Demons, few high-level cultivators remained in the cultivation world. The most powerful survivors were merely at the Nascent Soul stage—and extremely wary of risking their lives.
Some foolish Nascent Soul experts had attempted to ambush her, but Zhou Yanxi simply used treasures left behind by her master and their generation to take care of them. Only then did these would-be attackers finally back off.
As for the aftermath of the ambush: Zhou Yanxi went straight to the gossip-hungry cultivator Baixiaosheng and "leaked" a message—
"Due to being ambushed by high-level cultivators, I will be in seclusion for healing for the next thirty years. Not a single Many Children, Much Blessing Pill will be circulating on the market during that time."
This was a trap she deliberately set. She wanted to turn others against her attackers, using them as scapegoats so that their families would suffer backlash from rival factions—ensuring that she wouldn't be harassed again in the future.
Yes, Zhou Yanxi created the pill for the sake of her own comfortable life. She had no interest in breaking her back for cultivators desperate to continue their bloodlines.
During those thirty years, Zhou Yanxi went down to the mortal world, disguising herself as a male traveling physician.
Her main goal was to roam the lands and broaden her horizons—but also to improve her medical skills.
In her travels, she witnessed the rise and fall of dynasties, settled for a year in a remote village, and learned how ordinary people lived and interacted…
At first, her two little companions didn't understand her decision to leave the cultivation world. But after seeing the wonders of the mortal realm, they too became enamored and lost themselves in the experience.
Naturally, whenever Zhou Yanxi came across valuable herbs, crops, or interesting trinkets, she would store them away in her personal space.
Thanks to her immersion in the mortal world and its many worldly experiences, her mental state advanced rapidly. As a result, her cultivation progress also saw a significant boost.
When Zhou Yanxi reemerged thirty years later, no one in the cultivation world dared to try coercing her again. All they could do was humbly present treasures in hopes of buying from her.
Indeed, Zhou Yanxi no longer accepted spirit stones. She only wanted rare treasures that caught her eye—something that drove other cultivators both mad with desire and teeth-gnashingly frustrated.
They loved her pills, which truly worked wonders and could help even low-level cultivators bear children.
But they hated her demands—her appetite was too big, and she only asked for the rarest of rare items.
As for Daojun Daoyun and the others who had ended up in a foreign world, life had been extremely difficult.
Back then, they were swept into the Spirit Realm by a chaotic time-space rift. If not for their sect's Linglong Tower protecting them, their souls would have long since been destroyed.
Even so, the Linglong Tower's grade dropped significantly after the ordeal and now required many rare spiritual resources to restore.
Once in the Spirit Realm, they realized that newborn children here were born with Golden Core-level cultivation. At best, someone at the Nascent Soul stage could only qualify as an outer disciple of a sect.
Thus, the once-revered Daojun Daoyun lost all confidence. As for Zhenjun Chongyuan, who had an even lower cultivation level than him—he was in an even worse position, to say nothing of their disciples.
As outsiders in this realm, with neither strength nor influential background, they could only struggle to survive while searching for senior sect members who had previously ascended.
Sadly, the Spirit Realm was vast beyond measure. It took them a hundred years just to locate a single senior—but even then, that person turned out to be just a disciple of a third-rate sect, unable to help them much.
Throughout this time, Zhenjun Chongyuan had always wanted to return to the Canglan Continent. But the portal required to do so cost billions of immortal spirit stones to activate—and his current cultivation level was too high for the portal to withstand.
If he attempted to enter the chaotic time-space stream again, it would be a random transfer, with no way to guarantee a safe landing.
Eventually, Zhenjun Chongyuan gave up on returning to the lower realm, holding onto only one hope in his heart:
That one day, his daughter and Hen'er would ascend and join him in this realm.