My Simulated Road to Immortality Chapter 1 - 1 Where Does the Immortal Come From
1 Chapter 1 Where Does the Immortal Come From
Translator: 549690339
Da Xuan Kingdom, Xuanjing City, Grand Master Mansion.
Li Fan stood firm, wine cup in hand, as he surveyed the gathered dignitaries who had come to celebrate his birth. Despite his advanced age, a surge of pride welled up within him.
The Grand Master Mansion was packed with high-ranking officials today, a display of influence that was truly overwhelming.
Decades ago, Li Fan had arrived in this world as nothing more than a destitute scholar.
Over the span of fifty years, he had climbed from the bottom to become a dominant Grand Master. His transformation was a journey epic enough to fill a novel of several million words.
What more could a man desire from life?
Stroking his white beard, Li Fan drained his cup in one go.
“A toast to the Grand Master!”
The officials shouted in perfect harmony.
Li Fan’s satisfaction reached its peak.
Suddenly, absolute chaos erupted outside the hall.
“Look! What is that in the sky?”
“Falling fireballs! This is a divine sign, an omen! Hurry, alert the Grand Master!”
“They are heading straight for the Grand Master Mansion!”
...
Li Fan’s brow furrowed as the noise reached his ears.
The once boisterous hall fell into a sudden, heavy silence.
Li Fan rose and was the first to stride toward the exit.
However, before he could scold his servants for their lack of decorum, he was frozen by the spectacle above.
In the distant heavens, two streaks of silver light chased one another like falling stars, racing toward his location.
“What in the world...” Li Fan was speechless.
In the blink of an eye, the two shooting stars arrived directly over Xuanjing City and stopped dead in their tracks.
A voice then boomed like a thunderclap, the vibrations nearly bursting the eardrums of everyone below.
“Dao Xuanzi! Do not push me too far!”
...
The witnesses were paralyzed with awe; many began crying out "Immortal Teacher" while prostrating themselves on the ground.
At that moment, a term long buried in the depths of Li Fan’s spirit consciousness surfaced.
“Cult... Cultivators!” Li Fan stood rooted in shock, his voice a trembling whisper. “How is this possible...”
The two figures in the sky remained completely indifferent to the panic of the mortals beneath them.
A second voice rang out in response, “Kou Hong! Did you truly think you could escape me by fleeing to the Mortal Realm? Surrender the technique you stole. If you do not, I will hunt you until you are utterly destroyed!”
“What a joke! I have been stuck in the Foundation Establishment Phase for a century, lingering at death's door. Now that I have obtained this Golden Core Technique, do you think I would ever give it up?” Kou Hong’s voice was thick with mockery.
“Indeed!” Dao Xuanzi let out a heavy sigh. “The Golden Core Path is narrow; there can be only one. The world has many Golden Core Techniques, but it has even more cultivators trapped in the Foundation Establishment Phase.”
His tone turned abruptly murderous. “Since the path to longevity is finally before me, how could I possibly let you walk away?”
Kou Hong laughed wildly. “How ironic! We were brothers for a hundred years, and now we draw our blades over a single chance at life!”
Dao Xuanzi offered no reply, only a cold sneer.
Suddenly, Kou Hong spoke again. “I am aware I cannot defeat you, and escaping today will be difficult. But look at all these mortals. Do you truly believe you can endure such a concentrated blast of Immortal-Ordinary Miasma?”
Dao Xuanzi gasped in horror. “Kou Hong! What madness are you planning!”
Kou Hong’s laughter grew manic. “I am merely searching for a sliver of survival... nothing more!”
Listening to the exchange above, Li Fan felt a sudden, chilling dread. Before he could move, a massive red fireball detonated in the sky over Xuanjing City.
“Boom! Boom! Boom!”
The sky-shaking explosions deafened Li Fan. His vision was consumed by a blinding crimson, and he collapsed into unconsciousness.
...
When Li Fan finally opened his eyes, he had no sense of how much time had passed.
He was disoriented at first, but the memories of the disaster soon flooded back.
Li Fan coughed violently, spitting out dark blood. He struggled to his feet, trembling, and surveyed his surroundings.
Night still hung over the world, but the magnificent Grand Master Mansion was now nothing but a pile of smoldering rubble.
The air was thick with the sickening smell of charred flesh.
Everyone who had attended his celebration was dead, their souls gone forever.
Li Fan’s wives and his five sons had not escaped the carnage either.
His aged face remained expressionless, but his eyes were hollow and dead.
After standing in silence for a long time, he dragged his battered body out of the ruins.
Xuanjing City, once a thriving metropolis, had been transformed into a nightmare of fire and blood. Everywhere he looked, he saw mutilated bodies and fallen structures.
It was likely that less than one percent of the city's inhabitants had survived the catastrophe.
All of this devastation was caused by the sudden appearance of two “Immortal Teachers.”
Exhausted, Li Fan slumped against a broken wall and slid to the ground.
The explosion had shattered his hearing, but that didn't seem to matter anymore.
In this moment, he felt an urge to laugh.
How could Cultivators actually exist in this world?
From the moment he gained power, he had used every resource at his disposal to find any trace of the Immortal Way.
When he rose to the position of Imperial Teacher, standing above all others, he had scoured the entire world!
From the northern Frozen Ocean to the southern Great Ocean, from Xu Yuan in the east to Mountain Lian in the west.
There had been absolutely no sign of an Immortal in all of Great Xuan!
Yet today, in his twilight years when he had finally abandoned all hope, two Cultivators had dropped from the clouds and casually destroyed everything he had built.
Is this the nature of an Immortal?
And where exactly do these Immortals come from?
His rage and resentment eventually dissolved into a profound, endless confusion.
Heaven was truly toyed with mankind!
Yet, simultaneously, Li Fan felt a strange sense of luck.
He was fortunate that, before his death, he had finally confirmed the existence of Immortals!
Otherwise, if he started his next life, wouldn't he have wasted another fifty years in ignorance?
Indeed! How could he, Li Fan, a mere mortal, rise from a lowly scholar to a world-renowned Imperial Teacher without some kind of help?
That help was also the reason he had survived the Immortals' clash.
“[Real]!”
Li Fan whispered the word in his mind. Suddenly, his vision darkened, as if a thick curtain of water had been drawn across the world, making everything appear blurred and illusory.
“Turning Fake into Real.”
Seven glowing characters appeared in the darkness, then shattered, transforming into a screen of light.
“Charging complete.”
“Do you wish to virtualize the current scene and return to the original anchor point?”
Two lines of text appeared on the screen.
At the same time, images began to flash across the light curtain, filling his vision.
It was the record of Li Fan’s fifty years in this world.
Li Fan watched the scenes of his own life, momentarily dazed.
“[Real].”
That was the name he had given to the mysterious treasure he always carried.
It possessed only one power: to Turn Fake into Real, transforming reality into an illusion!
By transforming reality into illusion, Li Fan could turn all his concrete experiences into a simulated dream, allowing him to return to a pre-set anchor point—the moment he first crossed into this world.
In truth, this was already Li Fan’s second life.
In his first life, he was an ambitious but unremarkable man. After failing repeatedly, he gave up on his dreams of bureaucracy at thirty. He became a merchant, lived a comfortable life, married, and had children. It was only on his deathbed that he finally awakened the [Real].
This led to his meteoric rise in his second life.
Unfortunately, it seemed he had focused his efforts in the wrong direction.
After a moment of reflection, Li Fan decided not to end this life immediately. He still had a few tasks to complete.
He dismissed the light curtain and returned to the physical world, gathering his remaining strength to manage the ruins of Xuanjing City.
By seeking out survivors and utilizing the vast prestige he had built over the years, he managed to bring a small measure of stability to the people.
Though he was deaf, he could still use pen and paper. Communication was slow, but his commands were still obeyed.
First, he ordered his elite troops stationed outside the city to enter Xuanjing and maintain order. Then, he sent word to neighboring cities to send food and administrators.
Since most of the city was leveled, Li Fan lived in a military camp while overseeing the recovery.
Under his direction, resources and skilled labor poured into Xuanjing.
A month later, the ruined city began to show signs of life once more.
Once the Great Xuan Kingdom had stabilized after the "Immortal" attack, Li Fan issued a decree to collect every scrap of information regarding the two beings who had appeared that night.
He wanted to know where they came from, where they went, and if anyone had overheard any other parts of their conversation.
Sadly, months of searching yielded very little, other than the fact that the Cultivators seemed to have arrived from the direction of Xu Yuan in the east.
The outcome Li Fan had hoped for—that the two Immortals had killed each other—did not seem to have happened.
“I shouldn't have expected such a miracle,” Li Fan sighed inwardly. “In that case, I have nothing left to do in this life.”
Standing within the partially rebuilt Grand Master Mansion, Li Fan activated [Real] once again.
“Do you wish to virtualize the current scene and return to the original anchor point?”
Without hesitation, Li Fan chose yes.
On the light curtain, thousands of vivid memories froze. Then, the life of power and luxury he had led shattered like a glass dream, exploding into fragments of light that flowed into his spirit consciousness.
The images raced past like a carousel until they locked onto the moment the two Cultivators faced off high above his mansion.
“Dao Xuanzi, Kou Hong,” Li Fan whispered their names. “Fifty years from now, I will be waiting for you in Xuanjing City.”
“Wealth and status are nothing more than drifting clouds to me now.” Li Fan’s consciousness began to fade, but his resolve was stronger than ever.
“In my next life, I will capture an Immortal!”
The light in his spirit consciousness slowly dimmed, and Li Fan drifted into a profound slumber.