Cultivation of immortality begins with an eighty-year-old eunuch.

Chapter 679 Watching the Rain! Breakthrough to the Mid-stage of the Nascent Soul Realm!

This rain is even heavier than last year's.

Raindrops pounded on the tent with a rapid drumbeat, splashing water half a foot high on the grass.

Thunder rumbled from the depths of the dark clouds, deep and far-reaching, like the roar of an ancient god from the heart of the grassland. Lightning flashed continuously in the clouds, illuminating the entire grassland in an alternating light and shadow.

The herders had already retreated to their tents.

Chen Fan stood alone at the tent entrance, his hands behind his back, gazing at the torrential rain before him.

Raindrops fall from the sky, each one tracing an invisible path across the heavens and earth.

He wasn't looking at the rain itself, but at its trajectory. Each raindrop was born from the clouds, fell through the air, and finally shattered into countless tiny droplets on the ground, seeping into the soil and disappearing.

From birth to death, it's only a matter of a few breaths.

Every single drop of rain is like that.

Chen Fan once had an epiphany about the cycle of life and death in the rain, but that epiphany was not complete at that time.

At that time, he realized that life and death were not two opposing ends, but rather the upstream and downstream of the same river.

But he didn't understand where the river originated or where it ended.

Standing in the rain, watching countless raindrops fall from the sky, he suddenly understood something.

The life and death of rain is not the life and death of rain itself, but the life and death of heaven and earth.

Rain is born in the sky and dies on the earth, with the human world passing through between them.

This is a complete chain of cause and effect. It's not that the rain chose to fall, but rather that the laws of heaven and earth caused it to fall.

Rain itself doesn't know where it comes from or where it goes; it simply completes its life along that predetermined path.

However, in the eyes of an observer, the fate of each raindrop is clear, complete, and unchangeable.

Isn't this exactly the kind of cause and effect that Chen Fan has been pursuing?

When he locks onto his opponent with his sword intent, the causal power within that intent leaves the opponent with no way to avoid it and can only take the hit head-on.

The cause and effect of that time was domineering, imposed on people, and used to forcibly define the fate of others according to one's own will.

That is not the true cause and effect in the world, but merely a cultivator's illusion that he has grasped cause and effect.

The cause and effect in the universe are never imposed on people.

It simply exists.

Rain is born from clouds as a cause, and dies in the soil as a result.

This causal chain doesn't need anyone to impose or lock it; it just happens naturally.

Birth, aging, sickness, and death; gathering and parting—all things have their own unchangeable causal trajectory. Whether one is a cultivator or a mortal, one is merely a point on this trajectory.

Chen Fan stood in the rain for a long time, his sheepskin robe soaked through, water droplets streaming down his face.

He didn't wipe it away; he just watched the rain quietly.

A bolt of lightning cleaved the night sky, illuminating the entire grassland as bright as day.

In that instant, he saw everything on the grassland: every blade of grass bent by the rain, every stone eroded by the rain, and every tent shaking violently in the wind and rain.

All these things are in the rain, on their own trajectories, conforming to the same laws of nature.

set.

It certainly doesn't mean that it forcibly locks down all things in heaven and earth according to its own will.

They must be content with this body, content with this place, content with this moment.

Just as stones have their own textures, horses have their own textures, people have their own textures, and heaven and earth have their own textures.

Everything exists peacefully within its own texture, needing neither to deliberately change anything nor to deliberately pursue anything.

Chen Fan lived here for nearly two years, herding sheep for several months, raising horses for several months, and carving stones for several months.

He didn't deliberately cultivate or try to break through; he simply followed the most ordinary rhythm of life, working at sunrise and resting at sunset.

But it was in this most ordinary of lives that he found his connection with the world.

Chen Fan did not rise above heaven and earth as a cultivator, but rather merged into heaven and earth as a mortal.

Raising horses, carving stones, treating patients, and naming Qiqige—these seemingly ordinary things are all traces of cause and effect he left in the world.

Every single thing is a cause, every single thing is an effect, and every single thing is an inseparable connection between him and this grassland, and between him and these people.

Another bolt of lightning struck.

Chen Fan raised his head and looked at the dark night sky. The rain hit his eyes, but he didn't blink.

Cause and effect are the rules of heaven and earth, life and death are the cycles of heaven and earth, and destiny is the place of all things in heaven and earth.

The Three Gates of Artistic Conception are never three separate rivers, but rather three names for the same river.

Cause and effect are the direction of the river, life and death are the two banks of the river, and we are but a drop of water in the river.

Within his dantian, the three streams of light, formed from the three realms of intent, completely merged at this moment.

It's not a slow interweaving, nor a gradual permeation, but a natural and harmonious fit.

Cause and effect, life and death, and stillness—the three streams of light merged into one, transforming into a harmonious and profound power that slowly rotated in the dantian, like ripples spreading across a lake after a storm.

The nascent soul began to transform under the influence of this power.

It wasn't the violent expansion or contraction of before, but rather an extreme condensation. Three extremely faint lines appeared on the surface of the nascent soul: one representing cause and effect, one representing life and death, and one representing stillness.

Three lines flowed slowly across the surface of the nascent soul, like three fish swimming head to tail, endlessly regenerating and circulating.

Breakthrough to the Divine Transformation stage.

At this moment, Chen Fan's aura underwent a dramatic change.

The bottleneck of the Great Perfection of the Nascent Soul stage shattered silently, and the aura of the early stage of the Divine Transformation stage erupted within his body.

However, this aura did not leak out and did not disturb any of the sleeping herdsmen in the tribe. Instead, he used his word-fixing technique to firmly lock it within three feet of him.

Three feet away, the wind and rain continue.

But this is not the end.

At the same moment, the energies of immortality and demonicity were drawn by this breakthrough power and surged out from the depths of the dantian.

The spiritual energy on the left side of his body was as clear as water, while the demonic energy on the right side was as fierce as fire. Under the harmonization of the Fixed Word Technique, the two forces began to merge in an unprecedented way.

It's not about them devouring each other, nor about them repelling each other, but rather like two parallel rivers suddenly finding the same estuary.

This fused power is stronger than pure spiritual energy and purer than pure demonic energy.

It surged and flowed through Chen Fan's meridians, pushing his cultivation level up layer by layer from the early stage of the Nascent Soul realm.

Peak of the early stage of the Nascent Soul realm.

Mid-stage of the Nascent Soul realm.

He finally stopped steadily at the threshold of the mid-stage of the Nascent Soul realm, just one step away from the peak of the mid-stage Nascent Soul realm.

With the support of this fusion of immortal and demonic power, his true combat strength is already comparable to that of a late-stage Nascent Soul cultivator!

The downpour gradually stopped before dawn.

The dark clouds dispersed, and the first rays of bluish-white light appeared on the eastern horizon.

The grassland, washed clean by the rain, shimmered in the morning light, and the air was filled with the fresh scent of earth and the slightly fishy smell of grass.

Chen Fan withdrew his gaze from the sky and looked down at his hands.

He slowly exhaled a breath of stale air, turned around, and went back to the tent.