Chapter 095: The Hundred-Year Talent Development Plan

After hearing those words, Wei Bulie, the ancient forebear of the Demon Sect, could not help bursting into hearty laughter. The way she laughed made her seem even more like a girl of only ten or so.

Zhuge Yang, your words are truly absurd, she said. Your immortal cultivation world simply lacks capable people. For three thousand years, not a single Imperial Immortal Sovereign has emerged, and you still have the face to say that out loud?

You should be reflecting on yourselves instead of blaming us in the demon cultivation world for upsetting the balance. What nonsense.

I am telling you, Zhuge Yang, our demon cultivation world is full of talent. Who knows? Before long, we may well have another new Imperial Demon Sovereign!

Zhuge Yang stroked his beard and gave a few helpless laughs in response.

He knew perfectly well that the broken balance between the immortal and demon realms was indeed not the demon cultivation world’s fault. The blame could only rest on the immortal cultivation world itself, which had failed to produce a single qualified answer over the course of three thousand years, not once giving rise to another Imperial Immortal Sovereign.

Still, the increasingly lopsided power between the two realms had left Zhuge Yang deeply troubled.

Especially after the corpse of the Wine Immortal was discovered three hundred years ago, the balance of power between immortals and demons had already begun to tilt in one direction.

After all, the Wine Immortal had also been an Imperial Immortal Sovereign, and his death was a tremendous loss to the entire immortal cultivation world.

Then, two hundred years after the Wine Immortal’s death, the demon cultivation world suddenly produced Qin Xuanxi, an Imperial Demon Sovereign. With one side rising as the other declined, the demon cultivation world now clearly held the upper hand in overall strength.

That was why, when Qin Xuanxi single-handedly destroyed the Holy Heaven Sect, not a single major figure from the immortal cultivation world dared step forward to lead a crusade against her.

These great immortal experts all knew full well that if war were to break out again at this moment, the immortal cultivation world, already at a disadvantage, would be utterly defeated.

Zhuge Yang naturally understood as well that the immortal cultivation world had worked very hard these past few centuries. Perhaps it was simply a matter of bad fortune.

More than two months ago, Zhou Junhao, the master of the Immortal Deduction Palace, had advanced to the Imperial Soul Realm, which could be said to have given the entire immortal cultivation world a powerful boost of confidence.

Of course, Zhuge Yang did not know that Zhou Junhao’s rise to the Imperial Soul Realm owed a great deal to the female Demon Sovereign Qin Xuanxi.

For it was Qin Xuanxi and Song Ye together who formed the celestial Deduction scene that Zhou Junhao required.

But Zhou Junhao’s current cultivation was only at the first level of the Imperial Soul Realm, still a long way from the ninth level. Only at the ninth level of the Imperial Soul Realm could one truly be called an Imperial Immortal Sovereign.

In addition, Zhou Junhao cultivated the Ninefold Deduction of Awakening the Dao, a technique with extremely strict requirements for breakthrough. Not only did one’s cultivation have to meet the standard, one also had to encounter the celestial Deduction scene required for advancement.

It should be known that the particular celestial Deduction scene Zhou Junhao needed in order to break through to the Imperial Soul Realm took him a full two hundred years to encounter.

And from the first level of the Imperial Soul Realm to the ninth, he would need to encounter eight different celestial Deduction scenes. Heaven knew how many more centuries that would take.

More than ten years ago, the immortal cultivation world had also produced a so-called peerless genius named Li Xiuling.

At thirteen, Li Xiuling entered the Profound Understanding Realm; at fourteen, the Spirit-Severing Void Realm; at seventeen, she broke through to the Void-Breaking Realm. Such achievements indeed made her one of the rare immortal cultivation prodigies seen in thousands of years.

At the time, many said she had the bearing of an Immortal Sovereign, and quite a few even claimed she had the makings of an Imperial Immortal Sovereign.

For that reason, ten years ago, Zhuge Yang had secretly gone down the mountain in disguise as an ordinary woodcutter and deliberately approached this immortal cultivation genius.

Yet that encounter left Zhuge Yang greatly disappointed.

Li Xiuling was indeed extraordinarily gifted, but only up to the Holy Spirit Realm. In other words, her limit was the Holy Spirit Realm; in the future, she would find it difficult even to reach the Imperial Soul Realm, let alone become an Imperial Immortal Sovereign.

Some immortal cultivators might have mediocre talent at the beginning, their progress painfully slow, taking decades merely to reach the Profound Understanding Realm. Yet people like that often produced a late surge and ultimately became sovereigns who ruled the world.

Li Xiuling was the opposite. Her cultivation advanced at astonishing speed in the early stages, but later she would gradually show signs of decline, even falling into a bottleneck and stagnating.

It was precisely because Zhuge Yang saw Li Xiuling’s limitations that he chose to stand by without intervening when she was imprisoned by Changsun Ni in the Nine Nether Great Prison.

After all, Zhuge Yang understood that even if the immortal cultivation world produced dozens more Immortal Sovereigns, that still would not compare to the emergence of a single Imperial Immortal Sovereign.

In truth, after Zhuge Yang realized that the immortal cultivation world was clearly at a disadvantage, he had already begun making secret moves.

Zhuge Yang had quietly devised a Hundred-Year Talent Nurturing Plan for the immortal cultivation world.

Of course, before implementing this plan, Zhuge Yang had carefully analyzed why the immortal cultivation world had failed to produce a single Imperial Immortal Sovereign for three thousand years.

In the end, he concluded that the major sects presently active among the immortal clans simply had terrible judgment when taking in disciples. That was why so many disciples they had nurtured failed to produce even one Imperial Immortal Sovereign.

But Zhuge Yang himself could not personally take on disciples, because three thousand years ago he and Wei Bulie had long ago made a vow that neither of them would accept disciples.

For that reason, Zhuge Yang could only keep persuading the old Immortal Sovereigns who had long retired from the world to come out of seclusion and take disciples.

He hoped that, with the discerning eyes of these old Immortal Sovereigns, they might find a disciple with the true bearing of an Imperial Immortal Sovereign.

Unfortunately, most of the reclusive old Immortal Sovereigns had long since grown tired of meddling in the struggle between immortals and demons, and were even less willing to spend the time and effort teaching disciples.

After all, if you taught a good disciple, others would see it as only natural, since you were already an experienced old Immortal Sovereign. But if you made a careless mistake and ended up teaching a disgraceful disciple, you would ruin the reputation and prestige you had painstakingly built over the years.

So most of these old Immortal Sovereigns who had withdrawn from the world were unwilling to take on such thankless work.

Zhuge Yang wore out his tongue and spent every ounce of his connections before finally persuading only seven old Immortal Sovereigns to agree to take disciples.

Now, Zhuge Yang could only hope that among the disciples these seven old Immortal Sovereigns took in, one would one day become a true Imperial Immortal Sovereign. This was the essence of Zhuge Yang’s carefully planned Hundred-Year Talent Nurturing Plan for the immortal cultivation world.

As for how effective this talent-nurturing plan would ultimately prove to be, even Zhuge Yang himself had no certainty.

At that moment, Wei Bulie said to Zhuge Yang, The wine has already been drunk. If you have nothing else to say, then I will be taking my leave. See you again in another hundred years. I hope that by then you will have prepared a fine wine for me.

Wait, Bulie, there is something I have wanted to ask you for three hundred years, Zhuge Yang suddenly said with a solemn expression. Did the death of the Wine Immortal have anything to do with you?

Wei Bulie answered without the slightest hesitation. The Wine Immortal’s death has nothing to do with me.

As soon as she finished speaking, her figure vanished into thin air.