Eternal Cloud City, Year 1543 of the Third Martial Emperor's Rule

The city elevated itself miles above the planet, built from an immortal artifact owned by the Eternal Cloud Clan. Hundreds of thousands of people and beasts stood upon solidified cloud, condensed with the texture of solid dirt, but without weight.

Thousands of immortal residences were spread across the city, many of them sitting on proud independent puffs of cloud hundreds of feet above the common ground. When the sun rose and set, the brilliant light illuminated the city from all directions, refracting through the cloud bodies and shining a brilliant gold. 

Light-element spiritual energy from the sun was trapped and stored in the clouds. Convection currents of the sky a hundred miles up carried the spiritual energy out, giving Eternal Cloud City air thick with wind and light element energy. It was an immortal paradise that stood tall for 3,000 years.

The only mortals on the sky island were sons and daughters of cultivators. Among the 350,000 humans, over 80,000 had established foundations. The powerful Eternal Cloud Clan itself retained over two hundred golden core elders, each with the power to shake the heavens and cover a thousand meters with divine sense. 

Currently, two of these elders sat in an elegant mansion, playing chess and drinking tea.

One of the men looked young, barely touching the age of 30. A handsome and tall-looking man in the middle of his prime with streaks of brilliant blond in his flowing black hair. He wore an elegant white robe highlighted with gold and purple.

Across from him sat an old gentleman, hair streaked gray but in his eyes, misty clouds formed the whites of his eyes, and the black pupil was replaced with a golden iris, as if his sight contained the sky and heavens. Tian Peng, the older-looking man, captured a piece on the board.

"Senior, it looks like I am winning this time."

Tian Liansheng brushed his hand into his silky hair and gave a bright smile that had wooed hundreds of beauties. "Peng, you haven't learned from when you were still a foundation establishment. Look closer."

He waved his hand and suddenly the pieces on the board had reversed.

"This... sigh." Tian Peng had a painful look as he rolled his eyes. 

"You still have that tendency to underestimate people, even with your piercing-sun eyes technique. Perhaps the power of extra discernment has made you wrongfully arrogant."

"You just have a disgusting amount of luck, senior."

"It doesn't change the fact that I won again, Tian Peng. Perhaps once you change your attitude, you might finally win this game against me, but I assume it will take you another 10 years."

Tian Peng pulled out a purple flower from his storage space, with petals that looked almost transparent. "I planned to give it to your second wife for her tea-making anyway. Even if I lost, the tea I drank today makes it all worth it. Also, I'll only need one year."

Tian Liansheng pocketed the flower and smiled. "At that level of arrogance, you will take two decades. Sigh. I still wonder if a nascent soul level plant is too valuable for tea." 

"Hahaha, when she finishes brewing it, invite me to drink it and I will tell you if it is."

The handsome man laughed in kind. "I won't even have enough for myself. A nascent soul tea is something I will have to personally gift to the clan leader." Tian Liansheng looked back to the chessboard. "Still, perhaps I am also shocked I won."

Tian Peng sighed, "It would be nice if I had won your prized divination chessboard. But that child Tian Ran hid his trump card too well. To think even our divine sense couldn't see it. Or unless that is why senior chose to bet on him?"

He shook his head. "Even with my peak golden core cultivation, I couldn't see much." Tian Liansheng once again scanned his divine sense over Tian Ran and his defeated opponent at the Eternal Cloud Clan's Martial Arena. "The divination chessboard models and affects the fate energies of two people in the competition, in a way, it also helps me predict who will win. Your moves on the board helped Tian Ran's opponent gain the upper hand, but it seems Tian Ran's fate energy was inherently stronger."

"Sigh, my influence was not enough to overcome the difference in their fates. But still, a golden-core artifact able to affect fate energy is priceless."

"I was gifted this artifact by the clan leader after achieving a peak golden core. Unfortunately, the chessboard can only mildly affect the fates of qi condensation disciples. Perhaps fortunately for me. If it could sway the tides of foundation establishment battles, I doubt the board would ever leave our clan leader's mansion."

Tian Peng activated a golden light from his eyes and scanned over the chessboard. "Fate, what a mysterious technique. May I borrow it to study sometime, senior?"

Tian Liansheng gave a slight smile. "I'm in the middle of using it for a ritual. Next time, my friend. But be prepared to pay me a good price."

"As long as you let me try the tea as well. I have something interesting for you next time."

"We shall see then."

Tian Peng looked longingly at the chessboard one more time. "What a treasure..." he murmured. "Well senior, I bid you farewell."

Tian Liansheng watched with his divine sense as Tian Peng returned to his residence. Then, he looked at the chessboard and sighed. "Perhaps there is something wrong with the board." 

He once again imbued a figure into the chessboard, but this time of himself, a self-avatar suppressed to the qi condensation level. As soon as his position appeared on the board, it was corned in all directions. He had repeated this test with the avatars of thousands of qi condensation disciples, and each disciple had similar positions, cornered and desperate. 

The board representing himself contained powerful pieces, yet it was corned by surrounding weak pawns working in tandem to completely crush his mobility. For many of the qi disciples, the situation was even worse; they only had weak pieces on the verge of being executed by the encroaching hoard of opposing pawns.

"Nothing has changed. In fact, the fates of myself and our disciples even got worse!" Tian Liansheng had an immense frown on his face.

"I think it's time to bring this to the clan leader... before it gets wors..."

Suddenly, a bolt of red lighting came out of nowhere, striking through Tian Liansheng's body and directly onto the golden core in his dantian. Even under immense pain, Tian Liansheng immediately activated his defensive trump cards within milliseconds.

His strongest method permanently sacrificed 30% of his cultivation to generate a golden barrier that even late-stage nascent soul cultivators would need minutes to break.

The pain dulled slightly as the red lightning was stopped by the barrier. Tian Liansheng looked up at the sky in dread, as hundreds of bolts of red lightning tore through his mansion and destroyed everything.

His cloud island had been eradicated, and as he looked around, he saw the red light of lightning and death refracting and radiating everywhere across Eternal Cloud City. 

Among the millions of lightning bolts, a giant pillar of red crashed down onto the clan's main mansion. In pain and fear, Tian Liansheng, with his black and gold hair stripped of all color into a burnt grey, stared as the Soul Formation ancestor of the clan rose from within the main mansion with giant wings of light and crashed into the pillar of death.

The impact, exploding with gold and red, was so iridescent and terrifying that it even eradicated Tian Liansheng's divine sense and cracked his barrier a thousand meters away from the explosion.

Through the crack, the calamitous lightning broke his barrier and struck Tian Liansheng once again. Eyes bloodshot and painful, he used up another 60% of his permanent cultivation to activate a second barrier. But by the time the barrier was created, the red lightning vaporized half his face and his right arm. The rest of his body was heavily burnt, but alive. Severely injured but protected, Tian Liansheng's consciousness faded...

Tian Liansheng woke lying on a black rock on the floor of the Earth. The rock was not naturally black but became black under the ashes. The smell of burnt corpses and of his own body made Tian Liansheng want to immediately vomit. Then came the pain. His wounds had been burnt and cauterized by the lightning, but he couldn't move. Even a single thought of moving felt like being hit with lightning again and again. The lightning had not just burnt his skin, but every meridian and nerve. 

Even so, he spread his divine sense, trying to see if anyone else had survived the calamity. It landed on the clan leader, unharmed but unconscious a couple of hundred meters away. Beside him, someone sat in a seated position.

No. A corpse sat in a seated position, fully burnt and devoid of life. The corpse looked almost noble, sitting neatly. Tian Liansheng mentally gasped as he looked at the golden insignia still attached to the corpse, intact but now melted into the skin of the man.

The corpse was the Soul Formation ancestor of his clan. A man who had lived a thousand years. The former clan leader who raised him when he was a child. A kind and strong man.

And now he was dead. And so was everyone else. Tian Liansheng scanned his divine sense and tried to find his wives. He couldn't sense anyone. Tian Peng. Hundreds of thousands of disciples and residents of his city. The clan ancestor. All dead... Tian Liansheng felt his reality collapsing and couldn't stay conscious. He fainted again.

Hundreds of miles away, the culprit of the collapse of Eternal Cloud City sat in a wooden chair in a straw hut, sipping a cup of tea and watching the city of clouds burn and fall. The Eternal Cloud City, lasting 3,000 years, had been eradicated within minutes. As the light show finished, he put down his teacup and started to pet the small white cat sitting on his lap.

"Xiao Yue, I wonder if I did the right thing."

The man spoke with a soft tone, befitting his looks. He sat with a huge slouch on the wooden chair, looking weak and frail. His clothes were a modest white robe that was smudged with dirt. His hair was long, but he looked graceful, calm and mature beyond his years. Looking closer at the man, he looked no older than 20. 

Other than the strange calmness, there were no exceptional qualities to the man. In fact, if an immortal looked directly at him, he wouldn't sense a single trace of cultivation. Divine sense would illustrate a mortal man with crippled spiritual roots, closed meridians, and a deformed dantian. Wang Yu was indeed nothing other than a mere mortal.

Yet the cat on his lap suddenly replied, licking her master's hand, "You've been planning this for 10 years. What's there to regret? Meow.

You know, I've always thought. Meow. From afar, Eternal Cloud City looks like a giant floating sheep. It looks delicious. If not for us, someone would have devoured that place eventually. I am not the only tiger across the seven nations.

If you compare us with those monsters from the Western Jungle or even the local bandit cultivators in Demon Sea Cult, we suddenly seem like a cute and innocent kitty. Do you think those idiotic new leaders of the Eternal Cloud Clan, wantonly taking all of its surrounding resources and trampling over the region, would survive for long? Twenty days ago they walked right into the jungle and killed the prince of the Bamboo Monkey clan, and then a week ago they coerced 10 million spirit stones from Atlantic City.

Like a sheep grazing on grass in the territory of tigers. It doomed itself centuries ago when that ugly Tian Luo succeeded the clan leader position. Meow.

And now, you got your revenge master. Meow!" The cat looked at her sulking master and licked his face, her coarse tongue tickling his face.

Wang Yu gave a slight laugh and nodded, his eyes with a renewed vigilance. "Mother, may you rest in peace." 

He stood up and brushed the dirt off his robe. "Xiao Yue, let's go."

The cute white cat stretched her tiny body. "Meowwww. Where shall we go?"

"I've never been to Atlantic City."

Xiao Yue purred, "I HAVE been missing the fish there."

"Hahaha, I will get you all the yummy fish there."

"Meow! Master you are the best!"

"I know." He smiled.

(End of Chapter 1).