These “great senior brothers” mainly used their unique religious system to conduct sacrifices and invocation rituals, brainwashing and empowering members to believe they were invulnerable to blades and bullets. In reality, it was mostly deception.
However, not all great senior brothers were frauds.
Wu Paulo had once encountered, at a southern Yihequan altar, a great senior brother with one foot already in the cultivator threshold.
Though Wu Paulo had already achieved enlightenment then, he was under Wu Fiona’s orders to disguise himself as an ordinary rebel farmer infiltrating Yihequan to spy on their movements. After one internal invocation ritual, to boost morale, that great senior brother told a story about a special clan before the Dharma-ending Age.
He said that before the Dharma-ending Age arrived, when the world was still in the Bronze Age, numerous cultivators existed. Sects abounded, experts were as common as clouds. Overall cultivator strength far surpassed that of the Dharma-ending Age. Ascension was frequent. Nearly every sect had Mahayana practitioners successfully transcend tribulations and ascend, greatly inspiring others and firming their dao hearts.
Cultivators then focused solely on cultivation and ascension. In their eyes, mundane mortals were like uncivilised savages, so they had no time for worldly affairs.
Until the Dharma-ending Age descended, most cultivators lost channels to advance cultivation. As their lifespans neared end, they fell one by one.
Precisely because cultivation became difficult in the Dharma-ending Age, older generations gradually withered. New cultivators were rare. The scale and strength of cultivators plummeted instantly.
Surviving cultivators, seeking longevity and ascension, searched everywhere for opportunities. Yet longevity and ascension grew ever harder. Many sects perished unwillingly as their last generations died pursuing longevity, their millennium glory utterly extinguished in history’s long river.
But legend held that one sect, at the world’s southernmost end, in its coldest polar wasteland, found the final gate to ascension. There, perhaps, lay the last hope for Dharma-ending Age cultivators.
Those listening with Wu Paulo dismissed the great senior brother’s tale as myth. In their knowledge, south was warmer. The world’s coldest place must be farthest north, not south.
Farmers joining Yihequan then knew nothing of Antarctica or the Arctic. They had never left their country, or even travelled over a thousand kilometres from home. They knew only that north was bitterly cold, south eternally spring-like. Thus, the story clashed hugely with their common sense.
Wu Paulo differed. He could discern that great senior brother’s cultivation, knowing he far surpassed those frogs in a well. Thus, he always felt the story might not be mere fabrication.
Later, from Western missionaries, he learned that at Earth’s southernmost end indeed existed an ice-covered frigid continent. Western explorers had already set foot there multiple times, even planning South Pole expeditions.
In that moment, he grew more convinced of the legend’s truth.
In that same moment, he set Antarctica as his ultimate cultivation goal.
In the Dharma-ending Age, he refused to repeat Meng Changsheng and Wu Fiona’s mistakes. He sought that ascension gate for instant transcendence.
This story he told no one, not even Wu Fiona.
Now, Wu Fiona had suddenly granted them brief freedom. His cultivation was one step from opening the Niwan Palace. In this world, apart from cultivators stronger than him, natural winds, waves, heat, and cold could scarcely harm him.
Thus, in his view, this was the perfect chance to probe Antarctica.
A once-in-a-millennium opportunity!
