Fellow Daoist! That scoundrel has written a new book again.

Zhu Wuyao, no, "Zhu Wuji," stood before the familiar gate in his memory.

Zhu family.

In the original owner's memory, she watched the Zhu family decline. It wasn't a sudden collapse or a dramatic fall, but rather the dust settling on their magnificent cloak.

The household had lost a few servants, and the paper and ink they used suddenly became of lower quality. They could no longer spend lavishly to buy new jade pendants and gold hairpins, so they had to melt down the old ones and exchange them for new jewelry styles to maintain a respectable appearance. Their daily meals also lacked some of the more luxurious items.

The house that stands here now is nothing but an empty shell.

The interior has long since lost its dignity.

Sixteen years have passed, and even though the main house has been occupied by a collateral branch of the clan, and even though "relatives" have seized the Ascension Token and sent Zhu Wuji into the immortal realm.

However, this did not reverse the downward trend.

Instead, Zhu Wuji's competitive spirit drained the Zhu family's meager savings.

The Zhu family ancestors had a connection to the immortals.

That is why I was able to obtain an Ascension Token, and thus survive until now without falling into poverty, barely managing to maintain my precarious existence.

In this generation, there was a real lack of successors, so the Zhu family patriarch, who was also Zhu Wuyao's parents, thought of using the Ascension Token.

However, by a twist of fate, the ascension order ended up in the hands of someone else in the clan.

The Zhu family has now poured all its remaining wealth into Zhu Wuji, hoping that he can become a disciple or elder and restore the family's glory.

The Zhu family has exhausted all its resources in order to support a cultivator.

This information was pieced together by Zhu Wuyao based on the memories of the original owner and Zhu Wuji.

Ah.

Zhu Wuyao was kicked out of the family, and other clan elders had to step in to help.

The world of cultivation is slightly different from Zhu Wuyao's previous life.

Ultimately, it's because the way the lower classes compete for resources doesn't depend on physical strength, but on their talent for cultivating immortality.

In this respect, there is no difference between men and women.

In the past, the establishment of social structures fundamentally depended on who could better use stone tools and who had the power to protect the safety of the race. In terms of physical strength, men had the advantage, and the foundation determined the upper social structure, making men and women absolutely unequal. Even the so-called "matriarchal clans" should actually be called maternal clans if one had any understanding.

It wasn't until basic infrastructure was developed and technology replaced stone tools and spears, becoming a basic tool that everyone could use, that the gap between men and women in the use and competition for resources narrowed, and their status gradually became more equal.

Therefore, the concept of equality does not depend on written words.

It lies in the advantage of utilizing the most basic resources.

Everything else is just empty talk; only the development of underlying technologies can bridge the gap.

Development and construction are the top priorities.

The cultivation world, however, has smoothed out this distinction, because what truly determines one's status is the level of one's cultivation.

The Zhu family was the same.

Those with talent stayed in their own family, while those with less talent would marry out or move away.

The reason why the elders of the Zhu family chose Zhu Wuji and rejected Zhu Wuyao ultimately came down to the difference in their cultivation and talent.

Even if a small family cannot accurately determine the state of a spiritual root, they still have the resources to measure the level of talent.

The Zhu couple had long known that Zhu Wuyao lacked talent.

Therefore, after seeing that secret realm, he chose to keep it a secret, hoping to use the things in the secret realm to help his daughter achieve something.

As a result, he met his demise.

She stepped forward, brushed the ash off the stone lions at the entrance, and pushed open the peeling paint door.

An aged face heard the sound of the door opening, looked up, and saw surprise and delight in its eyes, as if it hadn't expected its child to return so suddenly.

The old woman quickly got up, seemingly a little flustered.

"Ji'er... Ji'er, why are you back at this time?"

Zhu Wuyao knew where this awkwardness came from.

Zhu Wuji was vain. He knew perfectly well that the family fortune left over from the past hundred years had been wasted on him over the past decade or so, and that the family no longer had the foundation of a noble family. Yet he insisted on maintaining the identity of "a family of immortals".

Not only does he have to support himself, but he also wants his parents to support him.

Zhu Wuji despised his parents' simple clothes. Every time he returned home, he would look at their tattered appearance with disgust and say something like—

"Can't you guys even tidy yourselves up a bit?"

"If my fellow disciples came to Dongji City and saw you all like this, wouldn't they be a disgrace to me?"

Therefore, no matter how difficult things were at home, he wouldn't let his parents move to a new house, and he insisted that they wear fine clothes when they were out in public.

Today, Zhu Wuji suddenly returned to his parents' home. His parents were unaware of this beforehand and did not have time to clean the front hall or change into the only set of brocade clothes they had left.

There wasn't enough time to salvage the dilapidated state.

Seeing the woman's uneasy appearance, Zhu Wuyao suddenly felt a little irritated.

She didn't know whether this restlessness stemmed from the remnants of Qian Xiangzhong and Zhu Wuji's divine souls, or from within herself.

Before returning to the Zhu family, she had planned to take revenge on everyone—her parents' revenge, the original owner's revenge, and anyone connected to the Zhu family. No one would be spared.

But the woman before me is now quite old, with white hair.

She won't live for more than a few years; in fact, her own child is already dead.

Even more tragically, all of the Zhu family's savings were destroyed by the successor they had personally chosen; with Zhu Wuji's death, it all went down the drain.

Zhu Wuyao took a deep breath, suppressing the reluctance in her heart.

It was the original body that died, not her.

She could feel sorry for him, but the original owner of this body had already died under a tree in the suburbs.

Right and wrong, gratitude and resentment, must be clearly distinguished.

She stepped forward, continuing to play the role of "Zhu Wuji," and said:

"My cultivation has improved, and my master has allowed me to go down the mountain to travel. But what about my father?"

The memories Qianxiang had retrieved were incomplete. Zhu Wuyao did not know who had harmed the original owner. Her purpose in coming here was to use Zhu Wuji's identity to find out the whole story from back then.

"Your father...your father is gone."

The old woman trembled, but her eyes were dry and no tears could flow.

Zhu Wuyao gritted her teeth. Sixteen years... she came back too late.

"Why didn't I know..."

“My son, the clan elders sent you a message back then, but you...you didn’t come back.”

During that time, was Zhu Wuji in Tongzhou?

Why not hang white banners?

Upon hearing this question, the woman fell silent again, her lips twitching slightly, but she ultimately remained silent.

Zhu Wuyao immediately understood—

The family had no money to afford a decent funeral, so it was likely that in the end, the body would only be kept in state for a few days. Seeing that no one would come to offer their condolences, they would simply bury the body hastily.

She slowly exhaled.

There was no sense of satisfaction from avenging a great grudge.

"I'll stay at home for a few days."

"Okay, okay, I'll go buy you some meat to eat right away. When we get home, we won't go hungry! When you go to Nanshan tomorrow, burn some paper money for your father as well."

The old woman's gloomy expression vanished instantly, and she looked at Zhu Wuji with eyes full of relief.

She patted Zhu Wuji's hand and said:

"His cultivation has improved again. I knew it. Ji'er is exceptionally talented and can be praised anywhere."

She was just an old woman in the mortal world.

They couldn't possibly understand anything about the cultivation world; all they knew was that their cultivation had improved and their children had become more powerful.

Zhu Wuyao nodded in agreement and said:

"I need to visit the elders of the Zhu family in the next few days."