A Farmer's Journey To Immortality

One could wonder if Kalina was really this gullible and naive to be played by Aksai in such a way.

But there were indeed deeper reasons behind her actions. These reasons stemmed from her background and the various written and unwritten rules of the Shinayin Empire.

As someone from the Shinayin Empire, she possessed richer battle experience and a more steadfast mindset than the Lords from the Dadangar Subcontinent.

It wasn’t solely that Aksai’s tricks worked wonders. More accurately, it was Kalina’s own judgment that had led her to her current situation.

A few moments before Aksai’s bluff came undone, Kalina had silently clenched her fists inside her sleeves.

The frustration she had been suppressing since the beginning of the encounter had finally reached its limit.

One demand.

Then another.

And now yet another.

This so-called King Kainaat simply refused to stop.

He had already taken two Complete Tantras from her.

Now he was asking for even more Third Order resources.

She lowered her head slightly, hiding the grievance flashing across her eyes.

’Enough...’

For the first time in many years, the desire inside her heart to reach the Nascent Soul Realm rose to an unprecedented height.

She had always wanted to become a King.

She had always believed she possessed the talent.

She had worked tirelessly, had accepted dangerous missions, and explored countless ruins. She had earned every opportunity through her own efforts.

Yet tonight, none of that mattered.

Before a true King, she could only lower her head.

Even if she had technically done nothing wrong.

Even if she had completed every mission flawlessly before this.

Even if she possessed talent admired by many.

Everything she owned could still be taken away simply because someone stronger wanted it.

This was the cruelest law of the cultivation world.

Power.

Everything ultimately came down to power.

Kalina had understood this principle long ago while growing up inside the Shinayin Empire. However, tonight made her understand it once again.

Not through words.

Not through teachings.

But through humiliation.

She silently engraved this feeling deep inside her heart.

’One day... One day I will also become a Nascent Soul King. And once I do... no one will ever force me to lower my head again.’

She believed it.

She had absolute confidence in her own talent.

King Kainaat was certainly stronger than her today. But cultivation was a long journey. With enough time, resources, and opportunities, she believed she had every chance to reach the Fourth Spirit Realm herself.

Perhaps...

She might even surpass ordinary early-stage Kings one day. Thinking this far, her heart gradually calmed down.

If she could not resist today, then she would remember today. She would use this humiliation as fuel for her future cultivation.

However, that did not mean she intended to silently accept everything.

Since King Kainaat wanted to keep pushing her bottom line, then she would also express her dissatisfaction in her own way.

Earlier, he had only asked her to bring out those Third Order resources that she could freely exchange.

Kalina decided not to follow that request. Instead, she would show him everything.

Every single Third Order resource inside her storage ring.

Including many items that clearly belonged to her own imperial faction.

Her eyes flashed faintly.

’You want to rob a junior of her precious resources while pretending to pay a few Spirit Stones to preserve your prestige? Hehehe. Then you might as well rob everything I own.’

She had already made her decision.

After returning to the Shinayin Empire...

She would report everything to the imperial council exactly as it had happened.

No.

She would report it in even greater detail. Make herself appear weak and feeble and this man to be extremely cruel.

She would make sure every King learned how "King Kainaat" had bullied a junior over and over again before forcing her to empty nearly her entire storage ring.

Kings cared deeply about their reputations.

Especially among fellow Kings.

Perhaps ordinary cultivators would never dare criticize them. But Kings judged one another differently.

If King Kainaat appeared too petty, even the other Kings would begin looking down on him. It would make it difficult for King Kainaat to interact with others of his circle, making it harder for him to exchange resources with them.

The Nascent Soul Kings of the Shinayin Empire had a very tight circle. Even though they were competitors of each other and the relations between them was not exactly amicable, they still needed to work with each other in order to progress in their respective cultivation paths.

As such, under normal circumstances, no King would willingly choose short term gains and compromise his somewhat healthy relationships with the remaining Kings. Especially when the potential dealbreaker was supposed to be a mere Lord.

Potential enmity of any form with King Runiye’s faction for a Lord’s meager possessions wasn’t worth it for a true King.

Kalina decided to make use of this very logic to work in her favour. She had deliberately decided to reveal even the resources that officially belonged to Great Elder Runiye’s faction.

Whether King Kainaat accepted them or not was no longer important.

The moment those faction resources appeared before him because of his excessive demands, this matter would no longer remain between her and King Kainaat. It would become an issue between two imperial factions.

After all, with his Fourth Order cultivation, King Kainaat was supposed to possess powers that would allow him to scan these resources using his Divine Thought alone. As long as those jade scrolls appeared before him, they were as good as exposed, and their contents would be considered compromised.

If that happened, Great Elder Runiye’s faction would certainly demand an explanation.

And if King Kainaat truly wished to preserve his reputation under such circumstances, he would have to compensate her and her faction far beyond the true value of whatever he selected. Only then could he provide a satisfactory explanation to her faction and the other Kings of the imperial factions.

Either way, she would not lose.

Her thoughts then shifted toward another possibility.

’What if... What if he isn’t King Kainaat at all?’

The thought had quietly surfaced in her mind a few moments earlier and never left. It was just that she couldn’t confirm her doubts.

After all, she had never personally met King Kainaat. Everything she knew came from records and rumors.

What if...

This mysterious King belonged to another faction?

Or perhaps...

He was hiding his true identity for some unknown reason.

What if this King didn’t even belong to the Shinayin Empire? Although the possibility of something like that happening was extremely low considering the subcontinent’s current condition, she couldn’t completely rule it out of her calculations. Especially after interacting more with the cloaked King.

If that were true, her chances of surviving tonight would become extremely small.

Yet...

She still chose to reveal everything.

The reason was simple.

If this mysterious King truly intended to kill her, hiding her treasures would accomplish nothing. In fact, it would be more beneficial to offer everything willingly and make killing her as meaningless as possible.

In theory, she could destroy her storage ring before dying if her opponent were another Lord, someone more powerful than her in the same major realm. She had enough confidence to do that.

This way, she would prevent her enemy from benefiting from her death. It was a common tactic used by wealthy and talented cultivators from the imperial factions of the Shinayin Empire to ensure that their enemies gained nothing after killing them.

But before a Nascent Soul King, she had no confidence in using such a tactic.

A King could erase her existence with a single thought before she even had the chance to destroy the storage space. In the end, she would die without leaving behind an intact corpse, and the cloaked King would obtain all her possessions anyway.

It would be fine if she died tonight if death was imminent. But she didn’t want to die a meaningless death.

Rather than letting everything be taken without purpose, it was better to place a burden upon this mysterious King.

Among the treasures inside her storage ring were several Third Order inheritances and resources officially registered under Great Elder Runiye’s faction.

Those resources carried special tracking methods.

They were not something ordinary cultivators could easily discover or erase. Perhaps even a wandering King would have difficulty detecting them.

After all, loose cultivators, also known as drifters, possessed shallow foundations compared to the imperial factions. The secret methods used by the imperial factions were far beyond the abilities of such wandering Kings.

If this mysterious King truly accepted those resources, then sooner or later, her faction would trace them back to him.

Even if she died tonight, her faction would eventually demand an explanation.

Perhaps even revenge.

With that thought, the last trace of hesitation inside Kalina disappeared. Her expression became calm once again. She confidently emptied nearly every Third Order treasure from her storage ring.

Whatever happened after this, she was ready to face it head-on. It was far better than remaining a helpless puppet manipulated by someone else.

One had to admit that Kalina had considered almost every possibility based on her knowledge, experience, and years of surviving within the Shinayin Empire.

Although it appeared that she was being readily manipulated by Aksai, she had her own reasons for going along with his demands.

In her mind, she was the protagonist of her own story. She believed she was merely pretending to cooperate with her enemy so she could turn the tables at the final moment or grow more powerful than her bully in the future before taking her revenge.

After all, she still possessed a forbidden technique that might allow her to escape from a King’s grasp by using the lives of her subordinates as fuel. Although her chances of survival were low, they were not zero.

The more time she had to activate the technique, the better her chances of escape would become.

This was also why she had decided to engage in conversation with this mysterious King, dragging it out for as long as possible to increase her chances of survival.

Unfortunately, there was one possibility she could never have imagined.

The cloaked "Nascent Soul King" standing before her was not a true King at all.

The existence of the False King Essence Pill had created a major impact in this situation despite the fact that it did not grant Aksai any real combat power. It was simply the way he used the pill that brought out its true potential—the potential to deceive.

If one really thought about it, the pill made by Arkaal in the Enchanted Everwood Farm was as good as being labeled as useless in a real battlefield. After all, who would dare to not cast any Spirit Spells against their opponents in a battlefield but simply stand in front of them as if they were not worried about the retaliation at all? And as long as they took action, the pill’s effects were bound to vanish.

Perhaps it really was not the grade of the tool but how one used it that decided the outcome of events. In the hands of ordinary cultivators, the False King Essence Pill was perhaps nothing more than a way to prank their peers. But in Aksai’s hands, it had become a game changer.

What made it even more effective was the fact that Aksai had not invested much time or many resources into using the pill against Kalina. He had simply wanted to see if she could be exploited with a few carefully chosen words. This simplicity made the trap even more effective than a more elaborate scheme.

Aksai was merely a Core Formation Lord, not even a late-stage Lord like Kalina.

While Kalina stood at the peak of the seventh level of the Core Formation Realm, only a single step away from entering the eighth level, the man beneath the cloak had merely reached the peak of the sixth level.

He had not even truly stepped into the late stage of the Core Formation Realm.

He was nothing more than a wolf wearing the skin of a lion. And an uninformed wolf at that.

The effects of the pill eventually wore out.

By the time Kalina realized that something was wrong with the identity of this mysterious man pretending to be a King, she had already taken out all of her Third Order resources.

She wanted to pull everything back into her storage ring.

But unfortunately for her, Aksai had already taken action, preventing her from reclaiming her treasures.

A potent poison field descended out of nowhere at this moment, taking everyone present at the scene inside it.

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