From the records of the first generation who entered the barrier of the Celestial Star Cave, it’s understood that from our perspective, it happened ten thousand years ago. This world was initially an era of cultivation, vast and grand, but then the world underwent significant changes, ushering in the End of the Dharma Era, with spiritual energy dissipating wildly, and the cultivation realm sensed a catastrophe approaching.
The specifics of how that catastrophe came about are unknown, as the Celestial Star Cave was merely a third-rate sect in that era, and had no qualification to know, with no records available. They only know that after the spiritual energy began to dissipate, chaos erupted in the cultivation realm, but the true calamity looming over the cultivation realm was the message sent to the cultivation realm by the three major ancestral veins of the human world.
These three major ancestral veins are the most powerful cultivation Dao lineages in the human world. They claimed that the dissipation of spiritual energy was a heavenly tribulation, and that heaven and earth would one day be restored, allowing all cultivators to enter the barrier to avoid tribulation, just waiting for the darkness to dissipate, and the spiritual energy would revive."
Gu Zhan put down his teacup and asked, "How did this barrier come to be?"
"Heaven and earth generated it," Kou Baimen said, "This barrier is the legendary Grotto Heaven Blessed Land, a kind of small world hidden outside the larger world, with different rules from the big world.
The most obvious manifestation is that time is different. According to the Celestial Star Cave’s recorded literature, they have only spent less than six thousand years within the barrier, whereas the outside world has already passed over ten thousand years."
Kou Baimen pondered for a while and continued, "After the End of the Dharma Era descended, the small Grotto Heaven barrier became the sanctuary for cultivators because spiritual energy continually dissipated, cultivators were polluted by Heaven and Earth Primordial Qi, subject to various restrictions, even experiencing setbacks in cultivation. The cultivation realm also underwent bloody turmoil as various forces scrambled to bring resources into the small Grotto Heaven barrier to withstand the End of the Dharma Era."
Gu Zhan asked, "That turmoil in the cultivation realm lasted quite some time, right?"
Kou Baimen nodded, saying, "Naturally, it didn’t last for a short time. The powerful forces naturally avoided tribulation early on. But small forces like the Celestial Star Cave and loose cultivators were different. They had no foundation and could only look everywhere for sanctuaries. The Celestial Star Cave found a barrier only three hundred years after the disaster, and naturally, it wasn’t a favorable Grotto Heaven Blessed Land."
Upon hearing this,
Gu Zhan roughly understood why the human world experiences a cultivation gap.
Three reasons: First, the cultivation realm avoided tribulation, and most inheritances were taken away. Second, the chaos in the cultivation realm lasted unknown years, and the human world inevitably suffered various disasters. Third, even some retained their inheritance during the End of the Dharma Era, it gained no effect during those thousands of years and gradually became akin to fake.
Gu Zhan thought for a moment and asked, "One question remains: since the Celestial Star Cave has survived stably in the small Grotto Heaven barrier for nearly six thousand years, why is the strongest cultivator still only Golden Core?"
"Heh heh," Kou Baimen chuckled lightly and said, "Grotto Heaven Blessed Land’s rules aren’t like those of the outside world. One day there might equal a month or even several months in the human world. Conversely, a human world year might equal only ten days or two weeks there. It indicates the Grotto Heaven Blessed Land fundamentally isn’t a complete world, with certainly limited resources.
Take the example of the Celestial Star Cave’s boundary mini Grotto Heaven; not only are resources scarce, but it’s almost utterly barren. It has two benefits, though. One is the slow flow of time, and the other is being sealed off can isolate Heaven and Earth Primordial Qi.
Cultivators are not like us martial artists; Heaven and Earth Primordial Qi is poison to them. Retreating into the small Grotto Heaven barrier is to avoid the infiltration of Heaven and Earth Primordial Qi,
however, with spiritual energy scarcity in the small Grotto Heaven barrier, not able to self-produce it, supporting themselves still relies on the accumulated resources. And with the original spiritual energy within the Celestial Star Cave’s barrier with the first generation entering, was depleted within just a few years. To continue cultivation and maintain cultivation levels, they could only rely on spirit stones and spirit medicine to keep up.
For this generation of Celestial Star Cave to have three Golden Cores, it was deliberate. Their ancestors had once set the rule, limiting each generation of cultivators to not exceed ten, cultivation level maxed to remain under the Grotto Heaven Realm, meaning the highest conceivable was the Refining God Realm, ensuring heritage and the Celestial Star Cave remained transcendent within the barrier, governing the mortal beings within.
This situation, relying on the foundation to continue, barely sustained until now. It’s been just two or three hundred years since they sensed faint traces of spiritual energy emerging in the human world, leading them from Huang Longzi’s generation to resume cultivation, waiting for the revival of spiritual energy to return to the human world, depleting most of their resources accumulated over thousands of years to produce three Golden Cores."
Gu Zhan raised his eyebrow and said, "So it’s as you say, Baiyun Immortal Child said there were three hundred cultivators, and claimed he is relatively weak, was he just trying to scare me?"
Kou Baimen chuckled lightly and said, "Indeed, that seems to be the case. According to the Celestial Star Cave records, the current resources of the Celestial Star Cave are certainly insufficient for nurturing three hundred cultivators."
Gu Zhan nodded slightly, saying, "However, the Celestial Star Cave is merely a second or third-rate small force, they are weak due to their lack of foundation. Those strong forces, such as the three major ancestral veins you mentioned, they control the best small Grotto Heaven barriers, according to your time flow comments, while it may have been ten thousand years in the human world, they might have only experienced a few hundred years.
And their small Grotto Heaven barriers are extremely prosperous; spiritual energy might still be abundant. Moreover, they have deep foundations, now their strength is likely unchanged from when avoiding tribulation, once they emerge, they define the world rules. Why did you say we still have time?"

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