The Deposed Empress Takes Up Cultivation - Chapter 1

When I failed my heavenly tribulation, I never expected to have one last chance at survival.

The deposed empress was using a secret ancestral art to summon an immortal.

“Your faithful petitioner, Jiang Yao, begs for a way out…”

The force of her will broke through the confines of this world and happened to strike my soul just as it was about to dissipate.

As luck would have it, my name was Jiang Yao too.

I slipped straight through that crack.

I hadn’t become an immortal yet, but I was only one major realm away. Even in the cultivation world, people addressed me reverently as an Ancestor. In a place like this, I might as well be an immortal.

The deposed empress had little soul power left, and the lightning tribulation had nearly destroyed both my life and my cultivation.

Our souls hit it off at once and merged into one.

Now that I was the deposed empress, I naturally knew that the Daoist teachings of this world had long since been lost.

Its spiritual energy had probably dried up too.

I felt a pang of regret. A thousand years or so of cultivation, along with that cultivated body of mine, had gone up in smoke.

Who wouldn’t be upset?

Unwilling to give up, I tried circulating my energy—and got the most wonderful surprise!

Not only was the mountain where Qingyun Temple stood rich in spiritual energy,

but the deposed empress’s body was a supreme Celestial Spirit Body!

Jackpot. Absolute jackpot!

What would any self-respecting cultivation fanatic do with a whole untapped world of spiritual energy?

Start cultivating immediately, of course!

I put the Daoist formula I knew by heart into motion and drew spiritual energy into my body.

In an instant, the energy around me rushed over as though fighting to get in first.

I accidentally took in rather too much.

Within a few days, I’d passed through Qi Refining and Foundation Establishment. The faint outline of a Golden Core was already taking shape.

A Celestial Spirit Body indeed…

Forming a core was a momentous occasion.

It deserved a little ceremony.

I decided to pick a good day.

While patiently stabilizing my cultivation, I sorted through this body’s memories.

The original Jiang Yao came from a great clan. Her father had been the prime minister.

The previous emperor had died young. His son ascended the throne at ten, and Prime Minister Jiang had been charged in the late emperor’s final decree with assisting him in government.

At fifteen, the emperor took power in his own right. That year, the original Jiang Yao entered the palace as empress at just thirteen.

For ten years, she managed the harem and attended to the titled ladies beyond it. Everyone praised her as a virtuous empress.

Once the emperor had consolidated his power, however, he slaughtered her entire immediate family and exiled her clansmen.

She had known she would be deposed. What she hadn’t known was that the scumbag emperor, Zhao Ye, would dismiss the whole harem to clear the way for his new empress.

Any relatives of the other deposed consorts who dared object were killed.

In the end, Zhao Ye dismissed every woman in his harem, refused to let them return to their families, and sent them to Qingyun Temple to practice the Dao.

A scumbag through and through.

Never mind the original Jiang Yao—what had all those other women done wrong? Yet the bastard had dumped them in a ruined temple on a desolate mountain. “Practicing the Dao” was just his excuse to leave them to fend for themselves.

Well. Since he was so eager for his former consorts to practice the Dao, I supposed I could trouble myself to send him a magnificent gift on the original Jiang Yao’s behalf.

That day, the palace was holding the new empress’s investiture.

Up in Qingyun Temple, the former empress and consorts were being forced to chant prayers under heavy guard.

As the deposed empress, I sat at the head of the group.

Perfect.

I calculated the time, formed a hand seal, recited the formula, and began forming my core.

Spiritual energy surged madly into me, stirring the winds and clouds over all of Qingyun Peak.

The instant my core formed, heaven and earth changed color.

Celestial music and sacred chants rang out in every direction. Phoenixes arrived upon clouds of seven colors and bowed their heads in congratulations.

Everyone in the capital saw the wondrous signs over Qingyun Peak.

The Heavenly Dao was being so enthusiastic, I was almost embarrassed.

Who could have imagined that a real phoenix would descend from heaven during the emperor’s investiture of his new empress—only to visit the deposed one instead?

I opened my eyes. My Golden Core spiritual sense spread out naturally, and I clearly saw the scumbag emperor’s livid face a hundred li away.

Through gritted teeth, he forced out a single command.

“Investigate!”

Hee. An auspicious day indeed. Excellent for cultivation.

The emperor’s man soon arrived at Qingyun Peak.

The Qingyun Mountains were the most treacherous range near the capital. Qingyun Peak itself saw hardly any visitors.

It had taken the deposed consorts, unused to physical exertion, two full days to climb it.

But Zhao Ye had sent the head of his shadow guards, a highly accomplished martial artist.

A hundred li of road and a mountain several thousand meters high took him just two hours.

The signs in the sky hadn’t even faded yet.

I was still suspended in the air, fingers held in a Daoist seal and a lotus beneath my feet.

Shadow Guard A found an old tree to hide in.

When he saw me, he almost fell out of it.

The twenty-eight deposed consorts and the hundred imperial guards present were in much the same state.

They couldn’t believe their eyes.

In this world, which had no idea what immortal cultivation was, Shadow Guard A’s martial skills were already at the pinnacle.

By the standards of the cultivation world, he was only a step away from entering the Dao through body tempering.

But he was still just a mortal.

He couldn’t rise into the sky from level ground. He couldn’t hover in midair. And he certainly didn’t have five-colored divine birds circling him or the spectral image of a phoenix floating behind him.

But seeing was believing.

They had no choice but to believe.

The mountain wind swept spiritual energy past me, setting my blue Daoist robe billowing.

As the sacred chants gradually faded, I heard someone murmur,

“The deposed empress… has become an immortal.”

Now that was an auspicious thing to say.

I liked the sound of it.