The end of the old year and the start of a new year.

Zhou Ye was now of the age of eleven but had the physique of a nine year old still. Zhou Ye coming from a commoner family, didn't have a personal birthday but rather celebrated it at the start and end of every year instead.

(Commoner is pretty much middle class)

He was currently running down a small mountain and on him were several weights and the combined weights were about one hundred jin. 

Running down the mountain he dodged several trees as well as the occasional jumping over rocks. 

He was sweating constantly and was moving and dodging everything in his path as best as he could. 

At the bottom of the mountain was Tang Xuan sitting in meditative position and waiting for Zhou Ye to arrive.

Such a position didn't make any difference to anything and wouldn't give any beneficial effects, rather it was force of habit.

Tang Xuan had lived for millions of years and had been in constant meditation for more than half his life and even if it didn't do any good he would do it regardless as it was a habit.

Zhou Ye dodged through tree and tree and he jumped over a few rocks, in the distance was a small fire which Tang Xuan could sense but he ignored it as he couldn't sense the cultivation or what was happening in the fire due to the Immortal Artifact from earlier blocking most of his vision. 

Tang Xuan whilst meditating also attempted to look again throughout the World, however due to his cultivation being suppressed and damaged by attacking the Heavens and the Immortal Artifact he couldn't go on any further.

As for his cultivation being damaged, it was because when he was in the Pseudo Sovereign Realm he took his rage against the Heavens and attempted to reach the Sovereign Realm and at the last moment reached the Sovereign Boundary of Power. 

But he was automatically rejected as he wasn't a True Sovereign and was pushed down and burnt by the azure flames all the way down to the Mortal World.

Since Zhou Ye and Tang Xuan had met, they had only gone through physical exercises and told Zhou Ye to wait for the passing of a year to learn his cultivation method. 

Zhou Ye was ecstatic and wanted to learn the method immediately but first had to temper the physical body. 

The Physical body could be tempered by a variety of elements such as wood, fire, earth, metal and water which were the primary elements. There existed other minor elements such as Spatial, Time, Void and the alike which couldn't normally be learnt.

Zhou Ye, however, was tempering his body via only normally strengthening as he had yet to embark on the cultivation road.

Tang Xuan in his meditative position for a split second had his eyes flickered but only to close them again as if he noticed something but chose not to intrude on it.

Zhou Ye screamed out "Ahhhhh!" he had just narrowly avoided a tree, but tripped over a pebble which brought him all the way down to the mountain.

Tang Xuan got out of meditative position and stood up whilst having a slight smug look on his face and saw Zhou ye slowly falling down the mountain. 

The test was for Zhou Ye to safely reach the mountain, it was only a small mountain and the trees were quite small but the rocks were slightly big and Tang Xuan could guess that Zhou Ye would probably fail eventually. 

It took a few moments and Zhou Ye eventually made it falling down to the mountain, Zhou Ye stood up to make sure his body was fine and looked for any broken bones and by pure luck there were broken bones, not even fractures.

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He was relatively unharmed, in the distance Zhou Ye could start to smell a small amount of fire and asked Tang Xuan "Master! Where's the fire coming from??". 

Tang Xuan smiled and said "Beloved Disciple don't mind something that trivial, I have yet another test for you to climb the mountain high above which soars to the skies, it shouldn't be to hard for you to reach there". 

Tang Xuan pointed out his finger and whilst it wasn't the highest it would probably be the second or third highest, but it's steepness made it easy for people to climb as long as they had enough time. 

But Tang Xuan added something else "You have half an hour to reach the top.....".

Even Spirit Acolytes that were at the middle stage of the Foundation would take an entire hour to get up there and those Spirit Acolytes only at the Initial stage of the Foundation might even take three hours at least and four at most. 

But, Zhou Ye lived in an Old World, it had long since forgot the two cultivation paths. Within Zhou Ye's world there was nobody cultivating system and because of that in truly prosperous Worlds such as Celestial Star they would be poorly matched against. 

Of course, Zhou Ye had not been doing body cultivation yet but his physical body was about on equal to that of a Spirit Acolyte at the Initial Foundation. 

Zhou Ye whined and said "Master.... Please give me more time!!" in truth Zhou Ye didn't know how long it would actually take and merely guessed that it would probably wouldn't be enough time. 

Tang Xuan patted Zhou Ye's head but it wasn't a true feeling as Tang Xuan didn't have a physical body and said "You know I can't do that, I'll tell you a trick theres a small Crow, which has the ability of lifting up heavy weights". 

(Strong Crow)

It was likely that through these words that Tang Xuan was trying to tell Zhou Ye to use the Crow to lift him up the mountain.

If so then it would only take twenty but the other ten would have to be used to try and tame the Crow! 

Crow's were extremely fast, but couldn't hold on much weight, fortunately, this clearly wasn't any ordinary crow. 

In the World of Cultivation it wasn't entirely impossible for there to be beasts that managed to reach the Spirit Master stage of late foundation or even peak foundation by merely existing.

A Crow like this was just so, it didn't have much interactions with humans and could be easily tamed as long as it was before it grew interaction or had a negative interaction with humans before. 

Zhou Ye then sped up a lake in a forest, Tang Xuan sighed as he was going to say something and saw the fire getting slightly bigger and he decided to fly up and see what was happening. 

Tang Xuan soared through the skies and soar a crazed man wearing a bloody robe and had bloodshot eyes screaming out "Yuan Li, you won't ever find me! I Liu Yan, once I break through to Promintent Soul won't have much trouble joining the Infernal Dusk Empire Sect".

Tang Xuan merely ignored him as he saw him going to an area known as Dreaded Earth Lands an area where thousands had died in the ongoing war between the Infernal Dusk Empire and the Holy Illumination Empire.

Zhou Ye was currently inside a lake looking for fish to catch, in the past he would so using a net made of tree branches and leafs but would fail every time due to his insignificant strength but now he felt confident doing so with just his hands.

Unfortunately Zhou Ye couldn't find any fish and started to go in deeper and whilst this happened, the passing of the crazed man "Liu Yan" started to scare away a few animals. 

The Crow on the nest looked angry as it's babies which were just born were being frightened by the immense pressure being brought on to them.

The Crow sped on to attack the crazed man but it didn't do anything as the crazed man took a look and immediately the Crow was about shattered and was just breathing on.

The crazed man then killed all the baby crows as well but one small egg was left out which was glowing with an azure translucent aura.

This was the power of Soul Emergence, the ability to use power outside the body it was a gap between Spirit Foundation that simply couldn't be passed by most.

The Crow was left alive as some sort of cruel mercy by the crazed man as he continued walking and Zhou Ye at that time managed to catch a fish. 

Zhou Ye then got a few sticks and made a fire to cook the fish, in the past Zhou Ye had seen people feed animals with cooked fish and didn't know any better if a bird would like it or not. 

The time of five minutes had passed and Zhou Ye had got the cooked fish and went to where the crow's where and went to the bottom of the mountain and climbed up a few metres and more metres until he made it to the crow's nest.

He didn't see the Crow on the floor but went up and saw the dead bodies of a few baby crows and saw a egg as it was hatching. 

A baby crow immediately hatched out with its eyes shining and attempted to take the fish from Zhou Ye and the two both fought over it for a few seconds before Zhou Ye getting pushed off the nest.

The baby crow was eating the fish happy and brought to the fish with him to the ground to Zhou Ye and was cuddling him slowly.