Heaven world, the strongest and largest world in the unknown universe. Among the thousands of worlds known to cultivators, it was idolized as one of cultivation's holy land. This world was huge, comprising of several continents spread across the ocean, along with its sun, moon and starry sky. The entire world was filled with high-quality spirit energy, teeming with vitality and magic. The concentration of spirit energy was enough to casually cause spirit rain, a phenomenon treated as a myth in other worlds. The abundant spirit energy of the world had caused an extremely high degree of evolution among the natives of the realm. As a result, almost every being in the heavenly realm had cultivation talent. Even a mediocre talent from the realm could become a genius in the myriad worlds. The sheer amount of talent had pushed this world to the pedestal of the strongest.

Over the years, this world had given birth to many geniuses. In ancient times, when the world was still considered young, many divinities emerged and established their sects. With time, even gods came into existence. This brought about a revolution as the gods became the pillars supporting their sects to much greater heights. Each sect that was helmed by a god became categorised as an ultimate sect. Around the time the ancient era ended, there were already hundreds of ultimate sects. The resources in the world could no longer sustain the burden of cultivators and a grand war between the ultimate sects unfolded. It was at that time that a monstrous genius rose in the world, completely overpowering the hundreds of ultimate sects to take the throne of the world. This genius was the current strongest in the universe, Heaven Emperor. With overwhelming power, he destroyed countless forces and even killed gods, establishing a new world order. He then took in the surrendered forces and created the covenant of ninety-nine ultimate factions. Under his rule, there could only be ninety-nine factions that would be allotted the cultivation resources of this rich world. While these 99 factions were still under him, they were given many benefits including the right to preach and expand their faith in the world as well as the priority in all cultivation resources. They were also given their own regions to rule and manage as well. To make it so that the competition would keep these factions sharp, he started the Heavenly Merit Conferment Ceremony. This was a competition held every ten million years that decided the rights to the ninety-nine established seats of different sects.

This conferment ceremony was a brutal competition in which many historically powerful forces had been wiped out. Even gods had fallen in overconfidence. Over the course of 49 such ceremonies, almost all forces had learned their lessons. There was no way that they would underestimate its importance anymore. The sects in the Heaven world soon realised that to maintain their power, they needed to keep on taking in new blood and train powerful cultivators. Talent was the most precious resource for these sects, not the spirit jades or treasures of heaven and earth. As such, they began to aggressively hunt for talented cultivation geniuses. The system culminated into a tradition lasting hundreds of millions of years - the selection battles. Every hundred thousand years, a grand competition was held in the Heaven Empire, where all geniuses of the Heaven realm and its subsidiary realms shone with their dazzling lights, hoping to attract the attention of gods. The greatest geniuses of the selection battles were chosen as disciples by the different gods in the Empire, which paved their path for great success.

As the next selection battles were coming up in only twenty thousand years, lots of sects had begun their preparations. As the next conferment ceremony was also coming up in a million years, the selection battles of this time were one of the more important ones as the sects might be able to recruit some geniuses that had a chance of becoming divinities in the remaining time. From the disciples of major sects to the itinerant cultivators in the realm, everyone was preparing themselves for this grand event. In the Aporaghaya continent of the Heaven world, there were three hegemonic sects and the Samsara Sect was one of them. As one of the ninety-nine recognised sects of the Heaven Empire, the sect has a very old legacy, going back to the ancient era. This six-hundred million year-long legacy had created many powerful cultivators. In the history of this sect, there had already been three demigods. Alas! over time, all of them had died either due to the passing of their lifespan or due to deific battles. The ancestor of the sect, also known as the Samsara ancestor was one of the more powerful gods in the Empire and was comparable to dao gods. He was also the deeply trusted advisor of Heaven Emperor. According to its stature, this vast sect owned many ultimate geniuses and heaven-defying talents. Each of these talents was a hero or heroine of their generation, idolised by many followers both inside as well as outside the sect. Their glamour and shine could cause the sun to dim and the moon to bow. But, we are not going to look at these heaven-defying chosen ones, at least not now.

In a corner of the sect forgotten by most, an outer sect disciple was currently practising his mystical abilities. He would fail most of the time, suffering backlash and getting injured. Then, he would heal himself before trying again. The torturous process had been continuing for a long time. The robe of this disciple was already red with his blood and his blood and sweat had long since evaporated, leaving dark stains on the ground. At this moment, the door to the training room burst open and a fat boy came bumbling inside. The boy suddenly turned to find the door blocked by five people, all wearing the same robe as him and the fat boy. Only, their badges were made of different colours, giving off faint vibrations of law. The youth went over to the fatty and helped him up, staring coldly at the five disciples blocking the gate.

"Fatty Lang, get up. What happened?"

"Mark, you have to stand up for me! I have been saving my spirit jades for the last year because I wanted to buy the second volume of the tome of spirit cooking. I just bought it and was meditating on it when these disco bastards came in claiming that I had obtained the tome through illegal means! These guys are trying to confiscate the tome!", Lang screamed.

Mark (Michael) looked at the five disciples from the disciplinary committee (or disco for short). These were disciples who had taken on the responsibility to maintain the sect's discipline and enforce the sect's laws on other disciples. Of course, these disciples were all outer sect disciples. The Samsara Sect was huge and even the outer sect was spread out across several demi-planes. The branch of the outer sect that they were in was a mundane nameless branch that was ranked almost at the end. The disciples thrown in here were known to be mostly talentless. They all had some weaknesses that made them unsuitable for the sect to invest in. As a result, they were thrown into branches like this. Naturally, these disco disciples were also not any different. It was just that they had been staying in this same branch for more than hundreds of years, having already firmed their social position. They had formed an alliance of corruption with the elders of the branch, exploiting the other disciples. They were crass and arrogant, ignorant of the world outside.

"Guys, do you need to do this? I can vouch for this fatty here. He is just a small cook in kitchen #933, where would he have the channel to do illegal things? Give me some face and let this matter go?"

The disco disciples looked warily at Mark before snorting and leaving while giving him an unpleasant glare. Michael only smiled slightly in response.

When Michael had first entered the sect, he had been treated very well. With Madeline's introduction, he was put into a good branch and was nurtured seriously by the sect. For over ten years, he had been favoured heavily and provided many resources. Alas! His speed of cultivation was not enough. As a result, he was kicked to this rotten branch. There were many reasons why this had happened. First of all, Michael was very habitual in using his perfect persona blessing to control the power of laws. The blessing had been with him since his birth, hence, he had not known how dependent he was on it. Once he started cultivating in the Samsara Sect, without the blessing, he had to learn how to control the laws like normal people, making it hard to progress. Also, 10 years ago, Madeline had created her new law and become a rank-7 ascendant. This would not have been a big deal in the sect, except that the law she had created was very unique and had caught the attention of many divinities. Her law was called "benevolent samsara", and it was based on her experiences during samsara wandering. Her innately kind nature and understanding of laws had created this law that was very different from what others had explored in the sect. Indifference was the emotion that cultivators primarily had towards mortals. Many of the disciples of the sect had never seen mortals in their life yet. To them, such weak beings were of no concern. To think that a powerful cultivator would create their personal law to benefit mortals was unthinkable to most. Most disciples even failed to understand the significance of this breakthrough. But the same could not be said about the divinities. Divinities were dependant on mortals' faith for their cultivation. But they were not able to grant blessings to mortals easily as their powers were too much for any mortal to bear, even with their utmost control. Thus, they needed to have an entire system around faith like their churches and temples, which was very inefficient and also opened room for corruption. If these divinities could merge this new law into their law foundation, they would be able to rapidly increase their faith. As such, Madeline was taken in as a legacy disciple by Red Pheonix divinity and was pulled into closed-door seclusion to stabilize her realm and fill up the flaws in her newly created law. While this had changed Madeline's future for the better, he had lost the only support he had in the sect. As his and Madeline's friendship was a secret, the elders in charge of performance assessment did not give him any face and sent him to this shithole.

The initial years had been pretty rough in this place. Michael had to adjust a lot, going from an emperor to a servant in a short while. His life in the sect was in sharp contrast to his main body's, constantly giving him the reminder of how important strength was in the cultivation world. Michael had already dedicated his main body to cultivating all non-orthodox paths whereas his clone in the Samsara Sect cultivated the laws of life and death. As he was in the holy land of life and death, he cultivated diligently, almost giving all his time to cultivation or his assigned duties. As such, he became very reserved. Since he was a no-name disciple in the sect and did not hold much power, he was not approached by other disciples either, making him a loner in the outer sect. Only the fatty who lived in the room across his would talk to him regularly and treat him as a friend. Life was tough but peaceful. But, it all changed 7 years ago when he was noticed by one of the elders for his diligence and was given a crystal token containing the information of advanced mystic arts. This aroused the greed of some senior disciples, who then decided to rob him. But how could Michael, who had already been through hell, bow to some nameless ruffians? Even though he did not have any of his specialities as a clone, he still had his rough psychic power and vast willpower. The battle shook the entire outer sect and even the head disciple of the disciplinary committee had to step in to dissolve the fight. Michael almost killed all the disciples who had targetted him, only failing because of the power of the samsara seal. This led to crazy retaliation of the older disciples, and he would surely have died many times outside the sect. But inside, it was not that easy to die. Samsara ancestor's protective seal made sure to keep all disciples alive, even if barely. Since he couldn't die anyway, Michael fought like a wild beast, with utmost cruelty towards himself and his enemies, striking terror into the hearts of most disciples. His reputation slowly resounded in the entire branch and he became known as the Savage Demon. This scared away most people from approaching him any more, only the fatty remained his friend in the entire sect. Naturally, he would protect his friend.

"Fatty Lang, good for you that you managed to buy the tome of spirit cooking, second volume. Your cooking is pretty great. With your talent, if you master the three volumes of the tome, you have a chance to become a spirit cook in the sect. You will be able to leave this shithole and become an inner sect disciple.", said Mark.

"Haha! Only you have understood this among all people. The elders of the sect are blind! Blind, I say! I still remember how they looked at me when I flunked the evaluation as if I was a defective piece. Just because I froze during the battle and had no combat instinct! But who says cultivators must fight and kill? This lord here will become the best spirit cook and hire numerous elders to guard my door!", Fatty Lang boasted.

Michael sighed. Yes, this branch was a dump for the sect to discard all useless defective disciples who had somehow become disciples. As the sect was not a monarchial institution, expelling a disciple was not an easy matter. There were clauses in the contract which protected disciples' rights. Thus, the sect threw them into these centres before forgetting about them. Mark Strong was another disciple declared as defective by the evaluation process. He was said to have innately lacked control over the powers of law, being a dense idiot with null awareness and no talent for law comprehension. As a result, the elders concluded that it would be a lot of effort to nurture him and threw him into the dustbin. While their evaluation was indeed mistaken due to Michael lacking control due to lacking his blessing, it was not completely false either. He indeed lacked in the comprehension department. Thus, he could only cultivate more and make up for the lack of talent with hard work. In the last 2 decades, he had practised the control of laws to perfection, reaching the same level as the main body without the blessing. His attainment in the law of life and death had also deepened. He was on the cusp of becoming a rank-2 ascendant now. While it might look that he had progressed very fast and reached the next stage in only 20 years, the value of resources and subjective time that he had used was quite high. This expense had allowed Michael to remove many flaws from his understanding of the laws of life and death, creating a robust foundation that could put even the geniuses of the sect who were in the same realm, to shame. As a result, his battle strength had also become very high, dwarfing ordinary rank-3 ascendants.

Although the sect's elders had marked Mark as a lost cause, the disciples of this branch would disagree strongly. If this monstrously powerful person was trash, were the geniuses of the sect all reincarnated gods? Fatty Lang also felt that there was some deeper reason behind why Mark was placed in this dustbin branch. After all, there were many such cases when young disciples offended someone they shouldn't have and suffered for it. Fatty Lang carried great respect for Mark in his heart. Just his dedication towards cultivation made it so that he would not remain a nameless disciple in the future. There were many talented disciples in the Samsara Sect and the Heavenly realm as a whole but only a small percentage could reach the realm of path. It required a tremendous amount of willpower to progress in creating one's path. Mark was the kind of disciple most likely to cross the threshold. This was known to almost everyone in the branch, which was why everyone in the branch had started giving him respect, including several elders. They did not want to offend someone who was likely to become a path-seeker.

"Anyway, what have you been doing these days? I did not see you for the last 5 days at all. Where have you been?", asked Fatty Lang.

"I have been here.", Mark replied straightforwardly, causing Fatty Lang to become speechless. Ascendants had already reached the realm of law, and so they were capable of sustaining themselves for a very long time without food or water. But people would generally not be willing to do so. After all, eating was still beneficial for cultivators to sustain their physical and spiritual strength as absorbing the energy from heaven and earth was too slow. Also, eating was a habit for all living beings. The entire profession of spirit cooks was based on other cultivators eating even when they didn't need to. Fatty Lang gave Mark a thumbs up for his dedication before he started sharing the recent information that he had come across.

"Did you hear about verdant leaf young master's duel with thousand transformation sect's shadow king?"

"The celestial lotus sect master's daughter was recently proposed during a banquet. It has already grown into a scandal."

.....

"I just heard that Benevolent Fairy Madeline has been made a saintess candidate!"

"Wait what?! Madeline became a saintess candidate?", asked Mark suddenly.

"Hehe, how come you always get so interested in any information about senior Madeline? Could it be that your iron heart has melted for her? I must say, senior Madeline can even cause our Savage Demon to falter, she really deserves to be a saintess candidate.", teased Fatty Lang.

"...", Mark just gave the fatty an annoyed expression.

"Ok, ok. Yes, I came across the news from gossip between the cooks. Apparently, senior Madeline has been nominated by the council of grand elders. The ceremony will be held in a few years' time after she comes out of seclusion. It will be a big ceremony, so the cooks have been told in advance to prepare the rare dishes."

Michael felt happy hearing about Madeline's success. He remembered the night more than 10 years ago when Madeline had secretly asked him to meet in a secluded area of the sect. She had been incredibly worried at that time.

"Mark, I asked you to meet me because I wanted to get your opinion. As you know, my samsara wandering allowed me to compile my insights and now I am almost able to give form to my law. I have actually formed two different paths that I can take, namely samsara justice and samsara benevolence. As you can guess from the names, if I take the path of justice, my law will be able to form karmic connections between living being's past and current lives, allowing me to manifest various judgements on my enemies based on the negative karma that they have. At its completion, I will be able to call forth a tribulation aimed at my enemies. On the other hand, with the path of samsara benevolence, I will be able to walk the path of benevolence, allowing me to give blessings to my allies based on the good karma that they have. I will also be able to weaken the natural tribulations of my allies. Also, I will be able to trigger feedback too, which will allow me to reduce the intensity of my tribulations. But how much feedback I will get will ultimately depend on how perfect the law I create becomes. I have already asked a lot of people and most of them don't prefer the benevolent path. Even my mentor has said that strength is the fundamental truth of the world and that I should choose the path of judgement. What do you think?"

At that time, Michael already knew that Madeline was placing a lot of trust in him. After all, deciding one's path could only be done once in a lifetime. It was very rare to encounter two different paths. Initially, Michael had wanted her to choose the path of judgement as well. After all, who could better know the importance of strength than him? The only lesson that he learned in his previous life was that weakness was a sin. Only strength mattered in the end. But, he had not impulsively answered. After some thought, he had said, "One's path is ultimately decided by oneself. Senior Madeline, I know the importance of strength very well. But I also believe that staying true to oneself is the correct path. Cultivation is the process of gaining strength, but this is a very general view. Cultivation, in my mind, is the way to attain control over one's destiny. It is not something that one can gain while compromising. If I had the choice to become strong by giving up my bottom line, I would never accept it. The more you become one with your nature, the more you will understand your path. The fact that you still came to me, a junior to ask your doubts already tells me that you want to choose the path of benevolence. Then what is there to fear? Only on this path will you be able to give your best, and only on this path will you succeed."

His advice had allowed Madeline to gain courage and follow the path of benevolence. Now, more than a decade later, she was attaining great success. Once she became the saintess candidate, she would be in the race to become the saintess. She will gain the best of resources till she faced her divine tribulation and if she managed to successfully become a divinity, she would become a saintess of the sect. Her influence would directly swell and she would not need to worry about cultivation resources even in the divinity stage. The position of saintess or saint in the sect was given to elders who had made many great contributions to the sect. This already showed how highly Madeline's path was valued by the sect.

Followed by that, Michael kept talking with the fatty for a while before going back to practising.

After a few days, large tribulation clouds covered the skies in Aterna as well as the demi-plane of Samsara Sect, and Michael transcended the tribulation successfully with his clone and main body to become a rank-2 ascendant.