Mortal Ascension: From Swordsmith Apprentice to Immortal Throne

When his childhood sweetheart ascends as the sect’s Holy Maiden, she severs their century-long bond with a single jade hammer and the parting words, "Our paths have diverged," before turning away without looking back. Zhou Lingxuan, a lowly servant disciple of the Heavenly Sword Pavilion, possesses crippled Five-Element spiritual roots and faces imminent death from exhausted lifespan. After a hundred years of forging swords, he has become the target of universal mockery; elders have abandoned him, and talented peers scorn him as rotten wood clinging to life while foolishly guarding mortal iron in a vain attempt to enter the immortal path. Yet through ninety years of relentless hammering, he has forged one million mortal blades. With a mere mortal body, he defies heaven to fulfill an ancestral mandate that no one in the sect has achieved for a millennium, summoning the sect-guarding Heavenly Sword and shaking the entire cultivation world. Forging his Dao from common iron and ascending upon discarded scraps, he leverages a century of endurance to carve a path against the nine heavens. Those who once cast him aside shall be surpassed a hundredfold, for even if the world lacks immortals, he will forge his own divinity.