The “red dust” represented worldly affairs and living things in all their facets, while “annals” were historical records.

The Dao of the Annals of Red Dust required gleaning enlightenment into the secrets of the Grand Dao through historical records and the shifting of worldly affairs.

Those who pursued this Dao were extremely rare, because it was far too difficult.

It required an enormous amount of effort and countless years wandering the world, immersed in the red dust of the mortal world in all its facets. At the same time, it also required comparing the present day to the annals of history and contemplating the world’s changes and the secrets therein.

Experts who pursued this Dao were typically Confucian. In the Nine Provinces of the Wilds, they were known as the Historians of the Grand Dao. Alternatively, and less flatteringly, they were known as “pettifoggers.”

The Nine Provinces Academy, the Wilds’ top Confucian faction, was a supreme orthodoxy of the Annals of Red Dust.

In his past life, Su Yi quite admired such cultivators. It was thanks to them that the long history of the world of cultivation had been preserved in the form of written documents...