Cultivated for a Thousand Years, Then Forced to Steal — Turns Out Theft Is the Fastest Path to Power

From a nobody in a backwater village to the Supreme Divine of the highest realm — his rise wasn't built on talent or lucky encounters. It was built on one rule: steal. First he stole only from the rich to give to the poor. Then he discovered that stealing a single artifact could grant a century of power, and stealing a true heart could skip him entire realms. But the stronger he grew, the clearer he saw the truth — he wasn't the one doing the stealing. Someone had been stealing his choices, his freedom, his very future, one step at a time. He started with nothing but a farming hoe — and a talent for "borrowing" things that weren't his. He never wanted to cultivate. He just wanted to eat, sleep, and waste away in peace. But fate didn't give him a choice — it forced him to steal just to stay alive. At first, he set his own code: only rob the corrupt, only give to the desperate. But then he realized — a stolen artifact could buy him a century of power. A stolen forbidden art could shatter a bottleneck in an instant. And a stolen heart? That shot him straight from the Lotus realm to the Venerable tier in a single breath. So he stole his way up — from muddy villages to celestial sects, from mortal lands to the nine heavens above. He climbed through all eight realms: Awakening, Foundation, Lotus, Venerable, Grandmaster, Prajna, Supreme Unity, and finally — Divine Saint. But with every leap in power came a creeping dread. The greatest scheme wasn't his own. It was the game being played on him — using the very word "steal" to take everything he truly cared about. He thought he was choosing his path. In truth, every step had been written for him long before he took it. When the final heavenly judgment descended, he finally understood: Stolen power must eventually be repaid. But the hearts he'd stolen — those, he couldn't bear to give back. This isn't a simple "steal and win" power fantasy. It's a story about choices, consequences, and the price of redemption. If the only way to survive was to take from others — how far would you go before you stopped? And would you even be able to?