Awakening the Talent [Myriad Worlds Traversal]

He had intended to reflect for a while, but unexpectedly, golden light continued to bloom in his mind, and lines of text appeared once more:

[Talent awakened: Myriad Worlds Traversal]

[Level: Lv1 (0/2)]

[Ability 1: Gate of Traversal Lv1 (0/2): Once every five calendar days, the holder of this talent can find an entrance to another world and open a passage to another world with a 100% success rate, allowing the true spirit's will to descend and the soul to traverse.

During traversal, the physical body remains in the gap between the other world and the main world, in a state of dormancy. It requires no food and cannot be discovered by anyone. Upon returning, the true spirit can bring back everything it has comprehended in the other world!

[Note: The flow of time in the traversed world compared to this world is ten years to one day. That is, for every day that passes in this world, 3,650 days pass in the other world. Upgrading Ability 1 can break through the world barrier and allow physical traversal regardless of any conditions.]

[Note: This talent was obtained when the World's Spiritual Endowment talent activated its effect in this world. It does not belong to the conventional awakening sequence.]

Chen Du read every word and sentence, his whole body as if nailed to his chair.

After a long while, he slowly raised his hands and rubbed his face hard.

He hadn't realized before that the world he lived in was also a world.

"Once every five days..."

His voice was a little hoarse.

"Ten years over there, one day here?"

"This talent looks like it can be upgraded, too."

An almost crazy thought spread through his mind.

Although he couldn't break through the world barrier and traverse physically, the insights gained from his true spirit's descent and his soul's traversal were real.

If he became a martial arts grandmaster in another world and brought his insights back, he could also become a martial arts grandmaster here in a very short time.

And what was terrifying was that, supposing he entered another world today, stayed there for ten years, and then came back, only twenty-four hours would have passed here.

Other people counted their cultivation time in days.

He counted his in years.

And that wasn't even the most important part. The most important part was that every time he entered a new world, his [World's Spiritual Endowment] talent would awaken another talent for him.

In other words, the more worlds he traversed, the more talents he would have.

And with every additional talent, his chances of surviving, gaining a foothold, and obtaining core resources in the next world would grow.

A snowball? This was a fucking meteor rolling downhill.

Chen Du forced himself to calm down. He wrote out the descriptions of both talents and compared them repeatedly, trying to find a trap.

A few days later, by the time Chen Du stepped out of his rented apartment, the rain had stopped.

He didn't look back at the partitioned room where he had lived for four months. All his possessions were in the single bag on his back.

After a day of analysis and filtering, he had marked several locations on an electronic map that might contain passages to other worlds. They were all quite remote, however.

And so Chen Du boarded a plane. After it landed, he took three buses and hitched a ride on a local's tractor. He covered the last stretch on foot.

The marked location closest to him was hidden deep in an undeveloped mountain range in a certain province.

The path Chen Du took into the mountains grew narrower and narrower, changing from a gravel road to a winding footpath, until finally there was no path at all.

The tree canopies overlapped overhead, blocking out the sky completely. Though it was afternoon, the light in the forest was as dim as dusk.

Chen Du walked for nearly four hours. Blisters formed on the soles of his feet, and sweat soaked through his T-shirt three times.

It wasn't that he hadn't considered the danger, but he had calculated that, with his talents, everything would be different as long as he could enter a new world alive.

This risk was worth taking.

Otherwise, he had no idea how he could rise in a world undergoing a Spiritual Qi Revival.

As he pushed aside the last clump of bushes, a powerful stench hit him in the face.

It wasn't the smell of rotting flesh. It was more like the body odor of some large beast, mixed with earth and blood, so strong it could almost knock a person over.

Chen Du covered his nose and mouth, his pupils contracting sharply.

In the clearing ahead, several trees as thick as rice bowls lay scattered across the ground.

The trunks hadn't been sawn through. Something had smashed them apart by brute force, leaving jagged splinters with coarse, stiff bristles caught on them.

There were footprints on the ground! And every one of them was bigger than his face, sunk deep into the soil.

The water pooled at their edges was still trembling slightly. Whatever had left them had only just passed through.

Chen Du's body reacted faster; he had already turned to run.

Too late!

A deep, muffled grunt came from behind him, low enough to make his chest tremble.

Chen Du turned his head stiffly. The thing emerged from the depths of the forest, each step making the ground tremble slightly.

It was a monstrous wild boar, far larger than any normal one. It stood over four meters tall at the shoulder and looked to be nearly seven meters long, its body covered in black bristles like steel needles.

And each bristle was as thick as a chopstick. Two curved tusks jutted from the corners of its mouth like a pair of curved short spears, their tips stained with the dried blood of some unknown animal.

Chen Du's brain short-circuited for a moment. How many days had it been since the Spiritual Qi Revival began? And such a terrifying monster had already appeared.

If the Spiritual Qi Revival continued for a while longer, would he still be able to survive?

Its small eyes stared at Chen Du, glowing scarlet.

Chen Du didn't know whether a normal wild boar's tusks could grow half a meter long, or whether its eyes could glow red, because none of that mattered...

What mattered was that the aura radiating from this boar made it difficult for him even to breathe.

This was a monster transformed by some kind of power after the Spiritual Qi Revival—or rather, an evolved creature!

The boar pawed the ground with a front hoof, sending dirt and gravel flying backward like bullets.

It lowered its head, aimed both tusks at Chen Du, and let out a deafening roar.

Chen Du turned and ran. He had never run so fast in his life, adrenaline driving every inch of muscle to its limit.

But he knew he couldn't outrun it. That boar's charging speed was definitely greater than any normal person's.

The tremors behind him drew closer and closer, and a foul-smelling wind had already reached the back of his neck.

Chen Du felt utterly miserable and lamented his bad luck. He was dying before his campaign had even begun.

Sure enough, even in the era of the Spiritual Qi Revival, Kim Ye-won had nothing to do with an ordinary person like you.

Why was it that someone could win five million while you couldn't earn it?

And he had finally managed to obtain two talents.

Just as those two tusks were about to pierce his back, a white light flashed.

It came without warning, shooting out of the dense forest to Chen Du's right.

How fast was it? Chen Du saw only a flash of light and didn't even make out what it was before the enormous creature behind him let out an earth-shaking scream.

A muffled thud followed as a heavy body hit the ground. The impact made Chen Du's legs give way, and he fell flat.

He lay on the ground, gasping for breath, his lungs burning with pain.

Several seconds passed before he dared turn over and sit up. Then he saw the most shocking sight of his life.

The giant boar that had nearly killed him lay on the ground, its head severed from its body. Blood mingled with rainwater, winding across the soil in a dark red stream.

A man stood beside the boar's corpse. He looked to be under thirty, wore a mud-covered outdoor jacket, and had his left hand in his pocket and a saber in his right.

It was that saber that had cut off a mutated boar's head in an instant.

The man looked down at the boar, then raised his eyes to Chen Du, his expression as though he were looking at a madman.

"Do you have a death wish?"

His tone was flat, even a little impatient.

Chen Du opened his mouth, but the words were almost squeezed out of his throat. "Th... thank you."

"No need." The man stepped over the boar's corpse and walked up to Chen Du, looking down at him. "What did you come here for? Backpacking? Hiking? Exploring?"

Chen Du didn't know what to say. He couldn't very well say, "I came looking for an entrance to another world."

The man evidently didn't need an answer either. He reached out, seized Chen Du by the collar, and hauled him off the ground like a chick, then gave him a shove toward the edge of the mountains.

"Get back. This area has already undergone a mutation. Nowhere within fifty li is safe. This boar is just a little thing on the outermost edge. Go any farther in, and there won't even be bones left of you."

A little thing.

He called that five-meter-long mutated boar a little thing?

Chen Du steadied himself, came to his senses, and thought for a moment.

He could be absolutely certain that this man was an evolver.

But the Spiritual Qi Revival had only been underway for a few days, and someone had already evolved to this extent?

"You..." Chen Du spoke up. "How did you do it?"

The man glanced back at him.

"How did I do what?"

Chen Du pointed at the boar's head on the ground, which was bigger than a water vat. "It's only been a few days. You actually managed to kill such a terrifying monster with one strike. Where did you get your lucky chance?"

The man was silent for two seconds, then laughed, with a trace of pity.

"Where did I get my resources?" He repeated the words as though he had heard something naive. "You think I'm like you? You think I only started after the Spiritual Qi Revival began?"

"Some people in this world were already waiting before the Spiritual Qi Revival.

Cultivation techniques, inheritances, resources, information... we had them in our hands long ago. You think the country really made no preparations at all? Don't be stupid. Just because ordinary people can't see something doesn't mean it doesn't exist."

Chen Du felt as though something had gripped his heart hard.

The man looked at his expression and sighed, his tone softening slightly.

"Listen, brother, I know what you're thinking. You saw those videos, thought the times were about to change, and figured you could turn your life around too, so you came running into these remote mountains and forests looking for a lucky chance, right?"

Chen Du said nothing, but the expression on his face said it all.

"Take my advice." The man turned and walked toward the depths of the forest, his voice growing more distant. "Lucky chances are for people who are prepared. You have no inheritance, no resources, no information, and you haven't even trained your basic physical fitness.

"For an ordinary person like you, never mind turning your life around in the era of the Spiritual Qi Revival—staying alive is the greatest feat you can manage. Go back, find somewhere safe to stay, and don't come out here to get yourself killed."

His figure vanished among the shadows of the trees. By the time his last word fell, he was completely out of sight.

The forest fell silent, leaving Chen Du standing alone beside the boar's corpse as rainwater and blood flowed past his feet.

Chen Du stood there for a long time.

Every word the man had said pierced him like a nail.

How could he not wonder what an ordinary person like him was supposed to do in this age?

Those who truly possessed inheritances and held resources had been brought into the system before the Spiritual Qi Revival. Under the state apparatus's arrangements, they improved themselves in an orderly fashion and seized the initiative.

Or there were the lucky ones who soared straight into the sky, beyond anyone's imagination.

Yet those graduates like him, restless after seeing unusual videos,

Those workers sitting in cubicles, secretly searching for cultivation methods,

Those young people working on factory assembly lines—what did they have?

They couldn't even overcome the information gap.

When the Spiritual Qi Revival began, ordinary people were left far behind right from the starting stage.

While they were still worrying about next month's rent, some people had already completed their first round of evolution in secret realms deep in the mountains.

While they frantically searched online for cultivation materials that had been wiped clean, some people already held complete sets of cultivation manuals.

This was the cruelest truth of the Spiritual Qi Revival: different from before, yet similar to before.

The reason mortals were mortals might not change just because their environment changed, because their fate might well have been decided at birth.

Chen Du's gaze grew much firmer, and his resolve to grow stronger deepened.

He had to find a world first!

The man had said nowhere within fifty li was safe. That meant there had to be some kind of abnormal energy source nearby, very likely the area affected by an entrance to a world.

Chen Du crouched down, wiped the rain and mud from his face, and took his phone out of his backpack to open the compass.

The needle spun wildly, as if it had gone mad, unable to stop.

A magnetic field anomaly!

Chen Du raised his head and looked in the direction the man had disappeared, toward the deepest part of the forest, where the trees were thickest.

The sky there was darker than elsewhere, and the clouds hung so low they seemed about to press against the treetops. A faint, almost imperceptible purple glow could just be seen flowing through the gaps in the clouds.

He took a deep breath and set off.

The evolver had meant well in telling him to stay away, but Chen Du couldn't retreat, because he had no way back.

If he went back, it would mean becoming part of the backdrop alongside the other ordinary people in the great flood of this era.

Chen Du would find that entrance and turn that world into nourishment, a stepping stone on his path of awakening.