New talents [Enlightenment Through Anger] and [Stunning Everyone with a Single Cry]
Awakening from the chaos, Chen Du opened his eyes to a pitch-black void overhead.
There were no stars, no moon, no source of light at all. There was only pure, boundless blackness, as though a gigantic bowl had been placed over the entire world.
[Unexplored independent world detected... "Heavenly Human Realm"]
[World tier: fifth tier]
[World type: lost secret realm]
[Enter?]
"Yes!"
Chen Du did not hesitate. The floating text before him burst apart the instant he spoke the word.
The words seemed to turn into countless tiny specks of light, drifting away in every direction like fireflies scattered by the wind.
The darkness began to spin. It was not his body turning, but the entire space.
Chen Du felt his body falling at an uncontrollable speed, but he did not struggle. He had experienced the sensation of traversing worlds once before and was mentally prepared.
When Chen Du opened his eyes again, a set of gray, dingy rafters hung overhead.
He lay on a hard wooden plank bed, with a thin, patched mattress beneath him. The rafters above had been blackened by smoke, and several strings of dried chilies and corncobs hung in the corner.
The window was a wooden frame covered with yellow paper, barely letting in a few rays of murky light.
A faint musty smell hung in the air, mingled with the scent of firewood and earth.
He slowly sat up and looked down at himself: thin arms and rough palms.
The webbing between his thumbs and forefingers was callused from farmwork, and dirt that would not wash away was embedded beneath his fingernails.
He wore a coarse-cloth jacket, patch upon patch, though it had been washed reasonably clean.
This body was younger and frailer than the one he had on Blue Star.
Its frame was decent, but long-term malnutrition had left its muscles as thin as paper.
He closed his eyes and began receiving the body's memories.
The body's original owner was called Gouwa. He had no formal name—or perhaps he did, but no one had ever used it.
He was fifteen this year and came from Qinghe Village on the border of the Zhao Kingdom.
There were three people in his family... a nine-year-old younger brother named Niuwa, a grandmother in her sixties, and himself.
His mother had died when he was six, killed by routed Zhao Kingdom soldiers who had invaded the village.
He clearly remembered how his mother had stuffed him and his younger brother into the cellar that day, then gone out to draw the soldiers away. She had never returned.
His father had been forcibly conscripted five years ago. At the time, the Zhao Kingdom had been fighting a protracted back-and-forth war with the neighboring Yan Kingdom. The front lines were under pressure, and the court had issued conscription orders one after another, draining the village of almost all its men.
On the day his father left, he had not even had a decent pair of shoes. He had gone barefoot with the conscripts, and nothing had been heard from him since.
Gouwa had suddenly collapsed while working in the fields that afternoon, probably from hunger, though it might also have been exhaustion.
His grandmother had carried him back and put him on the bed, then borrowed a handful of rice from the neighbors. She was now cooking porridge in the kitchen.
Because his true spirit had descended into the body, these fragments of memory churned in Chen Du's mind like a blunt knife.
This was the body's original owner's genuine sorrow, engraved into his marrow. It was not something Chen Du could shut out just because he wanted to.
He took a deep breath and temporarily suppressed the unfamiliar emotion, then began sorting through the original owner's memories for more useful information.
According to Gouwa's memories, he did not know the name of this world.
All he knew was that war was raging in the north of the Zhao Kingdom. The Yan Kingdom's army had already fought its way to Qinghe City, three hundred li away. Every day, refugees poured in from the north with their families in tow, their faces sallow and their bodies gaunt.
It would be a grave mistake to understand this world's political powers through the framework of the Great Sheng Dynasty.
Great Sheng was a unified imperial dynasty. Though it also faced trouble on its borders, its core territories were as solid as a rock.
The Heavenly Human Realm, on the other hand, was more like a shattered chessboard, divided into numerous feudal states of varying sizes.
The Zhao Kingdom and the Yan Kingdom were two of the more powerful states, with several smaller states clinging to life between them.
Every state had cultivators in its service, but cultivation resources were extremely scarce. The various sects and schools did not hesitate to come to blows to increase their own strength.
War and chaos were the norm; peace was the rarity.
Families like Gouwa's, destroyed by marauding soldiers, were beyond counting across this land.
As he was thinking, soft footsteps rustled from the direction of the kitchen.
A small, thin figure lifted the door curtain and entered, carefully holding a bowl of porridge in both hands.
"Brother, you're awake?" Niuwa's voice was thin and timid. His face was dirty, but his eyes shone with a touch of joy. "Grandma said you fainted from hunger. Have some porridge."
Chen Du took the bowl. The porridge was so thin he could see his reflection in it, and there were so few grains of rice he could count them.
He lowered his head and took a sip. It tasted bland, but the piping-hot rice broth slid into his stomach, making his body shiver involuntarily with comfort.
Niuwa stood by the bed, watching him eagerly. Chen Du held out the bowl, motioning for him to take a sip too. Niuwa shook his head and said there was more in the pot.
Chen Du glanced at his gaunt cheeks and slightly protruding ribs, but did not expose the lie.
Instead, he put the bowl back in his hands and said he had had enough, telling him to finish the rest.
Niuwa hesitated, then raised the bowl and drank in small sips. Halfway through, he stopped and said he wanted to save some for Grandma.
Chen Du watched his departing figure carry the bowl out of the room. After a moment of silence, he sat up in bed and began carefully sensing the state of this body's meridians.
His dantian was completely empty, with no trace of cultivation.
It remained unknown whether the Xuanye Realm's cultivation method system could fully adapt to this world, but as for the basics, no matter the body or the world, he had to start over from the very beginning.
At the very least, he needed to give this body the strength to work in the fields and keep the other two in the family from going hungry.
Just then, a notification popped up on the panel:
[Entered new world: Heavenly Human Realm]
[World tier: fifth tier]
[World type: lost secret realm]
[Warning: the rules of this world differ considerably from those of the worlds the host has previously experienced. Please explore with caution.]
[World's Spiritual Endowment triggered...]
[Awakening a talent that resonates with this world's rules...]
[Talent awakened: Enlightenment Through Anger]
[Level: Lv1 (0/2)]
[Ability 1: Becoming an Immortal Through Anger Lv1 (0/2): the angrier you are, the stronger your comprehension and ability to grasp things become. Turn emotion into power, and double the effects of all talents related to comprehension!]
[Enlightenment Through Anger]?
When the [Enlightenment Through Anger] talent popped up, even the text shone brilliantly, intensely hot.
This talent was like giving wings to a tiger for him. His greatest reliance in the Xuanye Realm had been the heaven-defying comprehension granted by Divine Revelation Reading.
Enlightenment Through Anger could not only turn anger, that most primal of emotions, into fuel for comprehension, but also directly double the effects of all comprehension-related talents.
This meant that the angrier he became in battle, the more he could raise the upper limit of his comprehension.
He hurriedly checked the panel again:
[Name: Chen Du] [Realm: Third-Tier Evolver · martial path, Transcendence Realm / Third-Tier Evolver · factor path, Cocoon-Breaking Realm] [Current status: true spirit descended] [Talent 1: World's Spiritual Endowment Level: Lv2 (0/4) Ability 1: Infinite Awakening Lv2 (0/4) (expanded): the world has spirit, bestowed upon one person. Each time he enters an entirely new "world" in the flesh or as a true spirit, he will randomly awaken two talents that resonate with that world's rules. [Talent 2: Myriad Worlds Traversal Level: Lv2 (0/4) Ability 1: Gate of Traversal Lv2 (0/4) (expanded): once every four calendar days, the holder of this talent can find an entrance to another world and open a passage to it with a 100% success rate, allowing his true spirit and will to descend and his soul to traverse. During traversal, the physical body remains in the gap between the other world and the main world, in a dormant state. It needs no food and cannot be discovered. Upon returning, the true spirit can bring back all insights gained in the other world! The flow of time in the traversed world compared to this world is one day to twenty years. In other words, when one day passes in this world, seven thousand three hundred days have passed in the other world. When ability 1 is upgraded, it can break through world barriers and allow physical traversal regardless of any conditions. [Talent 3: Divine Revelation Reading Level: Lv3 (2/8) Ability 1: Martial Arts Creation Lv8 (23/248) (expandable)
Chen Du felt another surge of joy. Both major skills had risen to Lv2, and the effects of both abilities had improved.
What was more, entering a world this time had actually allowed him to awaken two skills at once.
In an instant, his consciousness trembled again. This tremor was deeper than any before it.
It was as though something deep within his soul had let out a long sigh, then slowly opened its eyes.
New lines of text appeared one after another in the darkness, their light restrained and tranquil, utterly unlike the scorching intensity of [Enlightenment Through Anger].
[World's Spiritual Endowment has risen to Lv2. Triggering again...] [Awakening a talent that resonates with this world's rules...] [Talent awakened: Stunning Everyone with a Single Cry] [Level: Lv1 (0/2)] [Ability 1: Lie Dormant Lv1 (0/2): lie dormant with a calm heart. The longer the period and the deeper the emotions accumulated during it, the more explosive the surge in comprehension and ability to grasp things. When the dormant period ends and you stun everyone with a single cry, the effects of all emotion-based talents are doubled. [Note: this talent and "Enlightenment Through Anger" are yin and yang, two sides of the same whole. Cultivating both multiplies their power; they have a synergistic effect. With this talent, any emotional fluctuation can be turned into firewood for comprehension. The purer the emotion, the fiercer the flame.]
Sure enough, just as the effects of [World's Spiritual Endowment] stated,
the awakened talents were never random, but precisely matched to the rules of each world and what he himself needed most.
The Xuanye Realm had given him [Divine Revelation Reading] because he needed to deduce martial arts from scratch.
Blue Star had given him [Myriad Worlds Traversal] because he needed to cross world barriers quickly and accumulate strength.
And the Heavenly Human Realm had given him [Enlightenment Through Anger] and [Stunning Everyone with a Single Cry], as though it had given his greatest reliance a pair of wings!
That was what made World's Spiritual Endowment truly terrifying.
The awakened talents did indeed match the resonance between him and the world.
Simply put, every world offered him a personal, custom-made gift!