Hit the Jackpot, a Heaven-Defying Talent in a New World
While the Martial Canon stirred up a storm on Blue Star, Chen Du kept searching for an entrance to a new world.
In fact, he had been searching without pause ever since his return.
These past few days, he had cultivated while secretly releasing his Spiritual Power to investigate.
Unlike the previous two times, his cultivation now made his search ten or even a hundred times more efficient.
As for those first two times, he could only say that luck had played a part.
After searching all around Magic City,
he detected a trace of unusual spatial fluctuations deep within an abandoned mining area.
The fluctuations were extremely faint, like a bubble that occasionally rose from an underground river, gone in an instant.
If he had not cultivated the Concealment Technique to an extremely high level, and if his Spiritual Power had not far surpassed others at the same level, he could never have detected them.
He set out under cover of night, circulating his Star-Pressing Realm cultivation at full force. A journey of several hundred li took him no more than half an hour.
By the time the moon rose high overhead, he was standing at the far end of the mining area.
This place had once been an open-pit iron mine, and after operations ceased, it had been left with a massive pit a hundred zhang deep.
Dark groundwater had pooled at the bottom, its surface as still as a piece of black jade.
And those spatial fluctuations came from beneath the water, extremely faint yet unmistakably clear.
Chen Du stood at the edge of the pit and looked down at the pool of black water. Without hesitation, he leaped in.
The instant his toes touched the water, its surface did not break. Instead, a ring of ripples spread outward.
Then the ripples expanded, and the entire surface bulged upward like a curtain being lifted from below. A slit like a vertical pupil opened in its center.
The light shining through the slit was not glaring. It was a very pale silver-white, like moonlight condensed into liquid.
At that moment, a panel popped up before his eyes:
[Unexplored independent world detected... "Spirit Martial Realm"]
[World tier: 7]
[World type: ?? (The world has been detected as covered by a multitude of unknown rules. Unable to analyze.)]
[Warning: This world's tier exceeds the host's current world's highest assessed combat power. Please remain in a concealed state after entry and explore with caution.]
[Enter?]
A Seventh Tier world?
It was two whole tiers higher than the Heavenly Human Realm.
Instead, Chen Du felt a flicker of excitement.
The unknown meant danger, but it also meant there was room to break through to higher realms.
He took a deep breath and pushed the Concealment Technique to its limit, drawing the aura around him inward layer by layer. Then he reached toward the silver-white rift.
"Yes."
The moment the word left his mouth, the rift abruptly expanded. A tremendous suction surged out and engulfed him whole.
This crossing was more violent than the previous two, as though someone had yanked him into the deep sea.
He could not open his eyes or sense up, down, left, or right.
All he could feel was... countless things as fine as gossamer brushing past him. Some were icy cold, some scorching hot, and some carried an indescribable vibration.
He tried to investigate with his Spiritual Power, only to discover that some force in the passage had suppressed it completely. He could not release it at all.
He could only steady his mind and endure the increasingly powerful tearing sensation with his physical body.
After an unknown amount of time, a soft, warm azure light suddenly appeared ahead. The suction abruptly weakened, but he suddenly lost consciousness.
Spirit Martial Realm, Great Sheng Dynasty, Duke Tianyuan's Estate.
Chen Du woke on a wooden plank bed hard enough to dig into his bones. The thin quilt beneath him had turned yellow and stiff, and a stale, musty smell filled the room.
He moved his fingers. This body was so weak it barely obeyed him.
His stomach felt as if a fire were burning inside it, painfully empty.
He slowly sat up and looked around.
The side room was cramped and dilapidated. The window had been pasted over with two layers of paper, yet they still could not keep the cold wind from creeping through the gaps.
Long cobwebs hung in the corner. Half a bowl of cold porridge sat on the table, a grayish-white film on its surface. It had already gone sour.
This place was worse than Qianchuan Hall, where he had lived in the Xuanye Realm. Much worse.
Qianchuan Hall had been old, but at least it had books, roof tiles, and an old eunuch to bring him food.
Here, there was nothing but a bed, a table, and half a bowl of sour porridge.
He closed his eyes and began receiving the memories that remained in this body.
The original owner was named Ning Chuan, a seventeen-year-old son born to a concubine of Duke Tianyuan's Estate.
His birth mother, Liu Shi, was a concubine Duke Tianyuan had taken in his early years. She had been a woman from a respectable family, brought into the estate after catching the duke's eye, but had fallen out of favor within a few years.
Liu Shi was meek by nature, and no one from her family could support her, so she suffered every kind of bullying in the estate.
The principal wife, Zheng-shi, regarded her as a thorn in her eye. She would beat and scold her or punish her by making her kneel at the slightest provocation, while Duke Tianyuan turned a deaf ear and a blind eye.
When the original owner was six, his mother was dragged to the ancestral hall by Zheng-shi on the grounds of "failing to discipline him properly" and made to kneel for three days and three nights.
She was also subjected to a beating as household punishment. After returning, she fell ill and never recovered, passing away half a month later.
From then on, the original owner became someone no one in the duke's estate cared about.
He ate leftovers, wore old clothes, and lived in this dilapidated room in the most remote part of the estate. Everyone in the household, from the steward to the servants, could trample on him.
In this home, he had starved to death.
Ning Chuan's death was a miserable one. In despair, he had finally starved to death in bed, effectively going on a hunger strike.
As Chen Du felt the last memories of this body, the burning hunger in his stomach surged up, mixed with an indescribable sorrow.
The sorrow was not his. It was a lingering remnant left behind by the original owner.
Like a small shard of ice, it melted soundlessly in the depths of his consciousness.
He opened his eyes, his gaze falling on the half bowl of sour porridge on the table.
After a moment of silence, he picked up the bowl, gently blew aside the grayish-white film, and drank it one mouthful at a time.
During the era of Spiritual Qi Revival, he had endured every hardship imaginable. What was a bowl of sour porridge?
Survive first.
Chen Du sat cross-legged on the dilapidated wooden bed, his pupils contracting slightly as he looked at the two talent notifications that appeared before him.
[Entered new world: Spirit Martial Realm]
[World tier: 7]
[World type: ??]
[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 talents that resonate with this world's rules...]
[Talent awakened: Hundred-Lifetime Reincarnation]
[Level: Lv1 (0/2)]
[Ability 1: Hundred-Lifetime Body Lv1 (0/2): After the talent user dies, he can start another life. Number of uses available: ten.]
[Talent awakened: Reincarnation Inheritance]
[Level: Lv1 (0/2)]
[Ability 1: Inherited Body Lv1 (0/2): When starting another life, he can inherit 50% of his previous cultivation realm!]
After reading it, Chen Du was quite delighted.
He had pulled gold this time!
The talents he had awakened before had all been related to comprehension to some degree.
This talent, though, was a heaven-defying life-saving mechanism-type talent!
He could start over even after dying?
Ten chances, each time inheriting half the cultivation of his previous life.
Now, in this Seventh Tier world, his margin for error would far surpass everyone else's.
Whether he returned to Blue Star or his true spirit descended into another world again, he would still have the same margin for error. His ability to stay alive had received an epic upgrade.
Why fear death? He still had ten lives.
However, a skill like this would also be extremely difficult to level up.
In all likelihood, he would have to die once to gain proficiency.
Just like his first two skills.
He read the explanations on the panel again, confirmed there were no hidden restrictions, and slowly let out a turbid breath.
Cold wind crept through the gaps in the broken window, stirring a ring of ripples across the half bowl of sour porridge on the table.
He pulled his thin clothes tighter around himself and looked through the paper-covered window lattice.