The Gray World

Jiang Li was not surprised that other worlds existed. Ancient texts had recorded it long ago: the Immortal World ruled over worlds as numerous as the sands of the Ganges, establishing an Immortal Ascension Ladder in every one of them. So long as someone in that world met the standard for ascension, they could become immortal. The Nine Provinces World was the world with the greatest number of ascended immortals among them.

If there was an unknown world beyond the spatial rift, then it was likely one of the many worlds ruled by the Immortal World.

Perhaps that world's Immortal Ascension Ladder was still intact!

"How do I obtain source points?"

The host may obtain source points by completing missions or selling goods. This system will purchase them at one-third of the mall price.

"...What a profiteer."

Buying them at one-third the price and selling them back to me at full price—you couldn't say that if you had even the slightest conscience! "I've done several missions already. Where are my source points?"

Does the host wish to select the side mission—Source Point Mission?

"Yes."

Source Point Mission issued: Please have the host excavate two hundred jin of Shouyang Stone from Shouyang Mountain.

This time, Jiang Li did not need to visit the Heavenly Secrets Pavilion to ask where Shouyang Mountain was. He had heard its name before. It had once been an extremely famous mine, but due to the mine owner's reckless extraction, Shouyang Mountain had become an abandoned mountain two hundred years ago.

It had once produced a ton of Shouyang Stone in a single day, but now, digging out fifty jin in a day was already quite good. Shouyang Stone was not some necessity for cultivation, and the cost of mining was disproportionate to the profits. Naturally, no one was willing to mine there anymore.

With Jiang Li's methods, if he honestly dug for an entire day, he could still extract fifty jin.

Jiang Li thought it over and decided that the mission was quite simple.

He flew above Shouyang Mountain and directly dug out the entire Shouyang Mountain range, roots and all.

Jiang Li refused to believe that an entire mountain range would not contain two hundred jin of Shouyang Stone.

The system seemed not to have expected anyone to mine like this. It hesitated for a while before deciding whether this counted as excavating two hundred jin of Shouyang Stone.

Congratulations to the host for completing the Source Point Mission. The host is rewarded with fifty source points.

"Teleport me to the world we found earlier!"

An additional fifty-six thousand eight hundred source points are required. Insufficient source points. Teleportation unavailable.

He snapped.

Jiang Li's fist clenched.

Jiang Li swore that if this damned system could take human form, he would be the first to beat it half to death!

If you needed that many source points, why the hell didn't you say so earlier?! At this rate, how long would I have to do missions—until the Year of the Monkey?! "Looks like I can only exchange goods for source points."

Jiang Li flipped through the mall. It was filled mostly with all manner of cultivation arts. The cheapest could only be cultivated to the Golden Core Stage and cost merely one hundred source points, while the most expensive could be cultivated to immortality and cost one million source points.

Jiang Li glanced up at the setting sun and swiftly wrote out a copy of the "Setting Sun Heart Snatching Art." It could be cultivated to the early Body Integration Realm at most. Those who cultivated it could wield the lingering radiance of the sunset; anyone struck by it would involuntarily recall sorrowful memories of the past and lose all desire to fight.

Selling that cultivation art earned him more than ten thousand source points in one go.

Jiang Li slapped his thigh. "Wouldn't this have solved everything from the start? And here I was, hauling mountains around!"

"Tribulation Stage cultivation arts are hard to write, but aren't arts that can be cultivated to the Body Integration Realm everywhere?"

A Tribulation Stage cultivator could usually spend their entire life writing only three to five cultivation arts capable of reaching the Tribulation Stage and ascension. Even Jiang Li needed more than ten days to write one.

But Body Integration Realm cultivation arts were different. Jiang Li could casually write ten or eight cultivation arts capable of reaching the Body Integration Realm.

He glanced at the lush grass and wrote a "Wither Bloom Reincarnation Method" and an "Endless Vitality Art." Then he looked at a mountain peak and wrote a "Great Strength Mountain Moving Art"...

Jiang Li sold all these casually written cultivation arts to the system, gaining more than one hundred and ten thousand source points at once.

"Teleport me to the unknown world!"

Teleportation commencing.

This time, the system truly could teleport him.

The space around Jiang Li began to distort, gradually forming a passage to another world. He stepped forward and passed through the Nine Provinces barrier, the Gale Wind Turbulent Flow, and the unknown world's barrier, arriving in the unknown world.

With Jiang Li's discerning eye, he could tell at a glance that the system's spatial methods were extraordinarily profound.

How profound?

So profound that Jiang Li could not understand them at all.

"What the hell can I tell? I don't understand the Space Dao at all."

Jiang Li had originally intended to study the system's spatial leap, only to suddenly remember that he knew jack shit about the Space Dao.

"When I get the chance, I'll demonstrate it at Mount Sumeru. Mount Sumeru Old Buddha understands the Space Dao best. Maybe he can learn something from it."

"So this is the unknown world?"

Upon arriving in the unknown world, Jiang Li frowned slightly. The spiritual energy here was so thin it was outrageous.

Across the boundless desert, Jiang Li stood alone amid the yellow sand, letting the storm batter his protective barrier. The whole world was cast in a dull gray haze, without even the faintest trace of green. An ordinary person who stayed here too long would probably become depressed.

Jiang Li measured the land step by step and discovered that this world's gravity was the same as that of the Nine Provinces. He then grabbed a handful of coarse sand; its material composition was also largely similar.

"Then why is the spiritual energy so thin?"

Spiritual energy in the Nine Provinces was unevenly distributed as well. A very small number of places were known as spiritual energy forbidden lands, where spiritual energy was pitifully scarce. Even a cultivator with a Single Spirit Root could not cultivate to the Foundation Establishment Realm in such a place.

Yet this unknown world's spiritual energy was even scarcer than that of the Nine Provinces' spiritual energy forbidden lands! A place like this could never produce cultivators! Jiang Li swept the area with his Divine Sense and could not find even a human shadow. All he saw was a pack of gray beasts, part wolf and part leopard, rooting through the ground. They seemed starving enough to begin eating sand.

The pack of gray beasts spotted Jiang Li and instinctively found him incredibly appetizing. They moved to tear apart this thing they had never seen before.

With a single thought, Jiang Li immobilized the entire pack of gray beasts.

Jiang Li had never seen any lifeform resembling them in the Nine Provinces.

He scanned the beasts with his Divine Sense and discovered that they were not eating sand because they were desperately hungry; their bodily structure dictated that sand was the only thing they could eat.

Their digestive organs, respiratory organs, and the like were all unlike anything Jiang Li had ever seen. If not for the analysis afforded by his powerful Divine Sense, he would not have been able to distinguish the functions of those organs at all.

These beasts possessed powerful physical bodies. The leader's body was comparable to the Golden Core Stage, while the others possessed bodies comparable to the Foundation Establishment Realm.

For some reason, Jiang Li instinctively wanted to stay away from them. They gave him an intensely uncomfortable feeling.

Next, Jiang Li swept this world with his Divine Sense, and his brow never once relaxed.

At last, he understood why those gray beasts fed on sand.

Because this world contained only two things: gray beasts and sand.

Never mind people—there were not even any other species.

If the system told him this was hell, and these beasts were creatures of the Beast Path, there was an eighty percent chance he would believe it.

Compared to this place, the Nine Provinces was practically the Immortal World.