[System notification: Memory fusion in progress...]
With the system's notification, the memories of another person's life flooded into Lin Hanzhou's mind.
With over a century of experience behind him, Lin Hanzhou found it easy to sort through the other man's memories.
After going through them, Lin Hanzhou had a rough grasp of the situation.
The place he was in was a nation called the Great Gan Dynasty.
Then again, the original owner only knew that the place he lived in was called the Great Gan Dynasty.
The countryman that he was, he couldn't possibly know much more about it.
The original owner of this body was named Zhang Qi, an ordinary young villager from Zhang Family Village.
Zhang Qi and his parents had once lived a modest but peaceful life as a family of three.
But that very afternoon, their peace had been shattered by an outsider.
A man claiming to be a "disciple of the Cloud Glow Sect" had come to the village, saying that the sect wanted to recruit disciples there.
He told the village chief to gather everyone in the village, young and old, men and women alike, in the square at the entrance, where he would test their aptitude himself.
How could the simple villagers have any reason to doubt this "Cloud Glow Sect disciple"?
One after another, they had made their way to the village entrance, brimming with hope for a bright future.
But what awaited them wasn't a ceremony to test their martial talent. It was Zhou Fengyu's cold blade of slaughter.
As a Martial Master, Zhou Fengyu had massacred a group of unarmed villagers with ease. It was a one-sided slaughter.
He had effortlessly killed all the more than a hundred people gathered there.
The original Zhang Qi and his parents had naturally been among them.
Then Lin Hanzhou's consciousness had crossed over into Zhang Qi's body. Zhou Fengyu had mistaken him for a survivor and attacked him by surprise, only to be killed in return.
As for why Zhou Fengyu had slaughtered the entire village, there was no answer in Zhang Qi's brief memories.
Lin Hanzhou furrowed his brow.
A direct disciple of a major sect had slaughtered more than a hundred people in a remote village for no reason?
There had to be more to it.
But with so little information, he couldn't begin to guess why.
For now, the consequence of killing Zhou Fengyu was what he needed to be most wary of.
The sect he'd named before dying—the Cloud Glow Sect—was indeed a colossal power.
Even the original owner, a country bumpkin, had heard of it.
From the scraps of information in Zhang Qi's memories, the Cloud Glow Sect was one of the three most powerful sects in the Great Gan Dynasty.
It was on a par with the Emotionless Gate and Vajra Temple. Its ranks were filled with experts, and it even had a Grandmaster—the highest realm in the world—holding down the fort, its might shaking the land.
"Now that's trouble..."
Lin Hanzhou rubbed his brow.
He'd only just arrived in this world, and already he'd killed the direct disciple of a Grandmaster from one of its top sects.
He'd made an enemy of them, all right.
Fortunately, Zhang Family Village was extremely remote, so it would probably take the Cloud Glow Sect some time to hear the news.
And the Great Gan Dynasty had no such things as surveillance or tracking technology. He should still be able to stay hidden.
Then he began to carefully analyze the martial system of this world.
The martial realms here were roughly divided into:
Third-rate, second-rate, first-rate, Martial Master, Grandmaster, and Great Grandmaster.
Based on the strength Zhou Fengyu had displayed as a Martial Master, along with the scraps in the original owner's memories, Lin Hanzhou made a preliminary assessment.
"Third- and second-rate martial artists probably only train their muscles, bones, skin, and flesh, corresponding to the Body Tempering Realm on Blue Star."
"First-rate martial artists begin cultivating inner power and true qi, corresponding to my first-stage Pulse Opening Realm."
"Martial Masters can already project their true qi outside their bodies. They're far stronger than first-rate martial artists, corresponding to my second-stage Qi Gathering Realm."
"By that logic, the so-called Grandmasters should be experts in the third-stage Qi Sea Realm. And those legendary Great Grandmasters..."
Lin Hanzhou's expression grew grave.
"Those beings rarely act, so there's far too little information."
"But they're likely equivalent to the fourth-stage True Origin Realm on Blue Star. I'll need to gather more intelligence before I can say for sure."
Now that he'd worked out how the realms compared, Lin Hanzhou had a clearer understanding of his situation.
With his current second-stage cultivation, he counted as a Martial Master-level expert in this world.
Among those of the same realm, he had movement and swordsmanship skills at the perfected level, so he would probably have few rivals.
As long as he didn't provoke the major powers, his cultivation was enough to let him throw his weight around in any one region.
But he would probably still fall short against a Grandmaster.
And a mysterious Great Grandmaster was even more out of reach.
"The most urgent thing is to improve my strength as quickly as possible. At the very least, I need to be able to protect myself."
He glanced at the sky. The last rays of the setting sun had vanished, and night was about to fall.
He couldn't stay in Zhang Family Village any longer. He had to leave at once.
After all, if a Grandmaster from the Cloud Glow Sect happened to pass by, his dream transmigration would come to an end.
The odds were small, but it wasn't impossible.
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