Crossing Over

Inside the cave, Yu Chen looked at the bamboo scroll before him, visible only to himself. Staring at the milky-white bar at the very bottom, a trace of surprise surfaced in his eyes.

It turned milky white at this moment?

As he spoke, a tattered piece of beast hide in Yu Chen's hand turned to flying ash and vanished.

It had to be said that the Crow Witch truly treated her daughter well. Not only had she given her feathers capable of summoning totemic power, she had also entrusted her with a copy containing the true meaning of witch script to preserve her life.

Every such copy containing true meaning required consuming a portion of the totem's power to create. When infused with mana in a critical moment, it could unleash an attack nearly at the peak of a witch's power.

To any tribe, such things were regarded as foundations of their heritage, yet one had now fallen into Yu Chen's hands.

Through this copy, Yu Chen had not only learned Crow, the foundational witch script of the Crow Tribe, but also comprehended quite a few of the Crow Tribe's witchcraft arts. More importantly, the bar that had been transforming ever since he awakened his golden finger had finally turned milky white.

At that moment, Yu Chen focused his attention on the bar, and a stream of information flowed into his mind.

Back in the game world, this bar had been one of the most important buttons. It corresponded to instance worlds and story worlds alike, serving as the "vital hub" through which all players could travel between worlds.

After his crossing over, this button also represented travel between worlds. Like the instances and story worlds in the game world of his previous life, the worlds he could enter were divided into five grades: white, crimson, gold, azure, and violet.

Now that the entire bar had turned milky white, it meant Yu Chen could enter a world with a white energy level.

Does this so-called travel mean reconnecting with that virtual game world, or is it genuine crossing over?

Though he had long suspected as much and had continually gathered the corresponding energy to speed up the charging process, Yu Chen was still greatly astonished upon receiving confirmation. He silently recited the Purifying Heart Incantation again and again to calm the surprise and joy within him, countless thoughts flashing through his mind.

If it was the former, then what was the relationship between this world and the game world? Could he still contact his original world?

If it was the latter, what principle governed it? Reversing yin and yang? Shifting stars and changing constellations? Or was this his true golden finger?

Suppressing his thoughts, Yu Chen knew even more clearly what he needed to focus on now. This might be the place where he could swiftly step onto the path of immortality and obtain a method for eternal life.

Yu Chen continuously recalled the world-grade classifications from the game world.

White represented folk tales centered on mortals, with most cultivators involved being warlocks, mages, and the like. Crimson represented folk legends featuring accomplished demons or cultivators, sometimes involving relatively powerful deities... Violet, at the very end, represented mythological tales from various nations that spanned an extremely broad scope and featured numerous immortals and gods.

Lowering his gaze, Yu Chen immediately packed his things and left the temporary shelter he had spent several days arranging, moving to another backup resting place not far away.

It was a dark, damp earthen hollow, unsuitable for human habitation and equally unsuitable for storing supplies, but it was hidden enough.

Yu Chen drew one witch script after another across the surrounding walls, using the Snake Shadow Banner as the core to form layers of formations that concealed his aura and defended against invading enemies.

Then he took out a long, thin thread and tied it around a piece of broken wood inscribed with witch script, suspending it in midair. The other end of the thread was tied to a burning stick of incense.

Yu Chen came beneath the broken wood and cleared out a patch of somewhat drier ground. He drew witch scripts, drawing in the surrounding earth energy to nourish the center, then collapsed limply onto the ground as though boneless. Curling himself up, he resembled a long snake hibernating through winter.

"Witchcraft: Snake Hibernation!"

While casting the witchcraft on himself, Yu Chen opened the bamboo scroll and focused on the milky-white bar, gently touching it. In an instant, his vision blurred, and the next second, he appeared somewhere else.

"Caw! Caw! Caw!" Several crows perched on tree branches let out piercing cries. Yu Chen slowly awakened from his Snake Hibernation state and looked up at the sky. It was dim and murky, with only a faint orange glow remaining at the horizon.

Turning to survey his surroundings, he saw small earthen mounds standing everywhere. Something had been placed before each of them, more or less. The better ones had stone tablets carved with words, the poorer ones had wooden boards, and the worst had nothing at all, only slightly raised earth indicating something was buried beneath.

A mass grave?

Yu Chen was somewhat surprised. The sparse vegetation and disorderly gravestones clearly did not form a sight that would appear in the Southern Wilderness. He looked himself over. He was still dressed exactly as before, and the Yin Snake Chain around his wrist and the Fire-Snake Mark tucked in his sleeve were both intact.

With a thought, his pupils transformed into Snake Eyes. Then a witchcraft art naturally unfolded, gathering the surrounding yin energy into an illusory snake shadow that appeared before Yu Chen.

My casting speed is slower by one-tenth, and its power has dropped by one-quarter. According to the conventions of the old virtual game, this means this instance shares the same lineage as my cultivation system. It is only a different era, and the laws and principles of heaven and earth differ considerably in their manifestation, but the foundation should not have changed much.

Glancing at the information on the bamboo scroll, Yu Chen found it was not far from his guess, only more detailed.

Yu Chen breathed a sigh of relief and looked around, intending to leave before the sun set.

But before he could move, he saw a short man approaching from afar, cautiously making his way toward this place.

The man's aura was extremely faint, his qi and blood seeming to have been suppressed to the absolute limit. Logically speaking, someone like this should not have appeared in a place like a mass grave. Even going out after dark would make him likely to run into ghosts.

Yet correspondingly, some ghosts and monsters, as well as many spells that observed and probed qi and blood, would fail to notice his aura.

Only because Yu Chen's Snake Eyes witchcraft had undergone several rounds of deduction and optimization by his golden finger, gaining many new functions compared with before, had he been able to detect the other man before he drew near.

Otherwise, with the old Snake Eyes witchcraft, he might not have noticed the man's existence at all.

Thoughtfully, Yu Chen turned to look at the surrounding mounds. The snake shadow before him immediately dispersed into a cloud of mist, gradually blending into the surroundings and concealing Yu Chen's figure.

"Why did it suddenly get foggy? It hasn't rained these past two days!" After entering the mass grave, the short figure cautiously hid himself in a small clump of shrubs.

Yu Chen watched from afar. After waiting for a while, a hand suddenly stretched out from one of the earthen mounds.

The next second, a woman dressed in white crawled out of the mound. Her face was pale, her eyes vacant, and the whites of her eyes nearly covered them entirely. Yet after moonlight appeared, the woman's aura gradually became like that of an ordinary person. She slowly rose to her feet and patted herself. Her clothes, covered in dirt, instantly became clean.

"Baby... rice paste... Baby... rice paste..."

The woman muttered as she slowly walked into the distance. Yu Chen narrowed his eyes slightly. He had already guessed the origin of this instance: Corpse-Born Child, a short tale from the folk story collection Strange Tales.

The original story of Corpse-Born Child was roughly about Old Man Liu, who ran a small inn. One night, he suddenly encountered a woman who came to buy rice paste, and she continued buying it for more than ten days.

Old Man Liu's distant relative, Chen Ergou, a newly arrived waiter, saw that the woman came out every night and was quite beautiful, so he harbored crooked thoughts. He followed her to the mass grave and was ultimately devoured of his blood essence by the woman, dying there.

The next day, Old Man Liu discovered that Chen Ergou was missing and searched all the way there. At the place where Chen Ergou had died, he found the woman's grave. After digging it open, he saw an infant held in the woman's arms. When the woman herself saw sunlight, she turned into flying ash and vanished.

In Yu Chen's previous life, more than twenty endings for the Corpse-Born Child instance world had been discovered and made public, with a broad range of difficulty ratings. At the lowest level, an ordinary person carrying a specific exorcising item could handle it. But if it involved Corpse Mother, another tale from Strange Tales, the difficulty rating would soar in a straight line; even ordinary cultivators could not deal with it.

Though this instance is white, no one knows whether it might provoke some formidable figure. Yu Chen glanced at the short man and observed cautiously.

Ever since hiding at the side earlier, Yu Chen had noticed that the flow of air, changes in sound, and the way the grass and trees swayed in the night wind were all extremely natural and entirely without pattern. All of this subtly indicated that this was not a virtual game world.

Since it was close to reality, he could not follow a map to find a horse, blindly trusting what he knew. Besides, it was not as if there had never been cases in the game-world instances where an incarnation of a character from a violet instance suddenly emerged in a white instance. At such times, the instance's plot would usually be led straight into a ditch, while its grade soared all the way upward.