The bustling metropolis shimmered like a starry sky.
In this city, towering high-rises stood in forests, traffic surged like a flowing stream, and the air was filled with a modern ambiance.
White doves flew across the horizon, bells chimed, and the evening rush hour began. Lin Xian politely declined several female colleagues' invitations to walk together, standing in place as he flipped through the medical classic The Spiritual Pivot, watching his exquisitely dressed female colleagues get into cars with other male colleagues.
The few of them chatted and laughed happily, going for a joyride in their cars, making no attempt to hide their mutual flirtation.
This was also one of the styles of the big city: carpe diem, letting the wind blow wildly, and never wasting a good time.
Beneath the brilliantly lit night, civilization and desire walked hand in hand.
Lin Xian, who only wanted to live a peaceful life, felt completely out of place in this fast-paced city.
Talking about pure love these days is like Master Ye going to World War II bare-handed and fighting planes and artillery with Wing Chun.
* Unless Master Ye is the Desolate Ancient Sacred Body, there isn't a shred of chance.*
So, time to lie flat!
Lin Xian lazily stretched, radiating a Buddha-like aura from head to toe as he slipped into the darkness like a salted fish.
The big city at night hummed with endless streams of traffic on the roads. The sound of roaring vehicles rushed by his ears, brushing past him in a scene of extraordinary prosperity.
Walking to a four-way intersection, Lin Xian put down his phone, shoved his hands into his pockets, and stared intently at the traffic light.
A person ought to have self-awareness. He, Lin Xian, a medical student, was not a steel-boned sports major. If he got hit by a car, let alone recovering from his injuries in two days, he wouldn't be able to get up for two hundred years.
Obeying traffic rules was the primary secret to surviving in this steel jungle!
He, Lin Xian, had a house and a car, both mortgages fully covered, five social insurances and one housing fund, and a stable job.
His wish in life was to retire early, and his sole ambition was to fleece the company.
He only wanted to live a mediocre life and pass his days steadily.
Lying flat, slacking off, and muddling through—these eight golden characters guided him forward.
You strive, I work hard, and the boss buys a Ferrari tomorrow.
Striving hard? That's super impossible, okay.
BOOM!!!
A huge dump truck came roaring into view, exploding with a deafening sound like thunder splitting the air.
System 10086 wore a cold smile on its stern face, its eyes filled with gratification.
The host dies, the system lives.
Respecting the laws of transmigration was the primary rule for the System Race to survive in the Myriad Realms.
Oh host, shake off your mediocre and boring life!
Rise from the ruins, recover from Ji Mie, and snap the shackles of life as a brand-new world unveils its mysterious corner...
System, initiate!
Over the ruins of burning gasoline, a cold mechanical voice rang out:
[Do you want to understand the meaning of life? Do you want to truly... live?]
Lin Xian, wrapped inside a ball of light, remained unconscious and completely oblivious to the outside world.
"Cough, cough... I grabbed the wrong one, I grabbed the wrong one. This is the novice Main God manual from next door."
"Good thing the host didn't hear."
A flurry of panicked, bustling noises rang out in the void. The system finally found its own novice system manual, operated according to the procedures within, and restored that cold, mechanical voice:
[Timeline resetting... Void barrier repairing... Causality points cutting... System binding to host, transmigration laws activated!]
[Coordinates: The Outcast]
Fortune favors this divine masterpiece, Yin and Yang sever dusk and dawn.
Mount Tai, towering and profound, possessed a magnificent momentum and was honored as the foremost of the Five Great Mountains, hailed as the number one mountain under heaven.
Since ancient times, Mount Tai had been a symbol of holiness. Located at the easternmost part of the ancient Central Plains region and surrounded by the Yellow River and Wen River, it was regarded in ancient times as the place where the sun first rose and all things grew.
No mountain was greater than it, no history more ancient!
Emperors and Sages of antiquity all traveled to Mount Tai to perform the Fengchan ceremonies, hoping to draw close to the deities.
Having passed through two worlds, Lin Xian had never visited Mount Tai before, knowing of it only through essays and poetry.
When he arrived at the place in person, he was instantly overwhelmed by the grandeur and majesty of Mount Tai, finally understanding what it meant to touch an elephant while blind or peer at a leopard through a tube.
Hearing of it a hundred times was not as good as seeing it once; seeing it once was not as good as treading upon it with one's own feet.
The mountain body was divided into a three-tiered geological structure resembling steps to heaven. Facing south with its back to the north, the entire mountain mass opened up, and a ten-kilometer-long path to heaven led into the vast body of the mountain, extending all the way to the peak.
Whether viewed from afar or close up, one could feel that grand and magnificent atmosphere, stirring one's heart and mind.
Before the magnificent Mount Tai, one was left with a strange illusion: one's self was as minuscule as an ant, and even the sun, moon, and stars in the sky appeared insignificant.
This was a shocking feeling, one that made the soul tremble.
So much so that even the mechanical voice of the system issuing the mission became somewhat blurred.
[Trial Mission: Tamper with any major plot of The Outcast world and display the host's potential]
[Success: One of the Eight Extraordinary Skills]
[Failure: After the host's death, the system will automatically unbind]
[Side Mission: Seize first place in the Luotian Grand Ceremony]
[Main Mission: Defeat the Old Celestial Master on Mount Longhu]
"System, hold on."
Lin Xian raised his head to look at the sky. Seeing a few black spots appear on the horizon, he could not help but twitch the corner of his mouth, his voice carrying a trace of trembling: "Are you fucking sure this is The Outcast world?!"
System 10086 felt a jolt in its heart. Could it be that its operation was flawed, the coordinate positioning was wrong, and he had transmigrated to another world?!
It was also its first time acting as a system and its first time guiding a host, lacking experience.
In a flash, the system steadied its mindset, feigned maturity, and replied in a cold, mechanical voice: "The Myriad Realms are full of wonders. There are countless timeline branches in The Outcast world. Minor deviations appearing is a normal phenomenon."
"System 10086 guarantees—"
"You guarantee my ass!"
Lin Xian was usually steady, but at this moment, his psychological defense was also breached. He pointed at the Nine Dragons Pulling a Coffin in the sky and cursed angrily: "You call Mount Tai featuring Nine Dragons Pulling a Coffin a normal phenomenon, and you call The Outcast turning into Shrouding the Heavens a minor deviation!"
The scale of The Outcast and Shrouding the Heavens differed by more than just a little bit.
The background of The Outcast world was set within Earth, belonging to urban superpowers coupled with a bit of immortal cultivation elements, plus some alien races, which could be called colorful and varied.
The pinnacle powerhouse of Mount Longhu, the Old Celestial Master Heaven-Connecting Daoist, was hailed as the One Pinnacle, invincible in the mortal world, and stood at the peak of otherworlders, yet ultimately he could not resist a nuclear bomb with his physical body.
The otherworlders and practitioners in The Outcast could not contend with modern institutional armies equipped with thermal weapons either.
Generally speaking, The Outcast plane was a low-magic region suitable for ordinary people to survive, where mortals and the extraordinary kept each other in check, forming a delicate balance.
The Shrouding the Heavens universe was different, however. Its background was a starry universe, with myriad races rising together, immortal cultivation for longevity, the struggle for the Emperor Path, the law of the jungle, and strict hierarchies.
The cultivation system possessed five great secret realms in total: Sea of Bitterness, Dao Palace, Four Extremes, Dragon Transformation, and Immortal Altar, ascending step by step.
They respectively corresponded to: the Dantian, five viscera, four limbs, spine, head, and five major human organs.
Therefore, the Shrouding Method was also called: the Secret Realm Method, the method of Self-as-Seed.
Instead of seeking the universe, one sought within oneself, focusing on pushing open the doors of the human body's immortal gates, stimulating infinite potentials, and reaching the state of the great universe of heaven and earth and the human micro-cosmos.
Ultimately, one would sit on equal footing with the great universe, residing within it while the Dao remained outside, tearing through the void and transcending the universe.
This cultivation system originated from the Desolate Heaven Emperor, and it was powerfully perverted to the extreme. Cultivating to the second secret realm, the Dao Palace, was enough to roughly evade nuclear bombs. Cultivating to the fifth secret realm, the Immortal Altar, shattering mountains and rivers with a roar, plucking stars from the sky with a wave of the hand, and obliterating great suns was merely routine.
The complete unification of the five great secret realms condensed the Imperial Dao Laws, making one a Human Dao Supreme—a Great Emperor.
Two supremacies fighting to the cosmic frontier, with chaotic qi pervading every gesture as if heaven and earth were just born, stars shattered, and the Great Dao itself worn away · jpg.
This was the Shrouding the Heavens style!
This was a high-risk universe where planets exploded at every turn and galaxies blew up from a single glance.
Leaning straight from the urban superpower channel into the Eastern fantasy channel, not only was Lin Xian agitated, but even the system trembled, and its root program issued a fearful warning alarm.
For the host Lin Xian, the current danger came from the Shrouding the Heavens universe; for the system, the Shrouding the Heavens universe was not just Shrouding the Heavens.
Shrouding the Heavens had a trilogy: the present "Shrouding the Heavens"; the past "Perfect World"; the future "Sacred Ruins".
Before "Perfect World" came out, the systems of the Myriad Realms thought this was merely an unexceptional single universe of ordinary emperor-making and common immortality.
The protagonist Ye Fan transformed into a Red Dust Immortal and fought his way into the Immortal Realm, resulting in a very perfect ending.
Thus, all sorts of reincarnators and transmigrators flew all over the sky, and countless systems swarmed into the Shrouding the Heavens universe, viewing it as a blessed land and a treasure land.
When "Perfect World" came out, in an instant, the systems were struck dumb, and the transmigrators and reincarnators were dumbfounded. How was the Shrouding the Heavens universe any sort of blessed land? It was clearly a gigantic pit.
Within "Perfect World", powerhouses of the Immortal King Realm could manipulate the River of Years on a small scale and slightly alter history.
The protagonist Ye Fan attained the Dao as a Quasi-Immortal Emperor, went against the current up the River of Years, and headed to the past to help the Desolate Heaven Emperor fight off the darkness and correct ancient history.
The worldview suddenly sublimated from a single universe level to a Myriad Realms level, stepping in and out of the River of Time just like returning to one's maiden home.
If it were merely this, certain advanced systems could still barely handle it.
However, what truly screwed people over was that once "Sacred Ruins" came out, the gigantic pit instantly turned into a heavenly abyss.
The Red Dust Immortal was merely the beginning, the Immortal Emperor was not invincible, and above the Immortal Emperor, there was still a realm of transcendence.
In the final installment "Sacred Ruins", Ye Fan successfully reached Beyond the Sacrificial Path, transcended everything, and was crowned alongside the Desolate Heaven Emperor and Chu Ultimate as the Three Heavenly Emperors.
To existences Beyond the Sacrificial Path, the Great Dao was like flowing water, and a single thought could dry it up.
Destiny, fortune, causality, heavenly Dao, and the like were nothing more than the weakest illusions, shattering before one could even reach out to touch them.
Surpassing so-called eternity, the Dao, the Great World, all time and space, beyond the universe, beyond the chaos, omnipresent from antiquity to the present and into the future, everything could be dissipated with a single thought by beings standing in this realm, and wherever their gaze reached, they could wither everything or recreate everything.
The past, the present, and the future had lost their meaning to those Beyond the Sacrificial Path; the concept of time no longer existed, and stepping in myriad ages ago, stepping in during the current era, or arriving in the future all seemed visible, all seemed to exist in this very moment, allowing one to arbitrarily define antiquity and the present.
A wispy fog born from negative emotions could reshape an entire worldview, possessing infinite possibilities and changes, rewriting countless fates, subverting reality, and dividing into infinitely many worldviews.
A single glance back could derive endless time and space, as well as causality lines, and there was no need to care whether the future was disrupted, because at this level, what met the eye was inherently endless time and space and infinite possibilities, making the Great Dao, time, and space lose their meaning to them.
From then on, the Shrouding the Heavens trilogy universe became one of the rare forbidden zones in the Chaos Sea.
Few systems dared to run in and act wildly, and even if they did run in, they only bound native beings, not daring to casually take people across dimensions.
System 10086 felt that as a minor system responsible for The Outcast plane, it probably could not outplay someone Beyond the Sacrificial Path.
"Host, do you have any opinions?" System 10086's voice sounded, still cold, yet lacking the previous dull, stiff, and mechanical feeling.
Lin Xian moved a thought, spread his hands, and shrugged. Whatever, I'll just slack off.
System: ???