[The System That Lay Flat]

Compared to lofty topics like systems, spacetime, the universe, and Beyond the Sacrificial Path.

Lin Xian knew his own limits. He was a mortal, a mortal who would grow old and move slowly by the age of seventy or eighty.

There was no need to concern himself with attaining immortality, proving the Dao, or conquering the Immortal Realm. Those grand and lofty matters were things only Great Emperors and Heavenly Emperors needed to consider.

For Lin Xian.

Stepping onto the path of cultivation, opening up the Sea of Bitterness, and nurturing divine power—even if he could not attain immortality, being free of illness and living energetically to a hundred would count as a small win.

If he endured until the Dark Turmoil, even if he could not escape the Supreme beings' deadly hands, living to two hundred would be equivalent to a mortal living two lifetimes. That would count as a medium win.

If he survived the Dark Turmoil and was fortunate enough not to die, then cultivated successfully in the future, lived for thousands of years, and became an expert of his generation, that would count as a big win.

If he survived the Dark Turmoil, clung to the Heavenly Court's thigh, and coasted into the Immortal Realm, achieving effortless immortality, that would be an enormous win.

"Small win, medium win, big win, and enormous win."

A bright smile curled across Lin Xian's lips as he declared cheerfully, "There is no such word as 'lose' in my life's dictionary!"

"As long as I slack off hard enough, every part of life is a win!"

"Host, what do you mean by that?!" System 10086 cracked, no longer putting on an aloof act as static crackled through its voice. It had never seen such a thoroughly lazy, laid-flat host!

"Getting worked up, huh? Getting worked up."

Lin Xian whistled. It seemed the system he had bound was not omnipotent after all.

Fair enough. If the system were omnipotent, why would it need a host like him? It might as well work alone.

If the system was not anxious, why should he be?

Only when the system got anxious did he not have to be.

"My meaning is very clear: reject the rat race, starting with you and me."

Lin Xian raised his head and patiently persuaded it, "We've already arrived at Mount Tai and seen Nine Dragons Pulling a Coffin. System, do you think Beyond the Sacrificial Path will make a move against us?"

Static crackled as System 10086 answered without hesitation, "Most likely not."

If Beyond the Sacrificial Path bore them hostility, the system and host would not be on Mount Tai. They would be somewhere beyond the world, having tea with Heavenly Emperor Ye.

If Beyond the Sacrificial Path had made a move against the system, they would never have even entered the Shrouding the Heavens universe.

"Divine dragons never care about the ants beneath their feet, yet a casual movement from one can spell utter disaster for those ants."

System 10086 gritted its teeth. "Beyond the Sacrificial Path having no ill intent does not mean they have good intentions."

The thought of dealing with beings as powerful as the Main System made System 10086 somewhat cowardly.

"Sometimes, acquiescence is an attitude in itself."

Lin Xian chuckled, then changed the subject. "What do you think of Ye Fan?"

"Terrifying!"

The system gave a precise assessment. Ye Fan might be a mortal now, but that was the past incarnation of a great figure.

A casual probe could bring about who knew what kind of surprise.

Would it be the Supreme-level Great Accomplished Saint Physique making a move? Or the Heavenly Emperor-level Ruthless Emperor striking from the present? The Immortal Emperor-level Desolate Heaven Emperor acting from the past? Or Heavenly Emperor Ye beyond the Sacrificial Path intervening from the future?

From the human realm to transcendence, past, future, and present—everything was available, guaranteed to satisfy.

The unknown was the greatest fear.

"Wrong!"

In an instant, Lin Xian's eyes lit up, like a beggar spotting a mountain of gold or a starving ghost seeing a feast. He proclaimed fervently, "That's a thigh—a huge thigh!"

"A thigh?"

System 10086 froze slightly, as though it had gained some understanding.

"That's right."

Lin Xian spoke with absolute certainty, his tone meaningful. "A thigh full of chivalry and brotherhood!"

"Looking across the trilogy, Heavenly Emperor Ye is at least Chaotic Good. When trouble comes, he really steps up. He truly dares to quell the Dark Turmoil, and he truly dares to charge into the Eerie Plateau!"

"Compared to certain Great Love Immortal Venerables, Blood-Transfusion God Kings, and wife-killing Dao seekers... he's better by who knows how much."

"If you follow Heavenly Emperor Ye, even a dog can attain the Dao and become a peak Immortal King."

"I'm a living, breathing person. If I can survive until the finale, then at the absolute minimum—absolute minimum—I'm guaranteed to become an Immortal King with Emperor Radiance!"

The Immortal King realm!

That was the true win!

Immortal and undying, with an imperishable body and an undying Primordial Spirit.

If someone recited an Immortal King's true name, the Immortal King would sense it, and strange phenomena would manifest.

They could step into the river of time, disregard the power of the ages, and make small-scale alterations within the current of time.

Creating and destroying universes was ordinary to them; opening heaven and earth was something they could do with a wave of the hand. Such was an Immortal King!

System 10086, which was responsible for low-magic planes like The Outcast, felt its mechanical heart skip a beat and swallowed nonexistent saliva in disgrace.

Host and system were bound together. When one attained the Dao, even chickens and dogs ascended to heaven. As the host grew stronger, the system naturally rose with him.

"But... lying flat and slacking off goes completely against the system world's main theme."

System 10086 gritted its teeth, struggling intensely. "Working hard, showing off, humiliating opponents, displaying holiness before others, killing decisively, and being iron-blooded and ruthless—those are the qualities the System Race seeks to shape into the perfect host!"

"I... I am a system with principles!"

"I will report this to the Main System and return everything to the proper starting point—to The Outcast plane."

Lin Xian looked up at the heavens and said earnestly, "Your ambitions are higher than the sky, but your fate is thinner than paper. If you show off, slap faces, and struggle hard in The Outcast plane, can you cultivate into a True Immortal?"

"Following Heavenly Emperor Ye, lying flat and slacking off all the way to a smooth clear of the finale—isn't that better than a tiny system like you braving storms and rain across the myriad worlds?"

"Pacifying darkness and battling the eerie are the Three Heavenly Emperors' jobs. We're just hanging around behind the Heavenly Emperors, waving banners, shouting support, and slacking off. I'm not asking you to charge the plateau and destroy the ancestors."

"The Heavenly Emperors handle the slaughter; we handle the cheering. Put together, that makes slaughtering with style."

"System, as underlings, don't think about striving all day. The company isn't yours. We're all workers, so we need to know how to fish in muddy waters and reasonably fleece the Main System."

"Ah... this." The rookie System 10086, fresh from the factory, was stunned. By chance, a brand-new door had been pushed open before it. The key was, damn it, the more it listened, the more reasonable it sounded.

For a moment, it could not help sinking into a painful choice. Should it report to the Main System and confess its mistake, or conceal this accident, go with the flow, and take the opportunity to make a profit?

"Rumble..."

Wind and thunder rose as the sky split open. Nine colossal beings descended from above like nine black rivers falling from the heavens, dragging a Bronze Ancient Coffin and shaking the summit of Mount Tai.

In an instant, earth and stones flew everywhere, dust and sand filled the air, countless cracks appeared across the ground, and the mountains trembled.

"I remember Ye Fan's friend Pang Bo seemed to have eventually attained the Dao Ancestor realm."

"With Pang Bo's aptitude, Quasi-Emperor should have been his limit, yet he somehow became a Dao Ancestor. What does that tell us?!"

"It tells us that choosing well is more important than working hard!"

As if he had only just remembered this, Lin Xian whispered in a voice like a devil's temptation, "System, there isn't much time. If we head over now, we can add Heavenly Emperor Ye as a friend."

"Maybe someday, we can also become Dao Ancestors."

"What do you think, System?!"

Above Immortal Kings was the realm known as Dao Ancestor.

Immortal Kings were experts on the scale of a great universe, while Dao Ancestors, also called Quasi-Immortal Emperors, were powerhouses on the scale of the myriad worlds.

With a flick of a finger, they could destroy a realm. With a single thought, worlds could be born and perish. Their words became laws, and they could evolve all things and all Dao methods.

They could obscure the secrets of heaven by themselves. Whether in the past, present, or after their death, they were shrouded in mist, making them difficult to see through or observe across their lives.

No longer bound by the river of time, they had begun to transcend space and time. So long as no external force obstructed them, they could travel to any point in the past.

Experts of such a level had already surpassed many advanced systems. With a casual point, they could mass-produce Immortal King races.

After one long second of struggle, System 10086 thought of its brother system, 12345, which had been restored to factory settings. It recalled its first love, System 22333, and a trace of wild ambition ignited within its cold mechanical heart.

"Let's do it!"

With that shout, System 10086 made its decision. It did not want to remain a low-level system, nor did it want to be reset one day. It also wanted to become an advanced system, handling business across the myriad worlds!

A smile curled across Lin Xian's lips—plan successful.

As a transmigrator without even a weapon in hand, with no power to resist the system, seeking a win-win outcome was his only path to survival.

"Dora System, what tools do you have? Hurry up and take them out."

"We're about to miss the Nine Dragons Pulling a Coffin interstellar flight."

Lin Xian looked at the heavenly stairs still eight or nine kilometers away and said earnestly, "We're now an alliance of shared interests. Don't play those boring old-era tropes where systems erase hosts and hosts resist."

"We need to establish a community of shared destiny between host and system."

System: ...

It somehow felt that this host was CPU-ing it.

"The beginner's gift pack has been issued. Please check and accept it."

System 10086 resumed its mechanical, icy voice, wearing an entirely businesslike attitude. The void rippled like a tide and the surface of a lake stirred with waves as a streak of immortal light entered Lin Xian's Niwan Palace between his brows.

It traveled down from the upper dantian, passed through the middle dantian, and finally settled in the lower dantian. The streak of light—or rather, that mass of qi—condensed into an infant.

[One of the Eight Extraordinary Skills: Qi-State Origin-Flow]

[Effect: Return to Origin]

Laozi said: Can you embrace the One with your vital soul and never let it depart? Can you concentrate your qi until it is supple like an infant?

If one guarded essence and qi so that they did not scatter, the body would respond by becoming soft and compliant.

The purest union of essence, qi, and spirit, returning to their original and primordial state, was called the Nascent Soul.

Once the qi infant formed, it could cause all wondrous methods and divine abilities to collapse and dissolve into the purest primordial qi.

Thus, at the end of techniques, Qi-State Origin-Flow's greatest use was not for killing enemies, but for preserving life and opening the gate of cultivation.

It transformed all kinds of mixed and harmful primordial qi into source qi, nourishing the body in turn.

It seemed to be showing signs of evolving from a clever trick into a cultivation method.

"With techniques and methods, there will eventually be the Dao."

Lin Xian murmured softly, deep in thought. Wasn't the end of techniques simply methods?

As a medical student, he had read the Yellow Emperor's Inner Canon. He occasionally leafed through a few Daoist and traditional Chinese medicine texts as well, and had seen Shangqing theories regarding the Three Sceneries, Eight Departments, and Twenty-Four Gods. His studies were quite varied.

Whether from the perspective of healing the sick and saving lives, or cultivating toward the Dao, one could not avoid the human body's upper, middle, and lower three dantians.

The three thousand great Daos led to the same destination by different paths. Their names differed, but their essence was similar.

The upper dantian, the Spirit Terrace, was called the Immortal Platform Secret Realm in the Shrouding the Heavens universe. It was a pure land and an unparalleled treasury of immortality, holding boundless potential!

Ascending the Immortal Altar was also where a cultivator's Primordial Spirit resided.

The middle dantian, the Crimson Palace, was called the Dao Palace Secret Realm in the Shrouding the Heavens universe. The valley spirit never dies; this is called the mysterious female. The gate of the mysterious female is called the root of heaven and earth.

Nurturing the spirit so it did not perish, allowing the deity and qi to merge, would give rise to all kinds of mysterious phenomena.

The lower dantian, the qi sea, was called the Wheel of the Sea Secret Realm in the Shrouding the Heavens universe. It was further divided into the four minor realms of the Sea of Bitterness, Life Spring, Divine Bridge, and Other Shore.

Open the Wheel of the Sea, and divine power would surge forth. It was the gate of cultivation and the beginning of immortality.

Connecting the three great dantian secret realms was the spine, a great dragon running through the human body, known as the Dragon Transformation Secret Realm.

Meanwhile, the Four Extremes Secret Realm corresponding to the limbs symbolized spacetime. It represented a cultivator's influence upon the outside world, the resonance between the human body's small heaven and earth and the universe's great heaven and earth. When heaven and man became one, hands and feet could reach through heaven and earth; every gesture became law and profound art, capable of unleashing all kinds of great divine abilities.

From this secret realm onward, one could only improve cultivation through comprehending the Dao. There were few other shortcuts, and all manner of resources could only serve an auxiliary role.

Only upon reaching the third secret realm, the Four Extremes, did cultivators qualify to touch heaven and earth, sense the inner and outer worlds, connect with the Great Dao, and thereby trigger heavenly tribulation.

Before reaching the Four Extremes, even if a True Immortal descended into the world or a Great Emperor reincarnated, they could not trigger heavenly tribulation.