Gateway to Myriad Wonders

Sunlight streamed through the window.

Zhou Yi woke from a nightmare.

"Being alive is good..."

Memories flowed through his mind. Yesterday's terrifying experience still left Zhou Yi shaken.

On what had been a bustling, peaceful street, a wild wolf the size of a bull had suddenly appeared and gone on a rampage through the city.

Zhou Yi had been lucky. He had curled up beneath a car with his head covered, praying to heaven, and narrowly escaped disaster.

After statements, a psychologist, confidentiality agreements, and a whole mess of complicated procedures—as well as repeated stern warnings not to reveal anything—he had finally been allowed to return home.

Go to work?

What a joke!

Zhou Yi had confirmed that his mind was fine. Before he knew whether that giant wolf would appear again, why the hell would he go to work?

He bought more than a dozen bags of rice, added several locks to his security door, and got a fire axe for self-defense. Unless absolutely necessary, he did not even plan to leave the house.

Between life and death lay great terror!

Zhou Yi had experienced it firsthand.

He lay on his bed, staring at the ceiling, unsure how much time had passed.

His wrist suddenly grew scorching hot, pulling his scattered thoughts back. He lowered his head and looked at the door-shaped birthmark on his wrist.

Perhaps it was not a birthmark. Both his father and mother had clearly told him that there had been no mark on his wrist when he was born. It had appeared without notice when he was ten or eleven.

As Zhou Yi looked at the door-shaped mark, a piece of information entered his mind.

"Profound beyond profundity, the Gateway to Myriad Wonders!"

"A magical treasure called the Gateway to Myriad Wonders can take me through the myriad heavens?"

"Before, it had lain dormant because there was no spiritual energy between heaven and earth. I thought it was a birthmark. Only when the world changed did it absorb enough spiritual energy to activate!"

Zhou Yi abruptly sat up in bed, suddenly feeling at a loss. The information it contained was simply too vast.

A magical treasure.

That meant immortals existed in this world, or at least had existed before.

The myriad heavens.

Earth was not the only world—or rather, not the only plane.

Spiritual energy!

Spiritual energy had suddenly appeared on Earth!

Zhou Yi had read novels on Qidian in his spare time. Of course, he understood what Spiritual Energy Revival meant.

"No wonder they kept insisting that the giant wolf was a mutated animal that escaped from some laboratory. They must have been covering up the Spiritual Energy Revival!"

"I was wondering before—could mutated animals really use a spell that instantly sliced a sedan in half? That giant wolf must have been a demon that gained intelligence, like in the legends!"

Zhou Yi's expression shifted from shock to wild delight to indifference, as swiftly as a Sichuan opera face change.

Spiritual energy had revived, and myths had returned.

That giant wolf was definitely not the first, nor would it be the last. Perhaps Demonic Monsters and Ghosts would become more and more common in the future.

Blue Star was becoming increasingly dangerous. The Wolf Demon was not even the most terrifying kind; at least it had a physical body and could be seen with the naked eye.

What if resentful souls and vicious ghosts suddenly began causing havoc one day? He might die without even knowing how!

"Next time, I might not be so lucky..."

Zhou Yi suppressed the fear in his heart. With a thought, a purple panel appeared before his eyes.

Name: Zhou Yi (True Self)

Race: Human

Cultivation: None

Lifespan: 27/89

Origin: 1000 (+1 point/day)

Talent: Great Luo;

Aptitude: None

Cultivation Method: None

Spells: None

Divine Powers: None

Equipment: None

The attribute panel manifested by the Gateway to Myriad Wonders was only a tiny function compared to traversing the myriad heavens.

Zhou Yi's attributes were as plain as could be. The only thing that stood out was the talent column. The Great Luo talent, wreathed in Purple Mist, made his eyes light up.

Talent: Great Luo

Traits: True Self; Other Self;

True Self: The True Self is unique and remains unchanged through countless tribulations.

Other Self: Every world in the myriad heavens possesses an Other Self. Merging them into the True Self achieves unity.

"True Self and Other Self? Could it be that I have an Other Self in every world of the myriad heavens?"

Zhou Yi could not puzzle it out no matter how hard he tried. He could only take things one step at a time and study it slowly.

"1,000 points of Origin. At a growth rate of 1 point per day, the Spiritual Energy Revival must have begun at least three years ago."

"Heh, they really kept the news tightly sealed. After all that time, everything still looks peaceful and prosperous..."

Zhou Yi gently stroked his wrist, having already made up his mind.

He had to go to the myriad heavens!

To refuse what heaven offered was to invite punishment!

With a thought from Zhou Yi, the Gateway to Myriad Wonders emitted a dazzling light.

Consume 1,000 Origin. Search the myriad heavens for an Other Self!

Search successful. Other Self world coordinates confirmed!

Traverse the myriad heavens!

A flash of purple light passed by.

In an instant, the room was empty.

The sun was blazing.

Zhou Yi walked along a dirt road.

The occasional passing carriage kicked up dust, leaving him filthy and disheveled.

"Phew..."

Zhou Yi was panting like an ox from exhaustion. His worn long robe was so dirty that its original color could no longer be seen.

It was not until dusk that he finally spotted a city in the distance.

"I'm finally almost there."

Only when he drew closer could he see it clearly: grayish-blue city walls more than a zhang high, covered in mottled, chaotic marks of history.

Above the city gate were three large characters: Guo Bei County.

As he approached further, he saw that a section of the city wall had already collapsed, yet no one had repaired it.

Several soldiers squatted at the gate. They glanced at Zhou Yi's bedraggled appearance and could not be bothered to get up and extort him.

Guo Bei County had quite a few residents. It was now evening, and the streets were bustling.

Zhou Yi was hungry and was about to sit down at a bun stall.

A man carrying a saber had eaten buns and did not want to pay.

"Damn it, you dare charge me money!"

Crash!

He flipped the table over, drew his saber, and slashed at the bun stall owner.

The bun seller was no easy target either. He wielded the cleaver he used for chopping filling with surprising skill.

In the end, the freeloader was beheaded by the bun stall owner. The workers dragged his corpse into the back kitchen, followed by a burst of chopping against cutting boards.

Zhou Yi had been standing close and got blood splashed all over his face.

He wiped away the still-warm blood from his face, turned, and left at once, heading straight for the county's only martial arts school, the Golden Saber Sect.

Over a distance of merely two or three li, he encountered four more deadly fights. Zhou Yi's heart gradually turned cold.

"Guo Bei County somehow feels familiar..."

Zhou Yi had been in this world for six days. Apart from traveling today, he had spent the previous days in Zhou Family Village.

The father of this body's previous owner had been a scholar with considerable wealth in the village. Unfortunately, mountain bandits had raided the village some time ago, and their leader had chopped off his head on the spot.

The scholar's son had already been frail. Struck by such a sudden disaster, he died, and Zhou Yi, who had crossed over, took over his body.

Afterward, Zhou Yi lay low for several days, learned the situation, exchanged his inherited farmland for silver, and made his way to Guo Bei County.

Zhou Yi had already asked around. The most famous martial arts school in Guo Bei County was the Golden Saber Sect, and it taught genuine martial arts.

Chen Xiangyan, master of the Golden Saber Sect, wielded a thirty-six-jin Ghost Head Saber and had no equal throughout Guo Bei County. More than once, outsiders had tried to establish themselves in Guo Bei County, only for Chen Xiangyan to carve them into human stumps.

When he arrived outside the Golden Saber Sect, disciples were stationed there specifically to receive martial arts students.

A martial arts school was open for business, and what it took was apprenticeship fees.

Zhou Yi paid five hundred copper coins in apprenticeship fees and became a Registered Disciple.

It was already evening. The Golden Saber Sect had rooms available for outside students, though naturally they charged for them—ten copper coins per day.

The price was neither cheap nor expensive, but the conditions were poor.

There was only a hard wooden bed in the room, and the bedding smelled of mold. Clearly, few people rented it.

Zhou Yi readily moved in. What he had seen along the way in Guo Bei County had left him deeply unsettled.

This was no longer the peaceful, stable Great Dynasty, but an ancient dynasty in utter chaos. Who knew whether an inn might be a bandit den?

The Golden Saber Sect was safer instead. Zhou Yi could only pray that it was.