Otherworld

Boundless green mountains stretched for a thousand miles, their peaks rising and falling without end.

Chen Zhuo slowly woke. Towering trees stood above him, green hills and clear water surrounded him, and a stream burbled before him. For a moment, he was bewildered.

Wait, where the hell am I?

Is this still the Immortal Estate?

Chen Zhuo looked around in utter shock, his face blank with confusion.

What the hell? Did I transmigrate again?

And this time without a dump truck? Just my body crossing over?

Still stunned, Chen Zhuo surveyed his surroundings. Everything looked ancient and utterly unfamiliar to him.

After all, he was used to the cities of the Immortal Estate. This natural setting felt strange.

In the Immortal Estate, you had to pay Spirit Stones to visit a place like this and breathe in Spiritual Qi!

Chen Zhuo was just a poor student. He had no Spirit Stones to spare.

But...

A thought suddenly struck him.

Something about this place seemed different.

Chen Zhuo drew in a deep breath. A tingling sensation swept through him, and for a moment...

He felt a little drunk on oxygen!

"Whoa, whoa, whoa! That's potent!"

One breath nearly made Chen Zhuo pass out.

Wait.

What's going on?

Did I accidentally fall into a Spiritual-Energy Nature Reserve?

Chen Zhuo stared wide-eyed, panic rising as the thought crossed his mind.

If he really had fallen into a Spiritual-Energy Nature Reserve, he was done for!

The reserve's Law Enforcement Cultivators would arrest him at once, then make him pay for every second of Spiritual Qi he had inhaled!

He already owed five thousand Spirit Stones. With energy this dense, the bill would be brutal!

At that thought, Chen Zhuo immediately held his breath.

Then he waited quietly for the Law Enforcement Cultivators to take him out.

Except...

After three or four minutes, he couldn't hold it any longer and started breathing again. That only made him more suspicious.

"What, are the Law Enforcement Cultivators asleep?"

Chen Zhuo hesitated, then steeled himself and gritted his teeth. "Screw it. I'll breathe! If there are Law Enforcement Cultivators, I'll breathe carefully; if there aren't, I'll breathe as much as I want!"

"I already owe five thousand spirit coins anyway. Worst case, I'll switch to soul cultivation, apply for a job in a soul banner, and work off the debt!"

Chen Zhuo sat down cross-legged and began Qi Refinement!

Before this, he had only refined two wisps of Spiritual Qi and circulated them through his meridians, completing the Qi Refinement process. He had not truly reached the First Layer of Qi Refining.

In fact, he was still some way off.

But now he intended to make full use of the abundant Spiritual Qi between heaven and earth and begin Qi Refinement in earnest!

The Everlasting Spring Art began to circulate, faster and faster. In an instant, Chen Zhuo became a ravenous beast, devouring the Spiritual Qi of heaven and earth.

Boom!

A muffled thud sounded, followed by a series of crackles. Chen Zhuo opened his eyes, a sharp light flashing in them.

The First Layer of Qi Refining!

Every limb and bone in his body felt open and at ease. Strength filled him from head to toe!

"At a normal pace, it would've taken me at least seven or eight days to complete Qi Refinement at home. I never thought I'd become a Qi Refinement cultivator in just a few hours!"

Chen Zhuo was overjoyed, but he quickly gathered himself and calmed down.

Soon, his heart began to pound and his breathing quickened.

Chen Zhuo sat motionless, trying to stay calm. As he listened to the noisy birdsong around him, he gradually came back to himself.

Cultivation was a process of expelling the old and drawing in the new, of shedding one's mortal bones and being reborn. If his mind grew unsettled during a breakthrough, he could easily suffer cultivation deviation.

Chen Zhuo did not dare let down his guard.

Only after a while did he slowly rise to his feet.

The First Layer of Qi Refining strengthened muscles and bones.

Only now had Chen Zhuo truly shed his mortal shell and become a cultivator.

"Phew."

At the thought, Chen Zhuo let out a long breath and began studying his surroundings.

Mountains encircled him, and green trees cast shade everywhere.

The quiet, pleasant scenery looked just like the promotional videos for Spiritual-Energy Nature Reserves he had seen on television.

It had the air of the thirty-six grotto-heavens and seventy-two Blessed Lands.

"So where am I?"

His successful breakthrough had put him in high spirits, but Chen Zhuo began considering his location.

If this were a Spiritual-Energy Nature Reserve, a Law Enforcement Cultivator would have come to arrest him long ago. Since he clearly had not been arrested, he was not in a Spiritual-Energy Nature Reserve under the Immortal Estate's jurisdiction.

So...

Where in the vast cultivation world was there still a place with such an ancient feel?

Chen Zhuo rubbed his forehead, breathed out, then turned his awareness inward to examine the Spiritual Qi in his meridians.

Spiritual Qi gathered within him, flowing without end like a narrow stream.

But then Chen Zhuo froze.

A pitch-black bead was floating in his mind.

Its surface bore markings he could not understand.

Earlier, it seemed to absorb those two wisps of Spiritual Qi. Then everything went dark, I felt heaven and earth turn upside down, and I arrived here.

Chen Zhuo pondered. So did this bead bring me here?

He tentatively fed it a wisp of Spiritual Qi.

As the Spiritual Qi entered, the floating black bead reacted at once and began to tremble.

"Buzz, buzz."

After shuddering violently, the bead suddenly flashed with black light. The light enveloped Chen Zhuo, and he vanished from beside the stream.

When he opened his eyes again, Chen Zhuo discovered to his astonishment...

He was back in his own Cave Abode!

"No way."

Chen Zhuo could not help exclaiming, "What is this? Have I been carrying a Microcosm around with me?!"

He had seen this plot before.

Plenty of novels had something similar: the protagonist carried a little pocket dimension where he could grow vegetables, and time passed at a different rate inside. He could harvest thousand-year or ten-thousand-year spirit herbs at will and gradually become a moneyed powerhouse of the cultivation world!

Chen Zhuo's eyes lit up with delight, and he began testing what the bead could do.

As long as he fed it Spiritual Qi, he could travel between the Immortal Estate and that other Microcosm with a thought.

So traveling back and forth only costs Spiritual Qi. Judging by these trips, anything I'm carrying comes along...

Chen Zhuo wondered, So can I use the Spirit Message Jade Slip in that little world?

With that thought, Chen Zhuo returned to the bead's world.

After greedily drawing in a long breath, he opened the Spirit Message Jade Slip.

What he saw shocked him.

The Spirit Message Jade Slip had no signal!

"So the bead's world really is a new world, outside the Immortal Estate's jurisdiction..."

Chen Zhuo nodded slightly.

Throughout the cultivation world ruled by the Immortal Estate, from the highest heavens to the deepest underworld, its heavenly-star network provided coverage. If his device showed no signal, he had to be outside its jurisdiction!

"In that case..."

Chen Zhuo tapped the Spirit Message Jade Slip and opened one of its apps.

[Spiritual Qi concentration test.]

It was a built-in function of the Spirit Message Jade Slip, much like a compass or voice recorder.

Chen Zhuo was not worried about giving himself away. Every Spirit Message Jade Slip was a magical device with everything installed locally. As long as an app did not need a network connection, it was like a phone's calculator and would upload nothing to the cloud.

The same held true for the smart assistant, Little Jade, when it was offline.

After all, this was not the internet. It was made of Spiritual Qi and had no way to trace activity back to him.

The drawback was that it kept no history, so he could not see past readings.

[Current Spiritual Qi concentration: 4.39.]

[Your current environment meets the standard for a Level One Spirit-Gathering Environment.]

Chen Zhuo's finger went still. Without hesitation, he sat down cross-legged and resumed cultivating!

The normal Spiritual Qi concentration in the Immortal Estate was only 1.

Even Taiqing City Alchemy Vocational and Technical College, where he had been admitted, had a Spirit-Gathering Formation covering it, yet its concentration was only 2!

Here it was 4.39!

What was there to say?

He had to breathe in that Spiritual Qi!

Everything else was fleeting. Only the Spiritual Qi he refined into his body would truly be his!