The World Was Sick, the Spacetime Realm
In the Azure Billows Realm, on the Azure Firmament Continent, stood the Heavenly Revelation Sect.
Liu Yi wore a vacant expression as he walked slowly toward the sect's Spiritual Qi Conversion Grand Formation.
The banners hanging high along the way shimmered gold in the sunlight, making them especially eye-catching.
"Others rely on talent to reach Foundation Establishment; I'll work overtime until I become an immortal!"
"Others slack off, I work overtime; others lie flat, I cultivate! My comeback is just around the corner!"
"Work hard and put in overtime to earn Spirit Stones; break through one day and become an exalted immortal!"
At the entrance to the formation, Lin Xiuyuan caught sight of Liu Yi and immediately whispered to Jiang Neng, a newly admitted disciple:
"See him? That's Liu Yi, the outer sect's famous overtime maniac. Three days ago, he worked so much overtime that he collapsed from exhaustion."
"Outer sect disciples have to work the formation for six hours every day. He puts in another four hours of overtime on top of that, and he's kept it up for over a hundred years, just to earn one extra Spirit Stone fragment a month."
Admiration flashed in Jiang Neng's eyes. "He's so hardworking. He must have saved up quite a lot of Spirit Stone fragments, and he must be close to Foundation Establishment, right?"
"Foundation Establishment? In his dreams!" Lin Xiuyuan's face was full of disdain. "That waste has a mixed Five Elements Spirit Root. He's lived for 145 years and only reached the Qi Refinement Seventh Layer."
"Qi Refinement cultivators only live for 150 years at most. At this rate, he has no hope of reaching Foundation Establishment."
"If an outer sect disciple hasn't broken through to the Foundation Establishment Realm by 146, he'll be swept out the door. He won't have many years left to live after leaving the Heavenly Revelation Sect, either."
Hearing this, Jiang Neng's face filled with disdain as well. "His aptitude is that poor? If I'd had the Spirit Stone fragments he saved over all those years, I might have broken through to the Qi Refining Ninth Layer by now."
"That's right! If I'd had them, I'd probably have reached Foundation Establishment already." Lin Xiuyuan nodded in agreement.
Liu Yi entered the formation and sat cross-legged at his assigned position.
He looked around and saw that the other outer sect disciples were all in high spirits, as if they'd been pumped full of chicken blood.
This was because the Spiritual Qi Conversion Grand Formation concealed a special restriction that continuously released spirit waves to lift their spirits, forcibly clearing away negative emotions. That was how everyone remained normal while working beyond their limits.
The reason he had been able to awaken his memories of his previous life was that this restriction had no effect on him whatsoever.
At eighteen, he had taken part in the Immortal Ascension Conference and entered the Heavenly Revelation Sect.
After 127 years of working the formation at an intense pace and putting in overtime, his accumulated resentment and exhaustion had completely overwhelmed his mental defenses, prompting the awakening of his past-life memories.
In his previous life, he had died suddenly while working overtime, then transmigrated to this world and been reincarnated as Liu Yi.
And before awakening those memories, he had been even more absurd: unable to clear away his negative emotions, he had kept working overtime for 127 years. He could be called a congenital working ox-and-horse sacred physique.
Yet what he had left his memory-awakened self was a start that could only be described as hellish.
With the aptitude of a mixed Five Elements Spirit Root, he had only one year to break through from the Qi Refinement Seventh Layer to the Foundation Establishment Realm.
Otherwise, once he was expelled from the Heavenly Revelation Sect, the thin Spiritual Qi in the mortal world would make breaking through to the Foundation Establishment Realm even harder.
With only a few years of life remaining, he had essentially been sentenced to death.
As he understood it in his previous life, immortal cultivators were supposed to draw in and expel Heaven and Earth Spiritual Qi, carefree and untainted by worldly dust.
But in this world, Spiritual Qi was thin, and Spirit Gathering Formations were ineffective. Immortal cultivators had to go to work like ordinary wage earners, forced to operate the Spiritual Qi Conversion Grand Formation for six hours every day without any pay.
Only by working an extra four hours every day for a full month could they earn a single Spirit Stone fragment.
The Spiritual Qi in these fragments was pitifully thin. They were nothing more than defective products made by using special means to seal a little Spiritual Qi from the surroundings inside Spirit Stones whose Spiritual Qi had been exhausted.
This is daylight robbery! What a scam!
Even the capitalists from my previous life would have to offer them a toast first.
Something is wrong with this world!
There's nothing proper about this world!
This world is utterly insane!
The more Liu Yi thought about it, the more absurd it seemed. Whether it was the people or the rules and regulations, everything about this world had a streak of madness.
What proper cultivation world relied on human labor to power a formation and produce Spiritual Qi?
Recalling his life before the age of eighteen, he found that the mortal world was even more suffocatingly cruel.
Martial world sects and powerful Lineages monopolized resources. Ordinary people didn't even have a place to call their own and could only struggle desperately to survive.
"Are kings, nobles, generals, and ministers born to their rank?" had vanished without a trace here.
With supernatural power holding them down, it was as hard as ascending to heaven for ordinary people to rebel.
This screwed-up world had left normal people no way to live.
Fortunately, Liu Yi had a golden finger after transmigrating.
Otherwise, he would have had to consider killing himself in the hope of starting over.
In his sea of consciousness, his soul was enveloped in a silvery-white membrane that faintly revealed the mysteries of time and space.
It was a special space formed when his soul fused with the power of spacetime during his transmigration. He had named it the "Spacetime Realm."
Unfortunately, he still couldn't fully control the Spacetime Realm. He had gained only one percent control over it.
Even so, that small degree of control had benefited him greatly.
Not only had his memory improved by leaps and bounds, reaching the point where he could remember anything he saw, but his computational ability for deduction had also increased fivefold.
Besides that, the Spacetime Realm came with an innate ability to resist outside influences on his mind.
That was why the formation's restriction for clearing away negative emotions had no effect on him whatsoever.
The negative emotions accumulated over 127 years of intense overtime had nowhere to go, ultimately causing his predecessor's mind to collapse and his past-life memories to awaken.
The Spacetime Realm was different from the usual system golden fingers. It wouldn't make his cultivation soar overnight, much less turn him directly into an immortal or a god.
But it truly existed in his sea of consciousness. It was the product of his soul fusing with the power of spacetime during his transmigration, not some mysterious gift from an unknown source.
At that thought, a faint smile appeared at the corner of Liu Yi's mouth.
He decided to use his powerful deductive ability to create a Cultivation Method and improve the efficiency with which he absorbed and refined Spiritual Qi.
Cultivating a self-created method was immensely risky; the slightest mistake could cause Qi Deviation and leave him dead, his Dao extinguished.
But time was tight, and he couldn't find anyone to test the method. He could only take the field himself.
Without madness, there was no survival.
Compared with waiting to die after being expelled from the sect, even the greatest danger was worth braving.
Having come to this world with supernatural powers, he also harbored the ambition of becoming an immortal or a god.
He also wanted to overturn the rules of this world completely and drag those lofty immortal cultivators and the meat-eaters down from their pedestals.
But he knew those ideas were too distant. The key now was to reach Foundation Establishment within the year and gain more years of life.
He pressed his hand against the round spirit sphere before him and injected spiritual power to activate the formation.
While keeping the formation running, he circulated his Cultivation Method to absorb and refine Spiritual Qi.
Yet the Five Elements Qi Refining Instruction absorbed and refined Spiritual Qi at an astonishingly slow pace. Converting even a single wisp into spiritual power took a great deal of time.
Such sluggish cultivation efficiency only strengthened his resolve to create his own method.
Because if he didn't fight with all he had, he really would die.
Six hours passed. He stopped feeding spiritual power into the formation without hesitation, turned, and left.
Two lifetimes of overtime had long since left him thoroughly sick of it. Rather than earn that little bit of Spirit Stone fragments, he wanted to hurry to the Scripture Pavilion and read, accumulating the knowledge he needed to create his own Cultivation Method.
His predecessor had known only how to bury himself in cultivation. All told, he knew the Five Elements Qi Refining Instruction and a smattering of cultivation knowledge, nowhere near enough to support the creation of a new method.
Ignoring everyone's astonished looks, Liu Yi walked out of the formation and headed straight for the outer sect disciples' dining hall.
Qi Refinement Realm cultivators had yet to achieve Grain Avoidance and still had to eat to replenish the energy their bodies needed.
Grain Avoidance Pills could serve as a substitute, but he was penniless and couldn't afford even the cheapest one.
He had just sat down at a dining table with his food box and started eating when he saw the round-bodied Qian Duoduo amble over and plop down opposite him.
Qian Duoduo stared straight at him. "Meet me in the grove after you eat."
Liu Yi's hand paused as he picked up some food. Then he answered softly, "Mm."