This Nap Lasted Twenty Years

(Thank you for reading! I hope all you readers are healthy and prosperous!)

At noon, the sun shone through the branches and leaves of the trees, falling onto a smooth, gray stone at the base of a trunk.

"Ah, the rain's finally stopped."

The warmth of the sun awakened Chen Yang from his slumber.

"I slept for... hmm... five days this time."

Whenever it rained, Chen Yang would fall into a deep sleep because he disliked the damp smell of rainy days.

Rain and mist would make the normally clear spiritual energy become humid.

Chen Yang looked around; the scenery was still the same as always.

"Come to think of it, this is my twentieth year in this world."

After nearly half a year of high-intensity, non-stop work in his previous life, Chen Yang finally found release on that exhausting night.

He woke up and found himself lying here.

But the identity he transmigrated into was a bit... odd.

Neither human nor beast, but a stone.

Twenty years ago, this stone, nourished by spiritual energy, unexpectedly gained sentience, and Chen Yang's consciousness moved in at that moment.

Like all transmigrators, Chen Yang was very excited at first.

Because of the existence of spiritual energy, he knew that cultivation was possible in this world.

And as a transmigrator, he should normally have a cheat system by his side.

So, for the first few days, Chen Yang searched everywhere for his cheat system.

A status panel? None.

A system? It didn't show up either.

An Emperor's soul possessing him? That was even less likely.

Days turned into weeks, and Chen Yang finally confirmed.

There was probably no cheat system.

He was just a stone that was lucky enough to gain sentience.

Other than being able to absorb spiritual energy through breathing, he could do nothing else.

He couldn't even move; he could only lie here quietly.

After accepting reality, Chen Yang didn't seem too dejected or unwilling.

On the contrary, he felt that this new identity was quite good and suited him well.

Thinking about his past life, the endless overtime, the gaslighting and empty promises from his superiors, the burden of loans, and the expectations his relatives and friends had for him.

Such a life made him feel suffocated, and he had even thought of ending it all.

Now that he had become a stone, he no longer had to worry about all those messy things.

He just needed to absorb spiritual energy every day and sleep when he was tired.

Simple, comfortable, and wonderful.

So, in a way, becoming a stone that could just lie around perfectly matched Chen Yang's desired state.

It didn't take him long to fully accept his new identity.

And then he just lay there, for twenty years.

Initially, he was only conscious for less than two hours a day, falling asleep as soon as that time was up.

Later, as he absorbed spiritual energy year after year, the time he could remain conscious gradually increased.

Now, he could stay awake for more than ten days straight without sleeping.

In those twenty years, he had lost count of how many times he had witnessed demonic beasts devouring each other, spirit birds hunting each other, and monsters consuming one another.

If it were before, the Chen Yang who was accustomed to a harmonious society would definitely have found the survival rules of this world too cruel.

But now, after the baptism of time, Chen Yang saw these killings with no ripple in his heart.

"This is just how the world is."

"If you don't eat, you'll starve."

"If you don't eat him, he'll eat you."

The law of the jungle was the survival rule of this world.

Everything he saw was merely living beings acting in accordance with the laws of this world; there was nothing surprising about it.

The sunlight dried the water stains on Chen Yang. Once the lingering moisture dissipated, Chen Yang began his spirit gathering and breathing exercises.

The scattered spiritual energy around him was drawn and began to gather in Chen Yang's direction.

As a sentient stone, Chen Yang now possessed two abilities.

One is breathing and absorbing the spiritual energy of heaven and earth.

When he arrived in this world, he already knew how to do it, just like humans naturally know how to breathe.

After five consecutive years of breathing and absorbing, Chen Yang was able to use internal vision on himself.

He saw that in the central area of his body, there was a space wrapped in a white membrane.

The spiritual energy he absorbed was converted into spiritual power that he could use there, little by little.

At that time, the spiritual power stored there was only about one-third of the entire space.

After another ten years of accumulation, the small space storing spiritual power was filled.

The moment it was filled, Chen Yang fell into a deep sleep.

Ten days later, Chen Yang woke up again, and he clearly felt the changes in himself.

First, the spirit storage space within his body had expanded by more than double.

Second, his consciousness had become more solidified, allowing him to perceive further distances, and it had also become capable of communicating with the spiritual power within his body!

He realized that he had completed a realm breakthrough.

Chen Yang immediately began to try it out and quickly discovered that as long as he activated the spiritual power within his body, he could attract the spiritual energy of heaven and earth around him to gather towards himself.

The concentration of the gathered spiritual energy would become higher, about three times the original level.

Breathing and absorbing in such an environment would greatly improve his efficiency in converting spiritual energy.

The appearance of the spirit gathering ability began to change Chen Yang's originally quiet, laid-back life.

Due to the increased concentration of spiritual energy, the vegetation in the area around Chen Yang was nourished and grew wildly, as if it had been given hormones.

In addition to these ordinary plants, the dense spiritual energy also gave rise to a small spirit plant.

It was a small, emerald-green four-leaf clover, growing just a palm's distance away from Chen Yang.

At first, Chen Yang didn't notice anything special about it until one morning, when this spirit plant secreted a drop of milky white dewdrop spirit liquid from between its four small leaves.

Chen Yang sensed extremely pure energy within this dewdrop spirit liquid.

As the dewdrop spirit liquid appeared, the small spirit plant, under pressure, leaned towards Chen Yang and fell onto him along its leaves.

Chen Yang guided it into his body and spent five days digesting it. The result surprised Chen Yang greatly.

The spiritual power generated by this single drop of spirit liquid was equivalent to his breathing and absorbing for two months.

"Good heavens, if I got a drop like this every day, wouldn't my spiritual power growth be like riding a rocket!" Chen Yang thought.

It was just that the production of this spirit liquid also had a cycle, about one drop every three months.

However, Chen Yang wasn't demanding about it.

He had a laid-back attitude anyway; if he had it, he'd use it; if not, he'd just slowly breathe and absorb.

The peaceful days passed one by one. By now, with the help of the dewdrop spirit liquid, Chen Yang's spirit power space was more than half full.

The only problem that had troubled Chen Yang in these twenty years was that although he had seen all sorts of strange creatures, he had never seen a human.

Considering his surroundings, a forest, and beyond that, continuous mountain ranges, Chen Yang speculated that he might have been born in some remote, uninhabited place.

But the demonic beasts and monsters here didn't seem very strong; they didn't know any magic and fought with brute force, unlike what one would expect from the depths of the legendary Hundred Thousand Mountains.

He even suspected that he might have been born in a world without humans.

Unable to figure it out, Chen Yang eventually gave up thinking and stopped burdening himself with unnecessary worries.