The night was unusually quiet in the outer fringes of Black Mist City.
A faint breeze slipped through the numerous cracks in the weathered mud walls, carrying with it the distant, muffled echoes of the wealthier cultivator district.
Somewhere far down the road, a loose cultivator was loudly arguing with a street vendor over the rising price of low-grade spirit rice, followed by the lonely bark of a stray hound before absolute silence returned to the slums.
Shen Jietian sat cross-legged upon his thin straw mat, the dense water-attribute Qi circulating smoothly through his meridians.
The dangerous breakthrough had ultimately succeeded, and he was now firmly established at the Fourth Layer of the Qi Refinement realm.
Under normal circumstances, tearing through a lifelong bottleneck should have been a moment of unbridled celebration for any independent gatherer.
Yet, no excitement appeared on his haggard face.
Instead, his analytical gaze remained entirely fixed on the translucent blue screen floating silently within his field of vision.
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Myriad Realm Nexus System
Host: Shen Jietian
Age: 22
Realm: Qi Refinement Layer 4
Talent: Lower Grade Five Spirit Roots
Authority: Level 0
Nexus Points: 0
Connected Worlds:
Azure Cloud World
Earth
[Main Quest]
[Side Quest]
[Return to Earth]
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His focus paused heavily on the final interactive prompt: Return Home.
The moment his mind brushed against those characters, a wave of complex emotions stirred within his soul, and vivid images from his past life began flashing across his mind.
He envisioned the towering concrete skyscrapers, the crowded, neon-lit asphalt roads, the automated glow of streetlights, and the comforting hum of city traffic in the dead of night.
He could practically smell the aroma of a cheap cup of instant coffee resting beside a glowing computer monitor.
The planet called Earth—his true home, a world he had not physically laid eyes upon in twenty-two long years.
With a focused thought, Shen Jietian opened the specific sub-menu to inspect the structural variables.
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Return Home
Requirement: Reach Late Qi Refinement.
Current Progress: 4 / 7
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His heart skipped a beat, a sudden surge of adrenaline warming his chest.
He was only three levels away from unlocking inter-world travel.
The Fifth Layer, the Sixth Layer, and finally, the Seventh Layer of Late Qi Refinement.
On paper, a progressive gap of merely three minor realms did not sound inherently insurmountable.
For several seconds, a genuine, childlike excitement ignited deep within his bloodshot eyes.
If he could just climb those three remaining steps, he could finally return to the world he thought he had lost forever.
He could discover whether his old life still existed, and whether any historical trace remained of the corporate drone named Jiang Wei.
However, as the initial euphoria slowly receded, a cold, unyielding reality crashed back into his thoughts, causing his chest to tighten with dread.
Shen Jietian lowered his head, his hands resting heavily on his knees.
“Three more levels…” a bitter, self-mocking smile carved itself onto his face.
“I almost allowed myself to forget the fundamental laws of this world.”
He began to systematically calculate his historical progression.
He was exactly fifteen years old when his late father had first guided him to step onto the arduous path of cultivation.
And what exactly had those seven years of unrelenting struggle granted him?
The Fourth Layer of Qi Refinement, nothing more.
His fingers slowly tightened against his robes as his analytical mind dissected the harsh truth.
Most observers in the market only looked at the final result, completely blind to the agonizing timeline hidden behind a cultivator’s rank.
They didn’t see the thousands of hours spent painstakingly gathering the microscopic traces of spiritual energy from the thin atmosphere, the highly lethal expeditions into treacherous valleys, the permanent internal injuries, and the countless failures.
He had spent seven years of his prime youth sitting in this damp, freezing shack, cultivating through the night while the mortal world slept, just to achieve four meagre layers of strength.
And the most frightening part of the equation?
The first three layers were universally acknowledged to be the easiest phases of the entire journey.
The First, Second, and Third Layers of Qi Refinement were merely designed to forge a basic energetic foundation.
As long as a human being possessed even the most heavily contaminated spirit roots and a baseline of structural patience, they could eventually gather enough worldly Qi to reach the Third Layer.
It might take a few months for a genius, or several years for a mediocre gatherer, but there was no true conceptual barrier blocking the path.
One only required time.
This was the exact reason why thousands of aging loose cultivators across Black Mist City lingered indefinitely at the peak of the Third Layer.
They weren’t talented; they were simply old enough to have completed the baseline accumulation.
The true, merciless cultivation journey only began after crossing that threshold.
The Fourth Layer represented the first genuine bottleneck—the first immovable wall where an individual’s innate talent, available resources, and karmic fortune actually began to dictate life and death.
Shen Jietian had only managed to scale that wall because of a chaotic chain of anomalies.
Without the windfall of the Iron Fang Wolf materials, without the black-market breakthrough pill, and without actively risking complete cultivation deviation, he would still be miserably trapped at the Third Layer today.
If reaching the Fourth Layer had required him to dance so closely with the grim reaper, what kind of terrifying price would the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Layers demand?
As the heavy silence settled back over the room, the weathered, desperate face of Old Zhao spontaneously materialized within his thoughts.
Initially, whenever Shen Jietian recalled the ambush in the valley, he felt a burning surge of anger and betrayal.
But now, utilizing the cold logic of his expanded awareness, he felt a completely different emotion: a profound, chilling understanding.
Old Zhao wasn’t a weak man, nor was he lazy or structurally incompetent.
The veteran had spent decades of his life fighting, scheming, and bleeding in the wilderness just to secure crumbs of cultivation resources.
Decades of unremitting effort, yet he had ultimately remained stuck at the Fifth Layer of Qi Refinement.
Shen Jietian suddenly parsed a terrifying conclusion: Old Zhao wasn’t an anomaly.
Old Zhao was the absolute mathematical average for their class.
That was the inescapable tragic destiny awaiting ninety-nine percent of the independent cultivation community.
They spent their youth recklessly chasing raw resources, they spent their middle age frantically chasing minor breakthroughs to stave off physical decay, and they spent their dying years chasing one final, suicidal opportunity in some ancient ruin.
Then they died penniless in an alley.
They didn’t fail because they lacked determination or willpower; they failed simply because they lacked the raw material capital required to feed the furnace of cultivation.
His gaze drifted toward the small, frayed leather storage bag resting against the mud wall.
Inside lay the pathetic remnants of his life savings—a sum that was never, ever enough to secure his safety.
Loose cultivators essentially lived like glorified beggars who happened to wield supernatural powers.
Every single spirit stone had to be violently fought for, every medicinal pill had to be bartered with blood, and every advancement carried a devastating physical price.
The grand righteous sects operated in a completely different realm of reality.
Sect disciples received standardized monthly allocations of premium resources, high-grade cultivation manuals, direct personalized guidance from established elders, pure spirit stones, refined alchemical pills, and access to protected, high-density cultivation grounds.
They were guaranteed a stable, structured future.
Loose cultivators received absolutely nothing from the heavens, and this immortal world was even less fair than the nature that birthed it.
Shen Jietian’s thoughts naturally shifted toward the core manual he cultivated, his expression darkening significantly.
The technique was the Five Elements Circulation Technique—a five-attributes mantra so common and uninspired that most reputable merchants didn’t even bother to catalogue it in their registries.
It was sold in open-air baskets at roadside markets, purchased for pennies by destitute vagrants, and utilized exclusively by people who possessed zero alternative options.
Its cultivation speed was thoroughly mediocre, its energy conversion efficiency was thoroughly mediocre, and its defensive applications were non-existent.
Yet, he had no choice.
High-grade cultivation manuals were exponentially expensive.
Even the most basic, entry-level technique utilized by a common outer sect disciple was worth more spirit stones than a loose gatherer could realistically earn over a decade of continuous harvesting.
A superior technique meant a faster cultivation velocity, greater atmospheric Qi absorption, and a more robust foundational density.
The immediate statistical variance between a cheap manual and a high-grade text might seem small on a daily basis—perhaps ten percent, twenty percent, or thirty percent greater efficiency.
But cultivation was a marathon that lasted for decades. New chapters come out on g.com first.
A thirty percent advantage repeated every single day inevitably compounded into an uncrossable chasm over time.
A sect disciple and a loose cultivator might initiate their journeys at the exact same baseline, but ten years later, they would appear to belong to entirely different species.
It wasn’t a matter of who worked harder; it was a matter of who possessed the structural capital.
Shen Jietian slowly closed his eyes, forcing his mind to project a trajectory.
If he continued to cultivate normally using the baseline rules of a loose gatherer, how long would it realistically take him to accumulate enough energy to reach the Seventh Layer?
Five years?
Ten years?
Fifteen years?
Perhaps an entire lifetime.
Without a massive, destiny-altering opportunity, even a timeline of thirty years was highly probable for a Five Spirit Roots constitution.
Thirty years…
The specific metric struck his consciousness like a heavy blacksmith’s hammer.
Thirty years of grinding through the mud.
By the time he successfully unlocked the portal to return to Earth, he would be fifty-two years old.
The vivid image of Earth appeared in his mind once more—the bustling, ordered streets, the ordinary people rushing to their corporate jobs, and the vibrant modern civilization.
A strange, suffocating fear suddenly gripped his heart.
What if he spent decades desperately crawling through blood and mud, only to finally step back onto the pavement of Earth as a withered, grey-haired old man with wrinkled skin and broken meridians?
What if his entire youthful existence completely vanished into dust while he was blindly chasing those three remaining levels?
His breathing turned heavy and chaotic.
The terrifying thought of a slow, chronological death by time terrified him infinitely more than any wild spirit beast, more than the white wolf king, and more than mortality itself.
Minutes trickled by in the dark room before Shen Jietian finally opened his eyes.
The frantic panic and hesitation within his pupils had completely vanished, replaced by an absolute, icy clarity.
His near-fatal expedition to Moonleaf Valley had shattered his remaining illusions, teaching him a fundamental lesson about the mechanics of this world.
Raw courage was not enough to alter destiny.
Backbreaking hard work was not enough.
Absolute psychological persistence was not enough.
The late Old Zhao had possessed all three of those traits in abundance, and yet he had ultimately ended up as a desperate, treacherous predator rotting at the Fifth Layer.
The root problem had never been a deficit of individual effort; the problem had always been a systemic deficit of resources.
Cultivation was a physical path explicitly paved with capital; without a continuous influx of resources, innate talent meant nothing, determination meant nothing, and entire decades would simply evaporate without a single millimetre of spiritual progress.
Slowly, deliberately, Shen Jietian looked toward the glowing translucent screen of the system, and then out toward the absolute darkness hanging over the city walls.
Finally, he spoke, his voice remarkably calm, firm, and ringing with an ironclad certainty.
“I refuse to become another Old Zhao.”
The silent room offered no vocal confirmation to his vow.
Yet, his resolve had already finalized its structure within his re-forged soul.
If resources were the ultimate mathematical key to surviving the immortal path, then he would simply have to engineer a revolutionary method to extract them from the market.
He would not rely on reckless, high-risk wilderness hunts, nor would he continuously gamble his solitary life for crumbs.
There had to be an alternative path—a smarter, more systemic path that utilized efficiency over brute force.
Shen Jietian leaned his head back against the mud wall, staring intently into the dark void of his room.
Somewhere deep within the vast matrix of his newly recovered Earth memories, a faint, revolutionary business model was beginning to take definitive shape.
It was an idea completely born from the logic of a modern world—a world where physical strength was secondary, and where pure, unadulterated information held the ultimate value.
It was a philosophy entirely alien to the primitive, might-makes-right dynamics of the Azure Cloud World.
And perhaps…
that fundamental civilizational difference would become his greatest, most lethal advantage.
End of Chapter 10
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