The very first thing Shen Jietian did every morning upon opening his eyes was not to circulate his Qi, nor was it to wash the sleep from his face or consume a simple breakfast.
He didn’t even reach out to check the physical weight of his spirit stone pouch.
Instead, while still lying beneath his coarse blanket, he silently cleared his throat and issued a familiar command deep within his mind: ‘System.’
In an instant, a translucent blue interface materialized directly within his field of vision.
It glowed with a faint, steady light, hovering silently against the dim backdrop of his ceiling, completely unchanging.
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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]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Shen Jietian stared at the glowing lines of text for several quiet moments, tracking each metric carefully before offering a small, satisfied nod.
It was still there.
It wasn’t a phantom byproduct of his imagination.
Ever since the cosmic template had woven itself into his soul during his near-fatal cultivation deviation, Shen Jietian had developed this particular morning habit.
He checked the interface every single day without fail, not because he realistically expected the numbers to shift overnight, but because a deeply buried part of his psyche still harbored a lingering anxiety.
He constantly questioned whether the intense trauma of looking into the eyes of the white wolf king in Moonleaf Valley had permanently fractured his mind, causing him to hallucinate an entire past life on Earth alongside a magical interface.
What if he woke up one morning and discovered the system had vanished as abruptly as it had arrived?
Only after systematically confirming that the blue screen was an unshakeable reality did he finally push his blanket aside and step out of bed.
After consuming a minimalist, hot breakfast to satisfy his stomach, Shen Jietian stepped through his wooden gate and emerged into the bustling streets of the South District.
The sprawling slums were already fully awake, vibrating with raw, chaotic energy.
Independent loose cultivators rushed through the narrow, unpaved alleyways with urgent strides, their robes flapping in the morning breeze.
Small children chased each other between the crowded mud-brick houses, their laughter blending with the sharp cries of roadside vendors pushing wooden carts filled with basic provisions.
Along the thoroughfare, separate streams of people formed a stark contrast: weary harvesting groups were actively preparing their gear to march toward the distant mountains, while battered, blood-stained hunting squads were only just returning from overnight expeditions, their faces lined with exhaustion.
The district was loud, deeply impoverished, and thoroughly disorganized—yet it possessed a vital, undeniable pulse of survival.
Shen Jietian navigated through several familiar shortcuts before eventually spilling onto one of the broad, paved arterial roads that connected the outer ring to the prestigious city center.
As he crossed the threshold of the intersection, his eyes naturally locked onto two heavily armed city guards standing watch near a stone archway.
Both men wore crisp, uniform robes emblazoned with the official insignia of the Dark Mountain Sect.
Black Mist City was strategically constructed directly over a mid-grade Tier 2 spiritual vein, an environmental matrix fully capable of sustaining multiple formidable Foundation Establishment masters.
However, the distribution of this worldly Qi was profoundly unequal.
The vast majority of the dense, pure spiritual energy was artificially diverted and concentrated into the affluent North District to feed the cultivation chambers of the wealthy clans, as well as the central administrative citadel where the ruling disciples of the Dark Mountain Sect were permanently stationed.
They were the absolute sovereign force of the region.
Although the city house nested tens of thousands of independent loose cultivators, every single vagrant understood the exact same baseline truth: the sect fabricated the laws, the sect ruthlessly enforced the boundaries, and the sect maintained absolute ownership of the city.
To a common rogue cultivator, provoking a disciple of the Dark Mountain Sect was an act of pure suicide; avoiding their gaze was simply foundational common sense.
As Shen Jietian glided past their post, one of the patrolling disciples casually turned his head.
His eyes lingered on the youth’s features for a brief fraction of a second, reflecting a flicker of recognition.
The guard hesitated slightly, then offered a short, composed nod of acknowledgment.
Shen Jietian was caught off guard for a mere millisecond before his expression smoothed out, and he politely returned the nod with a measured bow of his head.
The disciple seamlessly resumed his rhythmic patrol, turning down the parallel lane.
A strange, complex sensation blossomed within the depths of Shen Jietian’s chest—it wasn’t a sudden surge of arrogant pride or frantic excitement, but rather a quiet, profound realization of his shifting reality.
A mere few months ago, he had been nothing more than an invisible, nameless ghost scraping for sprit stones in the mud, a nobody whom the city guards would have stepped over without a thought.
Now, through the systematic presentation of his market bulletins, his face was occasionally being registered by the local authorities.
The sensation of his identity carrying a minor grain of social weight wasn’t unpleasant at all.
The ambient density of the crowd spiked significantly as Shen Jietian officially crossed the threshold into the East District.
The mud paths completely gave way to clean, wide cobblestone avenues, the surrounding buildings grew significantly larger, and the storefronts displayed a prosperous, vibrant luster.
As he walked down the bustling market lane, the changing social dynamic became even more apparent.
Passing the smoking furnace of the Iron River Forge, a young metalworking apprentice caught sight of his frame through the sparks and frantically waved a soot-stained hand in greeting.
Shen Jietian smiled and waved back.
A few paces later, he crossed paths with a large herb stall; the shrewd owner immediately broke off his transaction for a split second to offer a respectful nod.
It was another familiar face logged into his consumer database.
Suddenly, a loud, cheerful voice cut through the ambient noise of the street, calling out from a nearby storefront.
“Fellow Daoist Shen!”
Shen Jietian brought his footsteps to a halt, turning his head toward the sound.
It was an independent talisman merchant standing behind a display of paper charms, a wide smile splitting his face.
“Greetings, Brother Sun,” Shen Jietian replied politely, adjusting his sleeves.
The seller leaned over his wooden counter, his voice dropping slightly to navigate the crowd.
“If your information network happens to harvest any definitive leads regarding a shift in Spirit Ink wholesale prices over the next three days, ensure you alert my stall first.
I need to balance my inventory.” Enjoying the story? Read on at g.com.
Shen Jietian offered a calm, reliable nod.
“I am currently compiling the supply data for the week, Brother Sun.
I will certainly keep an express eye out for your interest.”
The talisman merchant grinned broadly, cupping his hands in gratitude.
The casual interaction lasted for only a brief minute, yet as Shen Jietian stepped away, his mind quickly parsed the underlying pattern.
People were no longer merely tolerating his presence or treating his handwritten sheets as a joke; they were actively beginning to seek him out to resolve their commercial anxieties.
Trust was a remarkably slow-growing plant in the cultivation world, requiring meticulous watering, but it was finally taking root—one individual customer at a time.
He spent the vast majority of the morning hours fully immersed in his data-gathering routine.
He moved fluidly through a succession of crowded tea houses, open-air squares, commercial shops, and temporary market stalls.
He stood silently in the shadows, listening to the noise, observing transactions, cross-referencing values, and meticulously recording the raw metrics into his notebook.
His analytical filter caught every significant variable: a traveling merchant was loudly complaining to his associates about a sudden, fifteen percent spike in caravan transportation taxes along the eastern highway;
An experienced beast hunter was quietly discussing an unusual surge of territorial monster activity near the lower slopes of the mountains;
Two rival herb gatherers were locked in a fierce argument over the exact day-to-day purchasing rates of local medicine pavilions; and an elderly blacksmith craftsman was grumbling to a supplier about a critical shortage of raw spiritual copper ore.
To ninety-nine percent of the passing crowd, these scattered complaints were merely background noise, entirely ignored.
But to Shen Jietian’s Earth-trained mind, every single grievance was a pristine piece of raw market data waiting to be refined into capital.
Around midday, as the sun reached its apex, Shen Jietian navigated back to his usual spot near the market thoroughfare and efficiently established his simple informational stall.
The retail setup was entirely modest, consisting of nothing more than a plain wooden table, several neatly categorized stacks of his handwritten paper bulletins, an ink stone, a brush, and his master notebook.
Yet, compared to the dismal rejections of his first week, the operational velocity of his business had undergone an enormous transformation.
Within thirty minutes of setting up his sign, a low-level cultivator hurried directly toward his table, his face tight with urgency.
“Fellow Daoist Shen, do you possess any verified, information regarding the market availability of Fireleaf Grass?” the customer asked, leaning over the wood.
Shen Jietian smoothly flipped open his indexed notes, his eyes scanning the recorded entries for a fraction of a second.
“The current wholesale supply entering the East Market is critically low due to the seasonal droughts in the valley,” he analyzed evenly.
“However, according to my logs from two hours ago, the smaller medicine shops in the Western District still hold a residual stock available at standard baseline rates.
You should target them before the merchants execute a price hike.”
The cultivator’s eyes lit up with relief.
He quickly dropped three pieces of Spirit Sand onto the table, offered a grateful cupping of his hands, and immediately sprinted toward the West District.
Not long after his departure, a secondary customer arrived at the station, looking to extract precise intelligence regarding the safety ratings of specific caravan transport routes.
Then a third gatherer approached, followed rapidly by a fourth.
None of these independent clients paid an immense, life-altering fortune for the service—a few grains of raw Spirit Sand here, a minor fragment of currency there.
Yet, compared to the absolute silence of his initial attempts, it represented an incredible, geometric improvement in volume.
More importantly, his analytical mind noted that a significant portion of these afternoon faces were returning clients who had previously purchased Issue One.
That retention mattered infinitely more to the long-term viability of his enterprise than a temporary influx of stones.
The afternoon hours bled away with remarkable speed.
As the crimson sun began its slow, inevitable descent beneath the city walls, Shen Jietian packed a portion of his loose bulletins into his pouch and transitioned back into his secondary information-gathering phase.
He systematically drifted through several high-traffic tea houses, a prominent rogue tavern, and a busy merchant lane, keeping his ears open to the changing evening gossip.
By this stage of his operations, many of the local shop owners easily recognized his lean frame, some even greeting him by name as he crossed their thresholds.
The hefty owner of a packed roadside tea house let out a booming laugh the moment Shen Jietian stepped through his doorway.
“Back again so soon, Little Brother Shen?
You’ve visited my hall three times this week!”
Shen Jietian offered a relaxed, authentic smile.
“The market values are volatile, Boss Feng.
The information certainly won’t walk out of the mountains and gather itself onto my ledger.”
The tea house owner shook his massive head in amusement, wiping down the counter.
“I swear, if you keep up this insane pace, you’ll eventually wind up knowing more about the internal secrets of this city than the City Lord himself!”
The surrounding customers at the counter burst into a collective laugh at the joke, and Shen Jietian joined in the humor with a light chuckle.
Though secretly, deep within the hidden chambers of his re-forged soul, his analytical mind parsed the statement with absolute seriousness: Knowing more than the rulers…
that is actually not a bad foundational goal at all.
Night gradually descended upon the stone streets of Black Mist City, plunging the lanes into deep shadows.
One by one, the chaotic market stalls closed down their shutters for the day, and iron spirit lamps were illuminated along the avenues, casting a warm, flickering amber glow across the cobblestones.
The dense crowds quickly thinned out, leaving behind a sparse scattering of late-night merchants organizing their residual inventory.
Shen Jietian sat completely alone behind his wooden table under the dim light of a street lamp, methodically organizing his raw notes from the evening before commencing his pack-up routine.
It was a normal, quiet conclusion to an entirely standard day of labor.
Until a sudden, heavy shadow completely blocked out the amber lantern light illuminating his ledger.
Shen Jietian’s movements instantly froze rigidly in place, his muscles locking up on pure survival instinct.
Someone had glided up to his station with absolute, unnatural silence, standing directly before his wooden table.
The individual was completely shrouded from head to toe in a set of heavy, non-reflective black robes, their physical features entirely concealed beneath a deep, oversized hood that cast their face into absolute darkness.
Shen Jietian’s Earth-trained logical faculties and his rogue cultivation instincts reacted in perfect synchronization.
His right hand dropped smoothly toward his waist, his fingers wrapping firmly around the cold hilt of the rusted iron sword strapped to his side.
A freezing sensation of pure alertness cascaded through his chest.
This was still a brutal, might-makes-right cultivation world; independent gatherers were slaughtered in dark alleys every single night for fractions of wealth.
Slowly, deliberately, without shifting his torso, Shen Jietian’s eyes scanned the immediate perimeter.
The market lane was mostly empty, the late hour ensuring a complete absence of nearby merchants or customers who could serve as witnesses.
Most critically of all—there were absolutely zero Dark Mountain Sect patrols scheduled for this specific quadrant for another half an hour.
His heart tightened slightly, his knuckles turning white against the sword hilt.
Neither of them made a single movement, a heavy, suffocating tension stretching between them for several agonizing seconds.
Then, a voice quietly emerged from beneath the dark hood.
It was a distinctly female voice—remarkably young, refined, and completely devoid of the rough, coarse cadence common to the loose vagrants of the slums.
“Fellow Daoist,” she addressed him softly.
Shen Jietian blinked, the intense, life-or-death tension gripping his nervous system loosening slightly—though his grip on the rusted iron sword remained functional.
A young woman traveling alone in custom cloaking robes at midnight was often infinitely more lethal than a common bandit.
The black-clothed girl continued, her tone direct and business-like.
“I heard from a source that you specialize in selling verified, difficult-to-track information.”
Shen Jietian slowly relaxed his posture, though his hand did not leave his weapon.
“That depends entirely on what specific category of information you are looking to purchase, miss.”
Without uttering another word, the hooded figure reached into her sleeve, produced a neatly folded slip of paper, and extended it across the table.
Shen Jietian maintained his gaze on her shadow as he reached out with his left hand, taking the slip and unfolding it beneath the amber lantern light.
The moment his eyes registered the handwritten contents, his pupils contracted slightly.
The paper contained a meticulous, structured list of several exotic spiritual herbs.
These weren’t standard, low-grade commodities like Moonleaf Grass that a common gatherer could harvest on a morning walk; these were rare, exponentially expensive, and highly volatile botanical specimens.
Shen Jietian’s mind rapidly mapped out their ecological profiles from his memory files: some of these plants grew exclusively within the absolute core territories of high-tier spiritual beast packs; others only manifested within hazardous, unstable swamp environments; and a few were so thoroughly scarce that they rarely ever appeared on the open market even if one possessed a mountain of spirit stones.
He lifted his eyes to look at the dark void of her hood.
“The coordinates of these specific herbs are not something an ordinary gatherer can easily investigate without risking their life.”
The girl remained completely silent, offering no defense or explanation.
Shen Jietian returned his focus to the list, analyzing the data deeper.
As he cross-referenced the selected herb names against the foundational alchemy texts he had logged in his past weeks, his eyes narrowed into two sharp slits.
The specific elemental properties and the energetic composition of these plants complemented each other with flawless, mathematical precision.
Certain volatile chemical combinations appeared repeatedly within advanced medical literature.
A definitive conclusion crystallized within his analytical mind: This isn’t a random assortment of merchandise.
This looks suspiciously like the primary ingredient manifest for a pill formula.
This girl was looking to refine something significant.
“Tracking the current growth nodes and verifying the security parameters of these herbs will require an immense amount of high-risk field work,” Shen Jietian stated, tapping a finger against the paper.
“The raw cost of the intelligence alone will not be cheap.”
The female voice spoke with an absolute, icy calmness that radiated immense financial security.
“I am completely unconcerned regarding the prices of the herbs.
I merely require absolute accuracy.”
That specific statement immediately captured Shen Jietian’s complete, undivided attention.
Unconcerned about the price?
The rare specimens listed on this parchment were collectively worth a small fortune in hard currency.
To dismiss the cost so casually meant only one of two things: either this young woman was extraordinarily wealthy in her own right, or she was backed by a massive, resource-abundant entity.
Moving pieces through his logical matrix, he calculated it was highly probable that both conditions were true.
Then, the hooded girl added a final variable that caused Shen Jietian’s heart to violently skip a beat.
“As for payment for the tracking these herbs,” she whispered, “I can provide you with a full, sealed bottle of standard Qi Gathering Pills.”
For a brief fraction of a second, Shen Jietian nearly forgot the basic mechanics of how to draw air into his lungs.
Qi Gathering Pills.
It was universally acknowledged as the absolute premier, high-efficiency cultivation medicine specifically designed for Middle Qi Refinement cultivators.
It was the precise alchemical resource his body desperately required to accelerate his progress toward the Seventh Layer, and the exact luxury item he currently could not afford to purchase from the western shops without bankrupting his entire household.
His analytical brain ran a frantic, high-speed diagnostic script on the available clues: a carefully hidden identity, an educated, young female voice, a highly advanced pill formula manifest, an absolute lack of concern regarding material costs, and the capability to casually hand out premium cultivation pills as a mere deposit.
The data pointed cleanly to a singular, highly logical profile: an Alchemist.
Or, at the very least, a highly gifted alchemist’s apprentice.
Furthermore, looking at her access to resources, she was highly likely an elite scion from one of the prominent, wealthy clans of the North District, or perhaps a direct inner disciple under the tutelage of an elder within the Dark Mountain Sect itself.
Most importantly of all—she represented an absolute, direct pipeline to premium cultivation capital.
Shen Jietian slowly and meticulously refolded the paper slip, slipping it securely into the breast pocket of his robes.
Then, he looked directly into the dark void of the hooded figure, his face entirely composed.
“Return to this exact table tomorrow evening at the same hour,” he commanded softly.
The girl paused for a moment, her voice reflecting a trace of sharp surprise.
“You are truly confident you can track these coordinates within one day?”
A faint, exceptionally confident smile broke across Shen Jietian’s face for the very first time that evening beneath the lantern light.
He leaned forward slightly, his eyes reflecting the sharp, unyielding wisdom of his dual lives.
“I can find any piece of information existing within this city, miss.”
The black-clothed girl stared at him in absolute silence for several long moments, evaluating the absolute certainty radiating from his posture, before offering a sharp, decisive nod of her head.
Without uttering another syllable, she spun around on her heel, her dark robes fluttering as her frame seamlessly melted back into the absolute darkness of the empty street.
Left entirely alone beneath the flickering amber light of the street lamp, Shen Jietian slowly let out the breath he had been holding.
The weight of the folded paper rested heavily against his chest.
A full bottle of pristine Qi Gathering Pills.
For the very first time since he had launched this ridiculous, paper-peddling information enterprise in the dirt of the slums, a massive, destiny-altering opportunity capable of completely transforming his cultivation velocity had finally materialized right before his eyes.
And Shen Jietian had absolutely zero intention of ever letting it slip through his fingers.
End of Chapter 16
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