In the blink of an eye, a full year passed quietly.
To powerful cultivators who spent decades in secluded meditation, a single year was nothing more than a brief moment, a mere drop in the vast ocean of time.
But to Shen Jietian, this year had been more than enough to completely alter the trajectory of his existence.
His humble information business had grown steadily.
It had not experienced any explosive, overnight success or dramatic strokes of luck, but it grew with an unyielding momentum.
In the past, people looked at him with mockery and disdain; now, his presence was a familiar fixture in the East Market.
Some recognized him as the young man who sold the weekly market reports, some knew him as the clever information broker of the slums, while others simply dismissed him as the paper seller.
To Shen Jietian, the specific titles people used didn’t matter in the slightest.
The only thing that truly mattered was the spirit stones flowing into his hands.
When he compared his current circumstances to his early days, the difference was like the distance between the heavens and the earth.
Back then, he had struggled for days just to convince a single, weary herb gatherer to part with three pieces of Spirit Sand for a sheet of notes.
Now, returning clients regularly sought out his wooden table before heading into the mountains.
Some needed to know the current purchasing patterns of the western medicine pavilions, some wanted to verify the safety of specific caravan trade routes, and others sought coordinates to harvest rare materials.
The vast majority of these daily transactions still yielded nothing but small fragments of Spirit Sand.
However, as his reputation for absolute accuracy grew, the nature of his income began to shift.
Occasionally, a tight-lipped beast hunter or a prosperous merchant agent would walk up to his stall, look over his custom reports, and place an actual, solid low-grade Spirit Stone onto the table.
The very first time a whole stone had landed before him, Shen Jietian had frozen, staring at the glittering, energy-dense cube for nearly an entire minute, his mind racing.
In his past life as Jiang Wei, he had seen vast sums of digital currency change hands, but in this life, a single spirit stone represented day of survival.
Now, such payments occurred frequently enough that he simply accepted them with a calm, practiced nod, refusing to expose any unseemly excitement.
His intelligence network had naturally expanded as well, forming a loose but effective web of eyes across the city.
Old Liu regularly stopped by his table to share the latest harvest trends from the lower slopes.
The veteran caravan guard Zhao Qian occasionally provided valuable updates regarding political shifts or rogue ambushes along the major highways.
A young talisman apprentice named Fang Mei also joined his circle, helping him understand the fluctuating demands for beast blood and spiritual ink among the local craftsmen.
By combining these scattered threads, Shen Jietian could read the underlying movements of Black Mist City’s economy without ever leaving his chair.
More importantly, the mysterious black-robed girl continued to appear at his stall every fifteen days, moving with the absolute precision of clockwork.
She would leave behind a complex, difficult manifest of ingredients; Shen Jietian would spend the next twenty-four hours exhausting his local sources to track the items, and the following evening, she would return to collect his written guide.
And every single time without fail, she paid for his labor with a full, sealed jade bottle of premium Qi Gathering Pills.
That steady pipeline of alchemical medicine had completely transformed his private cultivation velocity.
A year ago, the milestone of the Fifth Layer of Qi Refinement had felt like an impossibly distant mountain, an unreachable dream for someone cursed with a Lower Grade Five Spirit Roots constitution.
Now, as the dense Qi vibrated within his refined pathways, he could feel that the boundary was finally drawing close.
At his current rate of progress, he calculated he would reach the threshold within another two years.
For the first time since he had recovered his memories and awakened the mysterious interface, reaching the late stages of Qi Refinement no longer felt like a mathematical impossibility.
As the twilight deepened over the stalls that evening, the familiar black-robed girl materialized from the crowd once more.
The transaction proceeded smoothly and efficiently, requiring very little speech.
She handed over her list, and Shen Jietian exchanged it for his meticulously prepared sheets of parchment.
In return, the cool, polished weight of a fresh jade bottle was dropped into his palm.
It was an entirely standard transaction, no different from a dozen others they had conducted over the past months.
Yet, the very millisecond Shen Jietian’s fingers closed around the medicine, a crisp, metallic sound suddenly resonated directly within his mind.
[Ding]
Shen Jietian’s entire body froze rigidly, his fingers locking around the bottle.
For a brief fraction of a second, his heart accelerated wildly, a surge of adrenaline warming his chest.
The system.
For months on end, the mysterious blue template had remained completely silent, floating passively in his vision without a single notification or whisper.
Now, it had suddenly reacted to his reality.
Without wasting another second to ponder the anomaly, Shen Jietian began packing away his display table with immense, frantic velocity.
Normally, he would have lingered for another hour to gather the late-night gossip of the clearing merchants, but tonight, his mind was entirely consumed by a burning curiosity.
He left the marketplace in full stride, his boots churning up the dust as he hurried through the darkening lanes.
He moved so quickly that he was practically sprinting through the commercial district, weaving nimbly past startled merchants packing their wares, busy customers heading toward inns, and patrolling cultivators.
A few people turned their heads to look at him with deep suspicion, and one traveling merchant even stepped aside defensively, assuming the youth was fleeing from a crime or running for his life from an invisible predator.
Shen Jietian completely ignored their stares.
He wasn’t fleeing from an enemy; he was being chased by the absolute desire for answers.
the time he crossed the threshold into the South District, his stride had broken into a full-blown sprint.
He reached his familiar, weathered courtyard, pushed through the wooden gate, and slammed the heavy door shut, sliding the iron bolt into place with a sharp click.
He rushed directly into his private sleeping quarters, sealing the secondary door behind him before finally allowing his tensed shoulders to drop.
He sat cross-legged onto his mat, took a deep, stabilizing breath, and issued the silent mental command: ‘System.’
The familiar blue screen immediately unfurled within his field of vision, its transparent light glowing softly in the dark room.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Myriad Realm Nexus System
Host: Shen Jietian
Age: 23
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]¹
[Return to Earth]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
At a first glance, the administrative metrics appeared completely unchanged.
Shen Jietian blinked, his analytical mind searching the interface, until his eyes locked onto a tiny, pulsing symbol hovering right beside the Side Quest prompt.
It was a clear notification marker.
His breathing quickened slightly as he focused his mental intent and clicked open the sub-menu.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Side Quest 2: Establish Stable Income
Objective: Acquire a reliable, sustainable source of spirit stones that does not rely on seasonal gathering variance.
Status: Completed
Reward: 50 Nexus Points
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Shen Jietian simply stared at the characters for several long seconds, a deep sense of validation washing over his mind.
Completed.
It’s actually completed.
The mysterious cosmic mechanism had officially acknowledged the structural validity of his efforts.
As he calmly analyzed the situation through his past-life framework, the system’s logic made perfect sense.
Over the past twelve months, his information business had ceased to be a volatile, desperate gamble for survival.
It had transitioned into a structured enterprise that generated a predictable, recurring flow of currency.
Even the premium Qi Gathering Pills he continuously extracted from the mysterious alchemist apprentice counted as a stable, high-value source of cultivation capital.
He was no longer a destitute vagrant surviving day-to-day at the absolute whim of nature; he had successfully engineered a sustainable business model in a primitive world.
A strange, unfamiliar sense of profound accomplishment rose within his chest.
It wasn’t merely due to the promise of the system’s reward, but because he had accomplished this feat entirely through his own intelligence and strategic plotting. You are reading on novelping dot com, the official source.
He possessed no grand ancestral inheritances, no powerful hidden masters guiding his steps, and no miraculous heaven-defying treasures to smooth his path.
He had started with nothing but a rusty sword, an abysmal talent, and a pile of discarded paper.
This stability was the direct mathematical result of months of unyielding, calculated effort.
Slowly, deliberately, he focused on the interactive prompt and accepted the payout.
‘Accept Reward.’
[Ding]
The text on the translucent screen shifted smoothly, updating his core parameters.
Nexus Points: 50
Shen Jietian’s eyes remained fixed on the double-digit number, a flash of intense excitement sparking deep within his pupils.
Fifty points.
This represented his very first acquisition of Nexus Points—the foundational currency of the system itself.
“Let’s see what exactly these points can purchase,” he murmured under his breath, immediately utilizing his intent to navigate the remaining tabs of the interface to locate a shop function.
He systematically tested every single interactive function available within the template, but his analysis yielded the same frustrating result.
The vast majority of the system’s advanced features remained completely sealed behind his current Level 0 Authority rating.
The fifty hard-earned Nexus Points simply sat there on the ledger, entirely stagnant.
They were completely useless to his immediate progression—at least for the time being.
However, Shen Jietian did not allow any trace of disappointment to affect his mindset.
In his past life as Jiang Wei, he had managed complex financial projects; he understood that capital didn’t lose its value simply because an account was temporarily restricted.
The points were anchored to his soul and weren’t going to disappear.
Sooner or later, as he climbed the ranks of cultivation, he would inevitably uncover the method to unlock his Authority and utilize this currency to its maximum potential.
More importantly, he had finally taken his very first real, tangible step toward mastering the system.
He maintained his meditative posture, patiently watching the translucent blue screen for several minutes, waiting to see if the completion of the objective would automatically trigger a subsequent prompt.
Five breaths passed in absolute silence.
Then, several minutes trickled away in the quiet room.
Yet, nothing changed.
The interface remained completely stationary, and the mechanical voice offered no further notifications.
The system had returned to its deep, silent dormancy.
Shen Jietian let out a soft sigh, a dry smile touching his lips.
“You truly are remarkably stingy with your instructions.”
Naturally, the emotionless template offered absolutely zero vocal defense to his complaint.
Recognizing that he had extracted all available data for the night, he focused his mind and allowed the blue light to smoothly fade away from his field of vision.
The small bedroom plunged back into its natural, shadow-drenched state.
The small jade bottle still rested quietly on the mat right beside his knee, its polished surface reflecting the faint moonlight.
Ten fresh, high-purity Qi Gathering Pills.
A faint, exceptionally calm smile finally broke through the lingering exhaustion on Shen Jietian’s face.
There was no brand-new quest assigned to his ledger tonight, no sudden alchemical miracle handed down from the clouds, and no explosive leap in power.
But to a seasoned rogue survivor, that was completely fine.
The arduous path of cultivation had always been built upon a foundation of absolute patience, repetitive accumulation, and enduring the quiet grind.
And tonight…
he would simply uncork his bottle, swallow his medicine, and continue moving with a steady, unyielding step toward the Fifth Layer of Qi Refinement.
End of Chapter 18
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