The modest, shadowy confines of the bedroom fell back into a profound silence, broken only by the faint, rhythmic chirping of nocturnal insects echoing from the muddy alleyways outside.
Shen Jietian sat completely motionless upon his creaking wooden frame, his legs still loosely folded in a meditative posture.
By all structural rights of the cultivation world, successfully blasting open a lifelong bottleneck and ascending to the Fourth Layer of the Qi Refinement realm should have filled his heart with unbridled ecstasy.
He had spent seven long, gruelling years drowning in the lower tier of the independent cultivation community, watching his youthful vigor gradually erode while stuck at the miserable Third Layer.
Yet, as the dense, newly refined water-attribute Qi vibrated within his expanded dantian, he felt absolutely no joy.
His empty, contemplative gaze remained fixed on a single knot in the weathered wooden floorboards.
His mind was no longer entirely present in Black Mist City; it had drifted across the boundaries of time and space to a completely different reality.
Earth.
Even as his lips silently formed the syllables, the linguistic structure felt intensely alien, carrying an almost illusory weight.
If not for the vast, structured ocean of foreign memories currently anchored deep within his reformed sea of consciousness, Shen Jietian would have readily dismissed the entire experience as a complex, soul-subverting demonic illusion brought on by his near-fatal cultivation deviation.
But the sheer density of the data structure denied any denial.
Mechanics of metal sedans traveling without beasts, soaring commercial airplanes piercing the clouds, electronic televisions broadcasting illusions across miles, hand-held mobile phones anchoring personal communications, and the global matrix of the internet…
he possessed complete, visceral records of entire modern cities illuminated throughout the deep night without a single spiritual array or low-grade spirit lamp.
How could a world entirely devoid of the natural laws of Qi even exist?
And yet, according to the unyielding testimony of his own soul, it had not only existed, but he had actively occupied a physical vessel within its borders.
Jiang Wei.
The corporate name still felt remarkably distant, resembling a tragic biography he had read about a stranger rather than his own sovereign past.
Yet, every single mnemonic thread anchored to his soul argued otherwise.
He could vividly remember the suffocating anxiety of studying late into the night for competitive examinations;
he recalled the hollow, performative compliance of his very first day at the company office;
he remembered the damp, oppressive heat of being jammed against hundreds of silent strangers within crowded subway trains;
and he remembered staring blankly at the harsh blue light of computer screens until his vision blurred in the dead of night.
He remembered exhaustion—a systemic, bone-deep exhaustion that seemed to transcend individual days.
Shen Jietian slowly raised a calloused hand, rubbing the bridge of his nose as a dull, lingering headache throbbed behind his eyes.
He had spent twenty-two full, authentic years experiencing the harsh realities of this cultivation world as Shen Jietian.
In contrast, the recovered memories of Jiang Wei only spanned a little over two decades of mundane mortal life.
Through an analytical comparison of his dual identities, Shen Jietian realized that his foundational psyche was still fundamentally anchored to the logic of the immortal path.
The memories of Earth indisputably belonged to him, but they felt distinctly old—buried beneath heavy, historical layers of dust like a sealed jade slip excavated from an ancient ruin.
Turning his gaze toward the window, his eyes swept over the jagged silhouette of the outer city wall.
Beyond that stone barrier lay the true reality he understood:
a volatile, high-stakes cultivation world where powerful patriarchs could tread upon the air, where catastrophic spirit beasts could flatten mountain ranges with a swipe of their paws, and where the grand promise of absolute immortality genuinely existed.
Back on Earth, the concept of longevity was nothing more than an abstract, mythological dream chased by ancient emperors through toxic mercury pills;
here, it was a tangible, mathematically verifiable path that millions of people actively pursued through blood and sweat.
Earth had prioritized the evolution of technology.
This world had chosen the path of individual cultivation.
Earth had engineered mechanical cars; this world refined flying treasures. You are reading on g.com, the official source.
Earth had constructed the infrastructure of the internet; this world possessed grand sects whose communication talismans could transmit thoughts across thousands of miles in a flash.
They were entirely different evolutionary paths, born of different civilizations across different worlds.
Yet, the longer Shen Jietian systematically compared the core mechanics of the two societies, the stranger his internal state became.
Because beneath the superficial glitter of high technology and magical spells, the structural reality of the masses wasn’t different at all.
On Earth, the mortal Jiang Wei had spent every single day trapped within an inescapable loop.
Wake up under the tyranny of an alarm, endure a gruelling commute, slave away at a desk for a corporation, sleep for a few hours to reset the body, and repeat.
The company compensated his labour with a calculated monthly salary—a sum meticulously calibrated to be just enough to ensure his survival, yet never enough to allow him to accumulate true financial independence.
It was a currency designed to keep him coming back to his cubicle the following morning.
He had spent his entire adult life passionately dreaming of absolute freedom, dreaming of escaping the matrix to chase something grander, yet every single tomorrow looked exactly like yesterday.
Then, Shen Jietian analysed his current life as a rogue cultivator.
Wake up in a squalid room, circulate a mediocre manual to prevent regression, risk his life in hazardous valleys to gather raw materials, liquidate those resources for a handful of spirit stones, purchase essential pills, and repeat.
The independent cultivation world operated on the exact same structural loop.
Instead of a corporate boss demanding his physical labour, the unyielding laws of cultivation demanded a continuous influx of expensive resources.
Instead of chasing a monthly corporate salary, he frantically chased spirit stones.
Instead of manoeuvring for a corporate promotion, he risked his life to achieve a breakthrough.
The crushing psychological pressure never ceased, and the competitive struggle for resources never ended.
Jiang Wei had ultimately worked his physical vessel to death at a desk.
Shen Jietian had nearly been slaughtered by a wolf pack and torn apart by his own meridians for a low-grade pill.
A bitter, deeply cynical smile carved itself onto the youth’s face in the dark.
Different world…
same miserable fate.
One was a glorified slave to a corporate entity, while the other was a desperate slave to the path of cultivation.
Neither identity had ever tasted a single drop of true, unburdened freedom.
The analytical realization left him unexpectedly, profoundly calm.
For years, like most low-level gatherers, he had viewed high-ranking cultivators as transcendent beings existing entirely above the dirty miseries of ordinary mortals.
Now, possessing the objective perspective of an outsider, he wasn’t so sure anymore.
The wealthy clan scions frantically chased higher realms to protect their status;
the powerful righteous sects waged covert wars to expand their territorial influence; and the ancient, hidden monsters of the late stages desperately bartered their humanity to extend their lifespans by a few centuries.
Everyone was trapped in a system; everyone was struggling against a deadline, and no one was truly free.
As the heavy silence settled over the room once more, the mental image of the white wolf king spontaneously surfaced within his consciousness.
Shen Jietian’s posture instantly went rigid.
He envisioned the magnificent, snow-white predator standing proudly atop the black stone, its piercing, ice-blue eyes reflecting a chilling depth of cognitive awareness.
He recalled the absolute, crushing spiritual pressure it radiated naturally, the meticulous way it had parsed his blood-stained clothes, and the supreme indifference with which it had ultimately disregarded his existence. Follow the newest chapters on novelping(.)com.
At the time of the encounter, his low-level cultivation mind had been entirely paralyzed by primal terror.
But now, filtered through the scientific framework of his Earth memories, a completely different layer of analysis manifested.
On Earth, a creature possessing that level of localized destructive power and supernatural pressure simply could not exist.
There were no low-grade spirit beasts, no mutated demon wolves, and no magical cultivators capable of upending the natural order.
Billions of ordinary human beings lived out their entire natural lifespans from birth to decay without ever encountering a single entity capable of effortlessly tearing their bodies to pieces.
On Earth, young children could walk home from school through public streets without the constant, underlying fear of being ambushed by predatory beasts; traveling merchants didn’t need to master lethal martial skills just to safely transport goods between cities;
Poor farmers didn’t have to worry about wandering monsters descending from the mountains to incinerate their crops.
Compared to the bloody, volatile reality of Moonleaf Valley, Earth was safe.
It was incredibly, unimaginably safe.
The thought felt almost absurd to his current sensibilities.
Back when he was Jiang Wei, he had spent his nights complaining endlessly about the stress of project deadlines, the exhaustion of modern life, and the misery of his low salary.
Yet, compared to the brutal reality of the inner valley?
Connected to the terrifying presence of the wolf king?
Measured against the cold reality of Old Zhao violently shoving him into the dirt to serve as a biological shield?
The corporate grind of Earth almost resembled a peaceful paradise.
A strange, unfamiliar longing suddenly blossomed within the depths of Shen Jietian’s heart.
It wasn’t a nostalgic desire to return to his cramped corporate cubicle, nor was it a yearning for his lonely city apartment or his past social connections.
Rather, it was a pure, conceptual craving for that absolute feeling of safety—a systemic desire for a world where a human being didn’t constantly need to accumulate raw, lethal physical strength simply to earn the right to stay alive for another day.
He slowly leaned his head back against the cold, uneven mud wall of his room, the cool rays of the midnight moon streaming over his chest.
His thoughts drifted uncontrollably back into the matrix of those modern memories.
He visualized the endless, paved asphalt highways stretching across continents, the brilliant neon grids of cities that defied the darkness of the sky, and the billions of peaceful, ordinary people living without fear.
It was a completely different world—a world that his soul had once, long ago, confidently called home.
“If…” The solitary word escaped his parched lips before his conscious mind could even filter the thought.
Shen Jietian stared unblinkingly through the cracks of his wooden shutters, his eyes locked onto the distant, cold stars of the night sky.
A strange, incredibly radical hypothesis formulated within his analytical mind—a concept so thoroughly ridiculous and logic-defying within the context of the cultivation world that he almost broke into another bout of laughter.
If I can somehow accumulate enough cosmic strength, enough boundary-shattering cultivation power to reverse-engineer the coordinates of my past life and actually return to Earth…
what would happen then?
The small bedroom fell back into an unyielding, dense silence.
Yet, no matter how hard his rational caution tried to suppress the thought, the ridiculous ambition refused to leave his mind, anchoring itself deep within the core of his newly forged soul.
End of Chapter 8
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