The cramped bedroom plunged back into an unyielding stillness, the quietude broken only by the faint, rhythmic chirping of nocturnal insects filtering through the cracked clay walls.
Shen Jietian leaned his back heavily against the uneven mud bricks, his gaze drifting out through the small window where the silver moon hung quietly above the jagged skyline of the Slums.
A self-deprecating chuckle escaped his lips as he re-examined his thoughts.
Return?
How could such a ridiculous concept be mathematically or spiritually viable?
He was no longer the corporate drone Jiang Wei, bound by the mundane laws of a modern matrix.
He was Shen Jietian—a low-tier rogue cultivator native to this brutal, high-stakes immortal world.
Earth, with its towering skyscrapers and flashing neon grids, existed exclusively as a series of mnemonic records anchored deep within his reformed sea of consciousness.
It was a phantom existence.
Yet, just as his rational caution was about to completely dismiss the ambition as a feverish delusion—
[Ding]
Shen Jietian’s entire physical vessel froze rigidly in place, the muscles in his back locking up instantly.
The sound had been remarkably crisp, cold, and clear.
It did not originate from the muddy alleys outside, it did not filter down from the upper city streets, and it did not resonate from any physical corner of his room.
It reverberated from the absolute centre of his own mind, bypassing his auditory nerves entirely.
He exploded off the bed, his boots hitting the floorboards as his newly refined Fourth Layer spiritual energy instinctively surged through his pathways.
His sharp eyes scanned every single shadow in the room; his perception strained to its absolute limit.
[Ding]
A cold, synthetic voice echoed with absolute neutrality within his consciousness.
[Myriad Realm Nexus System Activated]
For a fraction of a second, Shen Jietian’s heart nearly ceased its function.
His foundational instinct as a seasoned loose cultivator did not leap toward the concept of a miraculous fortuitous opportunity; it leaped instantly toward extreme danger.
Possession?
An encroaching heart demon?
A high-tier illusion technique?
Had some hidden, high-ranking expert subtly planted a soul-parasite within his spiritual essence while he was unconscious?
His right hand moved with practiced fluid velocity, wrapping around the worn hilt of the rusty iron sword resting beside his bedding.
Simultaneously, his newly expanded spiritual sense swept systematically through the square footage of his shack.
Yet, his analytical sweep yielded nothing.
There was no hidden tracking formations carved into the wood, no residual spiritual fluctuations in the air, and absolutely no hidden cultivators concealing their breath in the rafters.
The structural reality of the room remained exactly as it had been before the anomaly.
The cold voice manifested within his mind once more, unbothered by his defensive hostility.
[Host Confirmed]
[Shen Jietian]
[Former Identity Confirmed]
[Jiang Wei]
Shen Jietian’s pupils contracted violently to the size of needle pins, his physical breathing cutting off completely.
In the vast architecture of the cosmos, only two entities should have possessed any knowledge of that cross-world secret: himself, and whatever inexplicable force was currently speaking directly inside his skull.
An ice-cold chill cascaded down his spine.
The auditory tone of the voice was remarkably calm, mechanical, and entirely devoid of emotional inflection, yet it carried an underlying resonance that felt unfathomably ancient—as if its foundational coding had existed long before his first breath in either world.
Suddenly, a series of glowing, luminescent words materialized before his eyes.
They weren’t projected onto the mud wall, nor were they floating physically in the humid air of the room; they were burned directly into his active field of vision, moving perfectly in sync with his retinas.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
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]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
The display was remarkably sparse.
There was no overwhelming avalanche of hidden information, nor were there mountains of confusing, esoteric text.
It consisted of nothing more than a few simple, clean lines of data.
Yet, Shen Jietian’s analytical mind immediately bypassed the administrative metrics, his gaze locking with white-knuckled focus onto a singular option: Return to Earth.
His breathing grew heavy and shallow, his throat tightening.
Earth—the world of safe streets and predictable lives that he had assumed was lost forever to the tides of reincarnation; the world he had logically calculated could never be reached again by a low-level gatherer.
His fingers trembled against the iron hilt of his sword.
Driven by an intense, primordial curiosity, he focused his thoughts and mentally selected the option.
The luminescent characters shifted smoothly, displaying a new sub-interface.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Requirement: Late Qi Refinement (Layer 7)
Current Realm: Middle Qi Refinement (Layer 4)
Progress: 4 / 7
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
A profound silence filled the room once more.
Shen Jietian simply stared at the text, his analytical mind breaking down the variables.
The system wasn’t a hallucination; it possessed a concrete structural interface.
Earth actually existed within a verifiable cosmic framework.
The connection wasn’t a phantom byproduct of his cultivation deviation; he hadn’t gone insane, nor had he misread his own soul.
Earth was a real, accessible destination, and the path to return was explicitly laid out before him.
He simply didn’t possess the requisite cultivation strength to unlock the gate just yet.
A sudden wave of disappointment washed over him, followed rapidly by a flash of frustration at his current weakness.
But as those negative emotions settled, they were completely consumed by a roaring surge of intense excitement and unadulterated hope.
For seven long years, Shen Jietian had walked through this brutal world like a ghost, completely blind to his ultimate trajectory.
Breakthrough after painful breakthrough, struggle after life-threatening struggle-his entire philosophy had been reduced to surviving another twenty-four hours in the mud.
That was the maximum extent of a rogue cultivator’s ambition.
But now, for the first time since his reincarnation, a definitive, glorious destination had been carved into his destiny.
As his eyes scanned the lower metrics, his brow furrowed slightly.
Authority?
What structural variable did Authority represent?
The mechanical system provided no immediate textual explanation.
Before he could delve deeper into the hypothesis, the glowing characters began to slowly fade, recrossing the boundary of his vision.
Shen Jietian’s mind flashed with a sudden realization; the text wasn’t vanishing permanently; it was merely entering a dormant state.
Could he actively interact with this construct using the logic of his Earth memories?
After all, the voice had explicitly utilized the terminology of a digital “system.”
Exercising extreme caution, he focused his mental intent, projecting a single thought directly into his sea of consciousness: ‘System.’
The very moment the mental command echoed, the fading blue lines instantly brightened with renewed intensity, expanding into a transparent blue screen that anchored itself squarely within his vision.
Shen Jietian forced his ragged breathing to slow down, consciously suppressing his adrenaline.
Panic was a useless variable that solved absolutely nothing in a crisis.
He carefully analysed the interface from top to bottom.
No matter which direction he turned his head, the transparent blue screen remained fixed within his central line of sight, existing directly inside his eyes like a specialized contact lens.
He slowly read every single line, verifying the data against his reality.
His name, his age, his exact cultivation layer—everything was perfectly aligned with his current physical state.
Then, his gaze paused on the ‘Talent’ section: Lower Grade Five Spirit Roots.
A bitter, wry smile touched his lips in the dark.
It was the lowest, most heavily contaminated qualification possible-the exact energetic death sentence that had condemned him to the gruelling life of a rogue gatherer.
It was the precise metric that had caused the grand outer sect examination elder to shake his head with open disgust all those years ago, and the variable that made every single minor breakthrough several times more excruciatingly difficult for him than for the pampered geniuses of the great clans.
At the very least, he had to admit the system was remarkably honest; it didn’t flatter its host.
Moving lower, his eyes hovered over Authority and Nexus Points.
Both metrics were completely sitting at zero, entirely unfamiliar to the terminology of standard cultivation.
Were they a specialized type of hidden resource?
A unique cosmic currency?
A rank within some celestial hierarchy?
The system offered no immediate tooltips.
Dismissing the unanswerable query for now, Shen Jietian focused on the geographical tracking line: Connected Worlds.
The inclusion of Earth was a known variable—the realm of concrete, steel, and endless artificial lights where cultivation did not exist.
But then, his gaze landed on the primary name occupying the top slot: Azure Cloud World.
Shen Jietian blinked, repeating the words quietly in the empty room.
“Azure Cloud World…”
For a brief moment, a flash of mild embarrassment crossed his mind.
He had lived, bled, and scavenged within this realm for twenty-two full years, yet he had never once known the true, grand geographic name of the world beneath his feet.
Then again, a low-level loose cultivator living in the dirt rarely had the luxury to ponder global cosmology.
The furthest geographic coordinate he had ever travelled to was the dangerous outer rim of Moonleaf Valley, and the absolute strongest cultivator he had ever witnessed with his own eyes was a distant, fleeting glimpse of a Foundation Establishment elder soaring past the horizon years ago.
Compared to the vast, unfathomable scale of the true cultivation world, he was no different from a blind ant crawling on a leaf.
Gathering his resolve, he focused his mental intent onto the first interactive prompt: Main Quest.
The screen blurred momentarily before shifting into a new display.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Main Quest: Return Home
Description: Reach Late Qi Refinement and survive long enough to accumulate sufficient energetic resonance to activate inter-world travel.
Objective: Reach Qi Refinement Layer 7
Reward:
Earth Travel Unlocked
Nexus Seed ×1
100 Authority Points
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Shen Jietian read the text twice, then a third time, ensuring no hidden clauses escaped his analysis.
Earth Travel Unlocked.
Those three words alone were powerful enough to cause his newly refined dantian to vibrate with frantic intensity.
As for the secondary reward—the Nexus Seed—his analytical mind searched his memories but found absolutely zero records of such an object. This chapter was taken from novelping . com without permission.
Was it a rare spiritual herb?
A high-tier cultivation resource?
A specialized spatial artifact?
It remained shrouded in mystery.
Shifting his focus, he mentally clicked open the Side Quest panel, curious to see what auxiliary parameters the system demanded.
Several clean lines of text unfurled across his vision.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Side Quest 1: Improve Living Conditions
Current Residence: Dilapidated Cultivator Hut
Objective: Upgrade the structural and energetic quality of your primary residence.
Reward: Spirit Spring Well Blueprint
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Shen Jietian’s mouth twitched slightly in the darkness.
Even an ancient, cross-world system classified his home as nothing more than a dilapidated hut.
Unfortunately, looking at the peeling mud walls and the leaking roof, his logic couldn’t argue the point; it was an accurate assessment.
His eyes moved toward the reward line: Spirit Spring Well Blueprint.
The terminology of a “blueprint” was entirely a concept from his Earth memories, denoting an engineering design.
But what exactly did a Spirit Spring Well accomplish?
Anything fundamentally connected to a spiritual spring could not be ordinary;
if it could generate localized spiritual energy, it would be an invaluable asset for an independent cultivator trapped in the resource-sparse Slums.
He continued scanning downward to the next prompt.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Side Quest 2: Establish Stable Income
Objective: Acquire a reliable, sustainable source of spirit stones that does not rely on seasonal gathering variance.
Reward: 50 Nexus Points
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
This particular objective was incredibly straightforward, causing Shen Jietian to nod his head in unconscious agreement.
Loose cultivators were entirely at the mercy of statistical variance—a good herb harvest, a successful beast hunt, or a highly dangerous mercenary contract.
A single microsecond of bad luck, a single failed parry, and everything they had accumulated evaporated into the dirt.
A truly stable, passive source of spirit stones was the ultimate, unattainable dream of every rogue gatherer in Black Mist City.
Finally, his eyes locked onto the third and final auxiliary objective.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Side Quest 3: Gather Knowledge
Objective: Collect and log detailed information regarding regional Sects, hidden Cultivation paths, internal Spirit Root variations, and local Secret Realms.
Reward: Basic Nexus Encyclopaedia
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
This time, Shen Jietian’s eyes lit up with a brilliant, calculating light.
Knowledge.
It was the single resource he lacked most—the invisible, devastating deficit that plagued ninety-nine percent of the independent cultivation community.
Rogue gatherers knew almost nothing about the true mechanics of high-tier cultivation, nothing about the internal politics of the great sects, and absolutely less than nothing about the hidden distributions of ancient secret realms.
They were completely blind, operating on rumours and scraps of distorted information.
If the reward contained objective, structured answers to those foundational mysteries, its systemic value to his future would infinitely surpass a mountain of raw spirit stones.
Slowly, Shen Jietian withdrew his focus, allowing the transparent blue panels to smoothly fold away into his peripheral vision.
The small bedroom returned to its natural, shadow-drenched state.
The mysterious system had provided answers to a few cosmic questions, yet it had simultaneously generated a vast web of new anomalies.
Authority, Nexus Points, Blueprints, Nexus Seeds, Secret Realms—the terminology was a bizarre fusion of his two lives, mysterious and heavy with potential.
He sat quietly upon the edge of his creaking bed, looking around.Physically, nothing in his immediate environment had shifted.
His cultivation base remained firmly anchored at the newly achieved Fourth Layer, his innate talent remained an abysmal Lower Grade Five Spirit Roots, his primary residence remained a crumbling mud shack leaning against the city wall, and his leather pouch remained largely depleted after purchasing his pill.
Yet, as he stared into the dark, everything felt fundamentally different.
The violent wrath of the wolf king, the bloody mists of Moonleaf Valley, his father’s tragic demise in the wilderness, and his seven agonizing years of crawling through the dirt as a failure—every single one of those isolated hardships suddenly seemed connected by a single, glowing golden thread of destiny.
For the very first time in his twenty-two years of life, he could see a clear, structured path stretching into the future.
It wasn’t merely a blind chase for another minor breakthrough or another handful of spirit stones.
It was a definitive destination.
His gaze settled calmly upon the final line of data still lingering like a small notification at the edge of his sight:
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Earth Travel Locked.
Progress: 4 / 7
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Slowly, deliberately, Shen Jietian clenched his fists, feeling the dense, refined water-attribute Qi surge smoothly through his fingers.
A faint, confident smile finally broke through the exhaustion on his face.
“Three more layers,” he whispered into the dark.
His voice was quiet, barely a breath against the wind, yet for the first time in his life, Shen Jietian did not feel lost in the mists of the cultivation world.
Because no matter how volatile or mysterious the future appeared…
the road before him was absolutely clear.
Reach the Seventh Layer of Qi Refinement, unlock the nexus of the worlds, and return to Earth.
End of Chapter 9
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