[Special Item: Altar—Strengthens the connection between the material world and other realms, enhances Shamanic spellcasting.
Establishing an altar will strengthen the totem links among the material world, the spirit realm, and cyberspace, unlocking new abilities.]
[Altar Crafting Requirements: Elemental Storm (representing the sky) × 10, Elemental Earth (representing the ground) × 10, Elemental Water (representing water flow) × 10, Elemental Life (representing trees) × 10, Elemental Fire (representing the soul power of living beings) × 10, Spiritual Essence (to construct the altar’s base) × 10,000.]
[Spiritual Essence Shop unlocked:]
[Elemental Storm: 1,000 Spiritual Essence per unit]
[Elemental Earth: 1,000 Spiritual Essence per unit]
[Elemental Water: 1,000 Spiritual Essence per unit]
[Elemental Life: 1,000 Spiritual Essence per unit]
[Elemental Fire: 1,000 Spiritual Essence per unit]
[Exchange Rate Unlocked: 1 Spiritual Essence = 10 Eurodollars (The desire, love, hatred, and rage of Night City’s denizens toward the Eurodollar are enough to ignite the spirit realm.
Eddies are power, eddies are strength, eddies are life, eddies are love, eddies are everything.
Perhaps only when the world is completely destroyed will the craving for Eurodollars change…
perhaps…)]
[Shop Level: 1 (Establish an altar to upgrade)]
“???” Ruan Xian was completely dumbfounded on the spot.
“What kind of Shaman is this?
Once this altar is built, will I be casting Chain Lightning with my left hand, Healing Wave with my right, and then using Earth Shock to stuff a handful of dirt down someone’s throat to silence them?”
Ruan Xian didn’t fully understand, but he was deeply shaken.
His 150,000 RMB from his original world had been converted into 1,500 spiritual essence, which had already been fed to the lotus root—the root of his totem—in the spirit realm as fertilizer.
Though the ratio seemed to have changed from 1:100 to 1:10, it couldn’t be calculated that way.
In a place as “rich in talent” as Night City, 150,000 eddies could buy you a top-tier luxury car.
Sure, you’d be buying it from El Capitan, and it would definitely come with a few ghosts of its former owners, but it was still a luxury car.
Back in his old world, 150,000 RMB would barely buy a cheap EV to register for ride-hailing services.
All the altar materials added up to 60,000 spiritual essence, which was 600,000 Eurodollars.
A mere 5,000 eddies could get the mighty V to storm Arasaka Tower; 5,000 eddies was enough to save the President of the NUSA.
What the legendary V would do for 600,000 eddies was beyond his wildest imagination.
“With such a massive sum, getting it through legal means in a short time is absolutely impossible.
Even if I bump my Intelligence to 10 and use netrunning tricks, trying to pull 600,000 eddies out of a poor dump like Watson without attracting corporate attention is just wishful thinking.”
Ruan Xian might look strong now, but if he attracted corporate attention too early—especially by stealing tons of money via hacking—it would be like shoving his hand directly into a megacorp’s mouth to yank out cash.
Squeezing a megacorp’s windpipe like that would only get him cornered and gang-beaten by corpos, gangs, the NCPD, and MaxTac.
Even as a Shaman with passive buffs constantly active, Ruan Xian wouldn’t be able to handle it—at least not yet.
“The barrier between Night City’s material world and the spirit realm is just too thick.
Without an altar, my magic spells are weak as hell.” Ruan Xian tried to draw upon the power of the sky in his territory.
Consuming a large amount of spiritual energy, he only managed to whip up a small gust of wind, blowing road dust right into the bowls of people eating at a nearby stall and prompting a chorus of curses.
Ruan Xian tightened his trench coat.
Listening to the local “colorful” Night City slang, he brushed his hand against the grip of the Tamayura tucked into his shoulder holster.
*Looks like I’ll have to rely on classical physics and raise funds in a way that aligns with Night City’s common sense.
First, I need a safehouse.*
Based on his knowledge of the Cyberpunk world, he had absolutely no intention of installing any cyberware from the very beginning.
In the Cyberpunk world, the top netrunners and rogue AIs were terrifyingly powerful.
As long as you had even a single hackable component on your body, they could flatline you in the most bizarre ways.
Even with his Shamanic power establishing a digital fortress in cyberspace, he still wasn’t confident in taking on the rogue AIs behind the Blackwall.
Just look at the Voodoo Boys, who thought they had a digital deity on their side, only to be wiped out in droves by Alt Cunningham with a mere wave of her hand.
Fortunately, Ruan Xian already had an idea to solve this issue.
The lotus root, which served as his totem root in the spirit realm, simultaneously connected cyberspace and the material world.
The residents of Night City drilled holes in their skulls for neural links and installed cyberdecks just to connect their brains to cyberspace.
So, if he placed the interface and cyberdeck on the lotus root in the spirit realm, and used the root’s stems to connect cyberspace to his physical body in the material world, wouldn’t it achieve the exact same effect?
Sure, you might be a god-tier netrunner who could breach any firewall in cyberspace, but could you hack into the spirit realm?
Go ahead, slap me through the screen if you can.
At the same time, Ruan Xian had an unverified hypothesis.
Once the totem was planted, he could actually perceive cyberspace, the spirit realm’s lotus leaves, and the lotus root at all times.
Just like a healthy person could feel their own limbs, perhaps the digital lotus leaf fortress totem, the spiritual lotus root totem, and the material lotus flower anchor (Ruan Xian’s own body) existed as a trinity.
They seemed to reside in three different dimensions, but they were all the same person, the same “self.” Perhaps in the eyes of a High-Dimensional Observer, they were a single, unified whole.
Theoretically, this allowed for some incredibly slick tricks.
It was just a shame that, dirt-poor as he was, Ruan Xian lacked the materials to test them out.
“Looks like I still need to find a way to boost my Intelligence.
What does this raw data even mean?
I can’t read a damn thing.”
With so little money on him, doing anything was extremely difficult.
He couldn’t afford to rent a place, and with all his secrets, he wasn’t suited to live in those megabuildings where corporate surveillance was everywhere.
Fortunately, there was a specific group of people in Night City who possessed hideouts that the NCPD, corporations, and even Trauma Team couldn’t locate.
Plus, these spots usually came with equipment that Ruan Xian could use for his experiments.
They were the Scavengers—un-wipeable, inexhaustible pests that popped up out of nowhere.
Ruan Xian was currently using the lotus leaf digital fortress in cyberspace to monitor the NCPD’s public radio frequencies in Watson.
After planting the totem, Ruan Xian had acquired supreme authority over Watson.
Virtually anything connected to the Net in Watson was now his botnet.
Through the digital fortress, Ruan Xian could now understand the languages spoken in Watson.
However, highly technical jargon remained a mystery to him.
It was like buying a legendary-tier cultivation manual—say, the Qian Xuesen Manuscripts—for just twenty bucks; you could look at it, but your brain would still melt.
He could even intercept various encrypted channels.
The digital world of Watson held no secrets from Ruan Xian; he just couldn’t understand most of it.
An Intelligence score of 3—that was the source of his absolute confidence.
“Dispatch to Unit 9527, Dispatch to Unit 9527.
Violent crime reported at 221 Baker Road, Little China.
Please respond.”
“Copy that, en route.”
Ruan Xian’s mind stirred.
His spiritual intuition told him this was exactly what he was looking for.
“NCPD Dispatch, Unit 9527.
We have swept 221, 220, and 219 Baker Road.
No signs of violent crime.
Resuming regular patrol.”
“Copy that, Unit 9527.
Looks like another false alarm.
Good work.”
“Tch.” Ruan Xian, who was observing everything in secret, knew full well this was no false alarm.
Through the street surveillance cameras, he saw three absolute idiots wearing ugly masks and cheap suits, armed with pistols and baseball bats.
They were obviously Scavengers.
They were carrying a scantily clad joytoy through the back door of 221A Baker Road.
But that was the NCPD for you.
In-game, this level of incident would barely register as a one-star crime.
They’d take a cursory lap, find nothing, and walk away.
It wouldn’t even go down in Night City’s official crime statistics.
Unit 9527 had even searched two neighboring buildings.
By Night City standards, they practically deserved Employee of the Month.
“Looks like I’ve found my safehouse.
Thank God.” Ruan Xian took direct control of the internal surveillance at 221A Baker Road from his digital fortress.
The system had obviously been installed by the Scavengers themselves, and the password was ridiculously simple—four zeros.
They probably hadn’t even bothered to change the default settings.
Inside the two-story house, the first floor contained a kitchen, a bathroom, and a living room with a few sofas.
In front of the sofas was a large TV left turned on.
To the right of the door stood a computer desk displaying surveillance feeds, though nobody was actually watching them.
About a meter behind the computer was a keypad-locked door, likely leading to an armory.
The second floor had three rooms—one large and two small, all standard bedrooms.
But the real focus was the basement.
The view of the basement from the cameras was absolutely horrific.
There were no partitions down there.
The entire left wall was lined with specialized freezers used to store harvested cyberware and valuable organs.
In the center sat a standard ripperdoc chair and its corresponding medical tools, though the Scavengers obviously weren’t using them for healing.
On the right were a few computers and three bathtubs filled to the brim with ice water.
Near the basement stairs sat a pile of black trash bags, leaking dark, congealed blood and revealing a few severed fingers.
“Not many of them, no heavy weapons, and they’re spread out.” Watching the surveillance feed a bit longer out of caution, Ruan Xian noticed that before stripping the victim, the three idiot Scavengers had actually taken her to the second floor, clearly planning some non-consensual acts first.
One of them was on the first floor preparing food, while another had gone down to the basement to prep for the harvest.
“Wow.
They’re actually waiting their turn instead of going all at once?
How polite of them.” Ruan Xian muttered a dry complaint before standing up.
His muscular frame filled out the trench coat as he strode toward 221A Baker Road, the breeze catching the hem of his coat.
He looked far too handsome to be a local.
*Hang in there, girl.
Don’t die before I get there.* Never letting himself regret when there was still a chance to save a life—this was the core moral code Ruan Xian had brought with him from his old world, a belief etched into his very soul and marrow.