– My answer will remain the same. I will stay here.
"..."
Lucian just silently looked at Senior Xuanling, not understanding why the other party was being so stubborn.
Over the course of three years, he had tried persuading Senior Xuanling multiple times. He had even brought up the Taixu Mystic Immortal’s direct wishes, but even then, the spirit’s answer remained stubbornly the same.
And whenever Lucian asked why, Xuanling simply refused to explain.
Lucian had grown genuinely fond of this chatty, nagging orb that hovered around him daily. Beyond their friendship, he also felt a deep responsibility to take it out of this desolate place because of the promise he had made to the Founder.
"Why are you so stubborn, senior? Don’t you feel lonely in here? I too am thinking for your sake too, so please listen to me this once!" Lucian insisted, but all he received was a cold, unyielding silence.
– If my mind could be changed this easily, I myself would have destroyed this realm and escaped outside myself. Do you think my words hold just this much value?!
Xuanling’s voice roared inside Lucian’s mind, trembling with rare, bitter fury.
’I guess I can’t easily convince senior,’ Lucian sighed internally, dropping the subject before heading into the retreat to sleep.
The next morning dawned crisp and quiet. Lucian followed his usual morning routine across the marble terraces, but today, Senior Xuanling was completely silent, barely uttering a single word.
When evening arrived, Lucian sat down and drank his final pitcher of tonic: the unique, bitter-sweet tomato juice.
Xuanling floated near him, hovering lower than usual. A soft, iridescent light flickered beneath the orb, and an object drifted out.
– Take this. Consider this my farewell gift. I know you are planning to go today.
Lucian reached out and silently accepted the item. Resting in his palm was a smooth, lustrous pearl no larger than a plum.
– It is a small grotto-heaven treasure, kid. Not everyone has this.
Lucian looked from the pearl back up to the trembling white sphere.
"Are you not coming with me, senior?"
– Shut up! How many times do I have to tell you about this?!
"But just what meaning does this place hold to you! This emotionless and solitude realm?!"
Lucian yelled, his frustration boiling over.
In response, an overwhelming wave of spiritual pressure erupted from the orb. The heavy, invisible force slammed into Lucian’s shoulders, forcing him straight down onto his knees against the stone floor.
– How dare you, kid! Get lost from my sight!
Saying this, Xuanling began pulling back, drifting toward the shadows of the high ceiling.
Looking at the trembling sphere, Lucian knew the spirit wasn’t truly angry at his disrespect; it was simply devastated by the pain of parting. But there was nothing more he could say or do for this run.
’I guess it’s time now.’
Gritting his teeth, Lucian drew the plain, ancient sword he had received upon becoming an unofficial disciple of the sect.
Without hesitation, he turned the hilt and pointed the sharp tip directly at his own forehead.
– ...!!!
Xuanling froze mid-air, then screamed as it darted furiously toward him.
– Just what are you doing?!
Before Xuanling could reach him or stop his movements, Lucian channeled his qi.
He used Micro-Point Piercing Light.
The dark steel blade flashed with brilliant spiritual luster. In the fraction of a millisecond, an intensely compressed, needle-sharp point of white light condensed at the very tip of the sword.
BOOM!
– NOOOOO!
« You Have Died. »
« Please Select Your Harvest. »
***
Lucian once again arrived in the dark, boundless space and let out a long, weary sigh.
He didn’t know what would happen with Senior Xuanling now.
Killing himself in plain sight was no small matter. He had even tried willing his ability to leave behind a sort of saved checkpoint in that retreat, but doing so appeared completely impossible for him right now.
Still, he didn’t know what the future held. Perhaps as his personal strength grew, his ability would evolve alongside him. That was the standard logic every explorer lived by.
’This is a great harvest,’ he thought, his eyes lighting up as he surveyed the glowing cluster floating before him.
Hovering in the center was his own spectral body, radiating the dense, refined vitality of the Vessel Forging & Qi Ignition Realm. Drifting around it were the various techniques he had painstakingly mastered over three years:
The Eternal Profound Scripture.
The Five Elements Harmonizing Art.
The Eternal Jade-Bone Method.
The Nine Heavens Cloudstep.
The Micro-Point Piercing Light.
The Qi Sense Breath.
The Qi Sense Breath was the specialized perception art he had trained to detect spiritual currents.
Floating beside them was a heavy, ancient book bound by an intricate golden lock inscribed with the words: Sealed Secret Arts. Lucian deduced this held all the knowledge and techniques the Taixu Mystic Immortal had sealed in his mind.
Then came the physical items: his plain white sect robes, his bronze disciple token, his sheathed sword, and the grotto-heaven pearl Senior Xuanling had forced into his hands.
Seeing the pearl, Lucian was immediately reminded of the warm, chaotic days he had spent with that chatty senior.
Shaking the melancholy from his head, he checked the Karma costs that instinctively surfaced in his mind.
The most expensive harvest was obviously his cultivated vessel, which demanded roughly sixty percent of his accumulated Karma.
Next was the grotto-heaven pearl, which clocked in at around thirty percent.
The physical items—the sword, the robes, and the token—took up about five percent combined.
What truly baffled Lucian was the techniques: taking all of them together cost barely one percent of his Karma.
It felt like a mere formality, like those subscription apps that charge a token one-dollar fee just to activate a promotional trial.
’Is it because those techniques were given to me willingly by an Immortal?’ Lucian wondered.
Almost everything floating here had been handed to him as a gift. He hadn’t looted them in a panic like he had during his first run in the Murim world, and he still clearly remembered that feeling.
"Those three manuals nearly cost 20% of karma at that time..." Lucian muttered aloud.
This was the cost of Wudang Basic Sword Technique, Cloud Flowing Fist and Clearing Mind Method.
Though his total pool of Karma had expanded after hunting monsters during the academy drill, twenty percent was still a massive chunk to spend.
’And for thirty percent, I got a genuine grotto-heaven treasure. I am so glad I didn’t take any of those basic manuals back then,’ Lucian thought in immense relief.
If he had wasted his karma on basic Wudang swordplay, he never would have had enough points to bring back his enchanted sword, his token, or his robes today.
Then, another question arose in his mind.
’Does knowledge have some sort of criteria?’
During his very first trip to the Boundless Mystery Sect, he had absorbed vast concepts about cultivation just by staring at the name stele. That knowledge had carried straight across into his memories without costing a single speck of Karma, and it hadn’t even shown up on the harvest screen.
Lucian’s eye twitched as the pieces clicked together.
’Does general knowledge or basic stuff not count?’
By that logic, when he memorized the date on the desk calendar or read the street signs outside the Shanghai Gold Exchange, none of that required Karma either. Basic, observational knowledge of a world was completely free.
Techniques, however, were functional systems of power—and thus required an energetic anchor to manifest across worlds, no matter how cheap the fee was.
Satisfied with his deductions, Lucian channeled his intent. Expending nearly every single scrap of Karma he possessed, he claimed everything floating before him, right down to the plain white robes and the bronze token.
’It will certainly be helpful whenever I decide to go there again.’
Lucian fully intended to frequent that cultivation haven in the future. But for now...
’It’s been quite long. Let’s return to reality.’
With a single thought, Lucian closed his eyes in the void.
When his eyelids fluttered open, he was lying flat on his dorm bed, breathing the familiar air of Earth.
Taking a look at the wall clock, he checked the glowing red numbers: 03:37 PM.
’Did I just take a quick one hour nap and experience years?’ Lucian thought, blinking in disbelief.
He vividly remembered climbing into bed around two-thirty in the afternoon.
Unknown amount of trial time; Three full years of bitter bone tempering, endless projectile dodging, and gallons of tomato tonic had passed on the other side, while barely an hour had ticked by in reality.
This once again confirmed his theory that his ability was directly tied to his natural sleep cycle.
Lucian swung his legs out of bed and immediately noticed how light his limbs felt—as if the heavy gravity of the world had suddenly loosened its grip.
He stopped in front of the mirror to check his appearance.
"?"
He stared at his reflection, genuinely stunned.
His dark hair had grown a few inches longer, falling around his neck with a healthy, natural gloss. His face was visibly more defined, his skin smooth and clear after shedding years of accumulated mortal impurities, and his dark eyes carried a calm, razor-sharp focus. His height had gained an inch, his shoulders broadening and he even gained some muscles.
He had become remarkably refined, both externally and internally.
Curious, Lucian raised his right hand, clenched his fingers into a fist, and willed his Qi to circulate.
Hum—
A faint, pale spiritual luster immediately flared to life around his knuckles, humming with quiet power.
Everything was completely identical to when he cultivated at the sect. His power had genuinely crossed over with him.
Dropping his hand, Lucian expanded his senses into the surrounding room using Qi Sense Breath to connect with the surrounding spiritual energy.
’Hmm... spiritual energy is greatly lacking on Earth.’
Just as Luther had casually joked during lunch, Earth was a spiritually barren lower world. Aside from the energy leaking from the rifts, the natural environment possessed almost zero ambient qi to cultivate.
"He should be free now, let’s check on him..."