Arriving in the familiar dark space once again, Lucian stood before the silver mirror and focused on the type of world he needed to visit.
If this mysterious mirror genuinely responded to his thoughts, then he needed to be much more specific about the request he was making.
’Maybe I should focus more on those secret realms...’ Lucian wondered.
After his conversation with Luther, he had spent part of dinner browsing web forums and searching articles about xianxia tropes.
From what he gathered, the most dangerous yet rewarding place to find high-level techniques was an ancient secret realm.
Of course, he didn’t want a realm where thousands of bloodthirsty cultivators were actively slaughtering each other over scraps.
"Something like an abandoned or closed secret realm belonging to an Immortal Sect which was once a great power," he muttered into the quiet void.
In this vast, endless universe, wouldn’t a place like that exist somewhere?
Lucian was curious. He wanted the best possible foundation, even if entering an unknown realm carried its own share of danger.
Besides, if a place like that truly existed, wouldn’t its ancient guardian arrays and traps be heavily deteriorated or weakened after countless years of neglect?
’But first, let’s check that.’
Before attempting anything new, Lucian tested his control. He willed the mirror to show his previous destinations.
Immediately, the surface rippled, displaying the same breathtaking panorama of verdant peaks, winding rivers, and floating weapons from the Murim world. With another thought, the glass shifted, revealing the sickly, chain-bound globe of the Apocalyptic Earth.
Both anchors were still saved.
Reassured, Lucian cleared his mind, closing his eyes to concentrate on his exact criteria. He pictured an ancient, sealed sanctuary—an abandoned realm of a supreme immortal sect, long forgotten by the outside world.
Slowly, the silver symbols etched along the mirror’s rim began to rearrange themselves.
When Lucian opened his eyes, the reflection took his breath away.
Floating within the deep glass was an immense, ancient symbol radiating a heavy, domineering pressure.
Surrounding the sigil were grand immortal pagodas suspended in the clouds, while twin miniature celestial bodies—a radiant sun and moon—silently orbited the floating pavilions.
« Anchor Established. »
« Closed World – Secret Realm, The Boundless Mystery Sect »
Lucian let out a slow, steady breath.
Stepping forward, he reached out and pressed his palm against the liquid glass.
The surface rippled with bright silver light, swallowing his hand, his arm, and finally his entire body as he was pulled into the secret realm.
***
The moment Lucian arrived, his muscles tensed.
He immediately dropped into a low crouch, scanning his surroundings for sudden attacks.
"Huh? It’s quiet."
Standing up, he paused in mild disbelief.
Before him stood a colossal gate crafted from pure, glowing white jade.
Intricate carvings of auspicious mythical beasts—soaring Dragons, radiant Phoenixes, noble Qilins, and various beings—were etched deeply into the pillars.
Floating above the main archway was the mysterious symbol he had seen in the mirror, and hanging beneath it was an ancient banner inscribed with the sect’s name:
[The Boundless Mystery Sect]
The brushstrokes were so profound it felt as though they contained the fundamental secrets of heaven and earth.
Without realizing it, Lucian slipped into a deep, motionless trance.
The moment his eyes locked onto the writing, floods of concepts and answers to questions he had harbored began pouring directly into his consciousness.
What is cultivation?
What are the true realms of power?
What are the legendary heavenly and Dao bodies?
How does the cultivation of mythical beasts differ from that of humans?
With a completely blank, unblinking gaze, Lucian stood frozen before the sect’s name stele, his mind absorbing the vast ocean of foreign wisdom.
An hour slipped by. Then another.
Without him noticing in the slightest, day turned into night as the sun and moon circled above him. Days blurred, and just like that, five full days passed.
« You Have Died. »
« Unable To Select Harvest. »
’Huh? What happened?’
Lucian opened his eyes in the dark space, stumbling forward. It took him several long seconds to process where he was.
"Did I die because I didn’t drink water?"
The realization felt completely absurd.
Inside his mind, the experience felt like an eternity and a single second at the exact same time. Nothing had ambushed him, no arrays had detonated, and no monsters had attacked.
He had simply stood there reading the sign.
’My bodily functions either stopped, or my spirit died due to information overload?’
A cold chill ran down his back. Even without an enemy lifting a finger, he had managed to drop dead just by staring at a nameplate.
"But I also gained knowledge related to cultivation."
Lucian shook his head, caught between laughing and crying.
The price of his death had been the fundamental concepts of cultivation now engraved permanently into his memory.
Looking around the dark space, he noticed the message: Unable To Select Harvest.
This was the first time that had happened, likely because he hadn’t physically picked up or touched a single item during the trip.
"Hahaha!"
Lucian let out a short, genuine laugh into the quiet void.
’Just being a mortal itself is disadvantageous, I am not even at the Vessel Forging & Qi Ignition Stage.’
According to the knowledge he had just acquired, Vessel Forging & Qi Ignition was the very first step on the path of cultivation—the threshold where a mortal cleared their meridians and lit the inner qi.
Until he reached that level, his projection was still bound by mortal limits like thirst and fatigue.
Part of him felt tempted to look for a lower-level, safer martial arts or cultivation worlds. But he quickly brushed the idea aside.
Death couldn’t truly kill his real body anyway, so why settle for scraps? He wanted the best thing possible.
Willing himself awake, Lucian opened his eyes on his dorm bed and glanced at the clock.
’It’s just eight in the morning.’
After running through the mental fatigue of the trance, he had no interest in attending Academy today.
Sitting up, he unlocked his phone, typed a quick email citing illness to request a one-day leave, and sent it to the administration office.
He took a warm shower, got dressed in comfortable casual clothes, and headed down to the cafeteria for breakfast.
’This academy is too inflexible,’ he mused, chewing on a warm bun.
Until noon, Lucian simply wandered around the quiet pathways of the campus gardens, enjoying the fresh air.
Along the way, he pulled out his phone and replied to messages from Luther and Mari, both asking why he hadn’t shown up for morning lectures.
’This is refreshing in itself,’ Lucian thought, watching leaves drift onto the pavement.
This peaceful, modern world had its own quiet charm—at least, until it inevitably turned into the rotting zombie wasteland he had seen in 2051.
His eyes twitched at his own negative thoughts.
Academy life wasn’t terrible on the surface, but that all changed once a cadet graduated into an official Explorer. Venturing into the Rifts meant putting your life on the line every single day.
If you survived the beasts, massive wealth and glory awaited you.
’But the enemies of explorers are also other explorers.’
In the depths of the Rifts, betrayals and ambushes over high-grade resources were common knowledge.
On top of that, society strictly regulated awakenings; any unregistered awakening was officially classified as a serious crime.
Whenever random civilians awakened, some became legal explorers, but many turned to the black market, doing dirty, untraceable jobs for quick cash.
Then there was the Great African Rift, which had wiped out nearly fifty percent of the African continent decades ago.
Today, powerful awakeners acting as local hegemons managed that ruined land.
Although the United Nations regularly shipped humanitarian supplies to the region, the local hegemons made sure external peacekeepers stayed far away from their territory—while happily pocketing the aid for themselves.
’The world is truly a complex thing.’
Everyone had their own mountains of problems and schemes to balance.
For Lucian, however, his most immediate problem was much simpler: he needed to fall asleep.
He returned to his dorm room, climbed back into bed, and closed his eyes.
After lying completely still for nearly an hour, his racing thoughts finally slowed down, and his mind drifted peacefully into sleep.
***
Lucian opened his eyes to find himself standing before the colossal white jade gate of the Boundless Mystery Sect once again.
This time, he made sure not to even glance toward the carved name stele above the archway. He had no desire to die again.
Looking down, he saw his modern clothes were gone, replaced by a pristine set of flowing white Daoist robes.
Stepping across the threshold, the space around him twisted.
From outside the perimeter, the realm had seemed to stretch across boundless, rolling mountain ranges.
Yet now that he stood within the sect grounds proper, the scenery shifted.
Towering pagodas pierced the clouds in the distance, and mist drifted lazily around jagged peaks, giving the area a genuine immortal atmosphere. But as Lucian looked closer, something felt off.
’Isn’t it somewhat small?’
Though there were grand halls, soaring pavilions, and even an imposing central palace visible in the distance, the actual grounds felt strangely restricted—almost like a closed, miniature world rather than an endless continent.
"Alright, let’s move."
Pushing his curiosity aside for the moment, Lucian jogged down the stone walkway toward a massive open plaza in the center of the complex.
Everything here was built from foreign, iridescent metals and ancient, fragrant wood, creating a strange and heavy atmosphere.
He walked past several silent, empty courtyards until his eyes landed on a grand hall which read: Profound Scripture Pavilion.
Standing before the towering double doors, Lucian felt troubled.
The bronze-like slabs looked as heavy as a mountain, far beyond what any mortal could push open.
’Won’t there be some hidden mechanism to open this?’ Lucian thought, cautiously reaching out to place his palm against the massive doors.
CREAKKK!
With a deep, grinding sound, the massive doors slowly swung inward on their own.
Lucian stood frozen for a second, mentally facepalming at his own overthinking.
Taking a breath, he stepped forward to cross the threshold—only for an invisible, crushing shockwave to blast outward from the doorway.
The force slammed into his chest like thunder, launching him backward through the air like a ragdoll.
"AGH?!"
Lucian crashed violently onto the flagstones.
A sharp, sickening crunch echoed through his chest as two ribs snapped, causing tremendous pain.
’Fuck! Was that a formation?!’
Before he could even scramble to his knees, a cold voice echoed inside his mind.
– How is this possible?
"AHHHH–!"
Lucian shrieked, clutching his head with both hands as the sheer spiritual weight of the voice slammed into his consciousness.
Blood instantly trickled from his ears, nostrils, and the corners of his eyes.
The entire secret realm trembled.
A radiant, pulsing sphere of pure spiritual light surged from the deepest palace at the mountain’s peak, tearing across the sky in a flash before descending to hover directly in front of Lucian.
The spiritual orb pulsed with overwhelming pressure as the voice rang out once more.
– Boy, tell me, how did you appear here?