“O Savior, please save this world.”
The words hung in his mind like thick incense smoke curling from an ancient temple brazier; ancient, heavy, and impossible to ignore. They lingered for a long moment, echoing softly through his thoughts like a half-remembered dream, before dissolving into the gentle rustle of leaves high overhead.
For a second, Adam thought he could still smell the faint scent of sandalwood and smoke that wasn’t really there.
Adam stirred.
His body felt… wrong. Lighter. Smaller. Delicate in a way that made his skin prickle with unease even before his brain fully woke up. Every movement sent strange new signals through nerves that didn’t quite match what he remembered.
He stretched languidly out of pure habit, chasing the ghost of his old streaming routine. His hand reached blindly for the thick microfiber blanket he always kept heated to exactly thirty-eight degrees, the one he’d burrow back into for “just five more minutes” before the hard labor of entertaining millions of viewers kicked in.
The familiar weight of exhaustion still clung to his limbs, the kind that came from pulling all-nighters in the VR pod.
Except his groping fingers didn’t brush soft, warm fabric.
They found something prickly. Damp. Alive.
‘Grass…?’
His eyes snapped open.
A perfect, endless blue sky stretched above him, framed by towering ancient trees whose leaves fanned out like massive emerald canopies. Golden lances of sunlight speared through the gaps, painting shifting patterns of light and shadow across the forest floor.
The air smelled rich and wild, deep moss, fresh pine resin, and something faintly metallic, like old blood mixed with untamed nature. A soft breeze whispered through the branches, carrying the distant call of birds and the faint creak of wood. It was the kind of forest that felt like it had been growing for a thousand years, untouched by human hands.
No apartment walls. No gentle hum of the high-end VR pod. No nutrient gel cradling his body like a second skin. No flickering Neo-Tokyo skyline visible through the reinforced window. No sound of traffic or distant construction or the ever-present drone of the city that had been his entire life.
Just forest. Endless, primordial, breathing forest.
“Where the fuck am I?” he muttered.
The voice that came out was soft, melodic, and unmistakably feminine.
Adam’s heart slammed against his ribs like a war drum. He looked down.
Small, pale hands. Delicate fingers with neat, unmanicured nails. Flowing black hanfu robes with blood-red embroidery that seemed to pulse faintly in the dappled light, the silk so fine it moved like liquid shadow against his, no, her, skin.
The fabric felt alive, almost too perfect, as if it were breathing with her. The red accents seemed to shimmer with their own inner light whenever a stray beam of sunlight touched them.
‘Unique-grade [Heavenly Demon Raiment]…?’
It was exactly the same robe his avatar had been wearing when the Abyssal Sovereign’s health bar finally hit zero. The same blood-red trim. The same weightless way it moved. The same faint pulse of Qi that felt like a second heartbeat.
His, her, pulse raced faster. Adam pinched the soft skin of her forearm. Hard.
Sharp, bright pain flared instantly, sharp enough to make her eyes water.
She pinched again, twisting viciously this time. Red bloomed under the pale skin, and a bruise began forming almost immediately, dark and real, the color spreading like ink in water.
‘Pain feedback in UBAO was never this sharp. Dreams don’t hurt like this. Hallucinations don’t leave bruises that actually form in real time.’
“SYSTEM!” she shouted, voice cracking with panic.
“LOG OUT!”
“CONTACT GAME MASTER!”
She tried every command she could remember, every emergency phrase the game had ever taught players.
Nothing. No blue UI box popping up in the corner of her vision. No floating text. No helpful AI voice in her ear telling her the logout was processing. Just the forest answering back with birdsong and wind and the distant rustle of something moving through the underbrush.
Adam sat back on her heels, forcing herself to breathe slow and deliberate, the same breathing pattern she always used right before attempting a no-hit boss run. In through the nose, hold for four counts, out through the mouth. Focus. Control.
‘Don’t panic. Panicking got you killed in raids. Panicking got you wiped.’
She scratched a deep, deliberate X into the soft dirt with one fingernail, marking the spot clearly. Then she counted to sixty, eyes locked on the mark the entire time, watching a small beetle crawl across one of the lines.
It didn’t vanish.
She did it again. And again. Fifteen full minutes of methodical, almost obsessive testing. Scratching more marks in different patterns. Counting longer each time. Watching ants crawl over the lines she’d drawn, watching a tiny spider rebuild its web between two blades of grass.
Every detail stayed crisp and permanent. The grass under her palms was cool and slightly dewy, the individual blades pressing into her skin.
The sunlight warmed her skin in a way no VR system had ever managed to replicate, the subtle itch of blades against her bare ankles, the faint shift of air currents on her face, the distant rustle of small animals in the underbrush, the way the light changed as clouds moved overhead.
By the fifteenth mark, cold certainty settled deep into her bones like winter frost.
This was real.
She had either been kidnapped into the most advanced full-dive rig in human history, some Matrix-level nightmare that somehow simulated pain and smell and the exact texture of dirt under fingernails, or…
She had been fucking isekai’d.
A wild, slightly hysterical laugh burst out of her mouth. It echoed through the trees and sent a flock of jade-plumed birds exploding into the sky in a burst of color, their wings flashing in the sunlight like living jewels.
“Of course,” she wheezed, wiping at her eyes even as more laughter bubbled up. “Of course this happens to me.”
“I finally pull off the world-first no-hit solo clear on the Abyssal Sovereign, I refuse to log out during a magnitude-eight earthquake, and the universe decides to reward me with a genuine truck-kun special.”
“Classic. Just… classic. The ultimate speedrun reward. Except there’s no reset button this time.”
She stood up slowly, testing the new body’s balance. Everything felt off at first, the center of gravity was completely different, lower and more fluid, like she was built for speed and grace.
She looked down again and noticed something that definitely shouldn’t have been there. Small but unmistakably real breasts shifted with every breath, the hanfu fabric brushing against them in a way that sent strange new signals to her brain.
Long black hair in a low ponytail brushed the sensitive spot between her shoulder blades, sending tiny shivers down her spine every time the wind moved it. The hanfu sleeves fluttered dramatically even in the gentlest breeze, like they had a mind of their own, the silk cool and smooth against her arms.
Adam had spent over five years living as Ming Xuan Ji inside UBAO. She had designed every single detail herself, the sharp cheekbones, the deep black eyes that seemed to swallow light, the faint demonic patterns that would bloom across her skin whenever Qi surged through the meridians.
In recent years, she had spent more waking hours as Ming Xuan Ji than as Adam. The avatar had become more real than the person behind the screen.
Now they were the same person?
‘Well,’ she thought, rolling the new pronouns around in her head like tasting a strange new wine, ‘guess I should say goodbye to the old body and the old gender. Adam’s dead. Long live Ming Xuan Ji! Or… whatever the hell I am now.’
Anyway, gender was the least of her problems right now. Survival came first. Everything else could wait until she wasn’t in the middle of a primordial forest with no idea where she was or how she got here.
She tried every trick she knew to summon the system interface or status window, mental commands, voice triggers, even waving her hands in the old gesture patterns from the game that used to bring up menus.
Nothing worked. The world stayed stubbornly, beautifully real. No HUD. No health bar. No minimap. Just trees and sky and the sound of her own breathing.
Now that the game had become reality, maybe the rules had changed too. She closed her eyes and dropped into a familiar meditation stance, using the limited knowledge she’d picked up from in-game lore and real-world books on the side.
She controlled her breathing carefully, focusing inward, reaching deep into the strange new sensations in her body.
It was surprisingly easy. Almost effortless.
She felt something inside her, a tiny, flickering ember of warmth right below her navel. In the game it would have been called the Dantian. Here it was real, small but undeniably present, pulsing gently like a newborn star trying to find its rhythm. She could feel the warmth spreading through her meridians in thin, tentative threads, like roots searching for water.
She didn’t know how to feel about this new organ. It should have felt foreign and strange, like having an extra heart she didn’t ask for, but instead it felt… natural. Like it had always been part of her, waiting patiently to be noticed. Like coming home to a room she’d forgotten existed.
Setting the Dantian aside for a moment, she decided to test something she already knew by heart.
She dropped into the exact stance for [Frost-Devouring Demon Palm], weight on the back leg, right hand chambered at her hip, Qi pathways lighting up in perfect sequence inside her body like old muscle memory waking up. She pushed.
A pathetic little puff of white frost escaped her palm and melted into nothing before it even reached the ground, dissipating into the warm air like it had never been there.
Ming Xuan Ji barked out a short laugh. “A level one start. Of fucking course. They really dropped me in at the bottom with nothing but the clothes on my back. Classic isekai move.”
The knowledge was all still there. Every forbidden technique, every secret art of the Heavenly Demon path, she remembered them perfectly. Muscle memory from tens of thousands of hours of practice was etched into her very soul.
In this new body she could feel the techniques waiting, ready, like old friends she hadn’t seen in years. She just didn’t have the raw Qi or physical foundation to execute most of them yet. It was like having a library of nuclear codes but only a single AA battery to power the launch system.
Still, controlling the new body felt surprisingly easy. Natural. Maybe even easier than her old one had ever been, and definitely smoother than the artificial avatar in the game.
‘How bizarre,’ she thought with a small grin. ‘It’s like the body was made for me. Or I was made for the body. Either way, at least I’m not tripping over my own feet.’
It was good to know she wouldn’t have to relearn every skill from scratch. She just needed to build up her power. One step at a time. One monster at a time. One level at a time.
Her gaze dropped to her left hand.
There it was, a matte black ring with a single crimson rune glowing faintly on its surface, the rune pulsing in time with her heartbeat like it was alive and happy to see her.
[Void Storage Ring]. One of the ultra-rare New Game Plus rewards. The kind of item you could only earn by beating the entire game on the highest difficulty and starting over with nothing. The ultimate flex item for people who had already conquered everything.
‘Damn… don’t tell me it really is what I think it is. Please let this work. Please let something work.’
She focused, reached inward with her mind the way she used to in the game, and the white, endless storage space unfolded in her perception, vast, pristine, and completely empty, like a blank canvas waiting for her to fill it with the corpses of her enemies.
She picked up a nearby stick, rough bark and all, roughly the length of her forearm, and willed it inside with a mental command.
It vanished with a soft ripple of air, like it had never been there.
She summoned it back.
The stick reappeared instantly in her hand, exactly as it had been, down to the same beetle that had been crawling on it.
A slow, savage grin spread across her face.
“Nice. At least one thing still works the way it’s supposed to.”
One final test.
Ming Xuan Ji exhaled slowly, then threaded a thin strand of Qi from her tiny Dantian. Even though the energy felt new and unfamiliar, controlling it was surprisingly intuitive, like the body already knew what to do.
She moved it carefully through her meridians before feeling a gentle nudge urging her to settle the flow into her eyes, the way the Divine Eye skill description had always said.
The world exploded into color and information.
[Divine Eye of Veritas] activated flawlessly, the ultimate reward for clearing the Abyssal Sovereign on Nightmare difficulty, one of the few things that could carry over into New Game Plus.
The world lit up like someone had turned on the developer console and enabled every visual effect at once.
Threads of spiritual energy wove through everything around her. Trees pulsed with vibrant green wood-aspect Qi, their life force flowing upward through the trunks like glowing rivers.
The soil beneath her feet thrummed with deep, steady earth energy, ancient and patient. Sunlight carried faint traces of pure Yang, warm and invigorating. Even the air shimmered with dense ambient spiritual particles, far thicker than anything she’d ever seen in UBAO’s beginner zones, like the whole world was breathing magic.
And thirty meters to her left, hidden in the thick underbrush…
A massive predator.
Blue-backed tiger. Sleek black fur striped with glowing azure lines that pulsed with their own inner light. Easily two meters tall at the shoulder. Muscles like steel cables rippling under its hide.
Mid-low tier magical beast, if she had to guess, way beyond what any “level one” character should be facing. Its Qi signature was a steady, predatory hum that made the air around it feel heavier.
It thought it was perfectly hidden, its breathing slow and controlled, its body perfectly still except for the occasional twitch of its tail.
It was very, very wrong.
The tiger exploded out of the bushes in a blur of claws and fangs, a roar like grinding boulders shaking the air and sending birds fleeing from the canopy.
Ming Xuan Ji was already moving.
She twisted at the waist with perfect timing, her new body responding before her brain even finished processing the threat. The tiger’s jaws snapped shut on empty air where her head had been a split-second earlier, the sound of its teeth clicking together loud in the sudden silence.
The beast landed with a heavy thud that vibrated through the ground, golden eyes narrowing in confusion as it tried to understand how its prey had moved so fast.
‘Too slow…’ she noted clinically, even as adrenaline sang through her veins like liquid fire.
‘Especially for New Game Plus standards. In NG+ everything should be stronger and faster, yet this thing feels slower than base-game mobs. Or is it just my imagination? Or… am I just that much better now that I’m not limited by the pod neural network?’
The tiger roared again and lunged a second time, claws extended, mouth open wide enough to swallow her head whole.
This time she met it halfway, taking the initiative, her feet moving before she consciously decided to move.
[Demonic Echo].
Her palm struck upward beneath its jaw in a deceptively light blow, the kind of strike that would have done almost nothing in a normal fight.
The physical impact from her small hand against two tons of apex predator was laughably weak, but the vibration Qi that followed was not. The energy shot upward through the tiger’s skull like a shockwave looking for a place to break.
A muffled boom erupted deep inside the tiger’s skull, the sound of something rupturing from the inside out.
Blood sprayed from its eyes, ears, nostrils, and mouth in a gruesome fountain, painting the leaves around them red. The massive body crashed to the ground like a felled ancient tree, twitched once, and lay still, its eyes already glazing over.
Ming Xuan Ji landed lightly beside the corpse, breathing only slightly elevated, her heart pounding with a mixture of terror and exhilaration.
With [Divine Eye of Veritas] still active, she watched the most beautiful sight she had seen since waking up.
Threads of refined golden essence unraveled from the tiger’s body like smoke from a dying fire and flowed straight into her Dantian like she was a living black hole.
The Heavenly Demon Scripture activated on instinct, devouring, converting, and strengthening everything it touched, turning death into power.
Her Dantian swelled noticeably, the warmth inside her growing stronger. Bones creaked pleasantly as they densified, becoming denser and stronger than any human bone had a right to be.
Muscles tightened and refined themselves into something far beyond normal human limits, the fibers reorganizing themselves in ways she could feel but not quite understand. Meridians widened by a measurable fraction, the pathways for Qi growing smoother and more efficient.
‘I leveled up?’
All of it achieved in under ten seconds. One fight. One kill. One step closer to whatever she was supposed to become in this world.
Ming Xuan Ji stared at her faintly glowing palms, then at the dead tiger, then burst into bright, wild laughter that echoed through the ancient forest and sent more birds fleeing.
“Holy shit. Holy shit. I’m going to break this world in half. They dropped me in with nothing and I already killed something that should have eaten me. This is actually broken. This is actually fucking broken.”
She wiped tears from her eyes, whether from laughter or the sheer overwhelming absurdity of the situation, she wasn’t even sure.
She crouched beside the massive carcass, running one hand along the still-warm fur.
Three meters of prime magical beast. The pelt alone would probably be worth a small fortune back in any civilized settlement, if she could find one.
The core would be perfect for forging, alchemy, or setting up formation arrays. Fangs and claws could later be turned into deadly weapons, sold, or kept as trophies. Everything had value now. Everything was a resource.
With a thought, she sent the entire thing into her Void Storage Ring. It vanished with a faint ripple of spatial energy, the air where it had been shimmering for a moment before settling.
Then she stood up, brushed a stray leaf from her hanfu, and turned her face toward the distant sound of running water, just audible through the trees, calling to her like a promise of something normal in this insane new reality.
The robes fluttered behind her like living shadows, the red accents catching the light.
Somewhere out there was the person, or thing, that had called her “Savior.”
Somewhere out there were enemies, sects, mage towers, immortals, and gods waiting to be met, waiting to try and kill her or recruit her or use her.
Ming Xuan Ji’s smile was sharp enough to cut jade.
“Let’s go find out what kind of New Game Plus this really is.”
She still didn’t know whether this world was actually UBAO brought to life or something entirely new, but right now it didn’t matter.
The thrill of a fresh run was already surging through her veins, the same electric excitement she used to feel every time the game dropped a major expansion and she got to start over with new mechanics to break.
Only this time there were no wikis, no patch notes, and definitely no respawn button if she fucked up.
Just her, her cheats, and whatever this world wanted to throw at her next.
She started walking toward the sound of water, her steps light, her mind already racing with possibilities.
The stream was exactly where her ears had placed it, a clear, quick-flowing ribbon of water tumbling playfully over smooth, rounded stones that had been polished by centuries of flow.
Sunlight danced across its surface like a thousand scattered diamonds, glittering and shifting with every ripple and eddy. Tiny silver and gold fish darted through the shallows, their scales flashing like living jewels as they fled from her shadow.
The air here smelled even fresher, carrying the crisp, mineral tang of cold mountain water mixed with the sweet earthiness of wet moss along the banks and the faint scent of something sweet she couldn’t quite identify.
Ming Xuan Ji knelt gracefully at the water’s edge, the hem of her black hanfu brushing the damp grass. She cupped her small hands and scooped up a handful of the icy liquid.
It was freezing, real, biting cold that made her gasp sharply as it hit her skin and sent a jolt straight through her system, waking up nerves she didn’t even know were asleep.
She drank deeply anyway, letting the shock wake every nerve in her body. The water tasted pure and fresh, nothing like the filtered stuff back in her old apartment or the generic potions from UBAO’s vendor stalls. It shocked her fully awake, clearing the last lingering haze from her mind and leaving her feeling sharp and present in a way she hadn’t felt in years.
Then she leaned forward just a little more and looked at her reflection in the calm pool between two rocks, the surface still enough to act like a mirror.
The face staring back at her was perfect. Exactly as she had designed it years ago: sharp, elegant cheekbones that could cut glass, jet-black eyes that seemed to devour even the sunlight itself, lips a shade too red for any ordinary human, like they were stained with something that wasn’t quite blood.
Long hair like spilled ink framed it all, the low ponytail slightly messy from the fight and the trek but still somehow dramatic, strands escaping to frame her face in ways that looked intentional.
Skin like flawless jade, smooth and unblemished except for the faint bruise she’d given herself earlier. Beautiful in that cold, deadly, masterfully forged sword kind of way, elegant, sharp, and utterly dangerous. The kind of face that belonged on a villainess or a final boss, not a confused isekai protagonist.
‘Hello, gorgeous,’ she told the reflection silently, a small smirk tugging at her lips.
‘Looks like we’re stuck together now. Try not to die immediately, yeah? I just got here. I’d like to at least see what this world has to offer before something eats me.’
The reflection smirked right back at her.
‘Good, we are already on the same page.’
At least one thing in this insane situation felt right.
She sat back on her heels for a moment, letting the gentle sounds of the forest and the stream wash over her. The hanfu robes felt as light and perfect as ever against her skin, self-cleaning, temperature-regulating, indestructible. The fabric didn’t even feel damp where it had touched the grass.
Artifact perks were already proving their worth. No need for anything else right now. The initial shock of the new body had settled into something almost comfortable, like putting on a favorite jacket you’d forgotten you owned.
She still didn’t fully understand everything, but she was done overthinking the small stuff. Survival first. Existential crisis later.
With her mind starting to clear, Ming Xuan Ji moved a short distance away from the water and found a flat, sun-warmed boulder that looked like it had been placed there specifically for her.
She settled cross-legged on it, palms resting lightly on her knees, and began cycling her Qi properly for the first time in this world. Slow, steady breaths. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Focus inward. Let the world fall away.
Almost immediately, a strange and unfamiliar surge of knowledge surfaced in her mind, like a hidden scroll unfurling all at once inside her head, the knowledge pouring in faster than she could process it.
The Heavenly Demon Scripture. It was foreign, ancient, and far deeper than anything the game had ever shown her.
In UBAO, meditation had been nothing more than a simple way to speed up Qi recovery outside of combat, a mechanic you automatically did and waited for.
Here, it felt like something alive, something that went way beyond basic recovery.
The scripture guided her gently, showing her exactly how to draw in the ambient spiritual energy around her, refine it through her meridians, and weave it into her own pathways, as if she were building something.
She felt a faint chill run down her spine as the knowledge settled in. Having completely new memories and techniques appear out of nowhere made her pause, her breath catching for a moment.
‘What if whatever entity had brought her here could implant this kind of power… could it have messed with everything else too?
Were her memories of Adam, of streaming, of the earthquake, of her entire life, real? Or had she been created from scratch, with false memories planted like some elaborate game character designed to think it was human?’
Her heart spiked hard for a second, racing with the worst-case thoughts. What if she wasn’t even the real Adam anymore? What if this was all some elaborate simulation or a brand-new soul with borrowed memories and a borrowed name?
But the panic disappeared as quickly as it had come, burned away by the warmth still spreading through her Dantian.
She gave up thinking about it entirely. No matter what had actually happened, she could only live in the present.
Last Thursdayism was a fun little philosophical rabbit hole to debate on late-night streams with chat, but applying it to real life right now would just leave her helpless and frozen.
Basically useless. She had a body. She had power. She had cheats. That was enough to start with.
“Sigh… Deep breath, Adam, wait, damn it. Ming Xuan Ji,” she corrected herself out loud with a small chuckle.
“Get it together. You’re not going to solve the nature of reality by sitting here having an existential crisis. Save that for when you’re not in the middle of the woods with no food and no idea where the nearest town is.”
She shrugged it off and moved forward with her new life. Being overly dramatic or philosophical wasn’t going to help her survive. Action would.
All she knew for sure was that this was a second chance, a brand-new run with insane starting advantages.
She was satisfied with that. Proud, even, when she thought back on everything she’d sacrificed in her old world, the friendships that had faded, the family she barely talked to anymore, the health she’d neglected, the years she’d spent chasing pixels instead of real connections.
Now she would live this life to the fullest. She would make it count. She would become something legendary.
With that settled, she dove back into the Heavenly Demon Scripture. Using the fresh knowledge, she guided her Qi through her body in smooth, deliberate cycles, feeling it strengthen her meridians, nourish her bones, and refine her muscles with every pass.
The energy moved differently here than it had in the game. It felt thicker, more alive, like it wanted to be used. `
Then she extended her senses outward, pulling in the ambient spiritual energy from the world around her. It rushed toward her like iron filings to a powerful magnet, effortless and almost intoxicating in its intensity, the air itself seeming to bend toward her.
The feeling of pure power flooding into her Dantian was addictive, drop by drop at first, then faster, filling her up until it brimmed and overflowed with warmth that spread through her entire body.
Ten breaths. Twenty. A hundred.
A soft, imaginary chime echoed in her mind, like a ghost of the old game sound effects, and she felt her Qi reserves swell noticeably thanks to the tiger she’d taken down earlier, the energy from its death still settling into her.
She opened her eyes and activated [Divine Eye of Veritas] again, the world shifting into that beautiful overlay of glowing threads.
The world looked even richer now. She could see individual particles of spiritual energy dancing lazily in the air like fireflies made of light. She could trace the exact flow of Qi through every leaf, every stone, every blade of grass, watching the energy move in patterns that were almost hypnotic.
Far in the distance she sensed stronger signatures, probably other beasts, or maybe low-level cultivators, warriors, or mages going about their business. And beneath it all, like a vast, slow-moving underground river, she felt the planet’s ley lines pulsing with deep, ancient power, the heartbeat of the world itself.
Her gaze dropped to a small cluster of herbs growing half-hidden beneath a nearby fern, their leaves glowing with a soft green light that only her Divine Eye could see.
[Jade Spirit Grass]. Low-tier to mid-low-tier, but still useful. Worth a decent amount of spirit stones for any newbie cultivator, especially in a place like this. The kind of herb that would have been vendor trash in endgame but was actually valuable when you were starting from nothing.
She plucked the herbs carefully, not wasting a single leaf, her fingers gentle as she harvested them.
‘No time for proper alchemy right now, turning them into pills would give a much higher yield, sure, but immediate survival came first.’
She crushed the leaves in her palm and absorbed the energy directly, the way the Heavenly Demon Scripture had shown her.
The rush hit her instantly. Cool, refreshing fire flooded her meridians. Her Dantian spun faster, growing bigger and denser, not just in raw quantity but in quality too. Bones sang pleasantly as they absorbed the essence.
It wasn’t quite the massive boost the tiger had given her, but it was still plenty, enough to feel the difference immediately, like drinking a strong cup of coffee after being half-asleep.
The bliss of leveling up lasted only a few short seconds, but it was divine. Absolutely addictive. Ming Xuan Ji leaned back on her hands and laughed brightly at the open sky above, the sound bright and wild and full of pure joy, the kind of laugh she hadn’t let out in years in the real world.
In UBAO, you always started with a basic class. As you leveled up and grew stronger, you’d eventually unlock advanced classes that gave you more power and specialized abilities.
Most of them were just upgrades of the starting class with a tighter focus, like how Paladin was an advanced option for Priest that unlocked automatically at certain levels, while something like Saint required a long, painful chain of hidden quests that most players never finished.
Legendary classes? Those only showed up when you were already at a very high level, usually after hundreds of hours of grinding and luck.
But what if you could access a legendary class like Heavenly Demon right from level one?
The advantages were insane. Hunting monsters way above your level became easy and rapid. No wasted time on long quest chains to unlock the class. No grinding basic skills for hundreds of hours just to reach the good stuff.
This one cheat alone would have been enough to make her completely overpowered in the game. In this world? It might actually make her a walking natural disaster.
And she had three more on top of it.
[Divine Eye of Veritas] let her see through hidden strengths, illusions, stealth techniques, and anything else normal eyes would miss. In the game it had been incredibly convenient for spotting traps and ambushes in new game plus. Here in reality? It was a straight-up survival cheat code, the kind of thing that turned deadly ambushes into easy prey.
Then there was her Void Storage Ring. Normal spatial rings could hold maybe the size of a small house at best, and even that was considered luxury. Hers could probably store an entire castle with room to spare, maybe even a small mountain if she pushed it. The possibilities were endless.
And finally, the [Heavenly Demon Raiment] itself, unique-grade artifact that scaled its defensive power with the user’s Qi, boosted every stat that scaled with level, and came packed with auto-cleaning, temperature control, and total indestructibility.
The effects were small while she was still low-level, but as she grew stronger, so would the robes. They’d turn into an absolute monster of an item, the kind of thing that would make other cultivators weep with envy.
“This is ridiculous,” she said aloud, her voice carrying clearly through the quiet trees. A savage grin spread across her face, the kind of grin that would have made chat spam “FIST GOD” in all caps.
“With these cheats, I can grow stronger ridiculously fast! I don’t need to play fair. I don’t need to follow the rules. I can just… break everything.”
The words tasted like destiny on her tongue, sweet and dangerous at the same time.
She stood up smoothly, the black hanfu robes settling around her like living raven wings, perfect and pristine as always.
No dirt, no wrinkles, no lingering dampness from the grass. Artifact perks really were lovely. She was starting to understand why people in xianxia stories treated their equipment like sacred treasures.
Time to find more monsters.
Time to start climbing the ranks for real.
Time to show this world exactly what happened when you dropped one of the top players from UBAO into it with actual, functioning cheats and nothing left to lose.
Ming Xuan Ji leaped.
She shot twenty meters straight up in a single bound, her new body moving like it had been waiting its whole life for this moment, landing lightly on a thick tree branch that barely even shook under her weight. Another leap carried her to the next branch, then the next, her movements growing smoother with every step.
Within moments she was skimming across the treetops, black hair streaming behind her like a banner, the forest canopy blurring beneath her feet. She started slow at first, testing her limits, feeling the wind against her face and the way her body responded to every command. Then faster with every single step, pushing herself, seeing how far she could go.
Her new body responded perfectly, fluid, instinctive, even easier to control than her old VR avatar had ever been. It felt like she had been born and raised with this body, not dropped into it an hour ago. Like it was hers in a way the old Adam body had never quite been.
The forest stretched out endlessly in every direction, an ocean of green that seemed to go on forever. But she noticed in the distance, spiritual energy in the air grew noticeably denser, thicker, more alive. Stronger signatures pulsed in that direction, like beacons calling to her.
More monsters, probably. Maybe even something bigger. Maybe even people.
Ming Xuan Ji’s grin widened, a flash of sharp fangs catching the sunlight.
“World,” she whispered to the wind rushing past her ears, voice full of pure, unrestrained excitement, “are you ready for me?”
She leaped again, higher this time, the wind whipping through her hair and robes, and for the first time since waking up, she felt something close to joy.