The green Hinlan wood forest stretched endlessly in every direction, a vast, undulating sea of primordial foliage. It was a living, breathing ocean of timber, broken only by the occasional spear of golden morning sunlight that managed to slip through the incredibly dense, overlapping canopy high above.
Rather than taking the winding, flat, and heavily patrolled merchant roads that snaked around the Territories, Ming Xuan Ji had opted to travel as the crow flies. She refused the beaten path, choosing instead to dive straight into the deep woods straight toward her destination.
Towering ancient trees, with trunks as wide as city watchtowers and sprawling branches that formed a natural, interlocking cathedral, dominated the landscape. Their broad leaves rustled softly in the gentle, cool breeze, carrying the rich, heavy, earthy scent of ancient moss, damp soil, and the sweet fragrance of wild orchids hidden deep in the undergrowth.
High above, birds with brilliant, iridescent plumage called to one another in sharp, melodic bursts. Every now and then, the distant, bone-rattling roar of some massive territorial predator echoed through the deep woods, serving as a constant, sobering reminder that this wilderness was very much alive and untamed.
A few weeks earlier, this kind of unbroken, suffocating wilderness would have severely grated on her nerves. Back then, the silence had felt oppressive, the endless walls of green a meticulously designed maze meant to swallow her whole.
Now, however, she moved through the high branches with an absolute, cold certainty and a quiet kind of enjoyment she hadn’t expected to find in this world so soon.
A finely drawn, heavily detailed parchment map rested safely inside her [Void Storage Ring], its inked lines, topography, and marked trade routes a parting gift from Marquess Drelion Vael. Alongside it, hanging from her crimson sash by a simple silken cord, was a beautifully crafted brass compass enchanted to point toward the kingdom's leylines. Its glowing needle remained perfectly steady, even when the colossal trees blotted out the sky entirely.
The Marquess had offered her far more than just maps and navigational tools, of course.
Before her departure, Drelion had practically begged her to take one of his prized mounts: a sleek, terrifyingly beautiful hybrid beast known as a Storm-Scale Drakehorse, along with an opulent, well-sprung carriage built for extreme long-distance comfort.
She had refused both with polite, but absolute, firmness.
Her martial arts traversal technique (Qinggong) was vastly superior. It was faster, cleaner, and required absolutely no feeding, grooming, or mucking out foul-smelling stalls. The very thought of spending her evenings coaxing a stubborn, carnivorous lightning-horse into cooperation made her inwardly shudder.
As her body went on a serene, flawless autopilot, gracefully bounding across gaps of fifty feet with a single, gentle push of her toes, her mind began to wander.
Meeting Marquess Vael and Guildmaster Elandor had been a massive blessing indeed. The time spent in Theloca’s civilization had allowed her to learn a wealth of information about the actual, functional mechanics of this reality.
As she had expected, this world was not the game world.
Yet, the irony was not lost on her: despite how her own body worked almost exactly the same way it would in Unlimited Blade Art Online, the native people of this world did not.
She had been incredibly curious about how the people here actually grew stronger, how they hunted monsters, and how they progressed through the power ranks.
Through her conversations, she had learned that there were essentially three pillars to growing stronger in this world.
The absolute most important, and the most tedious, was practice. The skills required to control the physical body, the intricate pathways of Mana for a mage, or the dense meridians of Qi for a swordsman, were things a person had to train their entire life.
They utilized forms and breathing techniques that had been developed, refined, and passed down for centuries. Their internal Mana or Qi capacities grew stronger and denser the more they were repeatedly exhausted and replenished. Very similar to how human muscle fibers tore and rebuilt themselves back in her old world on Earth.
The second pillar of progression was practical use. Whether it was hunting monsters in the deep woods or fighting other people in bloody skirmishes, a native grew stronger in a completely different way through the crucible of life-or-death battles. Pushing their absolute limits under extreme adrenaline forced breakthroughs that safe, repetitive courtyard practice simply could not replicate.
Lastly, there was progression through external aids. Potions brewed by master alchemists, legendary elixirs, or the direct refinement of monster cores.
It seemed that the people in this world had a similar capacity for growth to hers, but only in those three pillars.
Unlike her, where her Heavenly Demon Scripture allowed her to effortlessly devour and absorb a monster's essence the absolute second she killed it. The people of this world absolutely could not do that. Merely killing a monster didn't automatically reward them with "experience points" or instantly make them stronger. The combat experience and the act of pushing their physical limits did.
This functional difference also solved a lingering question she had harbored about her own abilities.
One might wonder: if she could absorb energy, why hadn't she just eaten or absorbed the thousands of monster cores she had harvested over the past three months?
The answer was simple and somewhat frustrating. The raw energy she received from manually absorbing a generic monster core just wasn't very much.
Weirdly enough, she operated under the same biological restrictions as the natives when it came to external aids. To grow her Dantian using a core, she needed a compatible core.
They couldn't just randomly absorb any and all monster cores they found. The core had to fit their specific bodily constitution and elemental affinity perfectly.
Hers was intimately, fundamentally tied to absolute Yin and Yang. If she tried to absorb a wind-aspected griffin core or an earth-aspected golem core, it would give her close to nothing, rejecting her meridians entirely.
So, she just hoarded all the cores in her spatial ring for now. Selling them and trading them for wealth, information, and specific resources was a vastly more worthy use of her time.
If she needed to grow stronger, she just had to hunt more monsters in the deep dungeon to trigger her automatic essence absorption. She might as well heavily exploit the one overpowered ability that was entirely unique to her.
That said, analyzing these mechanics had led her to another logical question: wouldn't the ultra-rich nobility be virtually unstoppable, god-like beings, thanks to their bottomless wealth and their ability to simply buy or trade for highly compatible monster cores and elixirs?
Unfortunately for the nobles, there was a strict, fatal limit to how much power one could gain purely from monster cores. It was mostly limited by the people's own physical vessel.
Without enough grueling physical conditioning and years of agonizing meridian training, the human body would remain weak. A weak vessel absolutely could not hold a massive influx of great power.
If a pampered, untrained merchant prince tried to consume an S-tier core, they wouldn't level up; they would literally explode into a shower of blood and bone fragments.
It was a simple, brutal law of physics, but it still meant that the higher-ups in this world were mostly vastly more powerful than the average citizen.
They had the extra resources. They had the purest cores. They had the gold to buy the best elixirs, access to the highest-tier techniques locked away in family vaults, and above all else, they had free time.
It took a massive, unbelievable amount of time to practice and properly condition the body. Having an army of servants handle the mundane daily chores such as cooking, cleaning, and maintaining the estate freed the nobles to spend up to ten hours a day doing nothing but learning and practicing their martial or magical arts.
A peasant farmer had to plow a field for hours to survive, leaving perhaps one or two exhausted hours for practice.
On top of all the other advantages, it was no wonder the strong grew stronger, and the rich grew richer.
That said, it didn't mean there was absolutely no way for a normal citizen to rise up. The vast majority of the Adventurer’s Guilds were populated by men and women coming from entirely common backgrounds.
Their rate of growth was severely below the average of the sponsored nobles, relying entirely on the brutal, high-mortality rate of the second pillar: practical, life-or-death monster hunting. But there was always an exception. Every generation, someone truly extraordinary rose from the mud.
And those rare, unparalleled individuals were the bright beacons of light that kept the common people dreaming. They were the living proof that maybe, just maybe, one day they too could be one of the exceptional ones, even though reality was most often a harsh, unforgiving meat grinder.
Xuan Ji smiled faintly to herself as she bounded across the canopy, her robes rippling like dark water.
*‘At this pace, using only twenty percent of my Qi output, the imperial capital of Elyndria is less than a day away if I actually push it,’* she calculated mentally, analyzing her stamina drain.
*‘Two or three days if I feel like dawdling and actually enjoying the scenery for once and maybe visit a town or two.’*
And dawdling did have a surprisingly strong appeal. She was in no desperate hurry.
The legendary Grand Abyss Dungeon located beneath Elyndria would still be waiting for her whenever she chose to arrive. Its infamous subterranean depths, layered boss mechanics, and ancient secrets were perfectly ready to test her absolute limits and feed the growth of her power.
Rushing headlong into the unknown without preparation had its place in casual runs, but measured, calculated pacing was how you survived hardcore mode. She had learned that lesson the hard way in *Unlimited Blade Art Online*, and she was applying it meticulously here.
In the meantime, the smaller settlements, trading posts, and waystations along the Neutral Territories might offer something much rarer and more immediately satisfying than raw monster cores or glowing cultivation resources.
New flavors.
Without the internet, live streaming, the endless scroll of social media notifications, or her massive community chat to fill her idle hours, Xuan Ji had been forced to invent her own offline entertainment.
Food had quickly and aggressively become an obvious candidate.
She had already begun meticulously cataloging every new dish she encountered in a thick, leather-bound journal.
The smoky, melt-in-your-mouth richness of the Vael estate’s glazed forest venison still lingered in her memory, perfectly complemented by whatever crushed, spicy herbs the local dwarven cooks had used.
The bright, zesty citrus notes in a delicate white-fish sauce that Lira, the catgirl maid, had served her one evening had been an absolute revelation, light, refreshing, and a stark contrast to the heavy, bland, charred beast meat she had endured for three months.
In the capital, she fully intended to track down a true master chef. Someone whose culinary skills bordered on the arcane, and she would bribe, threaten, or pay them to teach her their secrets.
Cooking, when analyzed and done properly, was really just another form of martial refinement and control.
It required absolute precision in timing, perfect elemental temperature management, and the alchemical transformation of raw, unremarkable ingredients into something vastly greater than the sum of its parts.
It appealed heavily to the exact same obsessive part of her brain that enjoyed frame-perfect parries, mastering new combo techniques, and min-maxing her character build.
*‘Sounds like a fun, low-stakes side quest,’* she thought, letting out a small, musical laugh that was instantly swallowed by the vast forest.
The other new habit she had developed was simpler, yet strangely anchoring in its own way.
Each evening, when she found a suitable spot to rest, she took out the heavy journal and a small supply of enchanted, self-replenishing ink. Page after page was now filled with her neat, economical, and perfectly straight script.
Sometimes, she wrote about her fading memories of Earth. She documented the details of her final stream, the overwhelming magnitude-eight earthquake that had shattered her apartment, and the strange, desperate voice that had called her "Savior" in the dark.
Other times, she chronicled the mechanics of this new reality in slow, deliberate, analytical detail. She sketched the anatomy of the monsters she had hunted, diagramming their weak points.
She wrote lengthy essays on the techniques she had refined against them, noting the subtle differences between digital game physics and actual, real-world Qi flow. She documented small, profound insights into meridian harmony that she discovered through trial and error.
Sometimes, she caught herself lingering over a description of a sunset the exact same way she used to linger over reading developer patch notes, trying desperately to capture the exact, fleeting feeling of a martial technique finally clicking into place, or the way golden sunlight filtered through the morning mist after a heavy rain. It was her way of proving to herself that she was still human, still Adam and Ming Xuan Ji, both identities that she had accepted.
The wind tugged playfully at her raven hair as she continued her journey, moving from branch to branch in long, gravity-defying arcs. For the first time since being violently ripped from her gaming pod, she felt something incredibly close to true contentment.
It wasn't the massive, adrenaline-fueled dopamine hit of defeating a strong boss, but rather the quieter, profound peace of simply moving forward on her own absolute terms.
Around midday, she paused.
She landed weightlessly atop a particularly massive ironwood tree whose crown rose high above its neighbors, granting her a breathtaking, sweeping view across the rolling, forested hills draped in endless green.
This had become a standard tactical habit: stop, survey the land ahead, analyze the ambient energy, and plan the next ten miles of travel.
"Veritas," she whispered softly.
Behind her dark eyes, the [Divine Eye of Veritas] flared to life. The physical world instantly shifted, peeling back the mundane layers of reality to reveal the glowing threads, currents, and rivers of visible energy that made up the world.
Most of the monsters in this outer stretch of the forest registered as faint, dull flickers at best. They were too weak, or too far away, to be worth the effort of descending to harvest. Absorbing their weak essence would add absolutely nothing meaningful to her Dantian, and she had zero interest in pointless, low-level slaughter just for the sake of it.
She was about to deactivate the skill and continue moving when something wildly anomalous caught her attention. It hooked her gaze and flatly refused to let go.
Normally, ambient Qi and elemental mana in a healthy, ancient forest ebbed and flowed in gentle, natural, harmonious gradients.
Higher concentrations naturally gathered around subterranean earth veins, crystal deposits, or hidden spirit springs, drawing stronger beasts that aggressively basked in the richness the way dragons were said to hoard gold.
The flow here in the Neutral Territories should have been steady, dispersed, and utterly unremarkable.
But the pattern was violently broken in one specific place.
Everywhere else in her field of vision, the energy felt thin, almost barren in comparison to the deep wilds of Zel’Mora. That explained the scarcity of worthwhile prey.
Yet, about three miles to the north, one specific, rocky hill blazed in her enhanced sight like a blinding, lone signal fire burning in the dead of night. It was an intense, massive, and completely isolated spike of mana.
It was sharp, violently unnatural, and deeply contained rather than flowing freely into the earth. It pulsed with a heavy, sickening rhythm that felt fundamentally wrong, like a heart that had been forced into an unnatural, dying cadence.
Curiosity hooked her immediately, sharp and insistent.
*‘That’s artificial,’* Xuan Ji analyzed, her eyes narrowing as she zoomed in her vision. *‘Heavily, deliberately contained. Someone, or something, went to an absurd amount of trouble to hide a massive concentration of mana out here in the absolute middle of nowhere.’*
She altered her course without a second of hesitation.
*Qinggong* carried her forward, her speed exponentially increasing. Though true, sustained flight still remained just beyond her current cultivation realm, she moved faster than the fastest sports car from her old life. She was a blur of black and red, tearing through the canopy, her body responding to the dense terrain as naturally as breathing. The forest blurred beneath her in rapid streaks.
As she neared the rocky hill, closing the distance to less than a mile, a new sensation aggressively brushed against her sixth sense.
It wasn't a sight or a sound, but something deeper, and profoundly unpleasant.
It was a foulness. It felt exactly like inhaling corruption directly through her eyes, or tasting rotting, week-old meat on the back of her tongue.
It crawled across her spirit with insidious, dark whispers, projecting a magical aura of dread that urged immediate retreat. It promised safety and peace if she simply turned around, forgot what she saw, and left well enough alone.
Xuan Ji landed on a thick branch, her lip curling in open, blatant distaste.
*‘A fear-ward? Trying to scare me off?’* she thought, a cold, mocking smirk touching her lips. *‘How cute.’*
She didn't retreat. Instead, she flared her own internal Qi in direct response. A perfectly balanced, overwhelmingly dense pulse of Heavenly Demon Yin and Yang erupted from her core. It washed the invasive, corrupted influence away instantly, cutting through the dark magic like scalding water cutting through grease. The psychological pressure vanished.
Satisfied, she dropped silently to the forest floor and circled the base of the rocky hill.
Her [Divine Eye] and her sharpened instincts quickly revealed what careful, high-tier concealment magic had almost succeeded in hiding: a narrow, jagged cave mouth half-buried under thick, thorny vines and layered illusion runes. To the naked eye, it looked exactly like a solid, mossy rock face.0
She didn't hesitate. She stepped right through the illusionary stone and slipped inside without making a single sound.
The darkness of the cave folded around her immediately like a heavy, suffocating cloak. It was thick and absolute, but her [Divine Eye] pierced it effortlessly, rendering the pitch-black environment in crisp, glowing lines of energy. It revealed a rough-hewn, downward-sloping passage.
The stone walls were deeply veined with foul, residual mana. As she walked deeper, the rejecting pressure from the wards returned, significantly stronger now. It felt as though the cave itself violently resented her presence and was trying to physically push her back out.
She countered it again, stepping heavier this time, a flicker of genuine, icy annoyance crossing her usually serene features.
A few minutes deeper into the earth, the tunnel abruptly ended at a massive, heavy stone gate. It was completely etched with freshly painted, wet blood runes that pulsed with a dim, sickly, crimson light.
Beyond the heavy gate, her [Divine Eye] registered two distinct life presences.
One was twisted, foul, and radiating the exact same corrupted, fanatical energy she had felt outside.
The other presence was incredibly faint, the heartbeat erratic and dying. Yet, it was distinctly human. Furthermore, there was something wildly unique and strangely potent about the dying human's core, an energy signature that stood out brilliantly even through the suffocating haze of whatever dark ritual was currently underway.
Suspicion instantly crystallized into absolute, cold certainty.
On any other day, playing any other game, she might have passed by an ominous cave without interfering if she didn't need the loot. Live and let live, especially when someone had clearly gone to great lengths to ensure their privacy.
But the deliberate secrecy, the concentrated, contained mana, the psychological wards, and the unmistakable, revolting stench of blood corruption… it pressed every single wrong button she possessed. This wasn’t some hermit training in peaceful isolation. This was something that knew exactly how monstrous its work would look to the outside world.
*‘What hides itself this carefully?’* she wondered, her eyes turning as cold as the void. *‘A recluse seeking enlightenment? Or a monster that knows it deserves to be put down?’*
She weighed her options for only a fraction of a second, then shrugged internally.
Worst case scenario, she would politely apologize for the intrusion, step over the bodies, and leave. Best case scenario… well. Curiosity had always been one of her more persistent, fatal character flaws. Walking away now would sit poorly with her pride.
She placed her palm flat against the heavy stone gate. The gate violently resisted her initial push, the blood runes flaring defensively. Stone grated stubbornly against stone with a low, grinding protest.
Ming Xuan Ji’s eyes narrowed, a spark of absolute, Heavenly Demon anger finally igniting in her chest.
*‘Really?’* She pulled her hand back and chambered her palm at her waist. Pure, devastating Qi condensed around her fingers, spiraling into a violently compressed vortex of controlled, cataclysmic force.
With a single, blindingly fast motion, she struck.
It wasn't a strike meant to completely obliterate the mountain, only to overcome the wards. The [Demonic Echo] shattered the layered blood protections instantly and hurled the massive, ton-heavy stone gate inward.
It exploded into the chamber beyond with a thunderous, earth-shattering *BANG* that echoed through the bloody depths like the voice of an angry, descending god.