Ye Chuan finished clearing out the monsters and surveyed the scattered remains. He used his spiritual sense to search but couldn’t find a second energy core.
"Looks like only that leader dropped one core for me, and not every leader even drops one. These things are way too rare," Ye Chuan muttered, staring at the core in his hand as he pondered.
If that were the case, unlocking the entire tech tree would probably take a long time.
"Ke Ning, any way to get more of these?" Ye Chuan finally handed the core to the bespectacled science girl beside him.
"This is…?"
"The energy core I mentioned earlier. Just extracted from a monster," Ye Chuan explained.
Ke Ning pinched the core between her fingers. At a glance, it looked like nothing more than an ordinary gemstone, and a rather impure one at that.
"You need this?" she asked, adjusting her glasses.
"Yeah. Badly."
"Understood." Without further questions, she let the floating cube beside her drift closer to the core. Holding out her palm, she allowed the cube to scan its composition.
After a moment, Ke Ning pulled up a translucent window and skimmed through the core’s analyzed components.
"If you have other similar mineral materials, I can replicate this stone for you," she said.
"Replicate?"
"Correct. Replicate."
Ye Chuan immediately retrieved a spirit crystal from his backpack space. "Try this."
After all, the spirit crystal was the closest thing he had to a similar mineral.
Taking the crystal, Ke Ning examined it briefly, looking slightly puzzled. "Do you just enjoy collecting minerals?"
"Uh, they’re useful."
She didn’t press further, slotting the spirit crystal into the cube. A blue light flickered for a few seconds before a brand-new energy core materialized.
"Will this do?" Ke Ning asked.
Ye Chuan took it and immediately inspected it—
[Item: Energy Core
Contains condensed power. Can be used to unlock tech tree points.]
It actually worked!
Ke Ning was like Doraemon!
Ye Chuan was growing fonder of this glasses-wearing girl by the minute—she was basically a walking treasure trove, delivering one surprise after another in such a short time.
"Can you replicate as many as I have materials for?" he asked.
If he could mass-produce spirit crystals with his own replication magic and then have Ke Ning convert them into energy cores, wouldn’t that be perfect?
"You might be disappointed. The Cube V3 can only replicate one per day at most," Ke Ning said.
One a day…
Not ideal, but at least it was steady income.
Clutching the core, Ye Chuan glanced at the tech tree and unlocked the most basic node.
[Unlock successful: Obtained Mental Recovery Lv.1 (Increases spirit regeneration speed.)]
"Small gains are still gains," Ye Chuan muttered, but then he suddenly noticed his spiritual sense range had expanded significantly.
Huh?
Stronger than he expected.
Looking at the densely packed skill points on the tech tree, he realized that unlocking all of them would bring terrifyingly powerful enhancements.
Even a 1% boost was still a boost.
Damage stacked up percentage by percentage.
While Ye Chuan was absorbed in studying the tech tree, Ke Ning walked over to the spatial rift. She gazed at the shimmering light within before directing her Cube V3 to scan it.
The rift pulsed with an eerie blue glow as Ke Ning stood motionless, occasionally adjusting her glasses.
After a while, the cube finished scanning, and Ke Ning seemed to have obtained the data she needed. She turned and gave Ye Chuan a slight nod.
"That should do it, right?" Wang Yanran asked. Though she had no idea what Ke Ning was doing—or what that floating cube even was—she had learned not to ask too many questions.
After all, sticking with the experts meant guaranteed rewards. No need to stir up trouble.
Just then, the rift began visibly shrinking. What had once resembled shattered glass in space was now rapidly repairing itself.
"…" Ke Ning seemed to understand something but merely nodded without speaking.
"Does the rift disappear once all the monsters are eliminated?" Ye Chuan wondered.
"That seems to be the case here, though some rifts remain. Most follow this pattern, though," Wang Yanran explained.
"Alright, let’s head back first."
…
After returning home, Ke Ning headed to her room—or rather, her lab. But as she passed through the hallway, a head suddenly popped out from the wall, grinning mischievously.
Ever since she had successfully startled Ke Ning once, Lan Xiaoke had taken a liking to scaring her, thoroughly enjoying the way the girl trembled in response.
"Alright, Ke Ning has work to do. Stop messing around," Ye Chuan said, spotting Lan Xiaoke’s sneaky antics. He pinched her cheek and shoved her back into the wall, then smacked her butt.
"Go play your games."
"Okaaay~" Lan Xiaoke flailed her legs before finally vanishing into the wall.
A moment later, her head popped out again, this time with a cat-like expression. "Hey, Ye Chuan, I’ve reached Foundation Establishment now."
"Oh?" Ye Chuan gave her a surprised glance and probed her aura, confirming her newfound strength.
"Not bad. But with this much spiritual energy, even a pig could ascend."
He wasn’t about to credit Lan Xiaoke’s laziness for her progress—it was all thanks to his own blood, sweat, and heavy spending.
"Keep it up," he said.
"Will do!" Lan Xiaoke blinked her big eyes at him, sparkling with expectation.
Ye Chuan crossed his arms. "What? Why are you looking at me like that?"
"Foundation Establishment… comes with rewards, right?"
Lan Xiaoke distinctly remembered Ye Chuan promising her a hefty sum if she broke through to this stage. That was why she had been grinding so hard lately.
"Oh? Forgot about that," Ye Chuan said.
"Whaaat?!" Lan Xiaoke lunged out and clung to his leg. "You promised! I didn’t forget!"
"I feed you, house you, and let you game all day, and now you’re asking me for money?" Ye Chuan said, arms still folded.
"Wuuu…" Lan Xiaoke wilted, slinking back toward her room like a dejected caterpillar. "Fine… I’m going back…"
Seeing this, Ye Chuan pulled out his phone and transferred 50,000 to her.
He had previously agreed to give her 5,000 per minor breakthrough and more for major ones.
The moment Lan Xiaoke heard the notification sound, she immediately slithered back and hugged his leg again. "Hehe, Ye Chuan, you’re the best!"
Her pitiful expression vanished faster than flipping a page.
ive and Ruthless] Before his transmigration, Ye Xuan was playing a game called "Severing Emotions to Attain the Dao." The game's core wasn't about leveling up by fighting monsters, but about conquering various "bad women" with wicked personalities and cold, fickle natures. There was only one method to conquer them: stay unwaveringly by their side, then die at a critical moment, driving them to madness after losing the protagonist. The higher their level of regret, the higher the player's score. To dominate the server, Ye Xuan conquered all the bad women. In the early stages, he showered them with boundless tenderness, only to choose to sacrifice himself for them later, making them weep bitterly and drown in regret. Among them were: Xia Lengyue, the unfaithful immortal wife who chased after powerful men and discarded her husband like trash. Ye Qingcheng, the Demonic Venerable of the Joyous Union Sect, who appeared pure and innocent but was, in reality, promiscuous. Wu Lingxiao, the Empress of the Great Xia Dynasty, who lusted after men and loved maintaining a harem. Bai Qiangu of the Endless Demonic Sect: a bloodthirsty mass murderer. However, when the protagonist transmigrated into the game world, he made a horrifying discovery. Eight hundred years had already passed. The bad women he had conquered had now each become deities and revered ancestors. Faced with the endless stream of toxic women coming for him, Ye Xuan could only rely on his god-tier acting skills to carve a path of survival through this world of treacherous women.
ing gift was a patch of barren land, and disciples were all picked up along the way. He spent fifty years diligently building three "ramshackle little sects," thinking he could finally live a carefree life relying on his disciples. But right at the fifty-year mark, he was suddenly swept away by a spatial rift and exiled to the Chaos Desolation, the Disorderly Ruins. There was no spiritual energy there, only slaughter. Relying on the cultivation feedback from his disciples, Gu Changyuan hacked his way through a sea of blood for eleven hundred years. When the system finally fished him back out, he discovered the ramshackle little sects he'd built back then had developed a rather... unusual style. Hold on... I vanished for a thousand years, so how did my ramshackle little sects become holy lands?!
ut it can buy an entire year of absolutely perfect training results! Su Yu stared at his empty wallet and decisively opened up various online loan platforms. “Borrow a thousand bucks! Recharge my vitality!” Boom! His vitality broke a hundred points, shattering the limits of the human body! “Borrow ten thousand bucks! Recharge my combat skills!” Boom! A basic punching technique so common it was everywhere instantly maxed out, revealing the ultimate assassination technique of Five Elements Unity—Inner Force! When a rich kid hired assassins for a midnight ambush, aiming to break both of his legs, they instead ran headfirst into a monster—a human-shaped tyrannosaur, brimming with dragon-like vitality. With just two fingers, Su Yu snapped a steel staff reinforced with alloy. Staring at the killer’s stash of stolen cash—a staggering quarter-million dollars—he showed a corporate-sincere smile: “Thanks for the pre-exam gift pack, Mr. Zhao! I’m gonna go re-invest this!” Three days later, at the National Martial Arts College Entrance Exam, while everyone else struggled just to reach the passing line, Su Yu threw a single punch—and more than a thousand vitality points literally detonated the entire arena!
ine. During your journey, you save an abandoned baby girl and become her elder brother】 【You rely on each other, becoming each other's support】 【At the end of the simulation, you shield the now-grown girl with your life, sacrificing yourself to block numerous demonic cultivators. You die, and the light in the girl's eyes fades】 …… 【Second Simulation: You are transported to a world where steam and magic coexist】 【You immerse yourself in the study of magic, obsessed with its research. One day, while out, you encounter a half-blooded demon girl wandering the streets. You take her in as your student】 【You teach the demoness what it means to be human, show her the beauty of the world, and nurture her into a miracle that surpasses even the gods】 【At the end of the simulation, you die of old age in front of the nearly immortal demoness due to your mortal lifespan】 …… One simulation after another, one encounter after another. Xu Xi suddenly felt something was off: "Wait, you said you're coming to the real world to find me?"
