Finally, I Can Begin Cultivation

Your turn.

Seated behind the desk, the Starport garrison officer in charge of inspections turned out to be a Dragonkin.

For some reason, seeing a Dragonkin gave you a sense of kinship, like running into a fellow villager.

He first asked you to pay a toll: one hundred standard Source Stones.

A standard Source Stone is simply a Source Stone used as currency—raw ore Source Stones that have been cut and polished into a uniform shape and size.

Fortunately, when you boarded the ship, you used your enlarged body to stuff a good number of Source Stones onto yourself and then stowed them inside the Star Vessel.

Otherwise, unable to pay the toll, you'd have ended up like that lizard-looking fellow ahead of you—caught and forced to work off the debt.

After taking the money, the Dragonkin officer didn't even look up, just scribbling on paper with a quill pen.

"Name."

"Hu Chacha."

"Gender."

"Male."

"Race."

"Uh..."

That actually stumped you.

You hadn't had a chance to look in a mirror yet, so you didn't know exactly what you looked like—only that you had a pair of big horns on your head.

Fortunately, the careless officer glanced up.

"Cowhead tribe, right? You cowhead folk really are a bunch of dimwits, dull and slow."

"Are you a cultivator? If so, what realm?"

"Qi Transformation, Ninth Rotation."

"Where are you from?"

"Lingwei Star."

"What are you doing on Firelight Star?"

"My Star Vessel broke down. From the star charts, Firelight Star was the closest to my position at the time, so I came here to get it repaired."

The Star Vessel had already been shrunk down to the size of a palm.

The Dragonkin officer glanced at it and nodded slightly.

"Quite a mess it is. You didn't run into space pirates, did you?"

"Exactly—I'm just cursed with bad luck. They robbed me of everything I had, and the supplies in my Star Vessel were cleaned out. Thank heavens I'd hidden some Source Stones in the lower hold, or I couldn't even afford this toll..."

You played along with his words.

Your superb acting sold the part of a simple-minded cowhead perfectly, raising not a shred of suspicion.

He asked a few more questions, then handed you a green metal card.

"Listen well, you dull-witted cowhead—you're not a resident of Firelight Star, and you don't have a residency permit, so you're not allowed to live here long-term. This green card only lets you stay on Firelight Star for three months. After three months, you must leave on your own. Otherwise, if you're caught overstaying, you'll face prison time. Understood?"

You took the green card and nodded in agreement.

Firelight Star was a second-rate planet, with sparse immortal energy.

You figured the rulers here used this "household registration system" to control the number of cultivators on the planet.

With shipping lanes and Star Vessels available, cultivators could hop between stars all too easily.

If there were no controls, a flood of outworld cultivators would surely disrupt the local practice environment.

After leaving the Starport, you headed straight into the deep mountains and wild forests.

Three months limit—what a joke.

Since you'd already slipped in, wanting you to leave? Not a chance!

Still, you knew that without a proper identity, living on Firelight Star would come with plenty of inconveniences, and if you got checked, it could mean new troubles.

Same logic as sneakily entering the old US of A in your past life.

But you weren't in the mood to deal with that right now—you just wanted to start cultivating somewhere with immortal qi.

Living in a city was troublesome, so why not camp out in the wilderness?

You spent a little time wandering around the surrounding areas.

It felt like the density of immortal qi was about the same everywhere.

You avoided the big cities, since they required residency checks just to enter.

But some small towns and villages had fewer rules—though patrol teams often showed up to verify residency permits for unfamiliar faces, so you couldn't linger long.

Through chatting with local cultivators, you figured this place didn't have anything like "spirit veins" where immortal qi gathered—the qi density was uniform across the whole planet.

That was good news for you. It meant you didn't need to infiltrate some major sect to get better cultivation conditions—anywhere was the same.

As for resources like pills, artifacts, and formation arrays—

You'd just produce those yourself.

Getting materials was a bit of a hassle, but you could still find some in remote, rarely visited spots.

You refined your own pills and forged your own artifacts—just take a look at someone else's tool, use "Reverse Engineering" to get the blueprint and formula, then find a place with geothermal fire to craft it.

You tried asking around about Duobao Tonglao.

Plenty of cultivators had heard of her name, but when asked where exactly she was on Firelight Star, few could say.

After all, cultivators in such a small place were low in realm, and they wouldn't have contact with someone like her, so naturally they had no clue.

You weren't in a hurry, though—even if you found her now, you couldn't beat her. You needed to raise your cultivation first before settling that score.

After that, you picked a scenic, secluded spot to live in seclusion and began to cultivate in earnest.

Your true realm was actually Qi Transformation, Sixth Rotation. In the Real World, Qi Transformation was about refining true qi—not like the Void World, where you had to establish foundations, and then open a sea of consciousness at the Martial Saint stage.

The cultivation systems of the two worlds were somewhat different, but fortunately it didn't affect you much.

The Heaven-grade qi-refining art from the Void World, the "Indestructible Heartfire Scripture," ranked as Grade Five in the Real World's grading system (which went from Grade Nine to Grade One, with Nine to Five corresponding to Low, Middle, High, Earth, and Heaven respectively).

Grade Five wasn't bad at all, because recently you'd been wandering through villages and chatting with cultivators—they mostly mentioned their qi-refining arts were Grade Seven or Eight.

Grade Nine arts were practically everywhere; you could even find them hawked at roadside stalls.

Grade Seven was already something minor local families would treat as a family heirloom.

In short, the art you practiced was decent quality.

Plus, your cultivation aptitude had gotten a serious boost thanks to the special Fire-Attribute Affinity.

So your cultivation speed had noticeably increased.

You also had word-slot effects working for you, like the "Natural Breathing" talent of the Demon race from "The Calamity of Ten Thousand Races."

Back in the Void World, Natural Breathing's description was: physical body strength doubles, your body automatically inhales and exhales the essence of heaven and earth, and your cultivation auto-advances.

In the Real World, "essence of heaven and earth" became "immortal qi."

Sun rose, moon set, clouds gathered and scattered.

By day, you sent out your avatars to gather herbs deep in the forest, hunt for meat, and refine pills to speed up cultivation progress.

By night, you sat alone on a cliff edge, absorbing the essence of sun and moon, pondering the way of cultivation, and cycling your art to raise your cultivation.

Day by day, the days passed in this steady, methodical improvement.