【After leaving Star Harbor, you rode Blackwind with A-Dou and headed toward the rendezvous point.】
【You only had a rough idea of where the rendezvous point was. It still needed to be verified.】
【“When the stars Shen and Shang first turn, autumn comes to Dongting; at dawn, a traveler stands by the ancient ferry.”】
【There was a mountain on Vermilion Purple Star called Mount Dongming. To its west stood another mountain called Mount Tingxuan.】
【It would naturally be unreasonable to associate the two characters “Dongting” in the rendezvous poem with the names of two mountains based on that alone.】
【After all, Vermilion Purple Star had such a terrifyingly vast surface area that countless places on it were bound to bear names containing those two characters.】
【But as luck would have it, there was a river between Mount Dongming and Mount Tingxuan.】
【What was more, right between the two mountains stood a ferry crossing.】
【It was hard not to associate that with the line “a traveler stands by the ancient ferry.”】
【One coincidence could be dismissed as coincidence. Two were worth investigating.】
【As for the time of the rendezvous…】
【That was thanks to your extensive cultural knowledge.】
【At first, you thought “dawn moon” might be hinting at a time—perhaps a moonlit night, or the first full moon or new moon of some month.】
【But then you remembered Du Fu’s poem: “In life, people may never meet, like Shen and Shang, forever crossing paths.”】
【The stars Shen and Shang were two constellations.】
【They occupied opposite positions in the sky, their paths completely out of sync. When one appeared, the other vanished.】
【The moment they both “first turned” was precisely midnight, the Hour of the Rat.】
【Therefore, “dawn moon” could not refer to a time. It had to be the name of the person you were meeting.】
【The meaning was clear now.】
【At the ferry between Mount Dongming and Mount Tingxuan, sometime during autumn, at midnight, you were to meet someone named Xiaoyue.】
【As for the exact day…】
【There wasn’t one.】
【That was to prevent a specific date from accidentally coinciding with an outsider waiting there to meet someone and causing a misunderstanding.】
【You were to wait at the ferry for several consecutive days during autumn. Anyone who appeared would surely be the person you were looking for.】
【“A-Dou, we’re very lucky. The rendezvous point is quite close, so we can get there before autumn arrives this year. Otherwise, we’d have to wait at least another year.”】
【A-Dou, however, looked somewhat dejected.】
【You knew what he was thinking.】
【“A-Dou, in a world like this, we humans cannot rely on anyone. The only people we can rely on are ourselves!】
【“Perhaps on Blazing Star, you saw Mr. Xun, Shen Yifeng, Ma Bang, and countless other human compatriots display the brilliance of human nature. They sacrificed their lives so that you could escape!】
【“But remember this: never hesitate to assume the worst of others!】
【“Someone like you, if you want to grow strong, will face difficulties and obstacles beyond imagination. Don’t place your trust in or depend on anyone so easily!”】
【“Uncle Chen, I understand.”】
【On the way to the rendezvous point, you casually stopped in a nearby town to replenish your spirit-energy quota.】
【It was a large city—at least, it seemed large from the perspective of someone who had come from the Void Realm.】
【Yet it had no city walls, nor any large-scale military presence. There were only a few yamen runners responsible for maintaining order.】
【Commerce within the city was quite prosperous, and its market economy was highly developed.】
【All sorts of races lived together in peace, making a comfortable living.】
【At least, that was how things appeared on the surface.】
【After asking around, you learned about Vermilion Purple Star’s administrative system.】
【Each city and the surrounding area belonged to an administrative unit with its own local government. These units were largely self-governing, making their own laws and regulations and staffing their own yamen and government offices with locals.】
【It looked rather like a national system.】
【In reality, there was still no nation.】
【The superiors of these local governments were not a central court, but the cultivation factions that controlled the surrounding regions.】
【In other words, unlike Blazing Star, the cultivation factions did not govern the regions themselves. Instead, they allowed each locality to govern itself, provided it paid taxes and supplied corvée labor, talented individuals, and so on.】
【Only when a major problem arose—one that mortals and low-level cultivators could not resolve—would the faction ruling the region intervene.】
【“The spirit-energy quota and origin stones are exchanged at a one-to-one ratio. How much would you like to buy?”】
【There were only two employees at the spirit-energy station.】
【One was lying in the back room, fast asleep. The other was sitting behind the counter, engrossed in a pulp storybook.】
【They looked like the kind of people who had settled into comfortable sinecures in the civil service.】
【However, you noticed that the two of them belonged to a very unusual race.】
【It was the first time you had seen this race. Until now, you had only heard a little about them.】
【The Saint Dragon Race!】
【Unlike the Western-style evil-dragon features of the dragonkin, the Saint Dragon Race looked like humans with the heads of Eastern dragons.】
【They also had dragon tails.】
【Otherwise, there was no difference between them and humans.】
【“May I ask how long one unit of spirit-energy quota can support cultivation?”】
【The one reading the pulp storybook replied impatiently,】
【“If you want to buy, then buy. If not, get lost. Why are you asking so many questions?”】
【You nearly bared your teeth.】
【Damn it, you only asked one question!】
【What did he mean, “Why are you asking so many questions”?】
【Didn’t these two idiots realize that, in your eyes, they were as fragile as tofu?!】
【Killing them would have been easy, but this clearly wasn’t the time to cause trouble.】
【Especially since the uniforms they wore bore the emblem of the Saint Dragon Society.】
【In fact, every spirit-energy station belonged to the Saint Dragon Society.】
【In other words, the Saint Dragon Society had managed to control the spirit energy of the entire planet. Without going through their channels, no one could absorb it!】
【And this was the Real Realm.】
【The level of strength required to exercise such control over nature was self-evident.】
【Even more frightening was the fact that Vermilion Purple Star was not the headquarters of the Saint Dragon Society. It was merely one piece of their “commercial empire.”】
【You were also reminded of the “banned books” about human culture that you had found in the Old Hag’s lair.】
【The ones who had stamped those books with the seal of “banned” were also the Saint Dragon Society.】
【You directly paid one thousand origin stones to try it out.】
【The Saint Dragon man took your temporary residence permit—the basin-sized compass—and engraved a series of divine patterns onto it.】
【When he finished, he casually tossed the temporary residence permit back to you, then resumed reading his pulp storybook.】
【You took several deep breaths and suppressed the urge to have a heartfelt conversation with the Saint Dragon man.】
【During the transaction just now, you had inadvertently touched the Saint Dragon man’s hand.】
【You had already copied the Saint Dragon Race’s racial talent.】
【Dragon Transformation: Based on one’s cultivation level, transform into a divine dragon of corresponding strength. After transforming, one can use the Tiangang divine ability “Ride the Clouds and Ride the Mist.”】
【“Holy crap! After transforming, you can use a Tiangang divine ability directly? Even without reaching the Absolute Land Realm? This racial talent is way too overpowered!”】
【No wonder the Winged Race on Fortune Star said that the Saint Dragon Race was the noblest race in the Southern Star Realm.】
【With a talent this powerful, combined with the Saint Dragon Society’s control over spirit energy and its ability to harvest cultivators throughout the universe, this race definitely wasn’t merely dominating the Southern Star Realm!】
transmigrates into the world as the sect master of the Heavenly Yan Sect, which is on the verge of being wiped out. He binds a system that grants him cultivation power based on the number of disciples he has: for each disciple, he automatically gains a year's worth of cultivation every single day! Take one disciple: every day he gains 1 year of cultivation power. While others struggle through a year of bitter training, he gets the same just by sleeping through a single night. Take ten disciples: every day he gains 10 years of cultivation power. Foundation Establishment, Core Formation, Nascent Soul—he breezes through all bottlenecks without lifting a finger. Take one hundred disciples: every day he gains 100 years of cultivation power. Even a Soul Transformation Venerable before him can’t survive a single blow. Take ten thousand disciples: every day he gains 10,000 years of cultivation power! With a wave of his hand, he topples empires. With a single step, he crushes the sacred grounds of the universe. ... While others fight tooth and nail for secret techniques, Lin Yan casually hands out Nascent Soul-level cultivation manuals as beginner textbooks. While others strain to find talented recruits, Lin Yan opens his doors to anyone—so long as they’re human. In just three short years, the Heavenly Yan Sect went from a backwater sect made up of three crumbling huts to a sacred land that every cultivator under heaven would kill to enter. ... One day, otherworldly demon gods invade, with a million demon soldiers pressing down upon the realm. Lin Yan, yawning, rises from his lounge chair and glances at the system panel: [Current Disciples: 1.28 million] [Daily Cultivation Increase: 1.28 million years] He waves his hand casually, and the countless demon soldiers are reduced to ashes in an instant. “So noisy… interrupting my fishing.”
ions, keeping it grounded and realistic】 After quitting his job, office worker Su Yang accidentally binds with the "Enjoy Life System." As the name suggests, simply by indulging in life's pleasures, he can earn random rewards from the system—no need to spend money on beautiful women or grovel before anyone. Just enjoy, and the money follows, making it all about effortless fun. The system comes with a scanning feature, allowing him to establish a favorability bond with women rated 85 points or above. Every 20-point increase in favorability unlocks additional rewards. After suffering through over twenty years of hardship, Su Yang trembles with excitement, his dull eyes suddenly gleaming with newfound hope. "Enjoy life? How hard could that be?"
lanned to earn money steadily and take life at a slower pace. But he never expected... his father's remarriage, and the stepmother bringing along a dependent, would completely disrupt his life's plans...
he colors of other people’s emotions. Light red meant anxiety. Gray meant exhaustion. Orange meant excitement. Yellow... meant repression. At the same time, he could gain unlimited control over one of those colors. Pale cyan: relaxation. Using this ability, he started offering “two-yuan hugs,” spending an afternoon exchanging emotional-color experiences with others. Then came his final female customer of the day— a girl whose emotional color was pure black... —— A week later, Xu Chuan had become skilled at using pale cyan—Relaxation—treating it like a bottle of menthol balm whenever he needed it. That was when he discovered he had unlocked another unlimited emotional color: Purple, the color of fear. So these emotional colors refresh every week? Fine, I take it back—I’ll never call you useless again... —— Much later, after Xu Chuan had accumulated countless emotional abilities, one night, he suddenly found himself inside someone else’s dream. There, he could use the emotional colors he possessed to paint. And in her dream, he painted her a shower of pink shooting stars, spreading across the depths of the night sky...
