Verdant mountains stretched endlessly for thousands of li, their peaks rising and falling in unbroken succession.
Chen Zhuo slowly woke up. Towering jade-green trees reached toward the sky, surrounded by verdant hills and clear waters. A small brook gurgled right before him. For a moment, he was thoroughly bewildered.
Wait, where the hell was he?
Was this still the Immortal Mansion?
Utterly astounded, Chen Zhuo looked around in total daze.
What kind of ghost story was this—had he transmigrated again?
And this time without a dump truck, just a pure physical crossing?
Recovering from his astonishment, Chen Zhuo surveyed his surroundings. Everything looked extremely primitive and ancient, which felt completely alien to him.
After all, he was accustomed to the urban cities of the Immortal Mansion. An environment of pure, untouched nature was truly unfamiliar.
Back in the Immortal Mansion, taking a single breath of spiritual energy in a setting like this required spirit stones!
Chen Zhuo was merely a poor student with barely any spirit stones to his name.
However...
A sudden flash of inspiration struck him.
Something here seemed rather unusual.
Chen Zhuo drew a deep breath. A tingling sensation immediately washed over him, and for a moment...
He felt oxygen-drunk!
"Whoa, whoa, whoa—that packs a punch!"
With just that single breath, Chen Zhuo nearly fainted.
Wait a second.
What was going on?
Had he accidentally fallen into some spiritual energy nature reserve?
Dumbfounded, Chen Zhuo felt a surge of panic.
If he really had stumbled into a nature reserve, he was done for!
The reserve's law-enforcement cultivators would arrest him on the spot, and then bill him by the second for every bit of spiritual energy he inhaled!
He was already in debt for five thousand spirit stones. Given how rich this spiritual energy was, wouldn't they bleed him dry?
At the thought, Chen Zhuo clamped his mouth shut and held his breath.
Then he quietly waited for the law-enforcement cultivators to haul him away.
Except...
After waiting for about three or four minutes, he could no longer hold his breath. He began breathing again, which only made him deeply suspicious.
"What gives? Did the law-enforcement cultivators fall asleep?"
Chen Zhuo hesitated, but then gritted his teeth and hardened his heart. "Screw it, breathe! I'm breathing! If there are law-enforcement cultivators, I'll breathe carefully; if there aren't, I'll breathe as much as I damn well please!
"I already owe five thousand spirit coins anyway. Worst comes to worst, I'll switch over to soul cultivation and apply for a job inside a soul banner to pay off my debts!"
Chen Zhuo sat down cross-legged and began refining Qi on the spot!
Previously, he had only refined two wisps of spiritual energy and guided them through his meridians to complete the foundational step; he had not truly stepped into the first layer of Qi Refining.
In fact, he was still quite a distance from the first layer.
But now, Chen Zhuo was going to fully exploit this boundless abundance of worldly spiritual energy to refine Qi like mad!
Circulating the Changchun Art at full tilt, he turned into a ravenous beast, voraciously devouring the spiritual energy of heaven and earth.
Boom!
A muffled crack sounded within him, accompanied by a series of crisp pops. Chen Zhuo opened his eyes, a brilliant gleam flashing across his gaze.
The first layer of Qi Refining!
Chen Zhuo felt every limb and bone open up in pure, soothing lightness, his entire body coursing with strength!
"At normal speed, it would have taken me at least seven or eight days at home to finish refining Qi. To think it only took a few short hours out here to become a true Qi Refining cultivator!"
Overjoyed, Chen Zhuo quickly reined in his thoughts to calm himself down.
Soon, his heart began drumming rapidly, and his breathing grew heavy.
Sitting motionless, he strove to maintain his composure, gradually regaining his equilibrium amid the noisy chirping of birds around him.
Cultivation was a process of expelling the old to embrace the new, of shedding mortal flesh and remolding one's bones. If his mind wavered during a breakthrough, it could easily induce qi deviation.
Chen Zhuo dared not be careless.
Only after a long moment did he slowly rise to his feet.
The first layer of Qi Refining strengthened tendons and fortified bones.
Now, Chen Zhuo could truly be considered to have shed his mortal coil and become an official cultivator.
"Whew..."
Letting out a long breath, he began examining his surroundings once more.
Verdant mountains enclosed the area, shaded by lush trees.
The scenery was serene and idyllic, remarkably similar to promotional videos for spiritual energy nature reserves he had seen on television.
It genuinely carried the air of the "thirty-six grotto-heavens and seventy-two blessed lands."
"So, where on earth am I?"
Having successfully refined Qi, Chen Zhuo was in high spirits, but he also began pondering his current location.
If this were a spiritual energy nature reserve, law-enforcement cultivators would have arrested him long ago. Since no one had showed up, he clearly wasn't inside any reserve governed by the Immortal Mansion.
Which meant...
In the vast cultivation world, where else could there be such a rustic, ancient region?
Chen Zhuo pressed a hand to his forehead. After exhaling softly, he began an internal inspection of his meridians to check the spiritual energy inside his body.
The spiritual energy converged within him like an endless, trickling brook.
Right then, Chen Zhuo froze in surprise.
Floating in his sea of consciousness was a pitch-black bead.
Its surface bore markings Chen Zhuo could not decipher.
"Earlier, it seemed like two wisps of spiritual energy were absorbed by this bead, which caused my vision to black out and made the world spin before I ended up here."
Chen Zhuo mused, "Could this bead be what brought me here?"
At this thought, he tentatively channeled a wisp of spiritual energy into it.
As the energy entered, the floating black bead immediately responded and began to tremble.
Buzz, buzz.
Following its violent vibration, a sudden burst of black light flashed across the bead. Chen Zhuo was instantly wrapped in the dark radiance and vanished from the brook bank.
When he opened his eyes again, Chen Zhuo discovered to his astonishment—
He was back inside his own cave dwelling!
"Holy crap."
Chen Zhuo couldn't help but gasp. "What is this? Did I bring a pocket dimension with me?!"
Chen Zhuo had seen this plot before.
Countless novels featured similar premises: the protagonist carried a portable pocket dimension where they could grow vegetables or medicinal herbs. The time flow differed between inside and out, allowing them to effortlessly harvest millennium-old or ten-thousand-year-old spirit herbs, gradually rising to become a pay-to-win powerhouse in the cultivation world!
Chen Zhuo's eyes lit up with secret delight. He immediately began exploring the bead's capabilities.
As long as he channeled spiritual energy into it, a single thought was enough to travel back and forth between the Immortal Mansion and that pocket world.
"So, traversing back and forth only consumes spiritual energy. Judging by the transits so far, whatever I carry on me comes along with me..."
Chen Zhuo thought to himself, "In that case, does the spiritual communication jade slip work in the pocket world?"
With that in mind, Chen Zhuo entered the bead's world once more.
After greedily taking a deep breath, he opened his spiritual communication jade slip.
Then, something that stunned Chen Zhuo occurred.
The spiritual communication jade slip displayed: No Signal!
"It seems the bead's world really is an entirely new realm, outside the Immortal Mansion's jurisdiction..."
Chen Zhuo nodded slightly.
Across the entire cultivation world governed by the Immortal Mansion, from the highest heavens to the deepest underworld, celestial satellites provided continuous signal coverage. If a 'No Signal' status appeared, it meant he was definitely beyond the Immortal Mansion's reach!
"If that's the case..."
Chen Zhuo tapped on the spiritual communication jade slip and opened an app.
[Spiritual Energy Concentration Test]
It was a built-in feature of the jade slip, akin to a compass or voice recorder.
[Current Spiritual Energy Concentration: 4.39]
[Your current environment meets the criteria for a Tier 1 Spirit Gathering Environment.]
Seeing this, Chen Zhuo's fingers froze. Without a second thought, he sat cross-legged on the ground to resume cultivating!
Normal spiritual energy concentration in the Immortal Mansion was only 1 point.
Even Taiqing Vocational and Technical College of Alchemy, where he had been admitted, only had a concentration of 3 points under the coverage of its spirit-gathering formation!
Yet this place was an astonishing 4.39!
Why waste time thinking about nonsense?
Breathe that spiritual energy in!
Everything else was an illusion—only the spiritual energy refined into one's own body truly belonged to oneself!
Chapter 2