Injections!

"Judging by appearance, this place seems to be at an ancient level of civilization, but the cultivator at the fourth layer of Qi Refining inside the sedan chair confirms that it really is a cultivation world." Resting his chin in his hand, Chen Zhuo pondered as he replayed the video clip over and over. "An ancient cultivation world? Now that’s interesting. The books all say ancient cultivators were utterly selfish, loving nothing more than killing people and seizing their treasures..." In the Immortal Mansion, resources were everything and cultivators were coldly divided into hierarchical classes, but it had one major saving grace: high-level cultivators there didn't go around slaughtering people wholesale over trivial disagreements. Whatever else might be said of a capitalist society, it was certainly more advanced than feudalism or a slave-owning society. An ancient cultivation world, on the other hand, operated strictly on the law of the jungle, where the strong preyed upon the weak and might made right! Murdering for treasures and sacrificing a fellow Daoist to save one's own skin were everyday occurrences. If it truly was that kind of world, Chen Zhuo knew he had to be cautious so he wouldn't wind up dead. "The great thing is that traversing with the Boundary-Breaking Bead has no cooldown. It can be used immediately. If I run into danger, I can leave this world and return to the Immortal Mansion right away..." As Chen Zhuo turned it over in his mind, a bold notion struck him. *Wait a minute... could I just become a deadbeat?!* Defaulting on debts wasn't something to encourage, but Chen Zhuo realized that if he ever found himself unable to pay back the money, he could simply pull a disappearing act and duck into the Spirit Bead World. That way, nobody would ever find him! Still, it was a pretty underhanded tactic, and Chen Zhuo wouldn't resort to it unless pushed to absolute extremes. Besides... There was another issue that worried him most of all. What if the language and customs of the Spirit Bead World were completely different from the Immortal Mansion's? "If we can't understand each other, what do I do? The spiritual communication jade slip has a translation function, but it's not something I can just pull out in the open. Divine sense transmission allows direct communication, too, but I'm only at the second layer of Qi Refining. My divine sense is far too weak—how the hell am I supposed to talk with that?" Chen Zhuo let out a sigh. Just then, he noticed something, and his eyes lit up. He heard sound coming from the video! The audio was faint and intermittent, but it was definitely there. And it was dialogue. A conversation between the sedan bearers and the passenger inside. It was hard to hear clearly, but he could faintly make out words like "transaction" and "spirit slave." Chen Zhuo's heart leaped, and his eyes widened! He could understand it! The language of this world was hardly any different from the Immortal Mansion's! The only discrepancies lay in slight variations of pronunciation and intonation, which wouldn't hinder communication at all. It was somewhat like the difference between northern and southern dialects across a peninsula. Or the difference between Northeast Mandarin and Henan Mandarin—distinct accents, but perfectly intelligible. "Since I know next to nothing about this world, I shouldn't just wander around aimlessly," Chen Zhuo thought to himself. "I'd better treat this place purely as a cultivation retreat filled with spiritual energy and focus on my practice. In this environment, my cultivation speed can at least match someone with a natural spiritual root. Graduating smoothly won't be an issue, and if I get lucky, I might even manage to upgrade from vocational to an undergraduate degree..." For now, Chen Zhuo's ultimate goal was to cultivate to the Foundation Establishment realm during his twenty years of student life and complete that vocational-to-undergraduate upgrade. There was no helping it. In this society, vocational was vocational, and an undergraduate degree was an undergraduate degree. Chen Zhuo couldn't even accuse himself of "forgetting his degree roots"—he didn't have any to forget, only vocational ones! What exhausting work. Chen Zhuo sighed and closed his eyes. The next moment, heaven and earth overturned, and the sun and moon vanished into darkness. In an instant, Chen Zhuo returned to the Immortal Mansion, lying on his own bed. Opening his eyes, Chen Zhuo retrieved the medications. "Wanji Origin-Nourishing Essence, Spirit-Flow Voltage-Stabilizing Injection..." Chen Zhuo took a deep breath. These two doses had cost him over three hundred spirit coins on loan, representing nearly his entire net worth, but their efficacy was said to be remarkable. He had chosen not to inject them in the Spirit Bead World to prevent any unexpected side effects from catching him unprepared. If nothing went wrong, heading back into the Spirit Bead World after administering the shots would be effortless. The crossing consumed merely a few strands of spiritual energy anyway, which took only half an hour of cultivation to restore. "I hope it significantly boosts my cultivation speed, just as Senior Sister Si Jing said!" Chen Zhuo took out the two syringes and, following the instructions, began administering the injection. There wasn't much to it—steady and methodical. The instant Chen Zhuo injected the spirit fluid, a wave of scorching heat washed over him. "Holy crap!" Chen Zhuo couldn't hold back a curse. This mixture of pain and pleasure left his feelings tangled and thoroughly hard to describe! "That's—that's seriously potent!" In an instant, spiritual energy surged toward Chen Zhuo as if it cost nothing at all. He realized at once that he couldn't stay in the Immortal Mansion, where spiritual energy was sparse, or he wouldn't be able to get the absolute most out of the medication! With that thought, his vision went black! A flash of black light erupted, and Chen Zhuo vanished from his bed in the Immortal Mansion. When he opened his eyes again, he had returned to the Spirit Bead World. There was the familiar brook, surrounded as always by lush green hills and clear waters. Yet this time, Chen Zhuo felt entirely different. "Ugh, ah!" Chen Zhuo couldn't help crying out. Was this what it felt like to be on enhancers? "Aching and swollen, but weirdly refreshing..." Gritting his teeth, Chen Zhuo forced himself into a cross-legged position. The medication was taking effect. This kind of formula truly allowed a Qi Refining cultivator to achieve twice the result with half the effort. Yet once it kicked in, it felt like having his calves ground down with a fascia scraping tool. It could truly be called bittersweet agony. As Chen Zhuo sat cross-legged and circulated his technique, the spiritual energy of heaven and earth surged toward him like an incoming tide. "This..." Chen Zhuo's eyes went wide. His speed of absorbing spiritual energy was countless times faster than usual! If cultivating back in the Immortal Mansion was like a crow dropping pebbles into a jar and waiting for the water to rise enough to drink, and cultivating in the Spirit Bead World was like sipping through a narrow straw, then cultivating right now was like tipping the whole bottle back and chugging it down! This spiritual energy was like bottled water being guzzled down by the mouthful, rushing frantically into his body. Tracing his meridians, it began to nourish his entire physical form! Chen Zhuo felt as though he were on the verge of bursting at the seams! "Damn it, this is too fast!" Chen Zhuo hurriedly operated the Changchun Art, channeling the energy into cultivation! Under normal circumstances, his physical body would never have been able to withstand such an overwhelming torrent of spiritual energy! Fortunately, Chen Zhuo had prepared for this. The Spirit-Flow Voltage-Stabilizing Injection. He had bought that very syringe for this precise moment! Time for another jab! As the fresh medicinal potency was administered, Chen Zhuo's entire condition quickly steadied. "Phew..." Chen Zhuo let out a long breath, feeling an immense sense of relief throughout his body. He could clearly sense his cultivation climbing by leaps and bounds. "Is this the power of an injection?" Chen Zhuo was utterly astounded. At his normal cultivation rate, even inside the Spirit Bead World, breaking through from the second layer of Qi Refining to the third would have taken at least eight months. Yet now, propelled by these injections, he would likely step into the third layer of Qi Refining within a single month! "Traditional cultivation? Traditional my ass!" With that realization, Chen Zhuo completely abandoned his unrealistic notion of sticking to traditional cultivation and taking things slow. "What I need to do is ruthlessly milk some immortal path potential and spend spirit coins on drugs!" As for whether his head might end up pointed from all the enhancements in the future, he would worry about that when the time came. For now, the only problem was... He didn't seem to have any channels to obtain more immortal path potential.