Jiang Li did not find the idea of there being other worlds strange. The ancient tomes had long recorded that the Immortal Realm ruled over countless worlds, as numerous as grains of sand in the river. In every world, they had established an Immortal Ascension Heavenly Ladder.
As long as someone in that world reached the standard of Immortal Ascension, they could ascend. Among all these worlds, the Nine Provinces World was the one with the greatest number of ascended Immortals. If there was an unknown world beyond the spatial rift, then it was very likely one of those countless worlds governed by the Immortal Realm.
Perhaps the Immortal Ascension Heavenly Ladder of that world still existed!
“How do I obtain Source Points?”
[The Host may obtain Source Points by completing tasks or selling items. This System will purchase them at one-third the price of the Exchange Shop.]
“…You profiteer.”
Buying at one-third the price and selling back at full price… even if you had half a conscience, you shouldn’t be able to say that sentence aloud!
“I’ve already done several tasks. Where are my Source Points?”
[Does the Host wish to select a Side Quest—Origin Point Quest?]
“Yes.”
[Origin Point Quest issued: Please go to Rising Sun Mountain and mine two hundred jin of Shouyang Stones.]
This time, Jiang Li didn’t have to go to the Heavenly Mystery Tower to ask where Rising Sun Mountain was. He had heard of it before. It was once a famous mine, but because the mine’s former owner had overexploited it without restraint, Rising Sun Mountain had become a barren ridge two hundred years ago.
Once, the mine could produce a ton of Shouyang Stones a day. Now, producing fifty jin a day would already be considered good. And besides, Shouyang Stones weren’t any essential material for cultivation—the expenses of mining and the income from it didn’t match at all.
Naturally, no one mined there anymore. With Jiang Li’s methods, if he were to seriously dig for a full day, he might indeed produce fifty jin. Jiang Li thought about it for a moment and felt that this task was quite simple.
He flew over the skies of Rising Sun Mountain, and directly uprooted the entire mountain range from its foundation. Jiang Li didn’t believe that an entire mountain range could lack two hundred jin of Shouyang Stones. The System clearly hadn’t anticipated such a mining method.
It hesitated briefly, trying to determine whether this counted as successfully mining two hundred jin.
[Congratulations to the Host for completing the Origin Point Quest. Reward: fifty Source Points.]
“Teleport me to that world I found earlier!”
[An additional fifty-six thousand eight hundred Source Points are required. Insufficient Source Points. Unable to transmit.]
Solid.
Jiang Li’s fists clenched into fists of solid steel. He swore, if this damned System could manifest a physical form, he’d be the first to beat it half to death! If you needed that many Source Points, couldn’t you have said so earlier?!
At this rate, he’d be doing missions until the end of the world!
“Looks like I can only trade items for Source Points.”
Jiang Li flipped through the System’s Exchange Shop. The store was filled with all sorts of cultivation techniques. The cheapest ones could only be cultivated up to the Golden Core Stage and required merely a hundred Source Points.
The most expensive were Immortal Ascension techniques, needing over a million Source Points. Jiang Li looked up at the setting sun, then swiftly wrote out a manual called “Setting Sun Heart-Hook Art.” This technique could be cultivated up to the Early Integration Stage.
Those who practiced it could draw upon the lingering rays of sunset, and anyone struck by this technique would involuntarily recall their most sorrowful memories and lose the will to fight. When he sold that manual, he earned over ten thousand Source Points at once. Jiang Li slapped his thigh.
“Should’ve done this from the start! No need for me to move mountains!”
“Writing a Tribulation Transcendence-level technique is troublesome, but a technique reaching the Integration Stage? Those are a dime a dozen!”
Usually, even a Tribulation Transcendence cultivator would spend their entire life producing no more than three to five Immortal Ascension-level techniques. Even for someone like Jiang Li, writing one such technique would take over ten days. But Integration Stage techniques were different.
Jiang Li could casually write ten or so in no time at all. He looked at the grassy field before him and wrote “Withering and Flourishing Reincarnation Method” and “Endless Vitality Technique.” Then he glanced at the mountaintop and penned “Titanic Mountain-Moving Art”…
He sold all of these casually written techniques to the System, instantly gaining more than a hundred ten thousand Source Points.
“Teleport me to the unknown world!”
[Commencing transmission.]
This time, the System could finally do it. The space around Jiang Li began to twist, gradually forming a passage connecting to another world. With a single stride forward, he traversed the Nine Province Barrier, passed through the Gale Turbulence Stream, pierced the unknown world’s barrier, and arrived in the foreign realm.
In Jiang Li’s eyes, it was immediately clear that the System’s mastery of spatial methods was incredibly advanced. How advanced exactly? So advanced that Jiang Li couldn’t even comprehend it.
“I can’t tell a damn thing. I don’t understand a single bit of the Dao of Space.”
He had originally wanted to learn this spatial leap technique from the System, but then he suddenly remembered—he didn’t know squat about the Dao of Space.
“When I get the chance, I’ll go to Mount Sumeru and demonstrate this. The Old Sumeru Buddha understands the Dao of Space the best. Maybe he can gain something from it.”
“So this is the unknown world?”
Upon arrival, Jiang Li frowned slightly. The Spiritual Qi here was so thin it was almost nonexistent. He stood alone upon an endless desert of yellow sand.
The storm winds lashed against his protective aura, while the whole world around him was shrouded in a dull grey hue. There wasn’t the slightest trace of green anywhere. A normal person staying here too long would likely fall into depression.
Jiang Li measured the ground step by step and found that the world’s gravity was the same as that of the Nine Provinces. He grabbed a handful of coarse sand—the material composition was roughly similar as well.
“But why is the Spiritual Qi so thin?”
Even within the Nine Provinces, the Spiritual Qi was unevenly distributed. There were a few places known as Spirit-Forbidden Lands, where the Qi was so scarce that even cultivators with single Spiritual Roots couldn’t reach Foundation Establishment even after endless years of cultivation. But this world’s Qi was even thinner than those Spirit-Forbidden Lands!
A place like this simply could not give birth to cultivators! Jiang Li swept out his Divine Sense but couldn’t find a single human figure. All he saw were packs of grey beasts, halfway between wolves and leopards, digging into the ground.
They seemed so famished they had begun to eat sand. The moment those grey beasts noticed Jiang Li, their instincts told them that he looked delicious, and they wanted to share him as food. With a single thought, Jiang Li confined all of them in midair.
He had never seen creatures like this in the Nine Provinces. Using his Divine Sense, Jiang Li examined them carefully. He discovered they weren’t eating sand out of hunger—their body structure made it so they could only consume sand.
Their digestive organs, breathing systems, everything—none were the same as those in the Nine Provinces. If not for Jiang Li’s powerful Divine Sense enabling him to analyze them, he wouldn’t even be able to discern what their organs did. These beasts had mighty physical bodies.
The leader’s physique was on par with a Golden Core Body, and the others possessed Foundation Establishment-level constitutions. For some reason, Jiang Li instinctively wanted to stay away from them. There was something about these beasts that gave him an indescribably uncomfortable feeling.
He then continued to sweep his Divine Sense across the entire world, and his brows never relaxed. He finally understood why those grey beasts ate sand. It was because this world contained only two things—grey beasts and sand.
No humans, no other species—nothing else. If the System told him this place was the Underworld and these creatures were spirits of the Beast Realm, he would’ve believed it eight times out of ten. Compared to this place, the Nine Provinces were practically the Immortal Realm.
(End of Chapter)