Helping each other with countless me.

Chapter 568 Starting with Modern Cultivation.
"Sharing space statistics in progress"

"After becoming a duke, Li Zhongren in the world of Little Soldiers built high walls, stockpiled grain, and delayed declaring himself king. He relied on the unique power of the earth's veins to continuously develop and accumulate wealth."

Ultimately, after marrying the third princess, he unified the Principality of Baikal as king.

"Currently, it continues to develop, expanding on the basis of economic warfare instead of physical warfare."

"This world can now reliably provide fortune."

"Searching for a whole new world."

"Target locked"
-
Dividing line

"Can cultivation and modern life truly be integrated?"

After his rebirth, Li Zhongren kept thinking about this question.

With the help of the shared space, his soul ended its drifting in the void and descended into this world.

However, it absorbed the essence of its predecessor.

The memories of an unlucky high school student.

He couldn't help but ask this question.

In short, this is a world that looks much like the modern world on the outside. However, the difference is that this world has a cultivation system, or more accurately, a supernatural system. After all, in the East of this world, people call them cultivators, while in the West, they are wizards or magicians.

And there are other small countries and forces, all with their own unique and extraordinary cultures.

Without a doubt, this is a world where individual power reigns supreme.

In such a world, how could civilization develop in a way similar to that of the past?

Shouldn't it be that if there's a disagreement, it's simply a matter of "I don't eat beef"?
Li Zhongren, or rather, Li Zhongren who now fully inherits this identity and memories, slowly opened his eyes.

In the small but tidy single dormitory room, the soft white light emitted by the floating psionic streetlights shines through the window, and occasionally a sleek public shuttle engraved with basic runes glides silently by.

"Qi Refining Level 1. Nine years"

He muttered those words to himself.

Then, the despair, resentment, and final desperate madness of his predecessor echoed in his soul like a tide. It wasn't that his predecessor was still alive, but that the instincts based on this body had been preserved, similar to a knee-jerk reflex.

But whatever it is, these things cannot shake his core, which has been honed by endless void.

Ten thousand years, or hundreds of millions of years?

Li Zhongren was unaware of this.

All he knew was that his heart was as cold as the knife used by the fishmonger at RT-Mart.
"The Northern Darkness Breathing Technique"

With a thought, the cultivation technique written in distorted characters and exuding an eerie aura appeared in his mind.

The original being looked at this thing for one night, trying to understand how it worked, and then... that was it.

Well, he usurped this body.

It's wrong to kick someone when they're down, but the predecessor was indeed quite foolish.

Although this is a heretical cultivation method, it is still very logical. Normally, this situation would not occur.

His death was simply because he couldn't even walk, yet he tried to run away, and he did so while riding a motorcycle on the highway.

In short, he tried to cultivate the technique without even memorizing the entire method.
“It was foolish, but it also gave me an opportunity.”

Li Zhongren muttered to himself.

His reborn soul trembled slightly at that moment, and a sense of indifference and inclusiveness from the essence of his being spread out.

He clearly sensed that the "mixed spiritual energy backlash" described in the technique, which was enough to pollute the soul and corrode the meridians of ordinary cultivators, seemed to him to be just a slightly noisy "noise".

Just like the vast universe itself, would it mind a dust storm on a planet?
"A stable world...is the only place worth living in."

He recalled the coldness and deathly silence of the void, and the maddening absolute loneliness.

Compared to that, this world, with its warmth, color, and even some strange rules, is simply paradise.

In order to safeguard the "stability" of this paradise, he must be able to understand it, and even, if necessary, change it.

Yes, from the moment he was resurrected, Li Zhongren had already treated this world as his personal property.

He wouldn't allow any risk in this world; he never wanted to fall asleep again.
The first step is power.

In this world, without power, one doesn't even have the right to know the truth.

He hesitated no more.

Following the methods of the "Northern Darkness Qi Absorption Technique," he abandoned the tedious process of carefully guiding, identifying, and refining the Qi in the orthodox Qi Absorption Technique. Instead, he adopted an almost barbaric approach, unleashing his spiritual senses and frantically seizing the surrounding "spiritual energy" as if capturing fragments of free energy in the depths of the void!
At first, everything was normal.

A faint, gentle spiritual energy flowed into my body like a thin mist.

But the next moment, something unexpected happened!

It was as if a forbidden gate had been opened, and the originally gentle spiritual energy instantly became violent and chaotic!
The colors are no longer pure milky white or light blue, but a turbid torrent mixed with countless shades of gray, black, dark red, and pale green!

These torrents seemed to be filled with countless sharp howls, desperate murmurs, frantic shouts, and fragmented emotions—joy, sorrow, anger, hatred. In cultivation, these things are called turbid energy or karma. In short, they are also spiritual energy, but apart from certain extremely special evil cultivation methods, they cannot be used directly. Perhaps they can be used temporarily, but in the end, a terrible price will be paid.

It's like you've been thirsty for a long time, but you come across a stinking ditch. You think drinking the water will save your life, but the poison in the water will eventually kill you.
This is the true nature of the "spiritual energy" devoured by the "Northern Darkness Qi Absorption Technique"!
Complex, chaotic, and destructive!
They are no longer the energy that nourishes life, but poison for the soul!
A terrifying torrent rushed into Li Zhongren's meridians, like millions of red-hot poison needles, piercing, corroding, and tearing wildly!
His body surface instantly flushed an abnormal red, capillaries began to rupture, and fine beads of blood seeped from his skin.

The intense pain was enough to cause any Qi Refining stage cultivator to suffer an instant mental breakdown and physical necrosis.

However, the core of Li Zhongren's soul, that "essence" that had endured billions of years of drifting in the void and had been honed to an unparalleled resilience and even undergone unknown mutations, merely coldly "watched" all of this.

In his inner perception, the surging torrent of mixed psionic energy seemed to have crashed into an invisible yet vast "barrier".

This barrier is not solid, but rather extremely deep and empty.

Those violent energies, those fragments of souls filled with negative emotions, rushed into this "void," like a raging river flowing into the silent, cold depths of the universe.

Their speed was slowed infinitely, their roars were stretched infinitely, and eventually dissipated into meaningless background noise. What his soul was endowed by billions of years of drifting in the void was a kind of "indifference" and "assimilation" characteristic that was almost at the level of rules.

Without any deliberate refinement, his soul itself is like an invisible, high-speed grinding field.

Those mixed psionic energies and chaotic remnants of the soul were forcibly pulled, broken down, and ground into the most primitive and purest energy particles.

Those attached negative emotions and fragments of memory are like dust falling into an endless void, completely stripped away, annihilated, and vanished into nothingness.

The process was meticulous yet incredibly grand.

He "saw" streams of dark red, violent, and murderous spiritual energy roaring towards him, but the moment they touched the source of his soul, they were torn into countless fine threads by an invisible force. The violent will in each thread was precisely stripped away and extinguished, leaving only a pure, gentle, and obedient strand of red energy that flowed into his dantian.

He "saw" patches of gray-black, despairing, and deathly psionic mist attempting to erode his consciousness, but like a thin mist encountering an absolute zero vacuum, it instantly solidified, shattered, and decomposed into the most basic spiritual particles, with all negative qualities vanishing.

And then there's that ghastly green psionic energy, laced with poison and curses, that colorful, twisted energy, full of deception and illusion.
No matter what kind of negative soul remnants they came from, no matter how vicious and ferocious they were originally, they all lost all their claws and teeth in front of Li Zhongren's soul, which had been tempered by the endless void, and became docile and pure.

The pain persists, but it is merely the discomfort caused by the body's meridians initially receiving a large influx of energy, rather than an erosion of the soul. In fact, those meridians that were just damaged begin to regenerate and solidify rapidly under the nourishment of pure and abundant spiritual energy.
His body was trembling, and his pores were overflowing with foul blood and impurities, but his eyes were getting brighter and brighter, and the spiritual power in his body was growing wildly at an unprecedented speed!

Break through the first level of Qi Refining!
Second level of Qi Refining
Qi Refining Level 3
After an unknown amount of time, as the sky outside the window began to lighten with the first hint of dawn, Li Zhongren slowly stopped his cultivation.

His body was covered in a layer of dark red filth, which smelled foul, but his eyes were surprisingly bright.

He felt the surge of spiritual energy within his body, far exceeding anything he had ever experienced before; he was at the peak of the fourth level of Qi Refining!
Overnight, he broke through three minor realms in succession!
Moreover, its spiritual energy is extremely pure and its foundation is solid, completely lacking the superficial and restless feeling often found in heretical cultivation methods.

"The Northern Darkness Breathing Technique is indeed tailor-made for me."

He gave a complicated smile.

The risks are extremely high, but the rewards are also extremely high.

If it weren't for his special soul, he would already be a corpse, or worse.

He stood up, preparing to wash himself, while considering his next move.

You must take the college entrance examination, and you must do well on it.

This is his shortcut to integrating into the world and acquiring resources and knowledge.

However, in the instant his mind relaxed, an extremely faint, almost imperceptible "mark" emerged from the deepest part of the mixed spiritual energy he had refined, like a reef at the bottom of the water, silently trying to merge into his spiritual source.

The mark was extremely well hidden, carrying a hint of greed and voyeurism.

Li Zhongren's soul trembled instinctively, and his extraordinary intuition instantly locked onto this anomaly.

"Ok?"

His eyes suddenly sharpened.

The "Northern Darkness Breathing Technique" came too easily, and its predecessor died too mysteriously.

How could an ordinary high school student obtain such an evil skill that the empire is cracking down on?
It's important to understand that in this world, acquiring unorthodox cultivation techniques is as difficult as buying a gun at Tokyo University in my previous life—definitely not something an ordinary high school student could possibly do.
Now it seems that it's not that simple.

"Is this marking for tracking?"

"Is it location tracking?"

In the bathroom, as the water washed over him, Li Zhongren relived the memories in his mind.

In his predecessor's memories, there was Zhang Hao, a senior delinquent who mysteriously sold him the cultivation technique in a corner of the campus.

The predecessor only thought it was a black market channel, but Li Zhongren was different.

Combining millions of years of calmness with his soul's keen sensitivity to emotions, there seemed to be a hint of mockery and anticipation in the depths of Zhang Hao's eyes, like looking at prey.

"interesting."

In the blink of an eye, Li Zhongren provided the most reasonable explanation.
"Fruit, pick it."

This is the answer.

Just as Li Zhongren said, although the "Northern Darkness Breathing Technique" is a heretical cultivation method, if you cultivate it properly, you can at least get help in the early stages. People won't die immediately if they drink dirty water.

After all, although heretical cultivation methods have huge side effects, they never lie about one thing: they do lead to rapid success!
And that's the problem.

Regardless of who's behind that thug.

One thing is certain: the body of someone who cultivates the "Northern Darkness Qi Absorption Technique" is like a filter, capable of filtering out the impurities in the "water," leaving a portion of clean spiritual energy within the body, specifically in the dantian.

Then, when the time is right, the person or organization that spreads these heretical cultivation methods will come knocking and extract your pure spiritual energy.

As for calling the police?
In the Great Xia Empire, practicing heretical cultivation techniques is not only a crime, but a serious one!
Once discovered, it will take at least ten years!

Therefore, from the moment you begin practicing heretical cultivation methods, you have already lost the opportunity to call the police.

Moreover, and more importantly, and even more ingeniously.

The mark that he just sensed and captured had a very clever design.

It can provide location services and preserve clean spiritual energy, but the extraction process will not harm a cultivator too much. In other words, it will give you a glimmer of hope. However, Li Zhongren knows that this is a sunk cost. You keep cultivating, and others keep harvesting. One day, your body, which acts as a filter, will break down.

You then lose your value.
"very good."

He murmured to himself, and under his "gaze," the eerie mark was silently peeled away, enveloped, and then completely annihilated, leaving no trace.

After washing his body and changing into a clean school uniform, Li Zhongren looked at the handsome but deep-eyed boy in the mirror, picked up the old-fashioned psionic phone on the table, and went to school to ask for a sick leave for his "ghostly possession" - after all, his predecessor had indeed "died" once last night.

And then...
Then, he had to properly "thank" his senior, Zhang Hao.

After all, evil cultivation techniques lead to rapid mastery, so one's strength is bound to increase.

Finally, it's about figuring out the organization.

As for the reason
Of course, it's picking.

If the enemy can go, so can I.
Double-crossing is the happiest thing.
(End of this chapter)