Chapter 20—Progress
True Qi: 110/110
Your Journey Ends; Your Journey Begins
Tribulation: [With merely water and no food, tread ten mountains a day for ten days. Mountains tread today: 0/10, Consecutive days: 0/10]
Pre-emptive Tribulation Passed: [Purify Tainted Entities: 1/1]
Did it… just talk? Yu Han’s eyes snapped open. The mist hit his face; two worlds covered in fog.
He had heard a voice. Neither man nor woman, neither young nor old. It whispered in his ears.
Silent victory, keep it concealed
Your tribulation, best unrevealed
Heavenly secrets, guard them well
Let not your triumph’s whisper tell
Wisdom earned before the test
In silence holds its power best
For cultivation’s path is steep
And rivals’ eyes never sleep
So hush your glory, hard-won prize
Lest others seek to scrutinise
The path you’ve grasped before its time
Keep hidden like a distant chime
For in the realm of sword and scroll
Discretion guards the cultivator’s soul.
Yu Han stood up.
What the fuck? The voice was reciting poetry!
Dawn broke. A new day arrived.
+1 True Qi.
You Have Levelled Up.
Heavenly Allocation: Mind
+5 Primordial Qi.
A strange, energetic feeling welled up inside him, threatening to spill out.
“No fucking way!”
And as if in replacement for the energy, his voice leaked out without control. He… wasn’t stuck in the bottleneck. He had straight-up advanced.
It was something he thought was possible, logically thinking. But when it actually happened, the shock felt… felt…
No, that’s not shock! Yu Han brought up his status menu.
Name: Yu Han (Johan)
Level: 1
True Qi: 1 (+1)/200
Pure Qi: 8/110
Primordial Qi: 5
Lifeforce: 1/648
There were two new things! Yu Han sat back down.
“You reached the bottleneck, didn’t you?” Li Yao was sharpening a branch into a fishing spear with a knife from the kitchen. The boy always rose before everyone. “It’s funny how obvious your reactions are. Where’d the ruthless, devious Tubs go?”
“You… aren’t wrong,” Yu Han said. He hadn’t just reached the bottleneck—he’d broken through it.
“You heard the voice?” Li Yao winked.
“It caught me off guard.”
“I thought it was a ghost at first.” Li Yao stopped. “We could use this if we knew someone was close to a bottleneck.”
Yu Han rubbed his chin. “Wait for them to gain true qi in the middle of a fight, and when they’re surprised by the voice and distracted, finish them off?”
“More like if we knew someone’s tribulation, we could stop them from completing it. How would you even know if they got true qi?”
“Enough character data. Build a prediction model of their behaviour.”
“Fuck off.”
“Oh, okay.” Yu Han left the cabin. When he sat down to meditate, he went into that trance-like state.
And he was definitely in meditation, not sleep. If it were sleep, Deep Sleep and Echoing Dreamscape would have kept him lucid.
Either way, this was dangerous. If he lost it in some wilderness, he’d have only himself to blame if he became wolf chow.
Li Yao. That brat. He was watching over me.
A genuine connection. His dad would’ve told him to nurture it. Especially in this bleak world, where the strong preyed on the weak.
A warm feeling welled up in his heart again.
Wait, no. Eww. This ain’t some weird bromance. Yu Han pulled up the sheet again. It has to be this lifeforce or primordial qi thing.
Primordial Qi: 5
Lifeforce: 2/648
Stolen story; please report.
It went up!
Unlike true qi, pure qi, and lifeforce, primordial qi only had one number and no slashes. Just a five.
Does it mean that, unlike true and pure qi, I can’t gain primordial qi? Or that there’s no limit to how much I can gain?
Lifeforce. Life, force. Why was the max 648—such a weird number? The current value slowly ticked up, too. Yu Han had no idea what he was doing to make the number go up.
Judging from the name, it seemed to have something to do with “life.” In different media on Earth, lifeforce could mean anything. Vitality, health points, a mystical energy for some magic and whatnot. There were no set definitions, and what it did was up to the author.
Yu Han concentrated on the letters.
Nothing happened.
Let’s think about that later.
There was also primordial qi. Yu Han concentrated on Primordial Qi: 5.
What the—
A weird feeling surged through him. Like a guide, appearing in his mind. But it had no letters or words. Merely pure knowledge. Or rather, instinct. Yu Han instinctively knew what to do with it.
He brought up his origins menu.
[Body Origin: 5.20]
[Spirit Origin: 7.80]
[Mind Origin: 12.20 (+1.00)]
His mind Origin had gone up a full point!
Before, it was 11.20, and now it was 12.20. He was reminded of the strange message at the start.
Heavenly Allocation: Mind
He pulled up the sub-origins.
Primordial Qi: 5
[Mind Origin: 12.20]
Intelligence: 14 (+1)
Memory: 17 (+1)
Perception: 11 (+1)
Clarity: 9 (+1)
Focus: 10 (+1)
All sub-origins in mind origin had gone up by one! At first glance, the numbers looked like a simple mean, but because of his past experience, Yu Han doggedly treated them as weighted averages, with each sub-origin having a weight of 0.20.
Adding up the weighted sum would get the “origin” number. Since each of the five sub-origin had gone up by one, the primary origin went up by five multiplied by 0.20, which is one.
Yu Han nodded. Simple math didn’t need calculators.
Primordial qi appeared in the sub-origin menu too.
Should I try it out now, or should I wait?
He concentrated on the number. Something seemed to click, then move away. Yu Han focused on a sub-origin in mind.
Let’s pick memory, since it’s the highest.
Primordial Qi: 0 (5)
[Mind Origin: 16.13 (12.20)]
Intelligence: 14
Memory: 17 + 5 -> 22 (17)
Perception: 11
Clarity: 9
Focus: 10
Free stat points! Yu Han wished he could jump up and cheer. Is this a xianxia world or a LitRPG world?
Heavenly allocation. After he levelled up, it selected one origin and increased each sub-origin by one. It was like the automatic stat point gain in video games.
Primordial qi, on the other hand, were points he could manually allocate. He could allocate them to any of the sub-origin, regardless of which primary origin they belonged to. That was what these “new” instincts told him.
Freaky. This system thing—or dao, was it? It can implant instincts. Worse yet, after gaining origin points, his physical, mental, or spiritual capabilities would change. Meaning this dao system could directly modify living, breathing beings.
I don’t think I’ll ever be able to deny the possibility that I was kidnapped and put into a virtual reality simulation. Wait a minute…
Mind origin was now 16.13. That didn’t make sense if the weights were 0.20 for each sub-origin!
Yu Han counted on his fingers. He multiplied each of the sub-origins by 0.20 and summed up the results.
It should be at 13.20. Why is there a difference of 2.94 in mind origin?
Not that he should complain. But why? The answer was simple. Yu Han grinned.
The weights changed! He burst into laughter. I fucking knew it! You think you’re so clever? You mean little mean, trying to trick me again?
He felt vindicated. It wasn’t a simple mean after all, but a weighted average. Now, the weights had changed.
But again… why?!
“Hey, Crazy Tubs, you look scary. Look in another direction.”
“Huh?”
“You look like someone stole your wife.”
“…No, I don’t!”
It’s fine. It’s totally fine. Yu Han scratched his palm. His nails had grown longer, so it hurt. But he kept scratching. Damn it. No, don’t be anxious. I’ll get answers when I get to the sect.
Would he, though? By the looks of it, sects guarded knowledge litigiously. In novels, they would have libraries and archives, with only certain individuals permitted to access them.
There was far too little information. And too many questions!
A pressure rose within Yu Han. He concentrated on his sub-origins again. The strange heaviness that had moved from primordial qi to his mind sub-origins shifted back.
Primordial Qi: 5
[Mind Origin: 12.20]
Intelligence: 14
Memory: 17
Perception: 11
Clarity: 9
Focus: 10
His instincts told him that he could choose to “apply” the changes he’d made. But just changing them around wouldn’t immediately finalise them.
He played around with the sub-origins more.
Primordial Qi: 0 (5)
[Mind Origin: 13.33 (12.20)]
Intelligence: 14 + 2 -> 16 (14)
Memory: 17
Perception: 11 + 1 -> 12 (11)
Clarity: 9
Focus: 10 + 2 -> 12 (10)
Now it’s 13.33! Why? Gods-darned stupid—why aren’t you con—calm. Calm. This isn’t a spreadsheet.
He reverted his changes and spread the sub-origins equally.
Primordial Qi: 0 (5)
[Mind Origin: 13.20 (12.20)]
Intelligence: 14 + 1 -> 15 (14)
Memory: 17 + 1 -> 18 (17)
Perception: 11 + 1 -> 12 (11)
Clarity: 9 + 1 -> 10 (9)
Focus: 10 + 1 -> 11 (10)
“A-ha!” Yu Han raised his fists up. He shouted at the sky, “I’ll have your secrets soon.”
The other recruits gave him odd looks. Li Yao went inside the cabin, giving Yu Han a look that seemed to say not to talk to him anymore.
Yu Han felt his face heating and sat back down.
But when the data clicked into place, it felt better than a full-body massage. Didn’t it?
I’m not weird. Adding them equally keeps the weights the same at 0.20. And somehow, the very act of allocating primordial qi into sub-origins changes the weights.
But… why?
Yu Han closed his eyes and meditated for five minutes. Satisfaction came in steps. He didn’t need all the answers right now, so his heart should stop beating so quickly, and his blood pressure should go down. Right this instant. It was only logical.
He slapped his right knee. It had been twitching like an unruly child.
He tested body origin and spirit origin next. Adding the primordial qi equally would keep the weights stable at 0.20, but adding them unequally— whether he added them all into one origin or added them to all of them—changed the weights chaotically.
No need to finalise the primordial qi changes this instant. He didn’t know what most of the sub-origins did. All he knew was that memory made the mirages in Echoing Dreamscape more substantial, and they lasted longer without him passing out into actual sleep.
He had gained other sub-origins, too. Twice, messages showed assimilation of pure qi. Fifty pure qi each for a sub-origin point gain in endurance and strength.
The weights hadn’t changed then.
But… why?!
And why the heck was lifeforce such a weird number? Why did the dao system recite poetry? Was it sapient? Why did it warn everyone not to share their tribulation details? Was it benevolent? What was pure qi?
Yu Han pulled his hair.
He was going to make this his bitch!
Be rational, Johan. I am Yu Han now, not some psychopathic nerd. Just a… a normal fatty.
He meditated again. Whether it took a day, a year, or a gods-darned century, he was going to get his answers. This dataset was actually pretty good. The numbers were clear, with no strange outliers other than one “requirements not satisfied.” The problem was the absence of Excel. So, he had to do the math the old-fashioned way.
Unlike in his past life, he should be rational about data-crunching. No hiring hackers or data brokers to steal corporate secrets, nor private eyes to tail his competitors to gather dirt. He couldn’t do it even if he tried. So, he might as well be proper here.
He wasn’t gonna disappoint his dad. Never again. Even if they lived in different realities now.
The Drizzle passed through water valleys and mountaintop rivers, nearing the city but not approaching it. Many boats entered and exited the city like ants. It seemed to be the central hub of the area. But no boats crossed the Drizzle, as if their vessel had the waterway all to themselves.
Finally, with tropical rain pounding the world all around, the boat arrived at a large village.
The mountainside was lined with numerous huts, their outlines blurred by the falling rain. The palm trees swayed in the wind, their large leaves rustling. Near the riverbank was a large statue of a bearded man wielding a spear. Beside it, a small shack. The sound of chants and prayers came from it in waves. It praised the gods of the rivers, the lakes, and the land. The voices mixed with the sound of rain. The little jetty sat empty, like it was waiting for the Drizzle to arrive.
Thunder cracked. Lightning flashed.
Yu Han closed his eyes. When he opened them, a silhouette loomed on the dock.
It'd mean a lot if you could follow and rate it to help me climb the Rising stars list. If you could REVIEW it, that's even better!
Patreon ->
