A soft wind blew through the ruins, brushing against Mu Chen's body where he lay on the ground. The area around him had changed completely. No god statues. No damp cave walls.
In that place, there was only an ancient altar surrounded by a flow of clear, blue water, calm and still. Torches burned in a ring around the altar, the kind whose flames would never go out.
COUGH!
Mu Chen snapped awake when a cloud of dust particles drifted up and got into his lungs by accident. He opened his eyes slowly and pushed himself up, his body weak and sluggish.
Where... am I?
"Yunxi? Chen Wei? Gu Yan?!"
He got to his feet, one hand still pressed to his chest. The pain was still there, but compared to before, it was nothing like it used to be.
The smell of damp stone filled his nose. The stone floor beneath him was solid, shaped once again like an altar, without any significant cracks.
The air temperature was much colder, though not enough to make him shiver.
The mysterious things that had happened to him had Mu Chen suspicious of everything. Was it possible that all of it was tied to fate, to him and the necklace his grandfather had left behind?
I need to figure out where I actually am.
Mu Chen stepped away from the mysterious altar, keeping himself steady. He couldn't push too hard, couldn't get too worked up.
He walked along the room's walls, damp and cold to the touch. With his helmet still on, Mu Chen tried to connect his signal to Nan Yue. It failed.
He was caught off guard when he looked at the oxygen readings displayed on his helmet's visor. The suit automatically detected the oxygen level in the room and gave an instant readout on whether the air was safe to breathe or not.
"The air is... ten times better than the average on Earth?"
To test it for himself, Mu Chen took a long, deep breath and worked up the nerve to pull off his helmet visor. It came free from the suit, and he breathed in clean, full air.
This place is a lot better than I expected.
Not just the helmet, he took off the full specialized suit too, and now he was down to just black pants, a long-sleeved shirt, and a vest.
His attention drifted back to the script carved into the room's walls. But the characters were far more complex than anything Mu Chen had anticipated.
He turned and scanned the room, and spotted a door the same size and shape as the one in the three-god chamber back in the cave.
Mu Chen walked closer and looked for the door mechanism. But the moment his fingers touched the door's surface, a golden energy light appeared and lit up the carvings on it.
Within seconds, the door opened on its own, revealing a long corridor with a ceiling roughly ten meters high.
This corridor has to lead me outside.
Mu Chen didn't want to waste any time. He walked quickly into the corridor, not realizing there was a monster lurking above him, hidden in the darkness of the ceiling.
[Complete the mission and receive a reward]
Mu Chen's steps paused for a moment when the golden panel appeared in front of him again, listing a mission and its reward. He was getting more and more curious about this system.
[Heavenly Refinement Mission]
[First Mission: Kill 5 monsters and refine them]
[Reward: Spiritual Root Activation || Open Main Meridians || Synchronize Body with Primordial Origin Qi]
Monster? Spiritual root? Meridians? Qi? Am I in a xianxia world?
While Mu Chen stood there staring at the panel in front of him, a roar from somewhere ahead snapped him out of it. A sound that was more than enough to make his skin crawl.
Is that... a monster?
The fear in his chest kept climbing. He had no idea what to do, and no weapon he could use to fight anything.
From the far end of the corridor, Mu Chen watched a monster come toward him. It had a humanoid shape, just taller, around two meters.
The monster, wrapped in a black aura, lunged at Mu Chen. He jumped back and managed to dodge, but doubt crept in about whether he could actually beat it.
"How am I supposed to fight this thing?"
In the middle of that doubt, a golden cauldron suddenly appeared in Mu Chen's palm. It was small, no bigger than a grown man's closed fist, but it radiated a strong golden aura.
"Using this? How am I supposed to beat it with just a cauldron?"
The only thing that came to Mu Chen's mind was throwing it. Maybe it could be used to hit the black monster.
Mu Chen threw the golden cauldron, and to his shock it expanded to its full size mid-air, slamming into the monster with enough force to send it flying backward.
He was stunned. He never imagined the golden cauldron that had been tormenting him all this time would now come to his rescue.
The golden cauldron returned to Mu Chen's hand like a boomerang. He watched the monster pull itself back up. Without hesitation, Mu Chen threw the golden cauldron again, aiming straight at it.
He kept at it until the monster finally stopped moving for good. Its death was simple. It crumbled into ash and vanished.
Without Mu Chen directing it at all, the golden cauldron flew over the remains of the monster. It spun clockwise, drawing the spiritual qi out of the creature.
Is it absorbing the monster's power?
Before long, the golden cauldron finished and flew back to Mu Chen, hovering right above his palm. Just from watching what happened, he already understood how this mission system worked.
Alright. This might be more easy than I thought
Mu Chen continued down the corridor and ran into more monsters, smaller ones with the same form. He threw the golden cauldron and fought through them hard.
Twenty minutes of fighting ended with Mu Chen standing as the winner. One by one, the black monsters lay dead on the ground.
The golden cauldron did its job again, absorbing their spiritual qi energy. With that fight done, Mu Chen had completed the first Heavenly Refinement mission.
[First Mission Complete!]
[Congratulations, Host is entitled to receive the reward]
[Beginning spiritual root activation!]
[Beginning main meridian opening]
[Beginning synchronization of spiritual root with Primordial Origin Qi]
Mu Chen's body lit up in gold the moment the first mission was finished. His spiritual root had been awakened. His main meridians were now open. His body had successfully synchronized with the Primordial Origin Qi.
The light across his body slowly faded. He felt lighter, stronger. The pain in his body melted away.
After the first mission wrapped up, another panel appeared in front of Mu Chen's face. The system panel laid out his second mission.
[Second Heavenly Refinement Mission: Cultivate with Ancient God Cauldron for one hour]
[Reward: Primordial Origin Qi Seed || Increase Qi Purity 10% || Heavenly Refinement Art, First Layer Unlocked]
I don't know how cultivation works. Better to figure that out later.
Mu Chen kept walking through the corridor until he saw something different at the far end.
A bright light shone from the end of the corridor, a sign that he was about to get out. Mu Chen hurried toward it. But he stopped dead, stunned by what was in front of him.
He saw hundreds of cultivators spread out before him, wearing uniforms in three different sect colors: silver white, dark blue, and bright red.
Hundreds stood on the ground. Dozens more floated in the air.
What shocked Mu Chen even more was a small palace drifting in the sky, surrounded and guarded by a large number of cultivators.
"Who are you?! What sect are you from?!" one of the bright red uniformed cultivators on the ground shouted, yelling straight at Mu Chen.
Every single pair of eyes turned toward him, sharp and intimidating, like they were sizing up prey.
Mu Chen froze, awkward and stiff, unable to say a single word, as if his mouth had been locked shut. He was worried that saying the wrong thing could cost him his life.
A woman seated on the throne inside the small floating palace noticed something. There was a faint pulse of qi energy she could feel, one that felt oddly familiar, like it reminded her of something.
She rose to her feet, and many of her sect members turned and lowered their heads in deference. Mu Chen looked over and saw someone step out from one of the flying palaces.
The woman walked to the edge of her flying palace, wearing a beautiful, stunning gown, long flowing black hair, and a fair, flawless face.
Her eyes glowed gold as she looked toward Mu Chen with a puzzled expression. Through her sight, she could see the golden qi radiating from his body.
Several cultivators from the other palaces glanced over at the reaction of the woman in the silver-white gown. None of them expected this person to actually catch her attention.
One of the cultivators shouted in irritation, assuming Mu Chen was a member of a demonic sect based on his clothes and his unusual status.
Mu Chen turned in shock, staring at them. In an instant, they formed hand seals and fired their attacks straight at him.
BLAST!
Their fire technique attacks exploded and sent a thick column of smoke rising high. They assumed they had killed Mu Chen. They were wrong.
Mu Chen was terrified, but four giant swords had formed around him, covering him from every side. That was not his power, and every cultivator there knew exactly whose it was.
Su Qingyue had extended her hand, throwing her protection around Mu Chen. She shot a sharp look downward, sending a wave of cultivation pressure that hit every cultivator from the Hongyan sect.
"No one is allowed to hurt him!" Su Qingyue warned.
One man neutralized the cultivation pressure and looked up at Su Qingyue. "What makes him worth anything to you, Grand Sect Leader Su Qingyue?"
"That is none of your business."
The woman extended her hand again, reaching for Mu Chen and pulling him up inside a projection of white qi. She brought him up into her palace.
"You. What is your name?" Su Qingyue asked.
"Mu... Chen."
The woman narrowed her eyes with cool authority, stepped forward gracefully, and pressed her fingertips to Mu Chen's forehead, channeling her white qi into him.
Su Qingyue closed her eyes. Mu Chen felt nothing while she did it.
Within seconds, a golden light burst and thundered through Mu Chen's body, shocking Su Qingyue and the cultivators from the other sects.
"What? Golden qi?!" they gasped.
Su Qingyue stopped what she was doing and released Mu Chen from her qi hand's grip. She extended her slender hand and touched Mu Chen's cheek and chin.
"Finally... I found you, Mu Chen," Su Qingyue said.
What does she mean?
"You are officially my inner disciple in the Tianyin Sect."
"But I never intended to..."
THUDD!
Mu Chen dropped straight to his knees as a wave of cultivation-enhanced gravitational pressure crashed into his body. It made him feel impossibly heavy, too heavy to even stand.
He coughed up blood and felt the pain in his chest flare back up. Mu Chen lifted his head and stared hard at Su Qingyue.
The woman stepped toward him. "You belong to me. If I cannot have you, then no one else can."