Dragon Yuan Mountain was vast, but the inner family territory was far quieter than the bustling ancestral halls.
Lin Sheng walked along a winding stone path suspended halfway up the mountain. Below him, clouds drifted lazily, concealing deep valleys where spirit beasts roamed freely. Above him, towering cliffs were carved with ancient sword marks—remnants of long-forgotten battles between cultivators.
Unlike the outer residences where ordinary Lin clansmen lived in clustered courtyards, this section of the mountain was sparse.
Each residence stood alone.
Each immortal abode represented status, contribution, or inheritance.
Lin Sheng stopped before a small mountain peak that jutted outward like a natural platform. Upon it sat a two-story immortal abode, modest in appearance but elegant in design. The walls were formed from pale spirit stone, veins of faint blue light pulsing slowly through them like a living organism.
Protective formations shimmered faintly along the perimeter, dormant yet intact.
This was his home.
Or rather—
The home his parents had left behind.
Lin Sheng took out a jade token from his sleeve and pressed it lightly against the formation. The air rippled, and the barrier parted soundlessly, allowing him to step inside.
The world grew quieter.
The immortal qi within the abode was noticeably denser than outside—not overwhelming, but steady and pure. It flowed gently, nourishing the body without resistance.
Lin Sheng paused.
His gaze swept across the courtyard.
Empty.
No laughter.
No movement.
No familiar presence.
"…She's not back yet."
His sister, Lin Xiaolu, was not home.
That meant only one thing.
She was on a mission.
Lin Xiaolu was three years older than him and already a Qi Refining cultivator. Among the younger generation of the Lin Family, she was considered talented—though not monstrous. Since their parents' death, she had taken on missions far more frequently than required.
To accumulate contribution points.
To secure resources.
To protect what little remained of their family line.
Lin Sheng understood this without being told.
He entered the abode and closed the door behind him.
The interior was clean and simple.
A small alchemy room on the left.
A cultivation chamber at the back.
Living quarters on the upper floor.
Nothing extravagant.
Yet every brick, every formation node, carried traces of 1st Rank Artifact Refining.
This place had once been occupied by true experts.
Lin Sheng ascended the stairs and entered his room.
The room was tidy to an obsessive degree. A wooden shelf held a few books—mostly basic martial arts manuals and clan regulations. A jade lamp emitted soft white light. At the center of the room lay a simple cultivation mat woven from spirit grass.
Lin Sheng closed the door.
He walked to the mat and sat down cross-legged.
His posture was steady, practiced.
Natural.
This body had lived here for ten years.
Ten full years.
The original owner of this body—the real Lin Sheng—had grown up beneath this roof, trained in the courtyard, listened to his parents' teachings, and believed wholeheartedly that one day he would follow them onto the Immortal Dao.
Then—
Three years ago.
His parents had accepted a clan mission outside Qin Prefecture.
They never returned.
Their soul lamps extinguished within the ancestral hall.
Death.
Confirmed.
At only seven years old, the original Lin Sheng had received the news in this very room.
He had not cried.
Not screamed.
He had simply collapsed.
His consciousness shattered under grief.
That was when he arrived.
Lin Sheng opened his eyes.
They were calm.
Clear.
Unburdened by childish emotion.
The consciousness within this body no longer belonged to the boy born in the Immortal Lin Family.
It belonged to a man from another world.
Another era.
Another civilization.
"…I brought it with me." Lin Sheng murmured softly.
Deep within his consciousness, something stirred.
A crystalline construct—complex beyond imagination.
A crystallized consciousness chip.
In his previous life, humanity had reached the interstellar age. Planets were terraformed, stars harvested, and biological limits continuously rewritten. Yet even with such advancement, true creativity—true innovation—remained bound by the limitations of organic cognition.
That was when the project was born.
A fusion of consciousness and machine.
Not artificial intelligence.
Not simple augmentation.
But a parallel cognitive core, designed to assist, simulate, optimize, and expand human thought itself.
It was called—
Crystal.
Lin Sheng had been one of its test subjects.
And somehow, impossibly, it had crossed worlds with him.
"Crystal," Lin Sheng spoke silently.
The response was immediate.
[Consciousness Chip: CRYSTAL — Online]
[Synchronization Rate: 99.87%]
[Cognitive Stability: Optimal]
Lin Sheng exhaled slowly.
"Scan my body," he ordered.
"Focus on spirit and physique, and display the specific situation in data form."
With a soft whoosh, a translucent data panel unfolded before his eyes.
It was sharp, clean, rendered in precise geometric lines—utterly out of place in a cultivation world.
[Subject: Lin Sheng]
Physical Fitness Assessment:
Spirit: 5.9
Physique: 2.7
1.0 represents the average healthy adult male
Lin Sheng's gaze lingered on the numbers.
"Far above my peers," he murmured.
This body had trained in basic martial arts since childhood. Even without spiritual roots, the Lin Family still emphasized physical conditioning for all children.
Compared to ordinary ten-year-olds, his body was exceptional.
But it was still…
Insufficient.
The Immortal Dao relied on spiritual energy.
Without it, one could train martial arts for a lifetime and still remain mortal.
That was the fundamental truth of this world.
And spiritual energy was precisely what troubled Lin Sheng the most.
In his previous life, interstellar civilizations had explored countless galaxies, cataloged exotic matter, dark energy, vacuum fluctuations, even theoretical higher-dimensional substances.
Yet—
There had never been any record of something resembling spiritual energy.
After waking up in this world, Lin Sheng had immediately ordered Crystal to analyze the surrounding environment.
Air composition.
Particle behavior.
Electromagnetic interference.
Quantum fluctuations.
The result had been clear.
This world's atmosphere was not significantly different from that of planets humans could normally inhabit.
Nitrogen.
Oxygen.
Carbon dioxide.
Trace elements.
All within acceptable ranges.
Except for one anomaly.
An active substance.
Invisible.
Non-particulate.
Unaffected by electromagnetic capture.
Unaffected by gravity.
Yet undeniably present.
There was only one record of such a substance in Crystal's database.
A fringe theory.
A footnote.
A discarded hypothesis.
—
"For the visualization method to succeed, apart from visualizing specific objects, one must absorb the free-floating energy of heaven and earth."
—
In his previous life, this had been laughed at.
Dismissed as mystical nonsense.
A hoax proposed by failed researchers who couldn't accept their limitations.
But here—
It was real.
Lin Sheng slowly clenched his fist.
"Spiritual energy…"
He had measured its concentration.
Thin.
Extremely thin.
Only one-fiftieth the concentration of carbon dioxide in the air.
In most places.
Except—
Certain immortal abodes.
Cultivation grounds.
Spirit veins.
Locations deliberately designed to accumulate it.
This active substance possessed another strange property.
It could not be captured by conventional matter.
No container.
No field.
No mechanical structure could hold it.
Yet—
It responded to consciousness.
Specifically—
To the visualization method.
Lin Sheng closed his eyes.
After discovering spiritual energy's existence, he had tried everything.
All failed.
Every attempt ended in zero yield.
Only when he used the visualization method—
A technique designed to evolve the spirit through meditation—
Did spiritual energy respond.
Not to machines.
But to the mind.