Chapter 8
Chapter 8: How Vast Yun Zhou Is
“Damn,” a player muttered the moment they entered the forest. “For one second, I really thought I’d been transported.”
He sniffed here, sniffed there, like a bloodhound. If a squirrel had taken a dump nearby, he probably would’ve leaned in to smell that too.
“Right?” the player beside him said, kneading a fistful of dirt. “How can every detail be this perfect?”
How could technology jump this far in a single step?
It felt impossible—like it had done the splits and snapped every bone on the way down.
They wandered through the trees like Granny Liu stepping into Grand View Garden for the first time, wide-eyed and half-drunk on wonder.
“Holy shit, there’s even snakes!” someone shrieked.
The forest had harmless little creatures, nothing more, but it didn’t matter. When something slithered, a grown man could still scream like his soul had left his body.
“This isn’t just ‘realistic’ anymore,” someone whispered. “This is a second world.”
Even being shoved into the woods to chop trees didn’t earn a single complaint.
Then reality hit: chopping trees was hard.
In real life, most of them were takeout-dependent homebodies. Few worked out. Fewer had ever swung an axe. When the time came, they stood there blinking at each other, holding tools like they were props.
Luckily, someone who watched survival shows stepped forward. Even without hands-on experience, he had plenty of theory and started directing them—pick the right tree, cut it down, then trim branches.
“Tonight’s shelter doesn’t need to be fancy,” Han Tian said, stepping into the center. His voice carried, calm and controlled. “This is a long-term project.”
He swept his eyes over the crowd. “Let’s run an experiment.”
Wu Da Hu perked up instantly. “Big Shot—what experiment?”
Han Tian looked at the woods, at the dirt, at the cut branches and sap bleeding pale. “We test whether material reactions here match our world.”
Wu Da Hu understood at once.
If the physics and chemistry here aligned with reality, then the implications were terrifying.
A cultivation world would naturally have miracles. But if basic materials behaved the same, they could use modern knowledge to build modern things.
Houses. Tools. Farming methods.
Maybe much more.
The players quickly clustered into groups. In games, people instinctively gravitated toward competence, and Han Tian carried the aura of someone who knew what he was doing.
A few stragglers broke off to act alone, but Han Tian didn’t bother stopping them.
Zhou Xiao had promoted the game across several chats; not everyone knew Jing Bao Tian’s reputation. Lone wolves existed in every game.
While the players worked, Song Jiu Lai was struggling with a more immediate problem: dinner.
Tonight, they could only make do by buying steamed buns from the foot of the mountain.
The stove in the kitchen sat cold and lonely. Embarrassingly, the only one on the mountain who could cook was A Wu.
Song Jiu Lai could cook.
She just didn’t want to.
Cultivators could fast, but there was no need to show off.
Besides, she was only early Qi Refining Stage. She wasn’t anywhere near the fasting realm. And as someone from Blue Star, China, she craved food like a religion.
The food down the mountain tasted fine, but the cooking methods were limited. The cultivation world had abundant resources and many ingredients, but it lacked modern variety.
And she needed to feed fifty people.
Time flowed differently between worlds. Two hours here equaled one hour on Blue Star, and Song Jiu Lai didn’t restrict login time.
A determined grinder could stay online for a full day and night, and with a game this shocking, most of them probably would.
Right now, all fifty were still online.
The one upside was that Song Jiu Lai could see the players’ movements and had absolute control over them.
That was the System’s biggest guarantee—her safety net for daring to bring people in.
But as long as the players didn’t cross her bottom line, she wasn’t going to clamp down on their freedom.
If someone wanted to run down the mountain and get themselves killed, she wouldn’t stop them—as long as they didn’t cause trouble.
Below Flying Sparrow Mountain sat a mortal town, roughly the size of an ancient county seat.
On Yun Zhou Continent, cultivators stood above everything. There wasn’t really a “nation” concept—only cities that belonged to major sects.
This county belonged to Flying Sparrow Sect. But in a radius of thousands of li, there were dozens of human cities, all under one enormous sect.
Myriad Immortals Sect.
Just the name told you how shamelessly grand it was.
They even dared to use “Immortals.”
And yet, Myriad Immortals Sect still wasn’t the strongest sect out there.
Yun Zhou Continent was so vast that mortals couldn’t imagine it. Beyond the continent, there were even forbidden zones.
But even cultivators couldn’t freely cross Yun Zhou Continent. Too many territories were tangled with danger—Devil cultivators and rogue cultivators scattered everywhere, each with their own turf.
If you weren’t strong enough, the moment you crossed someone’s land, you’d be noticed.
Song Jiu Lai wasn’t thinking that far ahead.
Humming to herself, she arrived at the mortal county town: Wangan County.
Wangan County was smaller than any county in China. One long street practically ran from end to end.
Song Jiu Lai didn’t know the population, but it always looked lively.
Here, cultivators and mortals could coexist peacefully—so long as the sect managing the region did its job.
Today happened to be market day. And because the time flow didn’t match Blue Star’s, Wangan County wasn’t even close to evening yet.
Vendors lined the street with small stalls. Most had sold nearly everything and were packing up to go home.
Song Jiu Lai went straight to a bun stall and bought one hundred large steamed buns.
Mortals used currency too, but the universal one was spirit stones.
Mortals couldn’t cultivate with spirit stones, but spirit stones still nourished the body. Unless they were injured, people here rarely got sick.
One low-grade spirit stone bought a hundred buns. The shopkeeper even tossed in a few meat buns.
Song Jiu Lai counted the spirit stones in her pouch and felt a headache brewing. Food alone was already a real expense. Longevity Sect needed a way to earn money.
When she bought the puppet doll, Su Huan Li had given her a tiny Mustard Seed Pouch—a storage treasure with a small space inside.
It could store items, but not living creatures.
To store living creatures, you needed a higher-grade Mustard Seed Pouch, or something even more miraculous: a Cosmos Jade Token.
Only cultivators from major sects had Cosmos Jade Tokens.
A poor place like this didn’t.
Even now, Song Jiu Lai still found everything new and strange in the best way.
Before transmigrating, she’d been an orphan with no attachments. Getting an extra life was already luck.
If her cultivation went well, she could live a long time.
And the System had said that once she reached a high enough level, she could open a path back to Blue Star. She really did want to go back someday—to see it again with new eyes.
After buying buns, she picked up ingredients too. She couldn’t dump every meal on A Wu. The players needed to learn how to feed themselves.
She had to plan tasks. Assign roles. Keep the sect running.
Most importantly, tonight she needed to hand out fifty Spirit Root Pills and help the players awaken spirit roots—turning them into a true cultivation force.
Only then could they become her real support.
A unified notification sounded in every player’s mind:
[System: Note—after your spirit roots awaken, your talent will be determined by the player. The stronger your will, the stronger your spirit roots.]