Chapter 55: Achievement Realm

A few strands of sunlight fell from outside the window, the incense burner on the table before the window sent up wispy smoke, Zhou Shuo sat on the futon, his thoughts sensing the clear weather outside the quiet room; he was not cultivating qi, but instead slowly organizing his memories of cultivation, and now he wanted to devise a system for himself.

He had already experienced three worlds, Zhou Shuo had come into contact with two or three completely different systems, namely Dao arts, qi-refining techniques, and martial arts; although these three are independent, they are also closely related, and within each individual system one will touch upon the other two, and Zhou Shuo hopes to fully sort them out, not only to facilitate his own cultivation but also to aid in organizing information.

Because the martial arts and Dao arts of the Yangshen World are the most perfected among the systems he has encountered, Zhou Shuo draws on these two, using personal achievement to divide six ranks; the six ranks of achievement do not involve personal strength, for the outcome of a battle is determined by many factors such as environment, equipment, mindset, experience, and so on, and not everything can be measured by data like in an online game.

Personal achievement is divided into six realms: mortal, supernatural, legendary, epic, mythic, and sage. The mortal realm refers to ordinary people whose bodies have not yet broken through their limits, who have not mastered energies such as dark strength, true qi, chakra, psychic power, etc.; whether a mighty warrior capable of lifting mountains, or one born with extraordinary abilities, or even the old, weak, and infants, all belong to this stage.

After the mortal realm comes the supernatural realm; as the name suggests, supernatural means surpassing the limits of mortals, mastering energies that ordinary people lack, achieving a subtle command of one's own abnormal abilities, mastering dark strength, true qi, chakra, psychic power, and even external heavenly and earthly forces; those whose bodies have broken through their limits can be called supernatural, such as martial artists who have refined their viscera or Daoists who have commanded objects, and they belong to this kind of person.

After the supernatural realm comes the legendary realm; upon mastering one's abnormal abilities to a subtle degree, mastering energies such as dark strength, true qi, chakra, psychic power, etc., one's life transcends the human range—human immortals refining apertures into supernormal abilities, Dao arts seizing houses and attaching to bodies, mastering heavenly and earthly power, able to survive apart from the flesh, equivalent to a nuclear‑bomb‑level existence, beyond ordinary comprehension, belonging to those who live in legend.

Epic, after becoming legendary, life transcends the human realm, possessing superhuman strength capable of opening up the world, with an undying body—for example, Daoists who have survived seven heavenly thunder tribulations and reached the Yangshen realm, or martial artists whose flesh and blood have evolved to shatter the void—these belong to this tier; one person can sustain a massive force, unafraid of state power, and write an epic single‑handedly.

As for the final realms of myth and sage, Zhou Shuo set the baseline of these realms at the Daoist union with the Dao, the Buddhist nirvana, and the other shore of the Yangshen World; as to what these two realms are like, he cannot even imagine them—even the protagonist of the Yangshen World, Hong Yi, who broke through Yangshen and shattered the vacuum, Zhou Shuo has not yet seen how that is, but in his view Hong Yi probably only reaches the epic realm.

Zhou Shuo searched all he knew; many protagonists of web novels merely switch maps to grind experience, being constantly fed water, barely able to walk a little further in the epic realm before beginning to regress—such worthless goods; perhaps in the real world the river of history and the sages, immortals, buddhas, and gods of legend have reached those levels, but who would know!

"My half‑baked legendary thoughts are still too much!" Zhou Shuo mused on the mythic and sage realms, involuntarily shaking his head, then began to reflect on himself; in terms of realm, he is slowly refining his apertures, counting as having entered the door of the legendary realm, but his strength is still a hundred and eighty thousand miles from truly becoming legendary, his combat power can only be considered supernatural, and even some supernatural individuals he cannot defeat—this is a combat‑power issue.

Combat power is something extremely difficult to calculate, and Zhou Shuo does not intend to waste thought on it; first, because his ability is insufficient, second, because human hearts and lives—these things simply cannot be expressed in data, just like the stock market: no one can accurately predict which rising stock will plummet over a minor incident.

When he truly meets a master, if he can't win he runs; if he can't outrun he yields; if he really can't, he dies righteous; if he hasn't even prepared himself to face death, he might as well return to the modern world and continue being a code slave—rather than linger in those light‑less days, Zhou Shuo would rather strive for a chance at rebirth through fire.

His thoughts were too many; Zhou Shuo barely suppressed them and began to cultivate; he has already set a cultivation goal for himself, the overall goal being dual cultivation of life and fate, mainly training form, qi, and spirit.

Those who train the form mainly consolidate the body; the body is the vessel and reliance of the soul and life, and must not be weak—one must strengthen the bones and muscles externally, train the five viscera internally, and washing the marrow and exchanging the blood throughout the body counts as meeting the standard.

After training the form comes training qi; the goal of qi training is to master the body's subtleties, to master internal energy, and then to communicate with and command heavenly and earthly energy, requiring the opening of the eight extraordinary meridians and the twelve regular meridians so that internal energy flows unimpeded; Zhou Shuo is currently at this stage of training.

After qi training comes spirit training; understanding where the essence, mind, spirit, and soul of the human body reside, gaining the ability to survive without form, to attach and regenerate, and to roam a thousand miles with the spirit—this too is still being cultivated.

In the quiet room, Zhou Shuo silently circulated the primordial qi, visualized the golden light talisman, silently recited the golden light divine spell, and a layer of golden light invisible to ordinary eyes rose outside his body; this is the Heavenly Master's Abode's golden light spell—preserving the spirit, visualizing, and moving qi, the true qi contains not only a grand and righteous thought, but also a fiery, yang‑hot heat.

The golden light, following his thoughts, continually rose and changed outside his body—sometimes forming streaks of runes, sometimes turning into a pair of palms, sometimes condensing into solid ice like substance, sometimes fading into a golden‑tinged luster, then drawing back and flowing through his limbs and bones; Zhou Shuo circulated qi nine cycles before the golden light dispersed, only then slowly opening his eyes and sighing at the might of the orthodox Daoist secret art passed down for a thousand years.

The golden light of the Heavenly Master's Abode's golden light spell not only, like true qi, can be emitted to protect the body and evolve into attack power; moreover, due to the grand and righteous thought, it possesses a lethal force against Daoist arts and souls—if the union of spirit and flesh is the aura of perception, then this golden light spell is like the aura of armament, and it can further evolve.

"It should be doable now!" Zhou Shuo looked at his hands, feeling the golden light gradually coming under his control and solidifying; his two life‑and‑fate channels had undergone great tempering, and cultivating the golden light spell progressed just as swiftly—within a few days he achieved the golden light that many qi cultivators might not manage in over a decade—but the golden light spell itself is not important; what matters more is its further strengthening technique: thunder law.

Thunder law, whether in the Yangshen World or the Ability User World, is an extremely high‑level Daoist art; Zhou Shuo has studied the Taiyin Divine Thunder, now having appreciated the power of the golden light spell, he naturally wants to master the Heavenly Master's Abode's thunder law—since the golden light spell already harms souls, thunder law definitely possesses exterminating power over souls; with this art he could probably return to the Yangshen World to measure himself against Hong Yi.

"Let's try." Zhou Shuo felt his proficiency with the golden light spell, an itch he could hardly bear, and began to practice; the Heavenly Master's Abode's thunder law is likewise a secret not to be transmitted, based on the golden light spell, but his qi circulation is no longer the primordial qi, but the heart‑fire divine qi of the five viscera, likewise aided by visualizing thunder talismans to execute.

The five viscera of the human body correspond to the five phases; the heart belongs to fire, stores the spirit, and is pure yang; this Heavenly Master's Abode thunder law operates the heart‑fire divine qi, moves the lesser yin lung metal, and unleashes a heaven‑shaking, earth‑splitting thunder law; the first step in training is to locate the heart‑fire divine qi, which is like a martial arts aperture, hidden within the primordial qi; Zhou Shuo has already extracted the specific search method from Zhang Chulan's mouth.

Without much effort, Zhou Shuo located the heart‑fire divine qi, then, following the method, began to visualize the thunder talisman—twisting like a snake and jumping, the numbing electric sigil appeared in his mind, united with the heart‑fire divine qi, and then he used the heart‑fire divine qi to convey the lesser yin lung metal qi, circulating through the meridians and releasing it.

Finding the heart‑fire divine qi and visualizing the thunder talisman came easily to Zhou Shuo, yet when it came to conveying the lesser yin lung metal qi he could not get it moving—the lesser yin lung qi felt like a lump of cold steel, while his heart‑fire divine qi was like a fledgling flame, unable to melt it into metal qi.

Since he could not convey it, he instead actively cooperated; Zhou Shuo already had some understanding of qi training, and relying on his robust physique, his skill gave him boldness, so he deliberately stirred the lung qi to match the heart‑fire divine qi, and soon succeeded in releasing several arcs of electricity from his fingertips, as if he had completed the thunder law.

"Success." Zhou Shuo looked at the electric arcs spurting from his fingertips, involuntarily showing a smile, but before he could laugh, his facial skin felt a sudden warmth, while his whole body's skin prickled as if struck by static electricity, his pores forced wide open and unable to close, sweat pouring out like broth, and in an instant his whole person seemed as if fished out of water.

"What's going on?" Zhou Shuo touched his heated face and looked at the sweat marks wiped from his palm; having studied medical classics, although he cannot take a pulse, he can understand his condition from the symptoms—this is the manifestation of deficient yang fire overflowing, and it is quite severe, yet impossible, for he has already washed the marrow and exchanged the blood, so external evils cannot harm him, nor would external conditions cause illness; if not external, then it must be an internal problem from his cultivation.

"I'm screwed, that brat Zhang Chulan..." Zhou Shuo's first thought was that he was likely eighty percent duped by Zhang Chulan; he had practiced the method Zhang gave him without error, so the fault must lie in the method itself.

When deficient yang fire rises, a person shows signs of excitement; Zhou Shuo's annoyed thoughts were strong, but fortunately he still had some cultivation foundation, he suppressed the overflowing yang fire, then halted his thunder law training, left the quiet room for cultivation, and at this point, half a month had passed since he broke free from the all‑access pass; during that half month he had stayed with Lv Liang, Xia He, and others in the home of a person named Hu Lin in the Dongxiang Village of Jinmen Baodi, and the reason Hu Lin sheltered them was naturally thanks to Xia He.