Immortal Dao Fruits, Cards to Help Me

Chapter 31 Time Waits for No One~
I don't know what's going on with this system upgrade. It's been a whole day now and it's still only showing 22%!

What kind of upgrade is this? Why is it so big?
Chen Xiuxian and Lao Niu rested for another day, taking a long bath, eating a hearty meal, and then getting a good night's sleep.

However, after Chen Xiuxian woke up, he became restless.

Isn't this the game update 2.0, "The Great Calamity"? He spent the whole night watching forum posts and videos.

Upon seeing this, on the one hand, one marvels at how amazing this cultivation method is, and on the other hand, one becomes a little anxious.

Time waits not for us!
First, a little over a year later, the prepared Boarmen will attack Liaodong.

They either need to withdraw in advance or strengthen their capabilities.

Looking further ahead, the battle between the humans and the boar people in Liaodong was just a minor skirmish.

When this great calamity strikes, it's truly terrifying!
It's no exaggeration to say that demons are everywhere!

Even in the heart of the Central Plains, in places that had been suppressed by successive dynasties, various mutated monsters have appeared in large numbers.

As evening falls, be wary of goblin attacks in remote villages.

When you're walking alone, some strange thing might follow your shadow home.

If you venture a little deeper into the woods, you might just turn into a few tree spirits—and while you're drinking water by a big tree, one of those trees will come up and slap you to death!

Moreover, the barrier between the human world and the spirit world is beginning to weaken.

The Phantom Realm is a "spirit realm" distinct from the human world, where many legendary beings and conceptual beings reside.

The official mountain gates of many reclusive immortal cultivation sects are located in the Illusionary Spirit Realm.

Many things that are extremely dangerous to the human world eventually end up in the Phantom Realm.

—This world has no celestial realm, because it is a middle-thousand world.

If it were a small world, there wouldn't even be an underworld.

It can be said that the Phantom Realm separates those beings in the human world that are too abnormal and have too great an impact/harm on living beings.

But this widespread contact brought many legendary things back to life.

With Buddhism, Taoism, the Xuanmen and the Demonic Sect, and unorthodox sects all starting to appear in the world and recruit disciples, all sorts of demons and unorthodox sects also came out to cause trouble.

That scene!
That state of vitality and all things competing is still before our eyes.

In this game, "The Great Calamity of Heaven and Earth" has only been updated for two days, and Chen Xiuxian has already seen thirty or forty posts about large-scale "gang fights".

Low-level magical artifacts flew everywhere, and various magical light and shadow effects intertwined, making people's brains turn into dog brains!

From this perspective, although there are no players...

However, a great calamity will inevitably come a few years from now, and the whole world will become increasingly dangerous.

If I hadn't had enough strength back then, I would have been in big trouble!

—There's a popular thread in the forum's casual chat section that specifically discusses those unorthodox methods of sexual enhancement!
Those evil sorcerers really don't discriminate between men and women, they prey on everyone!
The players were discussing it with great interest, and some even shared their "interesting stories" of being captured by a demoness and having their "essence" drained for three days—that character was essentially ruined, with their skills regressed and their innate attributes severely diminished, and they had to delete the account and start over.

They're playing a game, but I'm playing for real!
Chen Xiuxian carefully examined most of the "Apprenticeship Invitations" and "Sect Invitations".

Well, it's incredibly difficult!

Smaller sects are easier to join, but their techniques are of lower level, only reaching level 30 to 40, which is the Gang Sha realm.

To achieve the Golden Core, one must find another method.

And what about the major sects?
The apprenticeship process is extremely complicated, and the sect rules are very strict and numerous... It involves a correspondence between rights and obligations.

Currently, Taoist sects only accept elites, and the entry threshold is very high. Just "forming a bond" is very difficult, and then one has to go through more than a dozen rounds of apprenticeship tasks.

There are many things to do after you get inside.

Buddhist sects, on the other hand, opened their doors wide to facilitate this.

But they are focused on KPIs, and they want to allocate only a tiny amount of resources to find the best among the worst.

Moreover, Buddhism emphasizes "karma" or "predestined affinity." If you truly have the right karma or destiny, even if you don't succeed in this life, you can continue cultivating in the next.

Cultivate virtue in the next life, not in this one!
Although there are Taoists who reincarnate and cultivate again, they are relatively few in number.

Then there's the Demonic Sect! There are many Demonic Sects, but most of them cast a wide net and raise Gu poisons.

The idea is to make the disciples compete and fight each other. Those who die become nourishment for the living, and those who survive in the end are naturally the best!
Damn it! None of them are easy.

Besides these, there are some other scattered methods, collectively known as unorthodox methods, the main problem of which is that it is extremely difficult to become an immortal.

—If one can cultivate to become an immortal, then it is no longer a heretical path, but the orthodox Xuanmen!
Chen Xiuxian pondered for half the night, only to feel a headache coming on.

Firstly, in the Liaodong area, which is a beginner zone, there are very few cultivation sects.

There are only two legitimate ones: one is the Taoist Jiuding Tiesha Mountain, and the other is the Buddhist Qianshan Yufo Temple.

However, these two can only be considered as lower-middle level among second-rate sects at best.

However, in the Bohai Sea outside Liaodong Bay, there is a slightly above-second-tier "Penglai Sword Sect".

Those who belong to the Sword Immortal faction are quite powerful in combat. However, this faction is very difficult to join.

The rest are just scattered, unorthodox techniques, not worth mentioning.

Oh, by the way, in Liaodong you can take the "divine path," and the most convenient way is to visit the Five Immortals—Fox, Weasel, White Willow, and Gray—outside the pass.

However, very few players choose to follow the divine path, which is undeniably due to its extreme limitations.

Everyone comes here to play the game, not to be played by the game.

This put Chen Xiuxian in a difficult position...

However, there's always a way out. Given my current situation, finding a master would be difficult.

Thinking about that too early is pointless. Instead, focus on leveling up and improving your strength!
Opportunity always favors the prepared mind!

So Chen Xiuxian talked to the Rat Immortal Dou Zhongde about what he had mentioned before: "knowing a place where a treasure-refining manual is hidden."

Is the "Treasure Refining Manual" considered a skill?
However, while most skills involve things like skinning, carving, butchering, and blacksmithing, this skill is "treasure refining"!
In the game, this is called "Hundred Crafts".

Players can't all be fighting and killing; some are involved in production as well.

From drawing talismans to refining weapons, forging swords, refining pills, creating formations, planting crops, raising Gu... it has it all.

If you're interested, you can learn it, but it will take effort and time to improve.

Most players will learn one of the various crafts to make leveling up easier.

Dou Zhongde stroked his goatee and whispered, "My benefactor, you may not know this, but thirty years ago, before I could transform into human form, I unintentionally stumbled upon an ambush..."

Thirty years ago, Dou Zhongde encountered a cultivator who was severely injured by a demon and then murdered by a group of bandits.

He also gained something from that experience; he secretly stole a divination manual called "Xiao Liu Ren Shou Zhan," which gave him some ability to predict the future.

He was timid to begin with, and his tendency to avoid danger and seek good fortune was what allowed him to accumulate a hundred years of cultivation. In the end, he almost met his end at the hands of the rat-man shaman.

Besides the book "Little Six Ren Divination" that he stole, there was another secret manual called "The Hundred Crafts Manual," along with other miscellaneous items on the cultivator's person, which were also taken by the bandits.

At that time, Dou Zhongde's cultivation level was at most enough to possess a human body and beg for food and drink—he had never even done that, he wouldn't dare.
Dou Zhongde: I didn't dare eat a single bite!
Over the years, he has seen at least ten or eight "Five Immortals" who were quite reckless and ended up ruining themselves.

However, he did keep an eye on the bandits.

Perhaps it was something about the cultivator that worked, because the band of bandits survived quite well. They were neither harmed by spirits or demons, nor were they wiped out by the Liaodong army.

By now, most of the bandits have either died of old age or illness, leaving only one of the teenagers who was still alive, now a leader. They continue to rule the mountain as bandits.

That book, "The Hundred Crafts Manual," must also be in his possession.

To ensure his safety, Chen Xiuxian waited all night to search for information on the forum, looking for the bandit leader called Old North Wind and the "Hundred Crafts Manual," and he actually found the information!

Moreover, there's something fishy going on behind the scenes—this band of bandits has connections with a wealthy family in the nearby Twin Castles!

That wealthy family had been established in Liaodong for a century, and many officials in the fortress were promoted by them.

No wonder that old North Wind gang has been able to roam freely for thirty years without being wiped out!

There's a mole!

　Thank you so much to 伤麟怨道穷 for the 1500-point donation!

　　
　
(End of this chapter)