He struggled to climb out of the muddy water, covered in mud, his mind still lingering with memories from the previous world: work, instant noodles, and the never-ending mortgage.
Just over twenty years had passed when he opened his eyes and found himself lying in a stinking ditch.
Then he obtained that thing.
A translucent light screen floated before his eyes, with several lines of text hovering on it:
[Fantasy Immortal Cultivation System has been bound to Host]
[Core Mechanism: Select a person. The stronger their fantasy about the Host’s power, the more power the Host gains. Fantasy Value max is 100, representing stability]
[Current Fantasy Source: None; Current Fantasy Value: 0]
[Current Cultivation: Mortal]
He stared at the light screen for a long time, slowly digesting one fact—he had transmigrated, and he had brought a system with him.
‘Great! I’m going to dominate the cultivation world!’
Then he spent another three full days digesting another fact—this system was a total scam.
Because that thing called “Fantasy Value” had a fatal limitation.
The other party had to have a sufficiently clear understanding of “power.”
But getting a mortal to imagine how strong a cultivator was—like asking a frog at the bottom of a well to imagine the vastness of the sky—was simply out of reach.
So even if he pretended to be a Qi Refining cultivator, ordinary people couldn’t truly grasp it.
Making mortals believe he was an expert might at best make his aura slightly stronger and look more intimidating, but it could never touch real “cultivation.”
And as a mortal, the chances of him actually meeting a real cultivator were worse than winning the lottery.
So two years passed.
In those two years, he traveled through seventeen towns, deceiving countless wandering swordsmen, wealthy merchants, and local gentry, and even a few charlatans who called themselves “Half-Immortals.”
Using the novels and dramas he’d read in his previous life, he packaged himself as a “High Being Playing Among the Mortals.”
Two years of refinement had forged a face that didn’t change even if Mount Tai crumbled before it, and a set of flawless speech tactics.
Thanks to the occasional weak “Imagination Feedback” the system gave him, he had tempered his body to be much stronger than an ordinary mortal.
But that was it.
He was still a mortal.
No Spirit Root, no cultivation, couldn’t even achieve the most basic Qi Induction.
The only “benefit” the system gave him was that whenever someone deeply believed in his power, his physical fitness would get a slight boost.
Over two years of accumulation, he could shatter green bricks with one punch and run a hundred miles without panting—top tier among mortals.
But if placed in the cultivation world, even the weakest of practitioners would probably slap him to death.
He once thought he might be the most tragic transmigrator ever.
Until today.
He was traveling, planning to head to the next town to continue his “performance career,” when suddenly a streak of light flashed across the sky.
Then—
A girl fell from the sky and crashed into the roadside bushes.
Startled, he immediately hid behind a rock and cautiously peered out.
It was a young woman who looked about seventeen or eighteen.
She wore a moon-white long dress, now already half-soaked in blood.
But even in such a miserable state, when he made out her features, he couldn’t help but hold his breath.
A painting come to life.
Her delicate features didn’t seem like flesh and blood; rather, she was like a master painter who had used heaven and earth as paper and spiritual energy as ink, brushstroke by brushstroke, sketched her out.
Her eyebrows were like willow leaves—even slightly furrowed in her coma, they still carried an irresistible curve.
A few spots of blood clung to her cheeks, which instead made her skin look even whiter, like white porcelain touched with red, bearing a kind of broken beauty.
She leaned against the broken branches of a bush, her head tilted slightly to one side.
But—
Even gravely wounded and near death, she herself was like a sword that had never been dulled, still giving off an instinctive sense of danger.
That was definitely not a temperament a mortal could possess.
This was the transcendence that radiated from the bones of someone who had set foot on the Path of Immortality, after being tempered day and night by the Heaven and Earth Spiritual Energy.
A cultivator.
A real cultivator!
The girl had fallen from the sky.
His heart pounded once.
Two years of experience made him snap back to composure, and he immediately scanned the surroundings.
No pursuers.
No one else.
He took a deep breath and slowly came out from behind the rock.
At that moment, the system interface suddenly popped up:
[Scanning target, analyzing…]
[Name: Su’er]
[Cultivation: Late Condensation Qi Stage (realm dropped from Foundation Establishment Stage)]
[Spirit Root: Upper Grade Water Spirit Root (under erosion)]
[Physique: Light Spirit Retreat Body (incomplete)]
[Current Status: Severe injury, unconscious, life-threatening]
He stared at the screen for two seconds.
Opportunity!
Finally, his turn had come!
The chance was right in front of him.
He licked his dry lips.
He knew it was an opportunity.
It could also be an abyss.
Save her, and it might bring the people chasing her; don’t save her, and he’d probably never encounter another cultivator in this life.
He crouched down and tested the girl’s breath.
She was still breathing, but extremely faint.
The skin around her mouth and the corners of her lips was faintly blackened, as if eroded by some insidious poisonous force.
He gritted his teeth, took off his outer coat, carefully wrapped it around the girl’s body, and then carried her on his back.
“Don’t let me bet wrong on this…”
He muttered under his breath, heading toward the nearest broken temple he remembered.
“And don’t let me have saved you for nothing.”
That broken temple was at the foot of a mountain, old and long out of use, its incense offerings long gone.
He carried the girl for an hour, and the sky had completely darkened.
The broken temple gate hung crookedly, and the courtyard was overgrown with waist-high weeds.
He laid the girl down on a pile of dry grass, then gathered dead branches from outside the temple to make a fire.
The firelight illuminated the girl’s pale face.
Her eyelashes quivered slightly, as if she were enduring great pain even in her coma.
He sat by the fire, looking at the girl’s face, his mind racing.
When she wakes up, how should he act?
The experience he’d accumulated over two years told him one thing: the more critical the moment, the calmer he had to be.
The core of all his “performances” was only one thing:
Make the other person fill in the gaps themselves.
Human imagination was the most powerful weapon.
They would complete everything for you, using their own understanding to create the power you didn’t have.
He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and began to rehearse in his mind.
He had to be indifferent.
Calm.
Even a little bit of casual coldness.
That was the standard for a great master.
But the last and most important point—
He absolutely had to make the other person owe him a favor.