Cultivation Nerd

The tense atmosphere was suffocating despite no pressure coming from the ghostly hologram.

"Anyway, to level the playing field, I've removed the factor of luck. No heaven-given luck to cheat. So only your mind and power matter here," the ghost declared. He seemed disappointed as he looked at us and wasn't even bothering to hide it.

What was that about? He had just called us an interesting group of people not so long ago.

"What a trashy event for heaven's favorite to find this place. It's kind of ruined my mood," the ghost whined, which seemed highly unsuitable for someone in its position.

Another realization dawned on me: by "heaven's chosen," there was a good chance he meant Hu Jin. What were the chances of there being someone else like that?

Which meant Hu Jin was here!

I looked around, trying to commit everyone's faces to memory. Yet none of them resembled him appearance-wise, and I didn't even sense his Qi signature.

Had he been here all along? Or was some other heaven's favorite?

I closed my eyes and focused entirely on my sensory abilities. With my cousins nearby, I didn't have to worry about a sneak attack.

Hu Jin had only recently become a one-star Qi Gathering, and his talent was even lower than mine. Rising through the ranks would be challenging for him. So even if he could hide his fake and Qi signature, he would still be one of the few here with low cultivation.

However, even that was more complicated. Most of the people on this expedition were stronger cultivators from the younger generation. There were also those like me who had entered through special permission or were related to the higher-ups, all salivating at the thought of gaining the inheritance of an immortal.

Assuming Hu Jin hadn't used a technique to disguise his cultivation level, about three dozen disciples fit the criteria. There was also a chance that Hu Jin had advanced through many stars since his breakthrough—perhaps through some miraculous encounter.

In the end, there was no way to guarantee I could identify the hidden Hu Jin. So, I stopped my efforts and decided to observe everyone's behavior instead. He could hide everything else but not his actions.

As a precaution, I decided it was safer to stay away from everyone.

The ghost said he could temporarily remove whatever made Hu Jin stand out. But I wouldn't survive long if I started taking a ghost's words at face value. Who knew what his real intentions were?

As for my cousins, I was sure Hu Jin hadn't impersonated any of them. That much I could be confident about. But if we stayed together, we'd only drag each other down.

While everyone else was likely searching for some powerful technique, I was here to study and learn new things.

Who wouldn't be interested in the man who achieved immortality? Well, more than one might think. But I didn't care much about powerful techniques—at least not the ones here—because I knew others were much stronger than me and had a better chance of obtaining them.

"Anyway, I'm sure you're all here for the reward. So, have at it," the ghost said, waving its hand. Doors revealed themselves on the dark walls, but that wasn't all—strange doors also began appearing mid-air, opening to dark, unknown spaces. "Pick whichever door you feel like. But if I were you, I'd rush before your peers pick the treasures dry. If you pass the tests, each door will lead to a treasure and an exit from this place"

The disciples rushed in without hesitation, though only a handful of the bravest chose the mid-air doors. My cousins glanced at me, clearly expecting me to join them.

But I shook my head. "Go ahead; I'm going to do my own thing."

Though they seemed a bit unconvinced, they nodded. Liu Bo was the only one to voice his concern, saying, "Don't die, or no matter what treasures we get here, we won't have time to enjoy them when Song Song kills us all."

"For a second, I thought you might genuinely be worried about my well-being," I replied with a smile, shaking my head.

Liu Qian elbowed Liu Bo in the ribs, and they set off. This wasn't the time for jokes.

Soon enough, everyone left. Cultivators might be many things, but few were cowards or unwilling to take risks. Those who were had stayed behind, so only the brave and reckless ones had come in this expedition.

I was alone with the ghost, and a lump of nervousness formed in my throat. The ghost's gaze turned on me, raising a questioning brow.

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"Hm? You're not going with them?" The ghost shook its head. "Otherworlders have always been hard to predict. What? Don't tell me you come from a world where ghosts exist, and you actually think you have a way to exorcize me? Sorry to shatter your dreams, boy, but I'm not a ghost."

Oh? So he knew after all. It was strange how nonchalant he was about it.

"Not at all," I said. "But how did you discover I was an otherworlder? Can every immortal see that?"

If every immortal could see it, I had to make sure I never met any of them.

"Not really. Technically, the only thing they should be able to see is whether you have the potential to gather Qi. Some otherworlders don't even have spiritual roots. Some others come out with messed-up souls, but you seem to have fixed your problem," the ghost said, rubbing his chin and frowning before sighing. "Sorry, I went off track there. What I mean to say is that under normal means, you've hidden yourself pretty well. Still, immortals usually have a technique or other means to tell you're an otherworlder. For example, I had an immortal technique called Four Heavenly Roads when I was alive. It allowed me to see the future, past, present, and fate itself. Though I no longer have the technique, some lingering observations remain."

Huh, that was interesting.

For a second, I lost all fear of being found out. I no longer cared if the ghost knew or not. The chances of him trying to torture me for information about the technology of my world or anything like that were slim to none.

I took out a blank notebook from my storage ring and a thin brush already dipped in ink and began writing down what he just told me.

"So, what's your deal, anyway?" the ghost inquired. "I've met a handful of otherworlders, but you win the prize for being the weirdest. Also, aren't you going after the treasure like the others?"

I shrugged. "Almost everyone else in the group has a higher cultivation than me, so it doesn't make sense to compete for something I probably won't get. At best, I'd end up heavily injured. Besides, I should focus on the treasure that's right in front of me."

I stared at the ghost. Everything was a calculated risk. After all, this ghost was a treasure trove of information about the personal and most intricate details of the immortal whose tomb we were raiding.

The ghost might be nothing more than a thought projection, like putting my thoughts into a jade soldier. But in my eyes, this was still more valuable than anything else I could find here!

"Would it be too much to ask for your life story? If that's too personal, can you at least tell me about your everyday life? How was life back when you were alive?" I asked, brimming with excitement.

The ghost made a face as if he'd just heard the most ridiculous thing. "You come into a treasure trove, and the thing that excites you most is the guy who put the treasure here?"

"Yes," I answered without hesitation. He clearly had some strange techniques that could tell if I was lying. But I wasn't worried—I was only telling the truth.

"Heh," the ghost chuckled. "With that mindset, you're either going to become an immortal or amount to nothing as a cultivator."

Though he said it jokingly, it felt pretty endearing to have an immortal suggest I could reach his stage of cultivation.

The ghost jumped off the stone coffin and walked toward me with soundless steps. When he was within arm's length, he sat down cross-legged.

"Well, sit down; my life story will be quite a long one. I lived for seven thousand eight hundred and twelve years," he said. I followed his lead, sitting down cross-legged, and began drawing him as he told his story. "Before the epithets that everyone began calling me by and they eventually forgot my name, my real name was Cui Yongnian. I resulted from the union between Emperor Tang Guoliang and a monstrous beast."

A union between a human and a monstrous beast? That was quite rare. Technically possible since monstrous beasts could take a humanoid form at will when they achieved the Nascent Soul Realm. But just because they could turn into humans didn't mean they were into humans that way... It would be like a guy gaining the power to turn into a dolphin and then wanting to have sex with one. Very weird.

Just that situation alone raised a thousand questions, questions I decided to keep to myself. Despite meaning no offense regarding his mother being a bit weird, I knew how it might come off. Did turning into a human make humans attractive to her? Wait, the cultivators who used transformation techniques, were they all secretly furries?

He explained his childhood, though he never went into much detail. His early years were relatively peaceful, and he even had a younger sibling born to the same parents.

Usually, emperors had harems, but his spouse was a Nascent Soul monstrous beast. If he had strayed from the bounds of their marriage, he could have found his entire kingdom destroyed.

Cui Yongnian's life continued normally for decades. That was until his father died, and a couple of centuries later, his mother was killed by some Nascent Soul cultivators searching for resources.

In the end, he didn't seem too sad about his mother's death. But then again, he had over seven thousand years to come to terms with it.

Cui Yongnian never took over his father's empire. Despite his mother's death, he felt he had already spent centuries with her—more time than most mortals spent with their parents. Afterward, he focused on cultivation for a while.

Though many exciting things had happened in his life, they had been washed away and forgotten after thousands of years. He told me he became immortal at seven hundred years old, mostly kept to himself, and died two thousand nine hundred years ago. Obviously, he died from unnatural causes, not a natural death, but he never elaborated on how he died.

"I would have liked to live until the Era of Immortals came. But sadly, I slipped when I was almost there," the ghost said, shaking his head.

"The Era of Immortals?" I raised a questioning brow as I finished writing notes on his story and the details he had provided.

Also, what did he mean by "almost there"? He was nearly three thousand years off. What kind of messed-up time perception did these immortals have?

"Yes, my tomb was supposed to open just a bit before that," he sighed, disappointed. "Though this wasn't the generation I was expecting. I thought I saw an era where many immortals emerged and cultivation entered a golden age like never before. Perhaps I saw it wrong."

An Era of Immortals…