The fatigue of the soul-drain was still heavy in his limbs, but Su Lantian couldn't stop the maniac grin from stretching across his face. Even as he sat in the dim cave light, the sensation of the Black Cube anchored in his Dantian felt like having a high-end graphics card installed directly into his consciousness. His tech-obsessed mind was already running through the potential "system specs" of the artifact, categorizing its mysterious functions in terms of bandwidth and processing power. If one second of activation could flash a perfectly optimized Qi-route into his brain, what could it do with a minute? Could it run brute-force simulations on complex alchemical reactions, or perhaps act as a real-time combat debugger, highlighting the lag and frame-drops in an opponent's movements before they even struck?
The possibilities were intoxicating, a sharp contrast to the suffocating limitations of his previous life. Back home, he was just a kid who spent his restless nights reading about silicon breakthroughs and quantum computing on a dying smartphone with a cracked screen. Here, he was the hardware. He realized that the Cube wasn't just a weapon; it was a bridge between two vastly different realities. It was the ultimate "cheat" for someone who understood the beauty of logic but lacked the raw power to manifest it. He spent a long time just staring at his own midsection, imagining the dense black void spinning within him, waiting for his cultivation to grow so he could finally "boot up" the full suite of its capabilities. "Mundane to Myriad," he whispered to the shadows, the title of his own life finally feeling like a sacred promise rather than a fever dream.
Finally, the adrenaline subsided enough for him to remember his primary objective. He couldn't stay in this cave forever, no matter how much security the silence offered. He needed to know if the door was still open, or if he was truly a castaway in this world of spirits.
He gathered his things with meticulous care—the torn backpack, the dented water bottle, and the precious gray skin—and squeezed back through the narrow aperture of the inner chamber. Stepping out into the main cavern, the world felt sharper, the smells of damp stone and forest pine more distinct as if his senses were being heightened by the residual Qi in his system. He moved with a newfound caution, his hiking boots crunching softly on the moss as he exited the cave and stepped back into the alien wilderness. The sun was higher now, piercing through the dense canopy in golden shafts, casting long, vibrant shadows through trees that looked like they belonged in a prehistoric era.
He retraced his steps through the shifting undergrowth, his internal compass—honed by years of solo hiking—guiding him back toward the clearing where he had first woken up. He moved twenty, then thirty meters past the initial impact site, pushing through a thicket of ferns that felt like rough silk against his skin. Behind a cluster of massive, silver-barked trees that seemed to hum with their own secret energy, he found it.
The space crack was still there, though it had changed significantly since he first fell through. It was no longer a jagged, violent fracture that threatened to tear the air apart; it had stabilized into a thin, shimmering needle of silver light, barely three feet tall and hovering inches above the grass. It looked fragile, like a delicate stitch in a piece of cosmic fabric that was slowly being pulled tight by an invisible hand. Su stepped closer, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. Through the distortion, he could see a shimmering glimpse of the other side: the dusty, brown limestone of his home ridge, the familiar gray sky of Earth, and the faint, nostalgic smell of dry grass and distant exhaust.
His hand reached out, trembling in the cool morning air. He could step through right now. He could be back in his own bed by nightfall, eating a humble meal and listening to the familiar sounds of his parents' voices. But the thought was immediately followed by a cold, sharp reality that cut deeper than any blade. What would change? He would go back to being the boy with the debt, the boy whose future was already sold to the bank. He would watch them take the land his family had worked for generations. He would be a man without a path, holding a dead man's ring and a black cube he could never explain to anyone. Going back now, without strength or wealth, was just a return to a slow, mundane death in a world that had no room for his dreams.
"I can't change anything like this," he muttered, his voice firming as he pulled his hand back from the silver needle. "If I go back, I go back as someone who can fix it. All of it. I'll return as someone they can't ignore."
He turned his back on the silver needle, the weight of the decision settling heavily on his shoulders. He felt a sharp pang of guilt—a phantom image of his mother's worried eyes looking toward the hills—but he shoved it down with a desperate kind of resolve. He needed a town. He needed people. He needed to understand this world and how to turn Han's legacy into the life-changing wealth he needed and change his life for good.
He began to trek through the forest, moving with purpose away from the hidden crack. After nearly two hours of navigating the dense undergrowth and avoiding strange, iridescent flora, his hiker's eyes spotted something that didn't belong to nature. In the soft earth near a trickling stream, there were tracks. They weren't the heavy, clawed prints of a forest beast, but the distinct, flat impressions of cloth shoes and the narrow ruts left by a wooden hand-cart.
He followed the trail, his pulse quickening with every step. The forest began to thin, the giant, luminescent trees giving way to more familiar stands of pines and ancient oaks. Then, the sound reached him—the distant, rhythmic chime of a blacksmith's hammer striking iron and the low, collective hum of a distant crowd. He crested a final rise, shielding his eyes from the sun, and stopped dead.
In the valley below sat a town, but it was unlike any village he'd seen in history books or movies. High, obsidian-black walls surrounded the settlement, etched with glowing white runes that shimmered with an inner light even in the full glare of day. Above the rooftops, he saw streaks of light—cultivators on flying artifacts—soaring like shooting stars toward the central spire of the town. It was a place where the mundane and the mystical occupied the same space, a bustling hub of Qi, commerce, and hidden dangers.
Su Lantian stood at the edge of the woods, his torn hiking jacket and modern backpack a stark, almost ridiculous contrast to the high-fantasy world laid out below him. He took a deep, steadying breath, feeling the Black Cube pulse once in his Dantian as if acknowledging the challenge that lay ahead. This was it. The true beginning of the Myriad.
"Time to see if this world is ready for a different kind of logic," he said, adjusting the straps of his bag, and began the long walk down toward the obsidian gates.