Heavenly Allocation: Body
+5 Primordial Qi
+3 True Qi
“Good morning,” Yu Han said.
Yu Han heaved himself up, using a hand to block the sunlight stinging his eyes. The room was empty; Fang Zhao and Li Yao must’ve already got up.
Right, they were supposed to finish their Filth-Eating Ghoul hunt before noon. After that, they would all take Huang Niuniu to complete her trial by a nearby river.
Name: Yu Han (Johan)
Level: 2 (+1)
Active Accords: 1
True Qi: 4 (+4) / 300
Pure Qi: 181 (+150) / 300
Primordial Qi: 5 (+1)
Lifeforce: 737 (-55) / 912 (+120)
So I did lose lifeforce… It was full at 792 before. Now, lifeforce had gone up by 120. And he’d lost fifty-five.
Yu Han couldn’t remember seeing the “lifeforce lost” notification. He must’ve missed it in the heat of the battle. The headache was gone. He touched his ears and nose. No blood. It seems his spiritual energy wasn't entirely depleted. Or maybe it wasn’t depletion at all, but strain?
Levelled up. It felt surreal. Was that really the forests of Taiwan?
There was an easy way to partially verify. He could echo a scene from his past life, and then echo what he had seen yesterday. Match up the trees for similarities.
He felt guilty. His wish to go back was too strong. The urge was undeniable. But now, as he woke up, he had to accept that this was his new reality.
Was there really a portal connected to Earth in his dreamscape? Yu Han doubted it. It was a dream, after all. The scene beyond his dreamscape might just be limited to that mountain. Or Yangmingshan National Park, where Yu Han had been at the moment of his death.
He told himself not to get his hopes up. In the dream, he was still Yu Han, not Johan. Though he couldn’t echo, he could memorycast. He certainly didn’t have this superpower on Earth.
Yu Han opened all three windows in the room, lining the same east wall. The sunlight came in unobstructed. The day was sunny, no mist on the horizon.
Today was the 158th day since he’d come to this world. Since that green meteor blasted him out of existence.
Green fire. The meteor had it. The memorycast Seiko watch had burst into green flames. This Ghost Dreams Parasitic Fireworm also commanded green fire. The accord scroll had burnt green. Yu Han’s memorycast pearls were lime-green in hue. Green ripples had pulsed across the mirror. Green characters had flared as he was hurled back from the other side.
Something was going on, and it had something to do with the green meteor.
But what?
It was hard to investigate in the real world. He didn’t have unrestricted access to knowledge with the internet like before. I still gotta look it up.
Fire burned green when copper, boron, and some other elements were introduced to it. That probably wasn’t the case with the green meteor, though.
The fire was neon-like, as if rendered with a game engine.
Beasts that use green flame. That was a lead.
Yu Han brought up his stat panels.
Primordial Qi: 5
[Mind Origin: 17.33]
Intelligence: 14
Memory: 24
Perception: 11
Clarity: 10
Focus: 11
[Body Origin: 7.60 (+1.00)]
Endurance: 8 (+1)
Vitality: 11 (+1)
Strength: 8 (+1)
Agility: 5 (+1)
Dexterity: 6 (+1)
[Spirit Origin: 8.60 (+0.40)]
Adaptability: 17 (+1)
Magnitude: 5
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Density: 6
Fortitude: 10 (+1)
Purity: 5
A smile crept up to his face. Yu Han clenched his fists in front of his eyes, then unclenched them. It was subtle, the power. But there was a feeling of confidence inside of him.
He could do more with his body now. He would have to test it out when practising martial arts. But part of his very being told him that he was stronger. He hadn’t felt like this during the first two heavenly allocations at Levels 0 and 1. Why now? Had he become more perceptive? Was it the perception sub-origin, or maybe the high mind origin overall?
How do I do this? They would go to the hidden realm the next day. Yu Han didn’t want to wait to allocate the primordial qi. Who knew—even one point being higher could save his life.
He brought up the arts panels.
[Deep Sleep]
Type: Bloodline
Grade: Mortal Level 1
Mastery: Initial Step Level 2
True Qi: 49 (+39) / 300
[Echoing Dreamscape]
Type: Auxiliary
Grade: Mortal Level 10 (+1)
Mastery: Initial Step Level 6 (+2)
True Qi: 420 (+271) / 700
[Calm Before the Storm Breathing Technique]
Type: Cultivation
Grade: Mortal Level 5
Mastery: Initial Step Level 3 (+1)
True Qi: 116 (+351) / 400
[Ox Tail 72 Sweeping Forms]
Type: Martial
Grade: Elite Level 2
Mastery: Initial Step Level 2
True Qi: 143 (+91) / 300
[Thousand Petals Awareness]
Type: Psychic
Grade: Elite Level 9
Mastery: Initial Step Level 3 (+2)
True Qi: 136 (+447) / 400
Looking at the progress of his arts over the last two weeks, Yu Han couldn’t help but be satisfied. After he had figured out the trick of cultivating inside his dreamscape, the true qi gains had skyrocketed.
Calm Before the Storm Breathing Technique had levelled up a few days back. The average true qi he could get from that was around twenty to thirty-five for each night of cultivation. Because of it, his natural realm true qi gain had risen from one to two per day to two to four.
Thousand Petals Awareness had levelled twice. Now it was easier for Yu Han to boost or mute a sense—especially the sense of touch, which he practised every night in his dreamscape while cultivating. His goal was to somehow ‘sense’ the qi that was, according to many a text, circulating inside him.
He would still blank out after a while and start levitating in space, though he had no idea why. What would happen if he could retain his conscious mind while cultivating?
This could be why I can better sense my power increase from the heavenly allocation.
Echoing Dreamscape had been at 347 true qi the day before. So in addition to his usual gain of around fifteen to twenty-five, he’d gained an extra fifty true qi.
He had hoped that it would explode as it had before, when he had done all the tests with memorycasting.
Yu Han opened the traits panel.
Traits:
[Existential Anchor]
Grade: Mortal Level 2 (+1)
True Qi: Requirements Not Satisfied
[Deep Writhing Clam Bloodline]
Grade: Mortal Level 10
True Qi: 159 (+89) / 1100
[Qi Affinity]
Grade: Mortal Level 7
True Qi: 11 / 800
He froze. Existential Anchor had levelled up. There had been no notification. He was sure of it. Usually, when an art levelled up, it notified him.
Yu Han concentrated on the words Existential Anchor. Nothing happened. No answers or hints.
What are you?
The trait was probably why he was unaffected by Fang Zhao’s ring’s mind control. He could also hear through the psychic whispers of the Mad Bloodhounds. The trait also didn’t appear on talent orbs; Qiao Jinhai and Dong Chou had been none the wiser.
So for now, all it had given him were advantages. And he had a hunch that his transmigration was the reason he had this trait.
But it would be nice to know what it actually did! Yu Han wasn’t complaining about the level-up. He more than welcomed it. But he needed more data. It could be that it levelled up alongside his realm level? He could confirm when he was Level 3.
The shock from the Existential Anchor almost made him miss the huge true qi gain to Deep Writhing Clam bloodline. Yu Han had looked up what a Deep Writhing Clam was. It was basically a clam octopus. There were normal animal variants, and many types of primal beasts and monsters.
The running theory on why cultivators had such varied beast-type bloodlines was that far into the past, they had an ancestor; that ancestor was a spirit beast who could take human form and had mated with a human cultivator. The innate abilities of this ancestor were then passed down to the descendants. Another possibility was that a more recent ancestor had awoken a bloodline artificially—like Fang Zhao with an elixir—or naturally, alongside the awakening of a spirit root, and had trained it to respectable enough level that their descendants to inherit it partially.Or perhaps, through years of consuming beasts with trace magical signatures whether knowingly or not, a normal human simply absorbed their essence into their being. According to Dong Chou, this was likely how Yu Han’s bloodline trait had manifested.
The usual way to increase these bloodline trait levels was via pills, potions, elixirs, spirit foods, and gruelling body cultivation. Some were more painful than the other, and some were more efficient. Each tickled out every last bit of potential from the flesh, bones, and blood. There were other methods, tightly guarded by each faction like a dragon’s hoard.
Yu Han didn’t want to do anything that was “painful,” and he was too poor to regularly use pills and spirit foods.
I guess the Deep Sea’s Spites count as spirit food? Or are they alchemic brews?
His belly rumbled.
Yu Han brought up the origin panel again. After some thought, he decided to put everything into memory. Though in his past life, there was a growing trend of generalisation rather than specialisation, Yu Han knew the only advantage he had over others was his dream abilities. Because of it, he could cultivate psychic and cultivation arts there directly, unlike martial arts, which would not increase. This effectively gave him more hours to train.
He had some plans with Thousand Petals Awareness. Right now, he could only enhance one sense substantially. What if he could do all of them at once? Not just the primary senses, but secondary ones too, like balance.
Memory was also the only sub-origin that had reflected tangible improvements to his Echoing Dreamscape.
It was a question of how important the primary origin’s value was, as opposed to the importance of each sub-origin. If the relation between the primary origin and the sub-origins really was a weighted average, dumping all his points into his highest sub-origin would increase the respective primary origin the most. This would have the upside of giving him both the highest points in memory, and the highest in mind origin.
Psychic arts depended on mind origin. Of course, different arts would probably depend on different sub-origins, like how with body origin, lightness skills depended more on agility and dexterity—as opposed to archery arts, which might depend on strength and dexterity.
Yu Han hadn’t decided to dump all his future points into memory either. But it should be fine at least for the initial levels, where he could maximise his training potential during Deep Sleep with Echoing Dreamscape, Thousand Petals Awareness, and Calm Before the Storm Breathing Technique.
He concentrated on the words and put five primordial qi into memory.
Primordial Qi: 0 (5)
[Mind Origin: 22.0 (17.33)]
Intelligence: 14
Memory: 24 + 5 -> 29 (24)
Perception: 11
Clarity: 10
Focus: 11
Immediately, an intense pain shot through his head. He groaned, falling on his butt. The cold ground rattled his bones, and the sunlight scorched his eyes.
“Damn it all—”
With each second, the pain would increase. It started as a stinging throb, then developed into feeling as if someone was poking around under his eyeballs with a barbed stick.
He pulled back the primordial qi.
Primordial Qi: 5
[Mind Origin: 17.33]
Intelligence: 14
Memory: 24
Perception: 11
Clarity: 10
Focus: 11
And the pain slowly vanished.