Merin opens his eyes and finds himself floating within his sea of consciousness.
Everything is still—silent—except for the broken mirror before him.
Cracked in hundreds of places, it rotates slowly, like it's waiting for something.
Streams of golden light rise from his soul and begin to enter the mirror.
Merin watches in silence.
"That must be merit," he thinks.
The mirror drinks in the golden energy steadily, pulsing with faint light.
It continues for several minutes—absorbing, humming, glowing—
Until it finally stops.
The surface clears, and radiant golden letters appear across its face:
Merit — 786
Merin stares at the number, uncertain how much he gained—
But he knows where he earned it.
From the world he just left.
A world that had many names—
But in the ancient language of its people, all names carried the same meaning: my home.
He couldn't call it that.
So, he gives it a name of his own—
Dragon World.
Because it was there, he shed his humanity.
It was there he became a dragon.
Suddenly, the mirror speaks to him—its voice both metallic and gentle.
"Shall I take my 70%?"
Merin smiles.
"Why not?" he says. "That was our deal."
The number on the mirror begins to drop—
786... 660... 500...
Finally, it stops at 235.8
As he observes the number, one of the many cracks running through the mirror quietly vanishes.
Then, without warning, knowledge floods into his mind.
A technique—
Good Fortune Technique
Unlike ordinary techniques, it doesn't use mana or qi.
It runs purely on merit.
And with it, Merin feels something new.
A pathway.
A way to grasp the rules of this world as easily as breathing.
Merin opens his eyes and exits his sea of consciousness.
He takes his first breath in the main world—this place he once called home.
Slowly, he begins absorbing the energy around him.
It flows into his body, unfamiliar yet strangely compatible.
As it enters, he senses the spirituality within him stirring.
He channels it deliberately, guiding it to merge with his vitality and the world's energy.
The process is slow, deliberate, and delicate as threading silk.
Then, without warning, something clicks.
A shift.
The three energies converge.
And from their union, a new construct forms within him—
A spiritual machine.
It stabilises quickly and then begins to function on its own.
Merin stops guiding it.
He simply watches.
The machine hums—softly at first—then louder.
Like an ancient engine starting after centuries of silence.
And then—
It releases mana.
But not the mana he remembers from the Dragon World.
This is something else.
Mana here carries a sharpness—an intensity—like invisible fire laced with thunder.
It radiates power.
Merin frowns slightly.
He studies it.
And immediately understands.
This world's mana contains radiation.
Not metaphorical—real, lethal, spiritual radiation.
Its presence enhances force but corrupts form.
To lesser beings, even touching it would mean illness, mutation, or death.
And Merin knows—this has nothing to do with his body.
It's not a matter of form—
But of nature.
The energy of the two worlds is fundamentally different.
In the Dragon World, natural energy was calm, harmonious, nourishing all life regardless of race or realm.
But here, in the main world, the mana is wild.
Not calm, but raging—unstable.
It doesn't nurture.
It mutates.
It devours the weak and strengthens the strong through pressure and pain.
And it was exactly this pressure that allowed him, in just around 120 years, to ascend to a Level Six lifeform.
The world itself is more powerful than the Dragon World.
More violent.
More alive.
He understands all this now, because of what he became.
Because of the perspective earned through experience, failure, and victory.
As the newly formed mana flows through him, his cells begin to shift.
They stretch, compress, refine—adapting to this world.
A wave of sharp pleasure rushes through him.
If he had a mouth, he would've cried out in release.
The next spiritual machine within him activates and moves toward his sea of consciousness.
There, using his refined mental energy, he begins shaping it into a spiritual core.
Its purpose is clear—
To localise the rules of the Dragon World within this new world.
He knows it will take years.
So, without delay, he activates the Good Fortune Technique.
And under a year—
He succeeds.
He localises the Rule of Vitality.
It happens quickly because he already grasped its artistic conception in the Dragon World through the Rule of Wood.
The spiritual core stabilises—
Then begins to transform.
First into a True Core.
Then once more—
And he ascends again.
To the Spirit Master Realm.
And he continues to climb.
Without pause.
Until once again, he reaches the Spirit Greatmaster Realm.
Then he stops at the initial stage of the realm.
He frowns, thoughtful.
In the Dragon World, with just one rule, his cultivation could rise only to the peak of the Spirit Master Realm.
To step into the Spirit Greatmaster Realm there, he had to comprehend at least two additional rules and superficially merge them.
But here, in the main world—
With just the Rule of Vitality, he has already stepped into the Spirit Greatmaster Realm.
It confirms his suspicion.
The laws of cultivation here are fundamentally more generous to those who grasp the true meaning of a rule.
He nods once, then speaks aloud.
"Mirror—show me my status panel."
The broken mirror reappears, its surface gleaming faintly.
Letters begin to etch themselves in golden light.
---
Status Panel
Name: Merin
Age: 126 (312)
Life Rank: 6 (15 / 1000)
Cultivation Realm: 7 (612 / 1000)
Rules:
• Vitality — True Meaning (0.16)
• Moon — Artistic Conception (23.6)
---
Merin raises an eyebrow.
"What is this?" he asks. "Two ages?"
The mirror answers in a cool, even voice.
"The first is your physical age. The number in parentheses is your soul's age."
Merin falls silent.
The mirror continues, its voice calm and precise:
"Rules are divided into three stages—Artistic Conception, True Meaning, and the next: Void Field."
"If your comprehension of a rule reaches the Void Field, you will no longer need to localise it when travelling between worlds."
In his sea of consciousness, Merin's soul nods in understanding.
He processes the information quietly, then asks, "When can I go to the next world?"
"Any moment," the mirror replies.
Merin nods again, unhurried.
Then the mirror asks,
"Are you not going to transform into human form?"
Merin answers without hesitation,
"I used to want to—because I believed that staying in tree form meant I'd be rooted in place. And if danger came, I wouldn't be able to escape."
He pauses for a moment, then continues,
"But now, I don't feel that need."
"Even if my upper body is destroyed—so long as my roots remain—I'll survive."
"I'll simply grow back."
His roots run deep beneath the earth, spreading wide and countless.
To destroy all of them would be nearly impossible for most.
And for those who could destroy them—
Even in human form, he wouldn't be able to escape.
The mirror speaks again,
"You still want to explore the world, don't you?"
Merin smiles faintly.
"For that," he says,
"I don't need to become human."
He exits his sea of consciousness and spreads his awareness through his mental domain.
The desert around him has changed.
What was once dry and cracked is now dotted with shallow ponds and tall grass.
Even trees have begun to grow—just a few, but alive, swaying in the breeze.
As his awareness expands, he spots a crow perched on one of his branches.
Its feathers are an unnatural red.
In an instant, his mental energy wraps around it.
The crow flaps its wings in alarm and lets out a sharp caw, trying to escape.
But it cannot.
The grip of his consciousness holds firm.
The noise startles the other birds resting beneath his canopy.
They flap wildly and scatter into the air, leaving only the red-feathered crow behind.
Then, from the tips of his silver-veined leaves, dozens fall—
But they do not touch the ground.
They hover, suspended mid-air, shimmering softly.
And then—
They vanish.
Virtualised into thin threads of energy, they shoot toward the crow and pierce its body.
The bird screeches louder.
Its wings beat frantically.
But more and more leaves continue to enter.
The cawing turns violent, desperate.
Then suddenly—
It stops.
The crow goes limp and falls unconscious.
One by one, its red feathers detach, drifting down like blood-stained petals.
Its beak cracks.
Its talons break.
And then—
Its body explodes, blood and flesh scattering in all directions.
But the silver leaves remain untouched, unharmed.
They hover again, then return to Merin's tree-form body.
As they sink into him, knowledge floods in.
He receives the crow's entire life structure—every organ, every trait, every strand of genetic memory.
And then—
His leaves begin to fall in waves.
Thousands of raindrops down, surrounding the space where the crow had died.
They twist and spin, gathering into ten glowing spheres.
The spheres pulse—once, twice—then converge into a single point.
A cocoon begins to form.
The leaf cocoon starts to squirm, twisting gently as its surface pulses with soft green light.
From one side of each cocoon, a crow's head begins to take shape—sharp beak, intelligent eyes.
At the bottom, legs form, thin and black, talons curling as they stabilise.
After some time, the cocoon splits open.
Ten crows stand before him—
Not with red feathers, but with feathers of pale, shimmering green.
The crows let out synchronised caws, then flap their wings and rise into the sky.
Each of the ten flies flies in a different direction, scattering across the horizon.
Merin watches them go, then creates ten spiritual puppets.
Each puppet links to one crow, hidden deep inside, guiding them, watching through their eyes.
These puppets will travel the world in his place—
Mapping mountains, recording rivers, listening to cities, studying creatures.
When they finish flying across the entire world, they will return.
Merin chuckles and says to the mirror, "Look—now I don't need to explore the world."
"They'll do it for me."
The mirror responds evenly, "You learned many things in the previous world."
Merin nods and begins to explain—how in the Dragon World, he studied every path, explored every technique.
Not because he lacked direction, but because he sought survival.
And knowledge was survival.
The mirror hums softly.
"But here," it says, "you cannot comprehend other rules until your life rank reaches eleven."
"And since you've chosen the Rule of Vitality, you must walk it to one per cent in True Meaning before anything else."
Merin nods.
He already understands this.
No new spiritual cores are forming—his existing core continues to absorb every bit of spirituality, growing denser and stronger.
In the Dragon World, the core would eventually reach its limit—
Leaving excess spirituality that he could use to form new cores.
But not here.
In the main world, there is no overflow.
Everything feeds into one.
Merin considers the implications.
Whether he deepens his understanding of Vitality here or in another world, the progress will be the same.
It might be better to leave.
In the Dragon World, he had spent 160 years—
Yet only two years passed in the main world.
If the next world holds a similar time difference, it would allow him to grow faster.
There's one risk.
The Rule of Vitality might not exist in the next world.
But Merin dismisses the fear.
A world without vitality would be a dead world.
And a dead micro-world would collapse and vanish before he ever arrived.
So, he speaks.
"Mirror. Send me to a new world."
"Seal only the memories I gained after I died on Earth."
The mirror doesn't ask why.
It simply obeys.
Light floods his sea of consciousness.
Merin watches as a silver thread of his soul unravels—
And wraps tightly around the core of his being.
Then—
Silence.
His soul is pulled into the mirror.
And everything fades.
---
Late at night, a red sports car blurs around a curve at breakneck speed.
Moments later, two large black SUVs follow, tires screeching as they tear through the same corner.
The red car darts through the night, skidding along sharp turns, its taillights glowing like angry eyes.
Behind it, the SUVs close in—relentless, silent except for the roar of engines.
As the chase reaches a long bridge, two figures emerge from the sunroofs of the SUVs.
Gunshots crack through the air.
Bullets pierce the silence.
One round strikes the red car's rear tire.
The vehicle jerks violently, swerving out of control.
Sparks fly as it slams into the bridge's railing.
The SUVs brake hard and comes to a stop.
From the crumpled sports car, a beautiful young woman stumbles out, blood staining her temple, her breath ragged.
She sees the burly men stepping out of the SUVs, approaching with grim faces and drawn weapons.
She glances at the broken railing, then at the river far below.
Her eyes hardened.
And without a word, she runs and leaps over the edge.
A splash echoes into the night.
The current pulls her under and away.
The men rush to the edge but see nothing—only the dark waters moving fast.
By dawn, the world is quiet again.
A young man strolls along the riverbank, humming to himself, water bucket swinging lazily in one hand.
He crouches beside the stream, splashes cold water on his face—
Then freezes.
Out of the corner of his eye, something pale drifts among the reeds.
He rubs his eyes once.
It's still there.
He stands, walks closer.
It's a person.
A woman.
Soaked, bruised, unconscious—
His expression turns serious as he crouches beside her.
And the quiet hum of the river continues to flow.
He gently checks her pulse—
A faint rhythm.
Relief washes over his face.
Without wasting a moment, he slips an arm beneath her back and another beneath her knees.
Lifting her carefully, he turns and walks into the forest, his steps steady despite the weight.
The morning mist clings to the trees as he weaves through ferns and branches.
After a short walk, a small wooden cottage emerges between the trees—humble, weathered, hidden.
He pushes open the creaking door with his shoulder and steps inside.
The scent of herbs and smoke lingers faintly in the air.
He lays her gently on a bed in the corner, its sheets rough but clean.
Then he exhales—calm, but focused.
The real work begins now.