"Zhou Xun!"
"Effective immediately, you are fired! These 90 spirit essences are your severance!"
"Manager, can you please show some leniency?"
"Get out! Get out!"
Ultimately, Zhou Xun could not escape the fate of being fired and had little choice but to accept the pouch filled with spirit essences.
These spirit essences were essentially spirit stone fragments. With a spiritual energy content even lower than genuine spirit stones, they served as a low-grade currency used by cultivators in this world. Generally speaking, one hundred spirit essences could be exchanged for a single spirit stone.
"N+1, not bad!"
Weighing the cloth pouch in his hand, Zhou Xun let out a self-deprecating chuckle before stepping out of the talisman-making shop and onto the main street.
It was late autumn once again, the sky turned a dim, sickly yellow, and the large trees along the road grew withered, bearing only a few dried leaves.
Suddenly, a gust of cold wind swept past, piercing straight through the seams of Zhou Xun's clothes. He involuntarily shrank his neck and sighed heavily:
"It has already been two years since I transmigrated!"
Recalling his life after transmigration, words truly failed to describe it.
In his past life, he was a corporate drone living the "996" blessed lifestyle. Although somewhat exhausting, life was manageable enough.
Yet misfortune always targets the suffering. Eventually, worn down by endless overtime, he collapsed one day and transmigrated into this immortal cultivation world.
Upon first arriving and learning of the existence of cultivators, Zhou Xun was beside himself with joy.
This meant that the scenes from novels—"riding the wind and roaming the void, stepping on auspicious clouds to pluck the moon in the highest heavens, commanding all things with the mind, a single sword-flash opening the gates of heaven!"—would become reality.
He would also have the chance to catch a glimpse of the Dao of longevity and watch the seas transform into mulberry fields.
Even more fortuitously, the youth he transmigrated into, who also happened to be named Zhou Xun, was himself a cultivator: fifteen years old, at Level 2 Qi Condensation.
Filled with anticipation for a future of longevity, Zhou Xun quickly integrated into the life of the cultivation world.
When he transmigrated, his predecessor was working as a spiritual contract laborer at Miaofu Pavilion, the largest talisman-making shop in Red Leaf Market.
A spiritual contract laborer could be understood as a contract worker from Zhou Xun's past life, though far more grueling here, since human rights certainly did not exist in this world. He had to toil from morning till night every day without a single day off.
"996 in my past life, 007 in this one. My lot in life is really getting worse!"
Zhou Xun had worked at Miaofu Pavilion for a total of three years.
Tandem with the drudgery and hardship, it was a job that outsiders found immensely enviable.
The pay was steady regardless of drought or flood, netting 30 spirit essences a month—just enough for him to survive in Red Leaf Market and sustain his basic cultivation.
One had to know that the vast majority of early-stage cultivators here earned less than ten spirit essences a month.
That was not even enough to rent the cheapest shantytown housing within Red Leaf Market; they could only live on the outskirts of the market where the formation arrays could not reach.
Because the cheapest shantytown houses cost 100 spirit essences a year, the one Zhou Xun rented happened to be of this type.
Calculated down, it still cost him eight spirit essences a month.
Hatching over nearly a third of his monthly income for rent gave Zhou Xun the exact familiar feeling of struggling to make ends meet in a major city back in his past life.
Arriving back outside his wooden hut, Zhou Xun took out a cyan-blue wooden plaque.
Muttering an incantation under his breath, he channeled an art straight into the plaque, causing it to emit a beam of cyan light that struck the door before him.
The cyan light melted into the door, flickered once, and vanished.
Zhou Xun gave a gentle push, and the door swung open.
Though dubbed a shantytown, the properties here were entirely owned by Red Leaf Market, and every wooden hut was equipped with simple defensive restrictions.
Anyone who foolishly attempted to force their way in would instantly alert the market's enforcement team, thus providing a certain degree of security.
Every cultivator in Red Leaf Market with the means was willing to rent such a house.
Stepping inside, the hour was still early.
Having nothing to do, Zhou Xun momentarily felt a sense of maladjustment.
On ordinary days, he spent his daytime working in the shop without needing to worry about what else to do.
Sitting in silence for a while, Zhou Xun began to contemplate his next path.
In the two years since his transmigration, he had accumulated a total of 120 spirit essences. Adding the 90 from his severance today made 210 in all—worth more than two spirit stones.
There was also a rank one low-grade golden stab talisman, which he had earned as a reward for his diligent work at Miaofu Pavilion.
"My current net worth can be considered upper-tier among early-stage cultivators!"
However, nearly a year had passed since he last paid his rent.
At this rate, the manager responsible for collecting rent in the market would soon come knocking. Deducting the 100 for rent, the amount he could actually use was only 110.
"One spirit essence buys three catties of spirit rice, and I consume thirty catties a month. Even if I pinch pennies on my meals, the remaining spirit essences will barely last me a year!"
Zhou Xun calculated that he needed to find another job.
Otherwise, he would eventually be reduced to drifting to the outskirts of the market.
One had to know that place was completely devoid of array coverage or patrolling enforcement teams.
Incidents of murder for treasures happened frequently there.
It was common for cultivators who were laughing and chatting with friends one day to be found lying dead in some gutter the next, their cultivation completely destroyed and lives snuffed out.
Zhou Xun had no desire to end up like that.
Having finished his calculations, the sky grew dark as well.
Zhou Xun therefore walked into the kitchen and set about preparing today's dinner.
Opening the large jar containing the spirit rice, Zhou Xun scooped out a full ladle, then, seemingly remembering something, shook a third of it back in.
"Now that I've been fired and have no source of income, I still have to eat sparingly!"
The reason he refused ordinary mortal food was that it contained too many impurities, making it unsuitable for cultivators to consume over long periods.
In Red Leaf Market, there were plenty of people whose cultivation remained stagnant simply because they could not afford spirit rice and had to subsist on mortal food for extended periods.
Zhou Xun's aspirations lay in the Great Dao; naturally, he would not commit such a mistake.
After finishing his spirit rice, Zhou Xun returned to his room, rested for half an hour, and then began his seated meditation.
This was a cultivation trick he had discovered.
Entering meditation half an hour after consuming spirit rice boosted efficiency by roughly ten percent.
Zhou Xun guessed this was because half an hour after the spirit rice entered the belly, its essence had been fully absorbed, leaving the body's spiritual energy in a flourishing state; practicing at this moment naturally yielded twice the result with half the effort.
The first realm of cultivation was the Qi Condensation Realm.
Qi Condensation had a total of nine levels.
Levels 1 through 3 formed the early Qi Condensation, Levels 4 through 6 the mid Qi Condensation, and Levels 7 through 9 the late Qi Condensation.
Based on Zhou Xun's rough statistics, practitioners in this world also conformed to the eighty-twenty rule.
Eighty percent of cultivators could only remain trapped in early Qi Condensation for their entire lives, and only twenty percent managed to break through to the mid-stage and beyond.
For the past two years, Zhou Xun had relied on this trick to practice diligently every single day.
Now, he was just a step away from peak Level 2 Qi Condensation.
Considering his age of seventeen, he could be considered a genius among low-grade cultivators, possessing the potential to break through to late Qi Condensation in the future.
As his meditation deepened, Zhou Xun's mind grew hazy once more, and the faint sounds of a magical battle echoed in his ears.
"This dream again. This is already the third time in two years!"
This was a battlefield of cultivators where spiritual lights and spells of various colors darted back and forth across a radius of a thousand miles.
Even a true phoenix descended from the heavens, summoning blazing spiritual flames that blotted out the sky and turned the entire world into a fiery crimson expanse. Meanwhile, Zhou Xun transformed into a supreme expert in this vision.
With a casual wave of his hand, a completely crimson gourd flew out, instantly subduing the towering arrogance of the true phoenix.
The next moment, the scene shifted, and Zhou Xun appeared inside a magnificent grand hall. Right in the center of the hall, a jade scroll radiating purple light was enshrined. Zhou Xun stepped forward to examine it closely.
The three large characters "Congealing Spring Scripture" were inscribed upon it.
Gazing at those three words, which seemed like mantras of the Great Dao, Zhou Xun suppressed his excitement and opened the first page.
"The Way of Heaven: diminish the excessive and supplement the deficient."
After a long while, Zhou Xun snapped back to reality, his eyes exceptionally bright at this moment.
This actually turned out to be a supreme technique for condensing the essence of spiritual plants to mend a cultivator's foundation.
"Mending a cultivator's foundation... could this be a technique to condense the essence of spiritual plants and elevate one's spiritual root?" Zhou Xun speculated.
"Pity I only saw the upper half of that jade scroll. But as long as I enter this dream one more time, I will be able to view the complete text!"
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