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“It seems I truly have transmigrated—”
Inside the lavishly adorned carriage, Zong Shou gazed expressionlessly at the round mirror before him.
The reflection in the mirror was clearly that of an underage youth.
About thirteen years old, with a pale complexion, but those features were exceptionally handsome and impeccably fine.
A pair of slender phoenix eyes sparkled enchantingly.
However, at this moment, they were filled with a bitter and helpless sentiment.
He remembered that not long ago, he himself had an exceedingly ordinary face, the kind that one could never pick out from a crowd.
To his surprise, upon waking from this dream, his body had turned into that of such a handsome young man.
Although slightly sickly and frail, he was indeed top-notch in looks.
Even those top male celebrities known for their good looks in his previous life could not come close.
If there was anything lacking, it was only the demeanor.
Yet at this moment, Zong Shou felt not a trace of joy, but rather, he only felt at a loss.
It was as if he was a little fish that had been free and roaming in the great sea and had suddenly come onto land.
In this world, apart from the strangling unfamiliarity that threatened to take his life, there was also a profound sense of fear and loneliness.
Not willing to give up, Zong Shou pinched his face forcefully once again and immediately felt a surge of pain.
Naturally, he didn’t find any signs of plastic surgery on his face.
“—There’s a sense of pain, so it can’t be a dream?
But what is my identity now?
And this godforsaken place, where is it?”
‘Zong Shou’ was the name from the memories of the body he now occupied.
He had a different name in his previous life, but in this time and place, that was meaningless to him.
Muttering to himself for a while, Zong Shou sighed and looked away.
His chest was filled with despair, having completely given up on any thoughts of returning or ‘waking up from this dream’.
Actually, he had been in this world for several days.
Almost every time he woke from sleep, he would repeat the actions just mentioned.
And today marked the seventh day.
The decor style inside the carriage seemed to suggest ancient China, but it was not entirely the same.
Peering through the window curtain, outside was an endless expanse of prairie, lush and green, which was refreshingly pleasant to the eye.
The air too was fresh and invigorating, without a trace of pollution found in the modern world.
However, a closer look would reveal that the carriage, though it had wheels, was suspended in midair, three feet off the ground.
The sixteen single-horned horses in front were trotting on air, capable of undulating up and down.
As such, although the carriage was massive, with just the carriage space being at least forty square meters, it could traverse any kind of complex terrain with ease.
And at this moment, no one was driving in front; it was speeding straight ahead, hurtling towards the distance.
The slashes and sword marks on both sides of the carriage were also a matter of great concern.
Zong Shou felt a wave of dizziness and collapsed onto the soft couch cushioned with swan velvet.
Then, with just a slight intention, a series of fragmented memories surfaced in his mind.
They were all disjointed and incomplete.
Among them were many characters, a good number of faces, and more importantly, there was a towering mountain that pierced the clouds and an unimaginably large academy occupying most of an island in a lake.
He felt both unfamiliar and familiar with them, and vaguely a sense of fear.
These feelings were extremely complex and bizarre.
Lastly, in the deepest part of his mind, the only remaining segment of memory was of countless mystical characters, combined together to form a complete book.
These characters were different from any language of his world, yet he found them extremely familiar, one might even say he knew them like the back of his hand, as if he had mastered them in his previous life.
“Indeterminate Spirit Emperor Technique?
And this demon language.
Could it be that this is the Divine Emperor World?”
Zong Shou’s lips twitched slightly involuntarily, but his expression was filled with utter bewilderment.
— “Divine Emperor,” was a virtual game that started in 2012 and swept across the world.
Nobody knew which gaming company developed it, and all the corresponding gaming equipment appeared in the market suddenly as well.
It seemed that overnight, the entire Earth had transitioned from 2D and 3D online games into the era of virtual holographic Illusion Realm.
Whether it was that academy, that mountain peak, or these demon clan characters in his mind, he had seen them all in Divine Emperor in his previous life.
That’s right, he remembered that in his previous life, his last conscious moment was inside the “Divine Emperor” game.
Combat amongst the Seven Emperors of Cloud Realm.
Alone with one sword, he fought amongst heroes, but in the final moment, his body suddenly passed through an electric current, and he lost all consciousness.
When he woke up, he was in a different body.
And everything before his eyes was no longer the familiar Earth.
So at this moment, was he still in the game, or was it a real world?
Or perhaps this world had some connection with “Divine Emperor”?
His brain spun again, and Zong Shou simply gave up on all thoughts, stopping his pondering.
In this carriage, with nothing to do anyway, Zong Shou decided to take out a Green Steel Sword, about three feet long, and began practicing his swordsmanship in the relatively spacious carriage room.
His footing―advancing, retreating, shifting, and turning―matched his figure, casting sword glimmers within the not-too-big, not-too-small carriage.
Just as in his previous life, every sword form and every step was so precise that it reached an extreme accuracy, almost to the point of perfection.
However, merely half a ji into practicing his Basic Swordsmanship, Zong Shou was already gasping for breath, drenched in cold sweat from head to toe.
And the shadow of his sword light inevitably began to distort.
It was only by clinging to his innate, unyielding belief that he managed to avoid collapsing to the ground.
Only when the last of his strength was utterly depleted did Zong Shou stop the sword light and sit gasping on the couch.
When that intense focus finally dispersed, in an instant, he could feel his whole body, his limbs, his organs, every part aching as if seared by flames.
This action was not simply borne out of boredom, but out of sheer unease.
The world around him, as well as his own circumstances, gave him a keen sense of crisis and urgency.
He was desperate to gain some strength, at the very least some capacity to save his own life.
In “Divine Emperor”, everything tended towards realism.
Whether it was Martial Arts, languages, the Five Senses, Combat, or even daily necessities of life, there was a complete system.
Most players relied on the default settings of the system for gameplay and combat without much understanding.
Yet, there were some who would learn all kinds of knowledge and languages within Divine Emperor, delve into the principles of various Martial Arts, and deeply understand everything about that world.
They could even escape the constraints of the game’s framework, and find new insights beyond the original basics.
Zong Shou was not only one of these people, but he was also an outstanding one among them.
Basic Swordsmanship, Basic Boxing, Basic Lightness, Basic Evasion, Basic Step Technique, Basic Guarding, Basic Internal Skill―he had thoroughly researched almost all foundational martial artist skills to the level of returning to simplicity, a master’s level.
And among the hundreds of millions of players, those who achieved this were merely a thousand or so in number.
In fact, Zong Shou had already mastered all the principles, changes, and derivations of this Basic Swordsmanship.
What he needed to do at this moment was to let this body firmly memorize those skills, so they would become his instinct.
However, his own body was simply too weak.
Just ordinary practice could only last for the duration of a cup of tea, and his physical strength was not even half that of an average person’s.
Even more disheartening was the fact that he was completely unable to practice Basic Internal Skill.
It wasn’t that Zong Shou’s body was truly weak.
In fact, in terms of strength, flexibility, and agility, he was even better than the average person; his root bone and Five Elements Spirit Root should be considered top-tier talent.
It was just his stamina that was extraordinarily weak for some unknown reason.