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Lingfeng's report to the Central Provinces about the destruction of the Moon-Devouring Demonic Sect:

"We began our assault on the Demonic Sect's laboratories as soon as the morning hours arrived. They put up a fierce fight, sending waves after waves of minions and having them sacrifice themselves without any care for self preservation. Some of them even blew themselves up to delay us from taking even one step further inside of the compound.

We had some reliable inside-intel that the Sect Master was currently present at this particular laboratory to inspect some demonic project which the sect was undertaking.

It was a golden opportunity to cut off the head of the snake, so we had rushed to this place as soon as we had heard about it. We indeed found many demonic monster pods that the sect usually used to craft different types of monsters inside of the buildings. Unfortunately, they were already empty.

Whatever had been inside was now loose upon the world.

The uncanny occurrences began when the Hero of the Sun spotted a young little girl, which immediately ran around a corner. The Hero thought that the young girl was, for some reason, his younger sister Lei Lei, which we knew had died a few years ago during a Demonic Sect attack.

We tried to keep up with him, but the ceiling collapsed right in front of us as soon as he tried to chase after the girl, so we became cut off from the main path and were unable to stay with the Hero. We were forced to take a detour, which proved enough of a distraction to allow for the downfall of our Hero.

The secondary path was filled with even more traps and crazed minions and it took us quite a long time to make it to the throne room as well.

By the time we got there, the fight against the Sect Master Fury Bone had already occurred and both the Hero and the Sect Master of the Moon-Devouring Sect had seemingly killed each other.

The only thing that we found along the path to the throne room had been the burnt or disfigured bodies of young girls that looked strikingly similar to the Hero's young sister.

The number of empty monster pods was equal to the number of dead girls, so it was obvious that the sect had somehow managed to get their hands on the genetic material of the Hero's younger sister and had manufactured these creatures to strike a deep blow against the psyche of the Hero.

Unclean demonic artifacts targeting the Hero’s Regenerative abilities were also found at the crime scene, and we have promptly collected and destroyed them afterwards, lest a same fate befall another hero if one such artifact were to arrive in evil hands again. This should also become a cautionary tale to other would-be heroes about over-reliance on one particular set of skills or attributes.

It is with great sadness that I have to report to you that the Hero of the Sun has perished and his soul has dissipated in the process, disallowing any further attempt at Resurrection.

He died the same way that he lived, fighting against the evils of the world down to his last breath.

He will forever be remembered and cherished in our hearts.

The Empire has lost one of its greatest forces against Evil this day, and his absence will be most certainly felt during the days to come.

I urge the Council to prepare a subjugation army, because I assume some of the other Demonic Sects are going to try and stir up trouble when they find out that the Hero of the Sun has left this world for good.

Yours truly

Lingfeng of the Zephyr, arcane windcaster, scribe and third member of the Hero's party.

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K̷̨̖̻̊̌̈́̈́͋̌̊̒͐ͅŎ̴̡̹̫͍̘̐̂́́͊Ĉ̸̨̩̹̭̹͎̺͂́̀͜͜K̵̨͉̦̒͗̀̚ ̷̦̥̠́̓͊͐̍̊́Ä̵̛̞̖̜́̑̅͌̌̃̈́͘ ̶̢͉͇̫̮̹̠̤̮̙͑͑D̴̙̙̰̳͔̪̽̔̈́̏̏̔͊ͅǑ̸̳͛̎̀Ò̴̧̱̎D̸̙̭̜̰̟͍́̀͋͆̀͊̚L̵̡̞̓̄̓̀͗͠͝E̴͔͔̻͊͐͊̿̏̾ ̸̡̧̭̞̩̲̓͂̽̀̒ͅḀ̸̧̤͇̇̀̅̊͂̀͋͝͝ͅĻ̸̮̼͎̠̄̈̆̌̑͝Ḻ̶̙̭̬̦̬̀̆͊̊́̓̈́ ̵̺̐̈́̀̌̑̋͊Ỵ̷̨̨̛̟̘͕̓̈́͑̓̌̽͘̕Ợ̵̡̗͈̞̔͆͋̈͛̽͑͛̚Ū̷͉̒̾́̈́̋̓̄̆̚Ŕ̶̻̳̰͇̥̥͑̊̾̑͂͛ ̶̨͕̥̬̖͖̳̼͔̘́͛́̍̓́̂͊͝B̸͓͔̳̖͕̰̫͇̘̋́̒À̵̖̟̼̖̫̠͖͋̋̚S̸̢̢̬̤͎̩̳̼͊̉̋̈̿͑͌̚͜͝Ḙ̵̬̬̫͍̮̉̋̌͑̐ ̶̧̜͕̠̣̫͑͜Ä̶̘̯͇̺͙̪͓͎̻͔͐̑̀͘R̶̢͖̝̫̤̱͚̳̒͗͊̈́͊͌͘͜ͅȄ̸̟͊̍̇͊͗̄̅̕ ̸̪̪̫͖̈́̆̒͊͋̔͘̚B̷̡̝̲̰̺̐́̾̊̃̓̇E̶̟͓̳͖̪̻̤̘̖͒͐͑̏̄̈̆̚L̷̘̦͌̈́̿̓͒̏͌Ǫ̸̞̰̭͖͎̺͚̰̦̎̐̄͌̄N̵̳̝͔̈̈́̄̕͝Ģ̸̳̜̜̰͖̹͓̝̔̋̆̋̈́̐͘͠͝ ̵̭͓̝͖̆̑̽̓͑̕̚̚T̷̯̻̿̐̐͋̆̔͘͝O̷̥̓̃̇͂͌ ̸̢͓̟̪̤̬̖͚͎͇̒̿̌̒̀͂͠U̷̖̺̮͕̇̔̐͋̃̀̄̓͊͜͜Ṣ̵̻̯̯̭̜̘͛͊͜͠ ̸͖̖̺̇̀͂̂̄̆͘͘͝͝D̸̜͎̗̦̭̣̖͍̰́̃̽̈́̋̉͜͠Ǫ̵̬̗͚̙̲͙͉̑͜Ọ̴̖͆̿̎̈́̎̈́͝

...!!! MOTHERF…!!!

SOME DAY, ROOSTER! SOME DAY I WILL GET MY HANDS ON YOU, AND WHEN I DO, I WILL RRRGHH...!

I woke up staring at the white ceiling. Yes, this was my new home now. I was still trying to wrap my head around the events that had happened during the last few days.

The Hero's party had found me weeping like a little girl over the dead body of the Hero of the Sun, as I was pretending to call out to him, telling him not to die, that I still loved and needed him and that I am sorry.

They had been very unsure what to do with me after that, and it had taken quite a few days for them to put the whole story together. I had been fully cooperative with them, and I had responded to all of their questions. I also lied to them through my teeth, telling them that the only thing I remembered was waking up inside of a pod, and feeling a strong urge to see my brother again. When they asked me who I thought my brother was, I of course answered that it was the Hero of the Sun. From the pieces of my fragmented memories and from what I had talked with Yi Gore, I was able to cook up a decent story for the Hero's party to swallow. Whenever I would encounter something that I could not answer I would just tell them that I did not remember anything about that certain subject. Which was actually partially the truth, since I had no idea what had actually happened with the Hero's little sister after she blew up. If what Yi had shown me was real, it had been a terrible thing, and the Hero had deserved his Fate 1000 times over.

After that, they had put me through many tests to confirm whether I was infected by Demonic Corruption or anything similar, but they had found nothing except for the nail that was stuck inside of my head, which they had promptly removed without any issues since it was inert anyway. It did hurt a lot though. Anything stuck inside of your spinal marrow tends to cause that.

After the party's medic/healer, which was a dainty short and plump little lass called Mina had given me a clean bill of health, I was now just a little girl with a bunch of fucked up memories inside of her head, and the party did not know what to do with me. Even though I had been grown inside one of those monster pods, I still looked and behaved very human-like. Being a heroic party, they just could not find it in their hearts to outright kill me, since I was obviously also a victim of the whole circumstance and they could not abandon me to my fate either. They did argue about it for a while though, as some of the more flame-spirited members just wanted to transform me into barbecued meat. Fortunately, the more calm minds had won over, and I was spared, but not before a lot of curses had been tossed around.

In the end, they decided together not to speak to anyone about my existence, writing off to their leaders that all of the clones inside of the pods had died during the conflict.

In the end, the Hero's party looted the entire sect, stripping it clean of all of its belongings. After that, they took the Hero's dead body and we headed to the closest Cathedral of the Light, where the body would be left until the Sect of the Sun would come to claim it and bury him on their sacred mountain.

All throughout the journey to the Cathedral, I had played the little heartbroken girl act, keeping watch over the body of the Hero of the Sun and pretending to cry from time to time. Which came easy, since the nail-hole wound in my head still hurt like hell.

After that, I was taken away by the third member from the Hero's party, a scholarly guy that everybody called Lingfeng of the Zephyr because of his unusual prowess at wind manipulation and his penchant for wearing light-colored blue robes with mauve accents. Together, we left the Hero’s party and I was taken back to his sect. We had both agreed with each other to keep my origin story silenced forever, and I would just pretend that I was one of his very distant nieces that was coming up to his sect hoping to become one of the outer disciples.

Of course, I still had to pass the outer disciple examination, but that would happen only a few months from now. For the moment, he had arranged a lodging for me somewhere inside the outer sect perimeter, and now I had an entire small house all to myself. Of course, Lingfeng did warn me that I would probably be getting a roommate once the exams were over, because they did not have that many housing spots in the first place, to allow each disciple to live on their own. I was certain that I would be getting a “special” roommate that would be there to keep an eye on me, just in case I somehow became demonized and blew up the place or something like that.

For now, I was rejoicing at the fact that I had a place to sleep at, a roof over my head and something to eat everyday and nobody was trying to murder me yet.

Lingfeng also took the time to give me some level 1 cultivation scrolls of the "Orthodox" variant for me to study. He was hoping that I could become a normal cultivator instead of a demonic one, and live out the rest of my life peacefully inside of his sect.

The “Blue Mountain of Books” Sect was where I currently found myself at the moment, and it belonged to the scholarly faction of the Orthodox path of the cultivation sects. It was named so because the main cliffside of the central mountain was made out of bluish-gray vertically stratified rocks that had been eroded to look almost like a stack of randomly sized books placed on top of eachother. It was quite fitting, to be honest, and I liked the look of the place.

Still, my entry into the sect among the ranks of the disciples was not a guaranteed thing, even with Lingfeng pulling all of the strings that he could. Since he could not tell the sect about my true origin, he could only pretend to be a doting Uncle that was pulling a severe case of nepotism for his young grandniece. Therefore, I still had to study hard for the upcoming “entrance exams”.

I have not studied so hard for something in almost 20 years, since I had been over 35-ish something when I got yanked away from Planet Earth. And these weren’t even your standard AST’s, but a totally antiquated and complex form of cultivation bogus.

In truth, the study was horribly hard. Even with the bonus of the system translating for me all of the scrolls that I was reading, the lectures were still made up from a whole lot of mumbo jumbo that had absolutely no relation to the actual cultivation method. Everything was disguised with flowery metaphors, exaggerated comparisons and inane philosophical discussions. In truth, it looked to me that, in fact, even the guys who had written the scrolls had no fucking idea what they were doing either, and were just filling in the gaps with a bunch of pompous words to make themselves look good and intelligent.

It took me quite a few days until I managed to find a method for squeezing out the useful information and ignoring all of the pointless yapping.

It wasn't much. In truth, I could have probably figured most of it out by myself, if I had enough time.

It was just “move the Qi this way, compress the Qi this other way, channel the Qi though these meridians in this order” etc.

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Why the hell the authors had felt compelled to add all of the other bullshit on top, I still had no idea, but my bet was either on pride or a need for higher pagecount. I mean, you cannot sell a cultivation “book” if everything can be concisely contained within three-and-a-half pages of practical descriptions. It then becomes a leaflet. No, fill 100+ pages with inane ramblings while hiding the actual 3.5 pages of useful shit among the garbage and drive the readers crazy by letting them try and figure out what you really meant in the first place.

And so my days became a blur, alternating between cursing the morning rooster, reading stupidly pompous scrolls, and trying out the methods depicted within. I still have no clue why the fucking rooster was making himself heard each morning, and how it had followed us all the way here from the Demonic Sect. Or, the even more terrifying thought, was that ALL roosters sounded like a heavy metal band lead singer on steroids with an angle grinder in hand in this world, and the one I was hearing was a totally different bird altogether.

Lingfeng would drop by every two or three days to check up on me, but he would relax immediately upon finding me deep in meditation study caused by flowery-words-induced-headaches.

In truth, I was trying to pin my cultivation knowledge that I had gained back on Earth against the inane ramblings that I was finding within these scrolls. More than half of what I was finding written down was absolutely bogus.

I had been forced to recompile and correct my given cultivation method more than once, and I had improved it by a lot.

I would also give Lingfeng an earful every time he stopped by, asking him to clarify all of my doubts that I had gained during the reading sessions.

That resulted in the comical outcome where he would become choked up on his words, not knowing how to reply back to me when I would lock him up with a difficult question. His pride as an Elder of the scholarly sect was being trampled in the mud by a young upstart, but he was wise enough to admit that he had no answers to give to some of my weirder questions, and that he would head to the library or ask the other elders for solutions to my inquiries. Seeing that I was quite smart at this “literary cultivation selection” thing, he had increased the amount of scrolls that he had brought me, allowing me to widen the scope of my knowledge, which suited me just fine.

In truth, I was starved for knowledge about the world, about the whole presence of the system, and how it affected everyone residing on the surface of the planet.

Apparently, the system was a presence known to everyone and everything, but what was different from individual to individual were the degrees to which every person was able to access or use it.

Plain “mortals” would only be able to see a few specks of colours or lights that would depict their general attributes while invoking the “Blessings of Mother Earth”, which was a skill that was taught even to the youngest mortal children world-wide, where by putting their hands on the literal ground and saying a certain catchphrase in their native tongue, they would begin to see their own attributes as wispy colored floating lights of different sizes coming up from the ground. The bigger the colored light, the higher the Attribute.

Once a person became “spiritually awakened”, whatever that meant, since there were big differences between the leveling systems used in the West and the ones in the East, their interface would be upgraded to something similar that of my own basic level interface, where they would be able to see their own statistics crunched down into numerals.

Lingfeng had no idea how the system was doing this, because everybody thought that the interface was an actual blessing that Mother Earth had cast upon all of her children, to aid them in their survival against the monsters that roamed the world.

I also took my time to ask him about how the leveling system works. Apparently, everybody gets automatically leveled up each year, usually on their birthday. So a newborn child would be considered level 0, just as I had been inside of the pods. After that, the system automatically levels up each person after one year has passed, until they reach what the system assumes is the maturity age of that certain person. It varies from case to case, but usually it's around the age of 20 for humans, give or take one or two years.

It is at the point where a person stops growing, and begins ageing instead. This is an important breakpoint for cultivators, because in their ever-lasting pursuit of immortality, they aim to forever remain at this perfect age of the body, even as they continue leveling up further and further. But what this means for the general public, is that just about every peasant out there is around level 20 or more.

Of course, that is as far as humans went, which composed the majority of the eastern world. The other races, which were more oftenly found within the western world, had their own “maturity” cap. Elves and fairykind were the highest-capped humanoids at level 30, dwarves at 25, halflings and gnomes at 15, beastkin and trolls at 10, orcs and ogres at 5, and goblins at 2.

Dragons apparently did not have a cap, and would auto-advance continuously without any limit as long as they kept themselves alive. All they had to do was wait for another year, and Poof, extra bonus Paragon level for free from the system. Sheesh, talk about favoritism, Mom Earth!

It is why wild young and inexperienced dragons were the most dangerous beast you could encounter as an adventurer, since they could have very well slept for the last 50 years and had woken up recently already at level 50 without having to do any work for it, then proceed to tear the adventuring party into shreds. It was actually a pretty common, albeit unfortunate, sort of occurrence.

After they reach level 20 via auto-level, the system stops handing out free level-ups to humans. If somebody wants to level up past 20(or their own racial cap in case of the other races), they have to do it the hard way, just like everybody else, by either killing monsters or becoming a specific type of artisan, since crafting also gives experience.

Of course, the fastest way to level up is by going out there and killing monsters. The harder, the bigger and the older the monster, the more experience you can get out of slaying it.

On the other side, the “safer” way to gain experience is to become a crafter/worker of some sorts. The experience awarded for creating new things is not as much as the experience gained from slaying monsters, but it is a “safe” way to level up, since you do not need to leave your village or city to gain levels as long as you have enough materials to work with at hand. This also is split into more tiers, with the more difficult jobs awarding more experience. The harder to craft, the rarer the materials and the higher the skills required for crafting an item, the more experience you gain, once you finish it.

This is why most of the peasantry barely breaks over level 25, even at the end of their lives, because growing crops is one of the least rewarding things when it comes to experience. While it might be back breaking work, and being a farmer is something to be proud of, planting seeds and watching them grow is not a “challenge” in the eyes of the system, since everybody can do that.

Overall, experience gains seem to scale with difficulty. Fighting monsters, of course, awards the most experience, because you are literally putting your life on the line when fighting those.

Crafting things also requires a high level of dedication and accumulation of knowledge to do one's job properly, as creating high level things can prove to be quite challenging for the mind and the skills of the crafter, hence the bigger rewards.

Also, the higher the level, the more experience is needed to reach the next step. I squeezed Lingfeng for this particular info, and I managed to create a general picture inside of my head about what to expect from that.

Level 50 is apparently a major breaking point in the leveling curve. It is the highest level that a “normal person” would be able to attain, as far as “Mother Earth” aka “The System” is concerned.

The highest level gear that you will be able to obtain, even those legendary or mythical pieces from the depths of the darkest dungeons, is still going to be considered level 50 by the system. Which makes level 50 gear the most valuable stuff that you can get your hands on, anywhere in the world.

As far as cultivation stages inside the sects go, Lingfeng showed me the following chart which simplified things by a lot:

1-9 Mortal (child)

10-19 Qi refinement Stage (outer disciple)

20-29 Foundation Establishment Stage (inner disciple)

30-39 Core Formation Stage (direct disciple)

40-49 Nascent Soul Stage (sect elder)

50+Paragon/Divinity Ascension Stage (mountain leader or sect head)

I wondered why mortal was only up to level 9 and not 19, but Lingfeng explained to me that children born inside of the sect would be tutored in the arts of cultivation from an earlier age, and would already have the capacity to open their spiritual roots by the age of 10, putting them squarely in the bracket of Qi Refinement stages from thereon.

Of course, not all of them would manage to open their spiritual roots, since only about 5% to 10% of the entire population, give or take a few points based on location or race, was capable of cultivation.

I asked him what happens after level 50. He told me that after hitting that level, you can still continue leveling up of course, but you will get awarded Paragon levels instead, since you have broken away from the “scope of mortality”.

The major difference between normal level-ups and the Paragon level-ups, is that Paragon levels do not give any stat rewards upon leveling up, unlike the regular levels where you gain a certain amount of stats each time you reach a new step.

Paragon levels are more like “bragging rights” levels.

Of course, you should not look down on Paragon levels, because any person or creature that has lived long enough to gain those, is going to have other ways in which it has strengthened itself.

It is also rumoured that once you have reached Paragon level 100, you could also gain the rights to challenge the Gods themselves for their positions. Of course, nobody has been able to do that just by reaching level 100. Heck, even a sleeping dragon that has snoozed his life away for 100 years would be Paragon 100, but he would get instantly destroyed by the Gods if he attempted to challenge them. The Gods have been around since the beginning of the world and that means that their own Paragon Levels and Attributes are so high, that they would crush you to bits even just by looking down at you.

Then there were also the great Ancient Spirit Beasts, the ancestors of all of the beasts and monsters that roam around in the world nowadays, which also have Paragon levels in the thousands, which makes them almost just as dangerous and unkillable as the deities themselves.

Of course, there are also methods for gaining levels faster than your age. It is theoretically possible for a 10-year old child to become level 20 or even higher, if he has slain enough monsters to gain the experience required for the level-ups.

But usually for something like that to happen within normal circumstances is almost impossible, since a 10 year old child would get shredded to pieces by the monsters that give enough experience for a level up.

Still, there have been known a few cases like that, but most of them had become legendary heroes when they had grown up.

The cultivation sects especially keep an eye out for such children which wind up out-leveling their own age, since most of them are promising candidates to groom for the future.

I was also nearing that stage, because when I had slain the Hero of the Sun, I had gained quite a large chunk of experience, which had propelled me from level 2 to nearly the end of level 14 in one fell swoop.

This fortunately allowed me to look like a normal person, for anyone with the power to inspect me, and not like some weird, lab-made homunculus creep.

I seemed to be, in the eyes of the beholder, only a promising cultivator candidate, because I was only one level higher than my age.

There was one bonus to being born as a homunculus though. I had been created from the start with the basic statistics to match a 13-year old girl, yet I had been classified by the system as having level 0. So as soon as I had gained those extra levels from the hero-slaying, the system had awarded me 12 levels-worth of extra stats and skills. Fortunately, while I had been stuck inside of the cloning tank and I had browsed through all of the menus, I had managed to have the brilliant insight to disable the auto-allocation of newly gained stats by the system, which was ON by default.

So I was now sitting on 70 extra stat points and 15 unspent extra skill points, since I had apparently gained one extra free skill point from the achievement of killing the Hero, yet I still appeared as a normal 13-year old girl as far as statistics went to anyone looking into it.

When I told him that I had become level 14 after the conflict at the Demonic Sect, Lingfeng told me to refrain from spending all of the points at once, because it would look very suspicious for someone to double their stats in the blink of an eye, and that I should add them slowly over a longer period of time, which could just be attributed to good talent and intense training. Of course, I wholeheartedly agreed with his way of thinking. I was also glad that he had assumed that my “empty” bonus levels had been caused by the cloning process, rather than by killing the Hero. Getting found out was just about the worst thing that could happen for me at this moment. We agreed that I would remain as low profile as I possibly could.

Then again, as a person that had been reincarnated from another world, I knew that such a thing was very unlikely to happen. One of the common traits of all transmigrators is that they are like lightning-attracting rods for trouble.

I knew that my peaceful time would not last very long.

As far as I was concerned, I also did not want to waste any precious points until I could figure out what my “build” would be, aka what I wanted to do with my life. From my gaming experience, monolith specced characters that dump all of their stats into only one category would usually wind up stronger than the “jack of all trades” characters which split their focus, but were also limited to only doing their own “thing” that they had specialised into. I was still not sure if going hardcore monolith build was something that I could afford to do at this point in time, because what I needed at this moment for survival was the wider utility range that a jack could provide instead.

I had to get as strong as possible in the shortest period of time, to be able to cope with the guaranteed shitstorm that was probably heading my way. When or how it would arrive, I had no idea, but I knew for sure that I had to be prepared. I was certain that the system would not simply allow me rest in peace.