Jack was surrounded by knowledge that flowed in like a stream. Through the North Apple Alliance, he gained access to a plethora of information, much of which he didn't care about. The only thing that mattered to him was the heavenly dao, which, unfortunately, he could only get so much of. Still, it wasn't too bad.
Jack entrusted Mike with managing everything and delved into deep research. Although making Mike the leader wasn't the wisest choice, it was the only practical opinion, as Mike controlled the puppet,
Mike, for his part, did his task to the best of his abilities.
...
The North Apple Continent was the largest nearby continent. But what does 'nearby' mean?
For a mortal, 'nearby' means their neighbor, or at most a few hundred meters away. Even at the most generous definition, it means the same or close to the city. For soul transformation cultivators, however, 'nearby' means being in the same geographical rank.
According to an ancient agreement among perfection cultivators, the world is divided into a million geographical ranks, each encompassing a defined land area. North Apple and its surrounding continents are all in the 36,441st geographical rank. It is considered one of the better ones, with quite good energy concentration.
The size of a geographical rank is not random; it is based on the average divine sense radius of a soul transformation cultivator. Typically, the divine sense of a soul transformation cultivator should theoretically be able to cover a geographical rank entirely.
For perfection cultivators, however, it's very different. Their divine sense can cover the entire world, so what 'nearby' means for them is very different.
Without even spreading their divine sense, a perfection cultivator can sense 100 geographical ranks. If they spread their divine sense, they can sense the entire world.
Perfection cultivators consider a radius of 100 geographical ranks to be 'nearby'.
The divine sense is the clearest, far better than seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, and smelling combined. When cultivators spread their divine sense, they receive complete information about that area. The most challenging aspect of divine sense is not its radius but the cultivator's processing abilities; it transmits so much information to the brain that even a perfection cultivator cannot keep up; even perfection cultivators don't waste so much brain power paying attention to every detail, so it is not like they know everything happening around them. Unless an entity that can threaten them appears, they usually don't pay any attention.
In the 'nearby' territory of the North Apple Continent, as seen by perfection cultivators, there were 25 perfection cultivators, most living on remote islands and not caring about anything that happened in the world. But once the puppet appeared, all immediately took notice. Even if they didn't care about anything happening in the world, the appearance of a perfection powerhouse was still too eye-catching.
One such perfection cultivator called himself Daoist Beggar. He lived on the island country of Small Apple, which was to the west of the South Apple continent. A branch family of the ruling dynasty of South Apple Continent ruled the island country of Small Apple.
But for Daoist Beggar, none of these mattered. He was a cultivator who had lived for over 100 billion years; he had seen so much of the world that he didn’t care about such small details.
He usually sat on the ground in busy markets, begging people for some money. Of course, he didn’t need any food. His actions were because he was trying to calculate the complete law of begging. This law may sound bad, but it is actually one of the strongest ones one can imagine. One must not underestimate the power of begging.
He had a long beard, a dirty face, poor oral health, with only a few teeth left, and ragged clothes. Usually, his eyes were drowsy and lacking any brilliance, but at this moment, they were shining as he contemplated.
"Perfection realm puppet … out of nowhere… interesting," he thought as he considered the possibilities.
After a few minutes, he decided on his next action.
"It has ... nothing to do ... with me." he decided to remain there and continue begging. He wasn’t looking for trouble; any disturbance could only delay his calculation of the begging law. As for what was behind the puppet's sudden appearance, he didn’t care at all. At his level, nothing, no amount of energy stones, treasures, weapons, spells, talismans, or pills could help him. He was at the absolute peak of perfection and had many perfection-level weapons. The only thing that would attract his attention was knowledge about begging, which the puppet didn’t have.
His eyes returned to their usual dim state, and he set the matter aside, continuing to beg mortals for food.
Still, even with all of his disinterest, he kept his divine sense on the puppet. No matter where it teleported, unless it used a powerful spell that could defend against his divine sense, its location would always be known to Daoist Beggar. Such a spell is only theoretical, as up to now, there has never been a spell that could completely defend against the divine sense of a perfection cultivator.
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He wasn’t worried about angering the puppet because it’s a tradition among perfection cultivators living' nearby' to keep an eye on each other.
Many other perfection realm cultivators who noticed the puppet reacted similarly to Daoist Beggar. They observed the puppet for a while but became disinterested. But like Daoist Beggar, they also kept their divine sense on the puppet.
...
Cedric was a college student from the Blue Planet. He was studying programming in college but wasn’t just an ordinary student. He had already created a few popular online, web-based games as a first-year student. He was able to pay for his education by himself. His last game was a massive success, earning him over a million in nine months.
His life was great; he had a beautiful girlfriend, loving parents, good friends, and a bright future ahead of him. Unfortunately, things didn’t go as he hoped.
Last night, the lights flickered as he was coding the game's latest update, and everything went dark. When he woke up, he found himself in an unfamiliar place that looked like the medieval era—just much worse than he imagined of medieval times. Everywhere was much dirtier than in the movies.
As a college student, he had also read some web novels. Although he considered reading fiction a complete waste of time, he still had his share. Seeing his situation, he realized that he had transmigrated to another world.
He knew it was another world because he saw a man flying on a flying sword.
Cedric was absolutely shocked, but unfortunately, his stomach didn’t care. He had been transmigrated with his own body and didn't have any money; well, he had his credit card, but well ... medieval times. He had no choice but to put his shock aside and first look for a way to survive.
He never thought of suicide; as a rational person, he never ever considered killing himself. He considered living the greatest joy. Even laying in bed for all his life was better than the complete darkness he believed would come after death.
Unfortunately, the world was cruel. As a nobody with no skill, he couldn’t find anything. His programming skills were useless, and his manual labor didn’t count for anything. Maybe if he knew a few people, he would have been able to receive some help, but unfortunately, he didn’t even speak the language, let alone knowing anyone.
"I remember when they crossed in those novels, they got some cheat! Where is my grandpa!?" he screamed in his mind as he begged for food. Unfortunately, everyone was poor; there was a drought lately, so food was in short supply to begin with. No one was kind enough to feed a man in weird clothes.
Just as he was about to pass out from hunger, something appeared in front of his eyes.
"Developer system has been activated!"
"Inventory empty."
A virtual keyboard, like those famous virtual reality headsets, appeared in front of his eyes simultaneously.
Seeing this, he suddenly became aware,
"Here comes my cheat!" He felt excited but then confused. There was nothing else besides a keyboard; was his cheat loading? Was there an error?
"Developer system? Could it be?" He became excited and started coding with his shaking fingers. His online game was an RPG; many items, including food, were in it.
Coding with shaky fingers is difficult, but he held on and wrote the exact code for orange juice
After he finished, a red button displaying 'run' appeared. He tapped on it.
The code disappeared; nothing happened.
"Developer system"
"Inventory: green: Orange juice x1."
Cedric quickly tapped on the 'Orange juice x1'.
"Select a location," the system displayed.
"Here," Cedric tapped on the ground right before him.
With a dim green light, a cup of orange juice appeared right where he tapped.
Picking it up, he laughed. "It's real! It's real!"
It was a cold night, and nobody was around; the city had no nightlife at all.
Without hesitation, he brought the cup to his mouth and started drinking. He was already very thirsty and didn’t want to wait. As for whether items produced by the system are safe to eat, Cedric didn’t care at the moment; nobody would pity and feed him; the system is his last hope in this cold night.
After drinking to the last drop, he looked at the cup. "It is just like real glass; unbelievable!"
He put it aside and started coding a blanket; it was cold, and his body was losing heat, so staying warm was even more urgent than food.
He had more energy this time, so he easily coded it.
In his game, items were classified into different colors. Green items are ordinary, yellow is uncommon, blue is rare, purple is epic, red is legendary, cyan is mythic, pink is ultra, gold is super, and black is godly. What he just coded was only an ordinary orange juice; he coded it because he was testing only.
This time, however, he didn’t just code an ordinary blanket; he coded the highest rarity of blanket, which was a godly blanket. Anyway, the code was about the same length.
"Does it take longer for the system to produce higher rarity items?" he thought. Usually, systems aren’t so overpowered as to produce high-level items from the start. If it takes long, he might freeze to death tonight.
So, he decided against it, changed the rarity to green, and ran the code. An ordinary blanket appeared, which he wrapped around himself.
At least now, he wouldn't freeze to death.
Then, he coded a few other green items: common gold coins, common silver coins, common bronze coins, common cakes, a common knife, a common gun, common clothes, etc.
After coding for about an hour, he coded all he might need to survive.
After doing all that, he finally decided to try coding items with higher rarity. Now, even if it takes longer, at least he would survive on his own.
"I wish the system had a manual!" he complained and started coding a yellow-level knife.
After a minute, he tapped to run.
Its appearance was exactly the same as the green knife; his game was only a simple web-based game. He didn’t have the resources to do fancy graphics. But he was sure it was uncommon, as it shone with a yellow light.
He unsheathed it to test it and cut the yellow-rank knife against the green-rank one. As expected, the yellow-rank knife easily cut the green one into two pieces, as if it were cutting butter.
"It didn’t take longer! It ran the code immediately!" Cedric started to become excited! He quickly coded a blue-level knife and tapped run.
Like the yellow rank one, it immediately produced the knife with no delay. Cutting against the yellow one, the blue rank knife easily cut the yellow one.
He tried again with purple, red, cyan, pink, and golden ones; the system produced them all without issue.
"I am going to be OP! GG!" He laughed. Even though his previous life had ended tragically, his new life was going to be fun!
Finally, he coded the black rank knife and hit run.
An ordinary-looking knife appeared in front of him. This time, he didn’t dare unsheathe the knife. Like all divine items, a divine knife has a dangerous special ability.
After a few minutes, he concentrated and very carefully unsheathed it. Then he pointed at a visible distant tower and waved.
"Bam!"
The top of the tower fell to the ground with a deafening bam!