Is this considered the Upper Realm? If so, I’m not impressed.

The last thing Ning Shan remembered was Heavenly Tribulation striking him as he sought ascension. Yet now, all he saw was an ocean of darkness as far as the eye could see. His whole surroundings were painted with black so devoid of light that he wondered if he had lost sight during his struggle against the World's Will.

He closed his eyes—seeing no difference—before looking in on himself. He inspected his qi channels only to see them all but destroyed. The qi he had accumulated and the cultivation he had meticulously built for over a thousand years had been mercilessly crushed until almost nothing remained, and the few strands of qi left were slowly slipping away.

To say Ning Shan didn't feel any sense of loss would be a lie. However, he had reached the peak once before and could do so again. To rise against adversity was merely what cultivators did. Only trash would cower from a challenge. Ning Shan shook his head, driving away idle thoughts as he sought to find his bearings.

My body seems fine enough after enduring the tribulation, and so are my eyes. Which means this place is simply that dark.

Before all his qi scattered away as his dantian crumbled, Ning Shan diverted it all toward his eyes. They glowed with a golden light as the qi infused his nerves, prompting his eyes to expand the spectrum of light he could recognize. A slight ache assaulted his mind as his brain adapted to this new sight devoid of colours.

Ning Shan frowned. This was the first time he had to use this technique, as he didn't have the qi necessary to use anything else. Still, he had never seen something quite like this. The world was bathed in a thin mist hovering around him, following his every movement and waving back and forth with his every breath.

Didn't that guy say this state would allow me to see something called radiation? Is that what this is? He thought as he extended his hand into the fine cloud but felt nothing on his skin. The more he looked at it, the less it felt like mist and more like fine dust. Fortunately, the dust wasn't opaque enough to hinder his new sight.

Ning Shan looked around but saw no walls close to him, only an endless vastness—or at least the illusion of one. Still, he was glad there was at least a floor under his feet. Otherwise, he might have thought he had reached the afterlife.

How absurd would that have been? I—the man who reached the peak of cultivation and unified the realm—dying to mere Heavenly Tribulation? I spit on those who thought me mad as I sought to break away from the world's shackles and ascend to a higher realm of existence. How could those cowards know of my aspirations? How could they fathom the true price of freedom? Still... it seems I find myself in another cage. No matter... it will also break soon enough. Mark my words...

The glow in Ning Shan’s eyes flickered as it struggled against its demise. Still, there was nothing he could do to remedy this. His own qi was running out—escaping his dantian as if he had regressed to a mortal. Still, there was something else troubling him. While he could feel the qi of the earth pulsing beneath his feet, Ning Shan felt none above his head.

Is there no Heavenly Dao in this world?

Ning Shan sighed. Even simply maintaining this sight posed undue stress on his mind. Without the surrounding qi aiding in this task, Ning Shan could only supplement it with impure earthly qi, making the sight unstable. How he had fallen.

A light appeared in the distance as he sought his next course of action. At first, it was dim, but then countless lights appeared in quick succession, bathing his surroundings in blinding light. He covered his eyes with his sleeve to prevent the light from searing his mind.

Soon enough, his eyes accustomed themselves to the light, and what he saw couldn't help but make him frown. As he thought, he wasn't in an unending space but in a room—a room so large that his sense of scale failed him. Days would be needed to walk to those walls—something that would have taken him but a thought at his prime. Somehow, thinking of what he had lost tasted bitter.

Still, something was unnerving about what he saw. The walls weren't made of wood or stone but of some kind of metal. Thanks to his enhanced sight, he could see the peculiar dust travel along the walls in countless rivers that parted and joined at random intervals, creating some kind of flow that strangely resembled the earth's veins below his feet. As he saw it, this dust might be his only remedy for his lack of qi. After all, it did behave strangely similarly.

However, before he could take the first step, two screens appeared before his eyes. He looked at one only to see a jumbled mess of characters he couldn't make any sense of. This was part of no language he had ever encountered—none of those characters looked like any of them. He grew curious but also cautious. He waited for a while, yet nothing happened.

Seeing the screens of light hovering in mid-air, Ning Shan extended a finger toward one of them, brushing its tip against it. While he knew this could be a trap, he also knew remaining passive was the worst thing he could do. After all, claiming the initiative was the first step toward success—at least, this was his experience.

As his finger reached the screen, it passed right through as if it were nothing but an illusion. Still, Ning Shan was well aware of what illusions could do. It was only a trick of the brain, showing images that weren't real.

As he sought to retract his finger, he felt a liquid flow down his nose, echoing as it dripped on the ground. He touched it with the tip of his fingers, bringing it before his eyes, but surely enough, blood. An exaggerated amount of blood stained the ground, and then a massive headache assaulted him.

He clutched his head with two hands and collapsed on the floor, unable to support himself. His body instinctively opened his mouth, yet all that emerged was a voiceless scream. His body had lost all voluntary processes as it sought to protect itself from the pain. He couldn’t even bring himself to howl.

Sweat poured down his back as his body spasmed. His muscles cramped under the strain, sending another jolt of pain through his brain. He felt his eyes sear as if they were boiling within their orbits. His throat collapsed, forbidding him to draw breath. Fortunately, his body remained in the state it was in as he challenged the heavens—air was something he could do without for much longer than mortals. Still, it was the first time in a thousand years that he had felt such helplessness.

Though fragmented at best, a massive amount of information appeared in his head. It was as if downloaded straight into his brain. Even as he shook onto the floor, he could see the windows of light remain in his sight. Those foreign characters slowly became legible as time passed, as if his mind translated in real-time.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Slowly, the pain receded, and Ning Shan could finally relax somewhat. Yet, he remained sprawled on the floor for a while longer, turning on his back. He looked to the sky—or at least what was supposed to be it. He only saw a bright light in the distance slowly dimming until it disappeared entirely, replaced by a peculiar ceiling that seemed much closer than previously.

While Ning Shan was intrigued, something else occupied his mind. The two windows of light were still reflected in his sight as if they followed it. While he could believe this was a natural phenomenon, the most logical explanation was that this was only interpreted in his mind. Still, this was something he could confirm later on. For now, he sought to read the word written on one of them.

Foreign Existence Detected...

Assessing Threat Level...

Subject Compatible with ARK Monitoring System...

Downloading Required Materials...

Subject May Incur Psychological Damage in the Process...

ARK System Wishes the Subject Good Luck...

...

Error...

Unable to Install Monitoring System...

Unknown Entity Detected During Installation...

Switching to Eradication Protocol...

Subject Will Now be Terminated...

...

Unknown Entity Invading System Protocol...

...

Eradication Protocol Terminated...

...

Installation corrupted...

Beginning Redundancy Protocol...

...

Thank You for Surviving Installation...

Welcome to the ARK Project, Where the Rest of your Life Awaits You...

(The system panel will close automatically when the subject is done reading.)

What the hell is this? What do they mean by ARK System? Is this what allows me to read those characters? Was that excruciating pain part of the downloading process, or was it part of the eradication protocol? What was the unknown entity it talked about? What the hell did they put in me!

Ning Shan was shaken and bewildered. Never had he seen such a peculiar sight in his previous world. Furthermore, while he now knew the meaning, there were some words he had never encountered before. Besides, how it was written on that small glowing window didn't seem fluid, almost mechanical in its delivery.

He shook his head again; nothing could be gained from mulling over it. He would find some answers sooner or later, and whoever was responsible would pay for what he had to endure. He turned his attention to the second panel. This one's meaning seemed even more obscure.

ARK System Information Panel

User: Ning Shan

Code: Immortal Cultivator

Origin: Nine Abyss Realm

Affiliation: Patriarch of the Unfettered Immortal Pavilion

Rank*: Unknown

Known Titles: Nine Abyss Overlord, Conqueror of Realm, Cosmic Traveller, Defier of Fate

Known Skills*: Tribulation Physique (Passive)

Dust Points: 10

*Corrupted—Please see System Engineer for further information...

Ning Shan frowned. How could this window know all this information about him, even the realm he came from. There was so much information at once that he felt his brain could overload.

He took a deep breath and regained his calm. Soon enough, the answer came to him naturally, as if it had been directly delivered into his brain. That system had installed more than just a translation system; it had also installed a new means to use power, something indigenous to this world. As for how he knew this, Ning Shan could only assume this information was part of the installation.

There was something about the row marked with skills that took his attention. The name Tribulation Survivor was much too conspicuous to ignore. At least this eliminated the option that he had died, and this was the afterlife. Still, there was no information within the knowledge he had been granted.

Using his finger, he tapped on the name, and a secondary window popped up. Yet what he saw only added more questions. The window was filled with nothing but gibberish, completely incomprehensible words strewn everywhere without rhyme or reason. Corrupted was the best way to frame it.

Even worse, as it was passive, Ning Shan couldn't even activate it to find out what it was. He could only rely on luck to know the conditions required to see its effects. Still, he had a mounting suspicion that it was somehow related to the fact that this installation had been corrupted. As for the dust points, Ning Shan had no clue what they represented. Somehow, the sight of that strange, fine mist came to mind.

While deep in thought, his instincts begin screaming at him to run away—something he hadn’t felt in a long time. The sense of impending doom was so fierce that Ning Shan instantly rose to his feet and began inspecting the now dim room, bracing himself for whatever could assault him. As for running away, the thought never occurred to him. Besides, there was nowhere to run to.

His gaze was fixed on the origin of the danger. His instincts screamed at him that something was coming—something that could reap his life yet wasn't impossible to overcome.

Somehow, he had missed this feeling. Being invincible meant being stagnant. Ever since he had risen to the top of his own world, he had been unable to improve. After all, how could a man push himself further without a goal to strive for or an equal giving him a sense of urgency?

Being thrust into this foreign world—stripped of all he had acquired previously—made him smile. He had a chance to go further than he did and become even greater than he was.

Yet, it all would start with a single step—a single foe that would soon stand before him. The sense of anticipation was maddening. He couldn't wait to begin his journey in this world and conquer everything below its skies, and then, he would go further and beyond!

A door opened in the distance, and he was ready. Even barehanded, stripped of all weapons, he knew he could prevail, whatever the odds were stacked against him. His smile was radiant, and his gaze pure as he sought a worthy opponent.

He would leave his name on this world, carved into its history, never to be forgotten. He would strike all those who doubted him down; all that would remain of them would be dust into the long flow of time. Only he would be eternal!

Then, a giant spider clad in metallic plates emerged from the door. A red mist of tiny particles hovered around the creature, and a green liquid dripped from its mouth, corroding into the floor as it sublimated into a cloud of dark smoke.

Ning Shan's enthusiasm deflated almost instantly.

A bug? Why did it have to be a bug... By Heavens, do I hate bugs...