My vision shifted as I entered the different time stream.

I then found myself at some sort of temple.

A man was kneeling in front of a statue.

He looked at me.

I felt his fear.

"Am I really that scary?"

He looked as if he couldn't understand what I was saying.

Ahhh... another language.

I used my nanites to analyze the language centers of his brain.

What a weird language.

"Hello, fellow human. I come barring no ill will. I merely wish to learn of your cultivation. My name is Zero!"

"Zero?"

"Yes. Indeedy. Funny story how I got that name... also a long one. But such things wouldn't make sense to you. Do you know about this world's cultivation?"

"Cultivation? Farming?"

"No. Not that. Haha. I meant supernatural power."

"You know, people that can move mountains with a wave of their hand. Can fly, shoot energy from their hands... all that neat stuff?"

The man looked to be in deep thought.

"I believe you are referring to immortals."

Zero asked:

"Are you an immortal?"

"No... they are just myths. Legends..."

"Nah... they're real. I saw them when I was viewing the time stream."

"Time stream?"

"You wouldn't understand even if I explained what it is."

"So anyways... what is all of this? Why was this temple constructed?"

"The founder is Hui Huang..."

The man paused as if looking for my reaction.

"Who is Hui?"

"..."

"He was one of the first scholars... how do you not know this?"

Zero laughed.

"Just treat me like a newborn in this world. I don't know anything. Maybe I should dissect your brain... just kidding."

"Or am I? Hmm..."

Zero contemplated it for a few seconds then dismissed the thought.

"If what I remember in my dream is correct... I don't want to build up bad karma."

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"If that is even a thing here."

Zero then felt something concerning.

His rank 6 genome was collapsing.

"Genes work differently in this world?"

Zero currently was rank 4.

Thanks to his timeless existence.

He didn't experience gene collapse when he changed out his genome.

But the DNA in this current reality was so different from his last reality.

That the very world was rejecting it.

Pretty soon... the genome would collapse.

It had already collapsed and regressed to a rank 5 genome.

If he allowed it to fall below rank 4.

He would slowly regress back to rank 3.

Then to rank 2.

Then to rank 1.

Then rank 0.

Then death.

He wasn't really worried.

Worst case.

He would just reload.

He had special energy in all eight of his seas.

Another concerning thing was the energy in this universes matrix was different then the one he made.

So he had to make due with the energy he had stored beforehand.

This was also the case in constant time.

Except constant time didn't reject his DNA.

It seemed to be a special attribute of this reality that was causing the conflict.

Zero used nanites to copy the DNA of Xiu.

He then without any equipment at all replaced his genome through pure intent.

His nanites also played a critical role.

He yeeted his rank 5 genome and became a baseline human.

He was still an Abyssal Paradox though.

He now wasn't getting rejected by the world.

His cultivation also wouldn't drop until he passed the energy threshold.

He was slowly leaking energy into the atmosphere.

Changing his DNA had slowed down the regression.

But it didn't stop it.

Everyday he would drop a level.

His cultivation wasn't ordinary though.

He had eight sets.

So he had eight days of rank 4 left.

As the energy depleted, the pressure decreased. Causing his energy to deplete slower and slower.

Instead of taking a single day to regress a rank.

Once he hit rank 3.

It would take two.

So he would have 16 days of rank 3.

32 days of rank 2.

64 days of rank 1.

Then he would become a mortal again.

He would need to adopt this world's cultivation.

His body also still retained his timeless existence.

So he didn't need to sleep, eat, or age.

He had infinite stamina.

It was just his energy that was limited.

He had no way to counteract the regression.

"I need to learn this worlds cultivation asap!"

Zero sat down in the temple and kneeled at the statue mimicking the posture of Xiu.

Xiu was confused, but shrugged and went back to praying.

Zero sat there for three days and three nights.

He had five days left of rank 4.

Why did he do that?

He had saturated the entire world with nanites.

Well this first layer of the world.

It was through this that he knew the general landscape of the world.

He found out something shocking as well.

The world wasn't like earth.

it was in a space bubble.

There was an artificial sun and moon.

The world itself was a giant circle.

It was completely flat.

Not a sphere at at all.

It's diameter was over 100,000 kilometers.

The continents were surrounded by a black sea.

Once you got to the end of the world.

It was encased in a wall of ice.

Beyond that point was just void.

His nanites found nothing further.

"What a strange world."

His nanites also found so called 'higher realms'.

Which were really just a smaller circle separated by a dimension above the main world.

There was also 'lower realms' in a smaller circle below the world.

His nanites didn't discriminate either.

A 'mortal' might be restricted to a realm.

But his nanites crossing the cut space was child's play.

He had ignored dimensional locks made by gods after all.

This world clearly wasn't natural.

It was as if someone had finely crafted it.

Zero stood up from the ground and walked out of the temple.

He looked to the sky.

He could feel the spiritual energy in the environment.

This energy also came from the world will.

But the energy was extremely thin.

"The main world is filled with mortals. Finding a cultivator will be damn near impossible here. The amount of spiritual energy in the environment is so bad. Only a mediocre cultivator would choose to live among mortals. I'll need to break through to the second realm."

Zero flew off into the sky, leaving the disciples on the ground in shock.

"He was an immortal! Our temple was visited by an immortal!"

Zero flew upwards.

After flying about 100 kilometers.

He hit a boundary.

"There must be some secret to ascending to the heavens. But I don't have time for that shit. I'll become a mortal before then. I'll just brute force it."

Zero had nanites move from his body past the boundary.

He then found gaps in the atoms and expanded the space creating a portal directly.

The portal wasn't to some far place or anything.

It was literally only bringing him a few kilometers further up.

He flew through the portal.