True Person Jianwei’s Casual Notes looked ancient. The pages were yellowed, the characters were archaic, and the cover had a few signs of battle damage. It had clearly weathered the passage of time, which perfectly fit Lynn Naya’s fantasy of what an ancient text should look like.
She thought of the protagonists in the novels she used to read, the lucky ones who found cultivation methods hidden inside old books. She quickly flipped through the pages, looking for a secret compartment, then carefully ran her fingers over the cover, checking for any hidden layers.
After all that, the book was still just a book, and she had gained nothing. Lynn Naya couldn’t help but laugh at herself.
This book had passed through so many hands. If there had been a secret, how could it possibly be left for her to find? Finding treasures by falling off a cliff, finding a treasure in a marketplace, or finding a top-tier cultivation method in a library—that kind of luck was reserved for the children of destiny. She clearly wasn’t one of them.
She took the book to a quiet corner and sat down to read. Once she calmed her mind, time passed by without her noticing.
The content of the ancient book wasn’t boring, but it was difficult to read. Lynn Naya could understand it, but it took a lot of time.
It took her two full days just to read through the Casual Notes. She couldn’t say she had gained nothing, though. The book was a collection of travelogues, full of stories like a mountain ghost haunting an old temple, a spider under the eaves of the Dao Palace listening to scriptures for three hundred years and becoming a demonic lord, or a person who wandered into a demon city and had to sneak around for a hundred days to escape. The stories made her long to see the outside world, but they had very little to do with cultivation. All in all, the book was a bit of a waste of time.
Lynn Naya hadn’t expected to find an answer right away, so she wasn’t too disappointed.
Since she didn’t find the answer in this book, she moved on to the next.
Seven or eight days passed. After she had read four or five more collections of “casual notes” by various “True Persons” and “Immortals,” she finally realized something was off.
To a cultivator, time was incredibly precious. It was one thing for a single cultivator to have a strange hobby like writing stories, but it was too much of a coincidence for three or four of them to all have so much free time.
And their stories were all too similar. Here, True Person Jianwei encounters a mountain ghost in an old temple, and there, a recluse finds a female ghost in a similar temple. Here, a spider becomes a demon lord after listening to scriptures, and there, someone’s pet fish suddenly becomes a spirit.
Jianwei stumbles into a demon city, and the others stumble into a ghost city or a devil city… these experiences were all cut from the same cloth. Only the locations and characters were different.
Sitting in the library, Lynn Naya suddenly realized that the target audience for these books was ordinary people. It all made sense.
The true authors of these so-called cultivation notes were probably just mortals themselves. They wrote these stories to appeal to the masses.
In a cultivation world, ordinary people were bound to have a lot of fantasies about cultivators, and these authors simply satisfied those fantasies to make a living.
With this thought, Lynn Naya lost all interest in the books.
The stories were good, but they didn’t provide her with the information she needed.
She put the book down and continued her search. Even though it felt like a waste of time, she had to keep looking. She had no way of knowing if the answer to her problem was hidden in one of these books.
With a clear goal, Lynn Naya’s reading speed increased. If a book looked like it was going to be another story, she would skim it and move on, only stopping to read if the content was related to cultivation.
With this new approach, she had scoured a quarter of the bookshelf in eight or nine days.
Maybe to succeed, you just had to have a clear goal and be persistent. She took down another set of casual notes, fully expecting another travelogue, but when she opened it, it was a real, authentic cultivation journal.
At first, Lynn Naya thought the book was a fraud, and it would only touch on cultivation before veering off into other topics like all the others.
But when she read about how the author was lucky enough to acquire a cultivation method but spent half a year unable to sense qi, she sat up straight without even realizing it.
Sensing qi was the first step in cultivation. The three months she spent grinding experience points were, in cultivation terms, sensing qi.
She flipped to the next page. The author, unable to sense qi, began searching for medicinal aids, but he went bankrupt with no success. He then became a beggar.
One day, he saw an old beggar who was about to starve to death and, out of pity, shared half a steamed bun with him. In return, the old beggar somehow got a flask of wine and gave him a cup.
The author was a bit annoyed at how stingy the old beggar was—a whole flask of wine and he only gave him a cup. But after he drank it, he was able to sense qi that very night. When he looked at the old beggar next to him, he saw that the man had turned into a skeleton at some point.
The author then spent a lot of ink speculating about the old beggar’s origins, theorizing about gods and spirits. But in the last paragraph, he only left a single line: “What a shame we won’t meet again.” It seemed he never met that immortal again.
After the intro, the author wrote about his mundane experiences in cultivation.
He described how his hearing and vision became sharper after he began to cultivate, how he felt lighter, and how he could read ten lines at once. He also gloated about being invited to a high-ranking official’s residence as a honored guest.
After all the bragging and reminiscing, he finally got to the good stuff.
The author had encountered the same problem as Lynn Naya. He was practicing a martial art that required him to use spiritual energy, but whenever he did, his meridians would prickle with pain.
“…I thought this was the pain of the spiritual energy breaking through my meridians, so I gritted my teeth and forced myself to circulate it. After one night, my body was covered in blood, and I was on my last breath. My attempt at expanding my meridians had failed… After recuperating for more than twenty years, I happened to meet a fellow cultivator. His master was from the Exalted Heaven Sect and was very knowledgeable.”
“One day, while chatting, I lamented my failure to expand my meridians. My fellow cultivator was shocked. After he listened to my story, I realized that the pain I felt wasn’t from breaking through my meridians at all. It was a sign that my body was weak and couldn’t handle the strain… A single mistaken thought has ruined half my life.”
Weak body.
Lynn Naya reread the passage three times, then thought about her own body. She did indeed have symptoms of a weak body and deficient blood.
The original owner of the body was already on the verge of death when she arrived, and even with her careful care, her conditions were limited. Her hair was still as dry as straw, and her arms felt bony to the touch.
It seems a good body is a prerequisite for cultivation.
In a flash, many thoughts came to Lynn Naya, but she pushed them aside and continued reading.
The author went on to talk about the different types of spiritual energy.
For example, the natural spiritual qi floating in the air was wild and unbridled, difficult for people to bond with. The quality of a cultivation method was measured by how fast it could guide this spiritual qi.
And when qi was absorbed and converted into spiritual energy, it didn’t mean it was completely safe. This spiritual energy still contained a lot of impurities. If the owner could suppress it, there would be no problem. If not, the spiritual energy might backfire and damage their body. A strong body was fine, but a weak one could crumble.
The only spiritual energy that was truly safe was purified spiritual energy. This kind of energy was not only harmless but could also warm the meridians and heal wounds.
These were things Lynn Naya had never known.
The rest of the journal detailed how to strengthen the body and meridians, as well as how to make children stronger. However, the most crucial page was torn out. Subsequent mentions of medicinal recipes and other useful information were also gone, leaving only some personal reflections.
The author of the journal had reached the second level of Qi Condensation before he died.
Cultivators had a hard time conceiving. He had no children, and it seemed this journal was meant for his apprentice. But things had a funny way of working out. This journal had outlived all his apprentices and their descendants.
Lynn Naya sat there, processing the information. Seeing that she still had time, she read the journal from beginning to end again, making sure she hadn’t missed anything useful before putting it back and heading home.
As she was leaving the library, she saw the scar-faced young man again.
Unlike last time, she felt him look at her back.
Looks like I won’t be able to come here for a while.
It was an overcast, rainy day. Lynn Naya was using her umbrella to get home, but the hem of her skirt was already splashed with mud. She was changing her clothes and washing her skirt when Fan Shi, Uncle Wang’s new wife, came over to her, a big smile on her face.
Half a month after Uncle Wang’s ex-wife, Aunt Wang, passed away, he married another woman.
In this chaotic world, it was difficult to survive alone. It made sense that Uncle Wang would marry someone else to get by. Rationally, Lynn Naya didn’t think there was anything wrong with it—everyone just wanted to live a better life. But emotionally, she felt a little sad for Aunt Wang.
Fan Shi, however, was not a likable woman. At least, Lynn Naya didn’t like her. Not because she was siding with Aunt Wang, but because Fan Shi, upon learning that Lynn Naya was alone, kept trying to set her up with someone, saying that getting married was good and that someone would love her.
If she hadn’t overheard her whispering to Uncle Wang at night about how much money they could get as matchmakers if they succeeded, she might have actually believed that Fan Shi had good intentions.
Lynn Naya knew she had always been a target. A stable job and a promising side business were a catch here and in her old world.
But because she had a friendly relationship with the supervisor who was friends with her father, no one dared to openly coerce her. This was about a marriage, not a feud. As for those who tried to get their way by force, thanks to her neighbors and her own vigilance, nothing serious ever happened.
Her desire to cultivate quickly was partly for this reason.
Before, she was powerless and could be at anyone’s mercy. Now, even with her frail body and deficient blood, she was stronger than the average person. She could easily pick up a hundred-pound stone and smash one of them. She would just need a lot of rest afterward.
Lynn Naya didn’t want to bother with Fan Shi out of respect for Uncle Wang, who had protected her before. But when she saw her coming over again, she cut her off. “I won’t consider what you’re saying, so please don’t waste your time. If you keep bothering me, I’ll have to ask Uncle Wang what he thinks of all this. If you don’t want me to stay here, I can move.”
She had medical skills. It was convenient for everyone in the courtyard to come to her for minor ailments. It would be a loss for them if she moved. Some people just don’t get it unless you stand your ground.
Sure enough, when they saw her serious expression, some of her neighbors came out of their houses. “Auntie, don’t bother. Lady Lynn has her own mind. She’s fine on her own. We’ll just help her out.”
“Exactly. And besides, Lady Lynn is engaged. What if her fiancé comes looking for her?”
“Engaged?”
This time, it wasn’t just Fan Shi who was surprised. Lynn Naya herself was taken aback for a moment.
Then, she remembered the so-called engagement.
It was a cliché story. The original owner had a childhood engagement, but when her fiancé was discovered to have a spiritual root, her family had voluntarily broken off the engagement.
A mortal girl couldn’t dream of an immortal.
Her former fiancé had apparently joined the Dao Palace. She wondered if he was even still alive.
From the original owner’s memories, she had been quite fond of her ex-fiancé, especially after she learned what love was. She would often fantasize about him appearing out of nowhere to save her and her family from a life of misery. She had even rejected her father’s matchmaking attempts because of him.
Unfortunately, the original owner never lived to see her dream come true.
Thinking of the original owner’s feelings, Lynn Naya said, “I don’t have a fiancé. I think I’ve made myself clear. Please stop bringing this up.”
With that, she ignored the looks on everyone’s faces and went back inside with her washed skirt.
The reason she hadn’t used her nominal ex-fiancé as a shield was that she felt she was already taking a huge advantage by living in the original owner’s body. Getting involved with her beloved’s love life would be dishonorable.
She was using the original owner’s body. If she could one day reach the level needed to go home, she might even be able to revive the original owner and give her a life of peace and happiness.
But if she used the original owner’s ex-fiancé as an excuse, she would be creating karma. The more she tried to repay it, the more entangled she might become. It was better to not start in the first place.
Lynn Naya knew the difference between a debt she could repay and a debt she couldn’t.