I might have been playing a fake cultivation game.

Section 040 Short-term goals

Time passed, and another day went by. Zhou Yunshen's character in the game had reached the ninth level of Qi Refining.

Zhou Yun Shen casually opened the character's attribute panel:

Name: Zhou Erzhu.

Age: 20 years old.

Cultivation aptitude: Grade 1 spiritual root (identified by the Spirit Testing Platform).

Cultivation level: Qi Refining Level 9, Acquired Perfection (Boiling Blood).

Cultivation techniques practiced: "Crimson Sun Burning Heaven Scripture" (Heaven) (Beginner Level), "Spirit Ape Body Tempering Technique" (Complete Level)

Status: Good.

"I've reached the ninth level of Qi Refining. One more level and I'll be at the peak of Qi Refining," Zhou Yun thought to himself.

The Qi Refining Perfection stage is equivalent to the Innate Perfection stage among martial artists.

Back then, it took him five days to cultivate to the peak of the Acquired Realm, and he hadn't even reached the Innate Realm yet.

Now, after only four days of cultivation, he has already reached the ninth level of Qi Refining.

This gave him the feeling that cultivating immortality seemed easier than cultivating martial arts...

Zhou Yunshen felt that this might be because his spiritual root was of a relatively high grade, while his martial arts talent was relatively average.

The grade of spiritual roots is only applicable to cultivation.

As for martial arts talent, what matters is something called "innate bone," which cannot be measured by instruments like a spirit-testing platform. The quality of one's innate bone can only be judged by the speed of martial arts training.

That day, Zhou Yunshen was watching a live stream on his new phone.

He was watching a game livestream, specifically the game "Xuan Yuan Invasion".

The blogger is currently controlling a character and browsing in a place called the Treasure Pavilion.

This place is said to contain many good things: cultivation manuals, elixirs, and divine weapons are all available, dazzling the eyes. However, upon closer inspection, one will find that the quality of these things is not very high. Take the cultivation manuals, for example; they are either unranked or yellow-rank manuals. Not even a single profound-rank manual can be found. The elixirs are all ordinary pills for Qi Refining cultivators or martial artists. The so-called divine weapons are the same.

These things are ridiculously expensive, often costing tens or hundreds of taels of silver.

The blogger barely spoke while controlling their character to explore the Treasure Pavilion, probably because they were afraid that if they talked too much, they would be seen as crazy in the game world.

Even so, the number of viewers for this live stream exceeded 2000, and that number is still rising.

In the comments section, people were asking all sorts of questions, and the blogger would occasionally answer one or two questions in a low voice.

At this moment, a message suddenly popped up on Zhou Yunshen's phone: Orange Smoothie invites you to join the Xuan Nan Kingdom player mutual help group.

After seeing this message, Zhou Yunshen followed Bozi so he could continue watching the live stream in the future, and then clicked on the message.

Orange smoothie is Chen Xin'an's.

Zhou Yunshen had to accept Chen Xin'an's invitation, so he immediately agreed and joined the group chat, which had fewer than 100 people.

Zhou Yunshen has joined several groups like this in the past two days, but he doesn't talk much and just silently lurks in the group to read the messages.

His phone vibrated again very quickly.

This was a message Chen Xin'an sent him: "Brother, how's your cultivation going lately?"

Zhou Yunshen typed back: "It's alright, I've already reached the ninth level of Qi Refining."

Chen Xin'an: '...'

Zhou Yunshen: "What's wrong?"

Chen Xin'an: "It's nothing, I'm just a little discouraged by you. I've cultivated for so long and only reached the ninth level of Qi Refining, and you've reached the ninth level of Qi Refining in just a few days. No wonder you have a first-grade spiritual root, it's truly enviable."

Zhou Yunshen: "What's there to envy? Aside from cultivating a little faster, I have nothing else. Unlike you, not only do you have a Golden Core family protecting you, but you also have a special bloodline waiting to awaken. Once that bloodline awakens, you'll be awesome."

After chatting casually with Chen Xin'an for a few minutes, Zhou Yunshen went to the forum to read through some more posts.

On the forum, some players have already posted screenshots of their characters reaching the tenth level of Qi Refining. However, this person is quite cautious, as the screenshots are all pixelated, only revealing the cultivation level.

As soon as the post was published, a player immediately asked: "Bro, can you perform soul transfer at the tenth level of Qi Refining?"

The original poster quickly replied: "Sure, the soul-swapping icon has appeared. I just tried it once, and it was incredibly awesome."

After saying that, the poster also posted a screenshot of the soul-transmigration icon.

Someone else asked, "Brother, I've been stuck at the eighth level of Qi Refining for over two days, and my cultivation experience isn't increasing much. What grade of spiritual root do you have? How did you reach the Qi Refining Perfection stage so quickly?"

The original poster replied: "This is a secret."

Another person replied: "It's not difficult to break through when you're stuck in a minor realm. You can either endure it for a few more days, or eat some spiritual fruits to force a breakthrough."

The reply from upstairs said: "I'm a rogue cultivator, all alone and helpless. Where would I get spiritual fruits to eat?"

Zhou Yun Shen muttered to himself, "He's stuck at the eighth level of Qi Refining? This guy's luck is a bit bad."

He didn't encounter any major obstacles.

After all, he has a first-grade spiritual root. The higher the grade of a spiritual root, the lower the chance of encountering a bottleneck.

To be honest, he started his cultivation journey relatively late compared to other players, but his current progress is already among the top players. This is the benefit of having a high-grade spiritual root.

At this moment, a message popped up on his phone: I was killed in Jizhou Road. When I was killed, I had a Heaven-Rank cultivation technique and a natal spiritual treasure on me. If you want clues, give me 200,000 yuan and I will tell you all the clues I know.

This is a message that popped up because Zhou Yunshen had just joined the group and hadn't had time to turn on Do Not Disturb.

Zhou Yunshen opened the group chat and saw that this person was tagging Orange Smoothie.

Orange Smoothie: "Two hundred thousand is too expensive."

"So how much are you willing to pay?"

"Message me privately. The more specific the information you give me, the higher the price I can offer."

"You're not some kind of scammer, are you?"

"Come to the Cloud Top Building in Yun City. I'll be waiting for you in my office on the 26th floor. We can talk face-to-face and then sign the contract. I'll reimburse your travel expenses, food, and accommodation. What do you think?"

"Is what you're saying true?"

"Of course it's true. As long as the leads you provide are reliable, and as long as you dare to meet me at the Genting Building, regardless of whether we can finalize the deal, I'll have my assistant reimburse your travel and accommodation expenses."

Zhou Yunshen looked at the chat and thought to himself, "It seems Chen Xin'an has already used the idea I gave him before. I just wonder how long he's been working on it and how much he's getting out of it..."

Zhou Yunshen wanted to ask, but ultimately gave up on the idea.

Forget it, he doesn't need to worry about so much. He should just focus on his cultivation.

After all, in the world of games, skill is the only true measure of success.

His current short-term goal is to establish a foundation.

If he takes another step forward, he will reach the tenth level of Qi Refining, which is the completion of Qi Refining.

Then he can begin the process of foundation building.

He had already inquired and learned that in this world, one does not need to undergo a heavenly tribulation to establish a foundation. One only needs to condense a foundation in one's sea of ​​consciousness to step into the legendary foundation-building realm.