novelsite Chapter 1 Galactic Center
Chapter 1 Galactic Center
"Hmm!"
In the dimly lit room, the gray-haired girl stood up straight as if she had risen from the dead.
A pair of bloodshot red eyes suddenly opened, the pupils still lingering with the terror of impending death and overwhelming hatred.
"Who am I...?" Li Ai looked confused, her gaze sweeping around her, a feeling of familiarity mixed with strangeness washing over her.
The next second, memories flooded back like a burst dam, and her pupils contracted instantly.
Cultivators, pollution, filthy beasts...
Crimson blood fell from the sky, and the earth was polluted by a strange red tide, leaving less than one in ten lands suitable for life.
Humanity huddled within steel-forged barriers, struggling to resist the ferocious and powerful filth that came with the pollution.
Only cultivators can contend with those terrifying high-level evil beasts.
There are seven realms of cultivation: Body Tempering, Meridian Opening, Qi Condensation, Primordial Qi, Divine Illumination, Three Paths, and Unity.
Each realm is further divided into nine levels, with the difference between the major realms being like an insurmountable chasm.
"And I'm only... at the... fourth level of Body Tempering? Cough cough—"
A sudden, tearing pain shot through her chest, and Li Ai coughed up a mouthful of blood, which landed on the sheets and emitted a faint rusty smell.
She painfully unbuttoned her shirt, revealing a grotesque, dark purple fist mark on her right chest, with bulging veins and most of her chest swollen and bruised—a shocking sight.
Li Ai stumbled into the bathroom, splashed the cold tap water on her face, barely managing to suppress the surging blood in her throat, and swallowed the mouthful of fishy-sweet taste.
"Ouch~ That hurts... I feel like I've forgotten something important." Li Ai looked troubled, frowning as she pondered.
She looked up at the mirror. The girl in the mirror had two loose gray braids and a pair of thick, round-framed glasses perched on her nose, covering most of her face.
Taking off his glasses, a pair of wine-red, thick-lashed fox-like eyes suddenly appeared.
These were sharp, captivating eyes and brows, but due to long-term weakness and timidity, they appeared somewhat dull and foolish.
Suddenly, the reflection in the mirror distorted, and countless blood-red characters appeared out of thin air, like freshly spilled blood, dripping with fine bloodstains.
[Live! Live! Live by any means necessary! Live on! Live like a madman! Die! Die! Die! Kill them! Revenge! Revenge!!!]
The dense, blood-red characters, as if scratched out by blood-stained fingertips, were twisted, ferocious, and full of hatred, covering the mirror, and even the walls, floor, and ceiling of the bathroom.
Li Ai's eyes widened, her heart pounding.
The crimson words crashed down on her like a raging sea of blood, and the overwhelming resentment and hatred almost suffocated her. She knelt on the ground and coughed violently for a long time before she recovered.
When I looked up again, the blood-red characters had disappeared.
After a long period of stunned silence, Li Ai returned to the bedside with a gloomy face to sort out her thoughts.
The images of being publicly beaten and verbally abused by Ma Shuang during the day flooded into Li Ai's mind, causing her fingertips to clench unconsciously, her nails digging deep into her palms.
322 days. A year. She had endured it for a year.
They beat her, insulted her, splashed her with dirty water, abused her, robbed her of her cultivation resources, and forced her to drink "poison," causing her meridians to become blocked, her spiritual foundation to be damaged, and her cultivation to be completely ruined.
Now you want to kill me?
"To survive by any means necessary...?" Li Ai swallowed the metallic taste rising in her throat, her gaze growing colder.
The origin of the blood-red script is unknown, but Li Ai intuitively felt that this was not a joke, but some kind of warning.
But... it was too late!
Li Ai gritted her teeth. Her "spiritual foundation" had long been destroyed by the "Lin family," her cultivation was completely ruined, and everything was reduced to zero.
Over the past year, he has stumbled and struggled to switch to cultivating "martial arts qi and blood," but the progress has been extremely slow, and the already limited cultivation resources have been taken away by others.
What can I rely on to survive? The fact that I'm still alive is only because of that person's twisted sense of humor, wanting to see me suffer.
wrong!
Sensing the abnormality within her body, Li Ai raised her palm, and a regular octahedral crystal with a dreamlike, starlight-like color appeared in her palm.
"This is......!"
Before Li Ai could even begin to study it, the octahedral crystal in her hand suddenly burst forth with dazzling light.
Observation, regulation, evolution, selection...
Countless lives are born before our eyes, the tides surge, the stars alternate, and the sparks of civilization rise and fall in the sea.
The next moment, the seawater turned red, and the flames, immersed in the seawater, either burst into brilliant light or gradually dimmed and almost went out.
A slender hand reaches into the seawater, scoops up a spark of fire, and gently touches the lingering wounds on the surface of the celestial body with its fingertips.
Li Ai subconsciously looked at the other person, but felt an intense pain in her eyes and couldn't see anything clearly.
"Hmm!"
Li Ai opened her eyes, clutching her head. The scene from before had vanished, replaced by the familiar sight of her dormitory.
And a strange man!
Clang!
Li Ai jerked backward, knocking over a clothes rack, and looked warily at the black-haired, golden-eyed youth: "Who are you?!"
Her eyes were still stinging, and streaks of blood trickled down her cheeks.
"Who am I?" The young man floated in mid-air, a mocking smile on his face. "I am your—lifeline."
"Playing tricks!" Li Ai realized what was happening, a fierce glint flashing in her eyes. She suddenly exerted force with her feet, her body twisting like a spring, her right leg drawing a sharp half-arc straight at the young man's face.
The wind pressure scattered an object on the ground, and the spinning kick passed right through the young man without hitting anything.
"A spirit?!" Li Ai's face was full of astonishment.
A cultivator's three-dimensional attributes are: essence, energy, and spirit; in simple terms, these are physique, energy, and spirit.
Some cultivators with exceptionally strong spiritual awareness can preserve their spirit after death and be reborn in another body!
"Hehe~ No need to overthink it. My name is Li Hui, and I am 'you' from a parallel world."
"If you don't believe me, you can 'visualize' your sea of consciousness—my original imprint is the same as yours, inseparable."
Li Ai slowly backed away, not doing as instructed, but instead sneered, "Is that so? Then tell me how you're going to help me?"
The Lin family, one of the five great families of Hanchuan, is a leading force in the military industry. Crushing her would be easier than crushing an ant.
slap~
Li Hui snapped his fingers, brimming with confidence: "With me here, nothing will be a problem. I'll guide you on how to use 'Silver Heart'."
"Silver Heart?" Li Ai frowned slightly and summoned the octahedral crystal—in the end, it all started with this thing that suddenly appeared in her sea of consciousness.
"Yes, observation, regulation, evolution." Li Hui nodded, then solemnly said, "It's far more important than you think, bearing the weight of an entire... Holy crap! Don't mess around!"
boom!
The octahedral crystal slammed heavily to the ground. Li Ai sneered, "Shark Arm, this is the substance you're storing, isn't it? You want to 'possess' me? Dream on!"
The next second, the octahedral crystal suddenly burst forth with dazzling starlight, instantly enveloping Li Ai.
Seeing this, Li Hui slapped his forehead: "Fine, that saves me the trouble of explaining. Poor little thing, you can experience it for yourself."
..........
The next day, early in the morning.
The dorm supervisor's booming voice echoed down the corridor like thunder: "Get up! If you don't get up, you'll lose credits! Do you even want your contribution points anymore?"
Li Ai suddenly opened her eyes, sprang to her feet, and instinctively tried to brandish her weapon.
"Where am I...?" Looking around at the furnishings, she paused, then blurted out, "This isn't a battlefield. I'm back?!"
[Hehe~ The tuning simulation field is a massive battlefield with thousands of players, a true mowing-down-enemies experience. Having fun?]
"Damn it!" Upon hearing this, Li Ai's expression changed. Everything that happened last night was indeed not a dream!
Stop looking, I'm in your head.
A chibi-style black-haired, golden-eyed figure appeared before Li Ai, tiptoeing around on its short legs: "Died 17 times in 5 days, killed 433 enemies, you're pretty stubborn~"
"The tuning simulation field... so it's all fake?" Thinking of the incredibly realistic, blood-soaked ancient battlefield with corpses strewn everywhere, Li Ai still felt a tremor in her heart.
The blade piercing flesh, the splattering of blood, the screams of people before they die—everything felt so real, yet it all seemed so fake.
"It's a bit like how humans view the life of an ant—can it really be called a life?"
Li Hui didn't explain further, but instead reminded him, "You should go to class."