Translator-Rhapsodite
Editor- Koneko, Proofreader- Spring Flower
On September 7th, Tuesday.
Although Wei Fuyuan and Jiang Nan’an wanted to quickly find Ran Qu, who was suspected to be the ‘True Immortal of Tianyuan’, unfortunately, Ran Qu was staying quite far away.
On the map of Hua Guo, the straight-line distance between his city and Fengxing City was over 2,000 kilometers. The most convenient flight only had two trips per day, and the daytime flight had already passed.
There was only one flight left in the day, which was to depart at 8:30 PM. By the time they would arrive, it would already be early morning. So, Bei Quan and the others decided to wait and leave the following day.
However, after the three of them fell asleep, they couldn’t enter ‘Tianyuan City’ again.
They couldn’t even dream of the ‘Two Pole Gate’.
It was a dreamless night of peaceful sleep.
Meanwhile, at the same time when Bei Quan and the others were sound asleep, thousands of miles away, a person was sitting in front of a computer, staring at the screen anxiously with wide eyes.
It was Ran Qu himself.
The computer screen displayed a discussion forum. It was a late night in Hua Guo, but it was daytime in the European and American regions.
As a result, the forum was filled with a large number of English posts, with most of the Chinese posts being pushed to the back.
Ran Qu’s English proficiency was very poor, and he couldn’t understand the tenses correctly.
Even with automatic translation in place, he could only understand about 60-70%, making it difficult and even harder for him to engage in debates with others.
He simply couldn’t win against the online trolls by himself.
Even if Ran Qu spent a lot of energy arguing with these people, his hard work in planning the ‘Two Pole Gate’ and ‘Tianyuan City’ would never return to its former glory.
“Ah!!!” Ran Qu let out a hysterical roar, clenched his fists, and fiercely pounded the table.
However, he couldn’t even properly vent his emotions.
“Bang! Bang! Bang!”
The thin partition wall was forcefully knocked on by the neighbor, accompanied by some fierce cursing.
“Do you know what the time is?! Why are you making so much noise?! Damn sick ghost, even if you don’t want to sleep, I still have to!”
He lived in a shared house, with his roommate being a strong and fierce man who could easily lift the emaciated Ran Qu with just one hand.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
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Now, upon hearing Zhang Ge banging on the wall, Ran Qu immediately jolted, snapped out of his unwillingness, and dared not make anymore sound.
In the next split second, a stronger sense of sadness, anger and despair engulfed him like a tidal wave.
——I can’t accept this!
——I really can’t accept this!
Ran Qu bit his lip, biting down until it drew blood.
He felt that his life was nothing but a complete joke.
His biological father died early, and his mother abandoned him like a burden, never looking back at him for over thirty years.
The uncle who raised him was a skilled “daoists”, but because of a past incident where he messed up a task for the village chief, he was seen as a fraud which caused him to be ridiculed by teachers and classmates when he was young.
Even when the uncle’s family got into a car accident, with one dead and three injured, the people in the village had nothing sympathetic to say about it.
They said it was the Ran family’s greed and the result of their unjust actions.
What’s even worse is that this so-called “retribution” eventually fell upon him.
Ran Qu never expected that he would suddenly fall seriously ill in the prime of his life, with a rare and difficult condition that could only be cured by a liver transplant.
But he had very little money left, barely enough to cover his daily expenses and monthly medications, let alone the cost of the surgery and subsequent medical expenses.
Ran Qu felt like he had reached the end of the road, living each day like a breathing corpse, with no meaning at all.
Only the ‘Two Pole Gate’ and the ‘Tianyuan City’ could help him escape from the painful reality, transcend the mundane world and become like a God or immortal.
Ran Qu’s uncle was a practitioner of Taoism who helped people with their troubles and fortunes, so he had collected many strange and rare books. Even though his uncle couldn’t actually understand them, he still displayed them to maintain appearances.
His uncle didn’t read them, but Ran Qu often flipped through the books.
Even though they were often profound and difficult to understand without guidance, Ran Qu enjoyed looking at them, and as if by reading them more, he could glimpse and look at the secrets of the universe.
Ran Qu was interested in these mystical arts because he always had a feeling that he was different from ordinary people. He believed that he had a ‘gift’.
Ran Qu had a strong intuition and often sensed things that were invisible to the naked eye. He also occasionally sleepwalked, and when waking up, he felt that everything he knew and felt in his dream was so real, as if it had actually happened.
Later on, when Ran Qu was sixteen years old, something happened that further confirmed his ‘uniqueness’.
One day, he casually described his dream in detail to his cousin, and two days later, his cousin came running to tell him, “I had the same dream and even met you in the dream, cousin!” Ran Qu was amazed by this.
Because the night before, he had the same dream and also saw his cousin.
Later, Ran Qu conducted similar experiments on his relatives, friends, classmates, and even online friends. He found that most of these experiments were not very successful, but occasionally, he was able to ‘pull’ the other person into his dream.
Once, he even had a simple conversation with the person who entered his dream. This usually depended on whether the person listening to his dream description was willing to listen carefully and take it seriously.
And often, people with rich imaginations had a slightly higher chance of success.
Ran Qu finally confirmed that he was the ‘chosen one’, someone truly gifted and unique.
He was a special person.
Unfortunately, his uniqueness had no use in the real world. He even lived a much more miserable life than most people. Ran Qu felt hatred, a lot of hatred.
But, no matter how extraordinary and special his abilities were, they couldn’t increase his salary by two thousand yuan next month, nor could they bring even the slightest improvement to his deteriorating health.
Until he accidentally stumbled upon an ancient book.
——————————–
About six months ago, Ran Qu’s uncle who had been paralyzed on one side since a car accident, finally passed away due to pneumonia.
He returned to his uncle’s house, intending to sell the old house to raise some money for his medical expenses. While cleaning up the house, he unintentionally stumbled upon a book.
The book was a blue-covered thread-bound edition called ‘The Enlightenment of the Daoist Spirits’.
Due to poor preservation, the book’s cover had faded, the edges were worn, the cotton thread was moldy and the pages had been chewed by insects, leaving many holes. Inside, there were handwritten traditional Chinese characters in regular script with a brush. The book was likely from the late Qing Dynasty or the Republic of China era, judging from the choice of words.
Ran Qu casually flipped through two pages and then his gaze became glued to the pages, unable to move away.
This was a book that taught people how to cultivate. The book began by listing the Eight Immortals one by one, saying that these great beings who became immortals, apart from diligent cultivation, all had natural talent and the right opportunities.
Ran Qu felt that he had no lack of talent, as his ability to induce dreams in others was the best proof.
As for what constitutes the right opportunities, the book listed three situations – encountering a true immortal, surviving a great danger and being unable to recover from a serious illness.
Of course, what Ran Qu was concerned about was the last point.
He quickly looked through the content carefully. According to the ‘Sacred Sutras’, a serious illness was a test of life and death.
After a serious illness, a person would undoubtedly have great enlightenment, their spiritual platform would be open, and they would transcend the various worldly restraints, not being trapped by the five thieves.
This was the highest state of being born from death, going through tribulations and ascending to a sublime realm. If it were an ordinary person, they would probably just laugh at such a bizarre explanation.
But Ran Qu was a patient man.
He was almost on the verge of despair due to his serious illness. When a person was mentally fragile, they subconsciously seeked a spiritual pillar, which was why those who are ‘old and sick’ are particularly prone to turning to religion.
Ran Qu was no exception. He saw the ‘Sacred Sutras’ as his lifeline and believed every word of it.
Subsequently, he started studying the ‘Sacred Sutras’ daily, hoping to find the path to enlightenment and immortality within it.
……
……
……
Ran Qu found a cultivation method in the ‘Sacred Sutras’ that involved visualizing the outline of the Bagua in his mind during meditation or deep concentration.
This helped him enter a better state of meditation and connect with the essence of heaven and earth. Ran Qu tried it and found it to be very effective. After persisting for a month, his dreams became clearer day by day, and it seemed to evolve on its own with a sense of self-awareness, gradually transforming from a simple yin-yang fish into the shape of the ‘Two Pole Gate’.
So, Ran Qu began to imagine what was behind the ‘gate’.
Because he wanted to achieve enlightenment and ascend to immortality, naturally he hoped that behind the ‘gate’ was a fairyland world. More precisely, a fairyland that could free him from all the hardships and difficulties of the mortal world.
[You can do it.]
Ran Qu heard a voice in his mind saying this.
It was a strange voice that he had never heard before. But, the words spoken were very inspiring.
[You can create a whole new ‘world’.]
[That ‘world’ will be under your control.]
[You are an omnipotent God.]
The voice told him.
[You need to make more and more people believe in you.]
[Then, you will become a true God in that ’world’.]
Ran Qu believed that voice was his revelation.
Ever since it appeared, he noticed a significant increase in his abilities. He became more adept at controlling his dreams and quickly ‘opened’ the “Two Pole Gate” to start building his ideal fairyland.
Ran Qu no longer worked and relied on his remaining savings.
He slept day and night, rarely leaving his bed except for basic physiological needs.
After about two months, he constructed ‘Tianyuan City’ according to his vision and began working on the next stage…
I feel kinda bad for the guy.