4 Rules of the game

The saying that cultivation required golden keys to open its stages was all too distressingly true. Without money, one couldn't ever advance in the field of cultivation and martial arts. Nobility and the rich possessed an obvious advantage over everyone else and could afford the vast expenditures required to groom talents and thereby maintain their foothold over the world. Take for example this single truism: "breaking into Initial Insight stage before 200 a genius makes".

Why would one be revered a talent for breaking into the third stage before a mere two hundred years if it were not because of the limitation of time? If the average lifespan ordinary people are born with is just ninety to a hundred years, plus the addition of twenty five years each time one enters the Nurturing and the Seeking Insight stage, that only amounted to 140 to 150 years from birth to death.

Breaking into Initial Insight stage before 200 a genius makes.

This was the insurmountable rule of the world of cultivation. Only the Initial Insight stage made one a true cultivator and the rest just ordinary martial artists. Everyone wanted to be a powerful cultivator. Only less than ten percent actually managed to become one.

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Inside the Penthouse suite, in the living room, an animated twenty five year old man sat with his right leg crossed over his left and wagging his right foot. Earlier, Kiran had placed a call for room service and ordered a cheese burger he ravenously devoured and a soda that he was currently sipping from a high ball glass. He was only half heartedly paying attention to a giant screen television and admiring the visions therein, whilst multi-tasking on the augmented reality heads up display of his cheat system. To be absolutely honest, he was watching an adult channel. The pin code had been, off all things, just one, two, three, and four.

During this time, Kiran Bei had also discovered a secondary HUD once he had minimised the cheat window and this new one just had a floating overlay of his name, level and HP, MP and Stamina points in the upper right corner of his vision and a mini map on the bottom right. The miniature map showed the entirety of the hotel suite, with a golden circular dot representing himself and a cone of vision to show the direction he was currently facing. One could even go so far to say that the system treated this luxury hotel suite as if it were a dungeon map.

"Doesn't this make me the big boss of this dungeon?" Kiran chuckled as he completely downed his drink in one shot and placed it back on the coffee table on a coaster, before turning his attention back to the television.

Was he so cavalier watching adult videos, because the map let him know he was alone? Absolutely not! This was just shamelessly and unapologetically the rascal that Kiran Bei was. The first channel he searched for when he turned the TV on wasn't a news channel to gather information or an entertainment channel to pass the time. It was simply to find out the quality of the adult entertainment of this world. In his opinion to truly understand a culture, no matter how progressive or restrictive, you first had to find its stash of porn.

Certain things will always be reliable constants in the Universe or any Multi-verse. Politicians will always be corrupt, Lawyers will always be sleazy and Cats are the true ruling overlords of us all. And lastly, porn. The quality, regulation, restrictions and the genres of porn would always inform you on almost everything you would need to know about a society and its particular societal views. Dirty and obscure things are usually the most honest. At least more honest than any Network owned news broadcast. From views on marriage, racism, politics, crime and popular opinion. Porn tended to cover everything.

Kiran examined his level which was currently at zero and he frowned a little at this, but understood why it was so. Originally, the person this body first belonged to had been poisoned by his deceased father's enemies when he was a child and almost couldn't cultivate at all. Even ordinary people who cultivated without the rich resources of a wealthy family would experience better results than he had over the years. He'd yet to break through to even the Nurturing stage.

With a quick thought, he pulled up the cheat system window and looked for his Level option, but couldn't find it no matter how hard he searched. There was, however, an EXP option with a current value of 198.

"Could this be an experience point based system? If that's the case I need to figure out how many points are required to break through?" mused Kiran, before he simply changed the value to 10198 and confirmed his choice.

Respectively, his level visibly increased to 10 in a flash of golden light sparks, with an accompanying rousing and triumphant musical jingle that played inside his head. It really felt like he was playing and immersed in some kind of strange Virtual reality sandbox role playing game.

To fully understand the system and confirm his calculations, he subtracted half of the experience points down to 5198 and watched as his level dropped to five. Now wholly convinced, he just changed everything to 50 000 EXP until he rose up to level 50. The uniformity of the amount of points separating each level up did bother him, but since it was a cheat he didn't mind that it was so easy.

"If you're gonna be over powered, then everyone else can just go get rekt." Kiran said as he wore a big toothy grin in anticipation of the bright future that laid before him.

As he was engaged in his research, he noted two approaching blue dots on the map and quietly turned off the television. He'd been expecting and waiting for this visitor, as most likely one of these two people would be his wife. He wasn't quite yet sure what to say to her, but he knew he couldn't go outside for a stroll and risk her worrying if and when she discovered that he'd mysteriously gotten up from a coma and disappeared.

He was anxious and worried about how to broach the subject of divorce. He was absolutely against the idea of marriage. He was just too young and unprepared, but he did admit that he needed his wife's help to figure out, get his bearings and adjust to this world temporarily. It's just the idea of relying on someone or accepting a marriage just out of reliance was a sore point for Kiran to welcome. So he'd resolved to ask the daughter of the Hong family, Hong Ga Eun, for a divorce.

Just then, the door handle slowly turned and was pushed open.

It was unclear what state of mind Kiran was in when the two alluring and beautiful women walked into the room. A void completely took over his consciousness and his breath halted. He vaguely recognized the lady in the white suit, as he had memories of seeing her accompanying and attending to the bride during his wedding. However, the long legged and absolutely gorgeous beauty in the black dress standing next to her and staring at him in quizzical shock was an unknown.

When he came to and considered the possibility that this might be his wife, only one thought remained: To hell with divorce! Straightening out his clothes, he stood taller and puffed out his chest before he spoke whilst grinning from ear to ear.

"Honey, I was gone for a minute, but now I'm back!"