Resolve

Dalvin wiped his eyes and forcibly calmed himself down again by slowing his breathing and taking the reins of his haywire thoughts. He knew that panicking in this situation would lead to a faster death, and no matter how terrified he was, he absolutely could not lose his cool.

Dalvin now needed to be more methodical and explore every single avenue he had to the end and make sure he chose the path of least resistance. As such, he first checked his character sheet and saw that apart from there being no changes, the segment that listed his bloodline energy was marked at 80%.

After all, he had just run two simulations that cost 10% of his total energy each, so it added up. The reason he was checking this was that he needed to know an important detail, which was how quickly bloodline energy regenerated.

Once he could nail down the exact regeneration rate, he would know how best to utilize both Simulation and Blink towards his attempts to secure his life and escape. Luckily for him, this system was based on a mobile game, so it listed the amount of time it took to regenerate one point of bloodline energy.

All it was missing was a 'plus' sign beside the regeneration timer to ask him to spend money to speed up the cooldown or watch ads to do the same at a markedly lower effectiveness.

Dalvin chuckled mentally at his own joke and saw that he gained 1% bloodline energy every minute. This was quite reasonable in the sense that he could either blink or simulate once every ten minutes.

It was especially useful for simulation, which could go up to an hour assuming he didn't die in the simulated content. With ideally six simulations an hour, Dalvin had six times to check whether any of his actions or choices would lead to a bad end.

As for Blink, Dalvin was sure it was exceedingly overpowered in terms of combat usage. The ability to shift instantaneously within 100 meters was great for fighting and ambushing, but not so much for escaping danger.

Of course, don't get him wrong, he understood that any form of blink or even shadow traversal style ability was great for stalking, infiltration, battle, ambushing, instigation, or even some situations where escape was required.

However, here and now, its utility was limited. It could get him out of his cell and also into any cell for sure, but it was not enough to take him out of this prison, much less the entire Immortal Ascension City. Even if he rapidly used it at once, going up to a max of 1 kilometer, that was barely enough to cover one-tenth of the prison's size according to how Feng Qi described it.

Dalvin paused. Technically, he could really try to blink out of the prison since the right path where the young master and his fellows died seemed to lead to the entrance of the prison, or at least to the place where prisoners were brought in.

Sure, something killed them, but if Dalvin simulated carefully enough and marked where the point of death was, he could try to multi-blink his way out through the door. Once outside the prison, he would still be in danger, but he could still find ways to secure himself beyond that through simulation!

Whew.

'That's right, there's no need to break down or panic. I have been given extremely useful tools to get out of my current predicament and only have to use them wisely!' Dalvin thought as he sighed heavily and slapped his cheeks.

'Right, what did the system of Path of Heaven say in the beginning? I was placed under a Dao Curse, hence my current situation?' Dalvin suddenly remembered.

He seemed to have infringed on something when his physique was awakening. He still remembered how his phone became terrifying and the message that continually popped up saying that his physique failed to awaken, so it was going to pull from the source.

Hm, pull from the source?

So because of a lack of energy, it drained the creator of Path of Heaven to awaken?

Well, that would explain why that person would curse him. If Dalvin was sitting somewhere and was suddenly turned into a desiccated husk because of some random person out there in the world, he too would not be happy to go.

Dalvin deeply regretted casually signing up for this game. From the un-inventive and non-intrusive ad, he should have known that it was not worth downloading to his phone, even more so when he saw it was ten whole gigabytes!

Well, no use crying over spilled milk. Dalvin glanced at his character screen again and checked every field, trying to understand what it meant. He might not have played any wuxia or xianxia mobile game before and only read a few books or comics of the genre, but he understood the basic terms.

It seemed that this system used progression, and given the ad, it was likely AFK style. While your phone was off, your avatar in the game would be diligently cultivating 24/7 until you logged on and did your various daily tasks or events.

Unfortunately for Dalvin, his avatar was currently him. He wasn't exactly sure right now, but it seemed like the one who would have to do the cultivating would have to be himself. In truth, he was not looking forward to this, as the books always described it as boring and painful.

As someone who struggled with the gym and was only motivated by his own health as well as his attractive female friend, Dalvin was fully aware of the feeling of physical agony from exertion.

However, there was naturally a difference in motivation when working out for a general purpose and working out to save your life from imminent danger. Dalvin could and would put in the work once he got the technique from Feng Qi's skeleton.

'Another option would be to stay in one place, right?' Dalvin thought pensively.

Okay, so there was danger on every path? Then I simply won't walk and will stand in one place!

If it was possible to do this, he could wait out the 24-hour period and return to earth. While going back to earth wouldn't suddenly save his life since he would be dragged back here in another 24 hours, it could allow him to prepare more things for his own safety.

However, it sounded too good to be true. While other prisoners were able to be stuck in their cells for extended periods of time given Feng Qi's recount, Dalvin was under a Dao Curse which meant his luck was in the negative, hence the exclusively fatal outcomes.

It was entirely possible for him to suddenly choke on oxygen given the way he understood it, though it might - hopefully - be an exaggeration. Well, rather than mope around and guess, he would be able to tell for sure if he simulated it, wouldn't he?

As such, Dalvin summoned the system and made another simulation request.

"System, begin simulation."

[3.05 pm. You regained your resolve to fight your way out of your situation and dispelled a growing heart demon that was manifested because of your Dao Curse. As such, you decided to wait it out and see what would happen.]