Chapter 2

After cleaning his body and oddly modern-looking briefs as well as possible, Cyrus tossed away the leftover scraps of the silken martial arts robes and pants in a random spot alongside his ruined shoes. The articles of clothing were completely unsalvageable. After that, he channeled a bit of Qi and blasted the energy outward from his body. Leftover filth shot out onto nearby plantlife with Cyrus at the epicenter.

'Glad I remembered I could do that with my Qi. Didn't really cross my mind at first since this feels a bit more real than Seventh Heaven.'

Around this point, he finally looked at his reflection in the water. Without any dung covering his face, he could finally get a good look at his current appearance.

Raising his brows, he rubbed his chin and mumbled to himself, "Huh. Although my hair is a bit blue and my eyes are… red? Is that even red? Well, not like it matters. Either way, it looks eerily similar to the real me, but younger and less chiseled, I guess. Feels almost like uncanny valley."

Ruffling his own hair, he stopped caring about his appearance and ambled back toward the basilisk in nothing but briefs. He didn't care who saw him in such a state, and he doubted a magical beast who had yet to inundate itself with human culture would care either.

"Well, I prefer going barefoot, anyway," Cyrus mumbled to himself while recalling his early days in Seventh Heaven after joining a sect full of gym-bro-esque body cultivators. Running around barefoot had basically been a sect rule because of the crazy but endearing sect leader. Cyrus' lips curled into a small smile when he recalled those days. "I wonder if that sect exists here. Would be nice to see that place again. Weird place, but good times."

A short barefoot trek later, he arrived in front of the Basilisk again. Its large scaly head jolted upward warily at Cyrus' approach. The moment it saw him, its eyes widened slightly, and its eye scales blinked once as though surprised to see him again.

Waving nonchalantly, Cyrus greeted, "'Sup? I'm back."

The basilisk's forked tongue flickered from its mouth briefly. It then shifted its coiled body back and forth for a few seconds while staring back at him. Eventually, though, it lowered its head and closed its eye scales. A puny Qi Gathering level human wouldn't be able to pierce its scales even with a powerful weapon, anyway.

Upon seeing the beast acting somewhat in line with what he expected from a more intelligent magic beast who wasn't starving, he focused his attention on the skat pile he had woken up in. Cyrus picked up a stick and walked over to it. Along the way, he briefly glanced at the basilisk just in time to see it closing the eye scale of its right eye.

'Figured it'd keep an eye on me even though it's probably well beyond the Golden Core stage. Even a young basilisk should be pretty strong regardless of which Heaven it resides in. Either way, hanging out here with it is my safest option at the moment, so I'll try to keep peace with it. Now… let's see if any of this body's other belongings also ended up in this dung heap.'

With that in mind, he forced himself to not gag on the stench and started poking the large skat pile with his stick. Several minutes passed before the stick clinked against something small and hard. Digging at the thick pancake batter-like skat, he eventually uncovered a small metal trinket. Scraping more dung away revealed an unassuming metal ring. Upon seeing what it actually was, he furrowed his brows.

'It looks like the lowest end of them, but that's definitely a spatial ring. I didn't get one until well into my journey through the Third Heaven while playing the game, and even that was considered pretty early for anyone without a special background. This body of mine must've had some status if he owned one in the First Heaven, which could be a boon or a huge annoyance. Either that, or he used all his luck on finding it.'

Intent on figuring out what was inside, he poked the stick through the ring's hole to pick it up. Then, he looked at the basilisk and warned, "Don't be surprised if I pull out some weapons or something. Not sure what's in this."

The basilisk only opened one of its eyes in brief recognition before ignoring him again.

Shrugging, Cyrus used a bit of Qi to blast all the dung of the ring. Then, he walked far enough away from the dung pile to escape the stench and sat back against a tree that didn't have barbs on its trunk. He briefly studied the outside of the ring, but it just looked like a simple red granite ring without any extra adornments. Thanks to his experience, he could vaguely sense the spatial array built into it, but that wasn't his area of expertise.

'Surprised my senses from a simulated environment are translating so well here. There's probably some reason for that, but I don't really care that much. If I figure it out, I figure it out. If I don't, I don't.'

Setting aside the issue for now, he channeled some Qi into the ring. His outward senses dulled, and he instead 'felt' the contents stored within the spatial enchantment in a similar manner to what many dub the 'sixth sense', but he could only sense that some items existed within, not what the contents actually were.

"This is probably the smallest amount of space I've ever seen in one of these. The fact I can't even see what's in it means a trainee array master probably made the array," Cyrus offhandedly commented to himself.

Without further ado, he opened the spatial seal with a small surge of Qi and dumped the ring's contents on the ground. Only a few items plopped on the grass in front of him. He calmly observed the items with some mild curiosity

"Spear, sword, backup robes, dried meat and a water crystal, a few pills… that looks like some sort of clan insignia… and what's this?"

Puzzled by a strange tablet about the same size as a smartphone, he picked it up. Although it looked like some sort of smooth black stone surrounded on its edges by intricate metal pieces which pulsed with a subtle blue glow, he found the tablet surprisingly light. Almost instinctively, he tapped the stone-like part with his thumb. He briefly chided himself for being dumb, but then a small stream of energy connected to his thumb like a weak shock of static electricity. Small letters written in the language he recognized from the game lit up with a dull blue glow on the stone-like part of the tablet alongside a low-resolution image of his face.

"Glad I learned this language for fun in my spare time…" Cyrus mumbled to himself while reading everything. A moment later, he looked at the sky and wistfully said, "This is totally a sect identification tablet… but my name here is Gu Yangde? That's only one step up from Peng Clan's young master, goddammit."

'Would probably be best to use that name around others to avoid annoyances. I'll just use Cyrus as an alias when I need it or around close allies. Or maybe I could use my old gamertag, too.'

Subsequently overcoming the brief spell of depression, he decided not to care about his name too much and focused on the other sections of the identification.

'Four Seasons Sect? I think I've heard of that one. Think somebody from my friends list was a disciple there… Does that mean this is actually the world of Seventh Heaven? Cool, I guess. Also… Inner Disciple? With this trash cultivation base? Definitely nepotism. Hmm. Dunno what this ranking is, but the mission status under it is probably why I'm out in this swamp despite being too weak for this kind of place. This mission is supposed to be in the Sacred Phoenix Mountain, though. What am I doing in this swamp, then?'

Briefly, he glanced at the basilisk. It also glanced back at him as though it sensed his gaze even with closed eye scales.

'Nah. It wouldn't have left the swamp area without good reason, so it probably ate the old Gu Yangde and shat him out here. Still, I don't recall there being a swamp near that mountain unless the terrain changed after I ascended. Well, I'll just figure it all out as I go.'

Now that he at least had some sort of clue about his current identity, he dressed himself in the clean autumn-brown colored robes. He noticed the sect emblem on the shoulder. It looked like a four leaf clover with symbols obviously signifying the four seasons embroidered into the individual clover leaves. A sun for Summer, a leaf for Fall, a snowflake for Winter, and a flower petal for Spring.

'One of the more creative sect emblems I've seen. I kinda prefer it to all those overbearing weapon-based ones,' Cyrus inwardly noted while slipping the silken robe onto his torso. It fit snugly and comfortably on his shoulders.

Afterward, he sucked the rest of the items back into the spatial ring and leaned back against the tree behind him. Echoes of insects and beasts in the distance relaxed him to his core. It reminded him of times he searched for cool vistas and locations scattered through the Seven Heavens within the game's world.

'I'd like to visit some of those places again now that I'm back in the lower heavens. That'd be nice.'

Suddenly, he bolted upright with a startled expression on his face.

"If this is the world of Seventh Heaven, then maybe I can find my Dao Companions out there somewhere! Alright. That's two things on the to-do list besides causing some fun chaos in the world again."

Unfortunately, he didn't have a lot of strength at the moment, nor did he know his current location. Since the previous Gu Yangde seemed to have some background, he figured somebody would search for him eventually. In the meantime…

Cyrus, now Gu Yangde, looked at the basilisk again.

"Mind if I hang out with you for a little while?"

The basilisk opened its amber eyes and silently stared at him for a few moments. Eventually, it hissed and puffed out a small cloud of green gas from its mouth which instantly vaporized the grass around it.

"Haha. Alrighty, then. You're probably the most chill basilisk I've ever met. I wonder what I did that made you eat me in the first place?"

The snake-like magical beast's throat rumbled in annoyance, which made Cyrus chuckle. Little did he know that the beast was inwardly contemplating about why the puny human wasn't nearly as aggravating as when attacking it a few days earlier. It also couldn't understand how the puny human was standing, breathing, or talking after it absorbed the nutrients from the human's body. Since the human didn't immediately show any killing intent or bloodlust, it didn't see a reason to eat the puny human again since it didn't taste good in the first place, but it still couldn't comprehend how the puny human lived. In the end, it just gave up and allowed the weak thing to stay within its territory.

For the next week or so, Cyrus hung out with the basilisk. He occasionally conversed with it or went out to hunt small creatures, but it mostly ignored his presence there.

Since a full seven days had passed, Cyrus started planning to rebuild his cultivation base, though he didn't think he had the full trust or protection of the basilisk despite having a peaceful truce with it, so he put off attempting such a thing. However, as a cultivator with knowledge from all Seven Heavens, he figured he had plenty of time and decided to treat the experience as a small vacation while trying to figure out his next steps.

On the eighth day, though, a booming voice changed his plans.

"Little Yangde! There you are! What the hell are you doing in the Hundred Poisons Swamp?!" The angered voice of a man advanced in years called out from above.