‘This is actually… my old Soul Strength?’

Sixteen billion. That was Xuan’s Soul Strength and Defense before the reset. The current values displayed beside his Soul Strength and Defense rows were a combination of his past Soul stats and the 2,700 he was supposed to have from reaching a cultivation of Body Tempering Stage Ninth Layer.

The question was, what were those values doing here? Wasn’t every past player’s profiles supposed to have been reset? Or… was Xuan the only person to have retained his former Soul strength?

To find out for sure, Xuan pulled open the blinds to his window and glanced outside at the bustling crowd below, who were in chaos at the three consecutive announcements that just happened. There, Xuan received his answer.

His Divine Asura Eye gave him the power to identify players from NPCs, and all the players he could see in the streets from up here had varying amounts of Soul stats—but with one common point: their Soul stats were always either equal or greater than their physical stats, never less. This was a strange phenomenon, considering all four stats leveled up evenly in the past, with the only things able to change being special artifacts, techniques, and physiques.

It was clear what was going on—all players got to keep their past Soul stats.

It didn’t make sense. Was it simply a system glitch? An admin oversight? Neither of the two options seemed very plausible. Nirvana was a multi-billion dollar company. They would never make a mistake as low-level as this. But then…

‘… They did on purpose. The only question is… why?’

Upon closer inspection, however, he noticed something odd. There was a person in the crowd with Soul Strength and Defense stats of both roughly 300, while their physical Strength and Defense were both at exactly 250.

This person was a Second Layer Body Tempering stage cultivator with no stat-changing equipment or artifacts of any sort on him. In other words, their Soul stats were supposed to also be exactly 250, meaning they had Soul stats of roughly 50 in their former life which got transferred over here.

But that was impossible.

After all, as long as someone began cultivating, they would have a bare minimum of 100 in both their Soul stats. That was the base for First Layer Body Tempering stage. Having dual Soul stats of 50 was simply not possible, so how did this cultivator only inherit roughly 50 Soul Strength/Defense points from his past life?

After pondering about this for a few moments, Xuan’s eyes widened slightly as he realized.

‘I see… so that’s how it is…’

One’s Soul Defense could also be referred to as their mental fortitude. As a VRMMORPG, Xianxia Online was all about convincing the human brain of various things to simulate a fantasy reality, and nothing that happens in the game is an exception to this. Therefore, when Nirvana attempted to reset all former players’ profiles and stats, those with incredibly high Soul Defense were able to resist, while those who didn’t had most of their Soul stats wiped away.

It all made sense now. The amount of Soul stats a player would be able to inherit from their past life was directly proportionate to how strong their Soul Defense was in that life. Since Xuan had an incredible amount of over 16 billion, he was able to inherit pretty much all of his former Soul power.

‘But… if one’s Soul Defense cultivated in-game could affect their actual body’s mental fortitude and resist something like this profile reset, then… was Xianxia Online really a game at all?’

One mystery solved led to another. Xuan had read many light novels and mangas before—the whole trope of a game world being an actual alternate universe wasn’t uncommon, but… he never expected it to actually happen to himself.

Of course, these were just his speculations, and he would require concrete evidence before he could say anything for sure. Putting this matter aside for now, he chose to look at the Leaderboards instead, searching for anything to solidify his earlier conclusion about Soul stats inheritance.

As he did so, however, he noticed something strange. He didn’t know why, but despite Godhood clearly existing as a cultivation realm, no one from it was listed on any of these rankings. The current Rank 1 in the general Cultivation Leaderboard, for example, was only a peak Heavenly Transcendent realm—one of Xuan’s wives, Xue Xinyue—otherwise known as the Heavenly Ice Queen.

He sighed. Because she didn’t know about the System and existence of these rankings, she had no idea everything on her profile was out for the public eye to see. Her real name wasn’t displayed, but everything else, including her age, was now public:

Name: Heavenly Ice Queen

Age: 2,046

Alignment: Lawful Neutral

———

Cultivation: Heavenly Transcendent

Forging: None

Array Making: Grand Sage

Alchemy: None

Beast Taming: None

———

Occupation: Divine Ice Palace, 1st Generation Sect Master

Legacy: Bitter Hail True God

Bloodline: Ancestral Ice Phoenix

Physique: True Frost Body

———

Strength: 20,912,369,444

Defense: 18,998,467,213

Soul Strength: 15,213,098,781

Soul Defense: 15,097,612,308

“Yue’er…” Xuan chuckled a bit after seeing her Profile. “To think you’re also a Heavenly Transcendent now… heh. Just how much time has passed here during those brief few hours in the real world?”

If Xuan had a way to tell her about the fact that her Profile was public for everyone to see, he would. But unfortunately, since Xinyue didn’t know about the existence of the System, messaging her was out of the question. He also didn’t have any communication artifacts yet, so there was essentially no way for him to contact her, or any of his wives for that matter (who, by the way, were all listed in the top 10 of the Beauty Leaderboard).

Xuan briefly considered spending his Credits to get a communication artifact from the System Shop, but to get a good one would cost way too much Credits. He could afford it, but it wasn’t worth the investment. He’d much rather save up to purchase a good weapon or some godly technique in the future.

Speaking of techniques…

“… Right. I should get some of those, in preparation of the Public Event happening soon,” Xuan told himself, re-shutting the blinds in his room and sitting down on his bed, eyes narrowed. Techniques were the most basic of the basics for a cultivator, and without them, one wouldn’t go far. It was like waving a sword around randomly compared to actual deadly strikes—the difference was clear.

Opening up his System, Xuan browsed the built-in shop. After all the expenses and gains that had transpired in the past while, he had Credits remaining. It was enough to purchase a good technique for his current stage—multiple, actually. He scrolled through the list of available items, setting a filter for ‘techniques’.

Basic Fist Technique: A basic fist technique. — Type: Martial.

Rose Thorn Fist: To give your enemies a rough fisting. — Type: Martial. (Earth attribute).

Buddha’s Unmoving Body: Become hard. — Type: Martial.

Sky Devil's Palm: Imbue your next palm attack with a powerful mixture of Demon Qi and Wind Qi. A martial technique, but scales with Soul stats as well. — Type: Martial. (Demon/Wind attributes).

Thousand Miles Menacing Steps: Walk menacingly. — Type: Martial.

Swift Cloud Steps: Become light and nimble, as if walking on clouds. — Type: Martial. (Wind attribute).

———

Tempest Fury: Unleash the wind inside you (not referring to intestinal gas*). — Type: Soul. (Wind attribute).

Spirit Thorns: Summon a plethora of spikes condensed from Soul energy to control and use against opponents. — Type: Soul. (Plant attribute).

Essence Guard: Form a barrier around yourself. Its power scales with your Soul Defense stat. — Type: Soul.

———

… And so on and so forth.

Unsurprisingly, most of the techniques listed here were very basic, with half-assed descriptions to match. Not only that, they were also scattered in terms of alignment—the System Shop was tailored to the user’s current cultivation and style, so given that Xuan was only a Body Tempering stage cultivator and had yet to engage in any serious combat, the techniques listed were quite random and did not have an overall direction to them.

‘Normally, it’s recommended for new cultivators to begin with martial techniques since they’re far easier to comprehend and cheaper as well, but…’ Xuan smirked. “I’m no new cultivator, and if there’s one thing I’m not missing right now, it’s Credits.’

With a Soul Strength stat as high as his was, he’d have to be stupid not to abuse soul techniques instead. No matter how low-grade the technique was, simply due to Xuan’s Soul Strength of 16 billion alone, nobody below the Origin Transformation realm would be able to defend themselves against his attacks.

This was not to say his power was already on par with his former self—naturally, that was not the case. His current cultivation was still incredibly low, so he didn’t actually have the Qi to use a lot of that Soul power, nor the powerful techniques to use it on. If he had to guess, his cultivation was probably around… a peak Qi Transformation realm currently, and would be Origin Transformation if not for the power of Laws that came with the Origin Comprehension phase.

After some thought, Xuan picked out a few techniques from the list—Sky Devil's Palm, Swift Cloud Steps for movement enhancement, Spirit Thorns, and Essence Guard. Four was enough—he didn’t want to overspend here. After all, all of these were basic Earth-Grade techniques that only fit his current cultivation level, and would be overshadowed by higher-Grade, more powerful techniques in the future.

As for why he chose these four in particular, Xuan remembered all of them to be quite popular amongst the general player base of Xianxia Online, which meant they were good and cost-efficient techniques that gave good bang for one’s buck. In fact, Sky Devil's Palm was a technique he also cultivated in his past life, and it had served him well until he reached the Origin Comprehension phase.

After purchasing Sky Devil's Palm and Swift Cloud Steps for 1,000 Credits each and Spirit Thorns and Essence Guard for 2,000 each, Xuan retrieved the scrolls and scriptures from his inventory and began the process of comprehending them—an essential step to learning a technique in Xianxia Online.

In this world, the game system forced the player to comprehend a technique in-game before being granted the ability to use it freely, since otherwise players could easily just search online for how to use a powerful technique and learn it from there through some simple memorization. As such, even though Xuan technically ‘knew’ how to use plenty of powerful techniques from his old life, he was restricted from actually using them—that is, until he found some way to transcend and break the game system.

Thanks to these four in particular being basic Earth-Grade techniques, however, comprehending them wasn’t very hard and just took a bit of Qi channeling. Before long, he’d finished, and obtained the power to use these skills. Sky Devil's Palm was especially quick to comprehend for Xuan, since he was quite familiar with it.

With that done, Xuan exited out of his System before promptly peering out the window again, just to satisfy his curiosity. The masses were still yelling over what just happened, and some NPCs were starting to really wonder what this whole Credits currency was, along with the bounty system.

“It’s the Zero person again! Who is he?!”

“One billion Soul Strength already? Yep, that’s Zero for sure…”

“Does this mean we players got to keep our Soul power from our previous lives? Because even if he’s Zero, there’s no way he hit a billion Soul Strength in just a few days of cultivation!”

“Check your Profiles, guys! We really did keep our past Soul power!”

“What? Profiles? Players? What are you talking about?”

“Are Credits some sort of rare currency? If so, I want that guy’s head! 250,000!”

Xuan sighed. He couldn’t even blame them for wanting his head, with a bounty of 250,000 Credits. Back in his old life, other players would sacrifice anything for that kind of wealth. That was enough to purchase multiple heaven-defying battle techniques as well as powerful Divine-Grade pills and artifacts, so naturally every player wanted it. And now, since NPCs would discover and learn how to use the System sooner or later, Xuan was going to have more enemies than ever.

‘Nirvana’s really putting a bounty on my head, huh?’ He thought, eyes narrowing a bit. ‘Well, so be it. Let them come—my current cultivation method is in need of some blood anyway.’

The Global Chat was going wild too, with many people spamming ‘WTF’ and ‘:cold_sweat:’ emojis, while Xuan received numerous friend requests on his System. Naturally, he ignored them all, with the exception of one: Nine Heavens.

Almost immediately, Xuan received a direct message (DM) from his Social tab, and he navigated to it to see what Nine Heavens had to say.

[Nine Heavens: How much of your past Soul stats were you able to retain?]

Xuan chuckled. As expected, he was here for this as well.

[Zero: It’s a pleasure meeting you again as well, Nine Heavens. As direct as ever, I see.]

[Nine Heavens: Cut the bullcrap. Answer the question.]

[Zero: It looks like that arrogant attitude has not changed one bit either. I wonder if your combat style is also still as unrefined and barbarian as it used to be?]

[Nine Heavens: Don’t get cocky, Zero. You may have bested me many times in our past lives, but do you know what the biggest difference between you and me is?]

[Zero: Oh? Enlighten me.]

[Nine Heavens: You think you’re on top of the world, above everyone else. You’re static, and won’t grow any stronger than that—because that is what your heart believes. That’s also why you were never able to break through to Godhood, even though you tried for so many years. I’m different. I learn, and improve from my mistakes. You call me the arrogant one, but in reality? You’re the one with an ego above your capabilities.]

Seeing this message, Xuan laughed. Not once did he ever think he was at the pinnacle of the cultivation Dao, and not once did he ever ‘think’ he was on top of the world.

He was on top of the world.

One part of Nine Heaven’s message was true, however. Ever since reaching the peak of the Heavenly Transcendent realm, Xuan’s cultivation became stagnant, unable to progress any further. An immense bottleneck stood in the way of Heavenly Transcendent and Godhood, one that no player has ever comprehended—Xuan was no exception.

He narrowed his eyes. ‘In this life, I will ascend to Godhood. I swear it.’

[Nine Heavens: Well, even if you don’t tell me, I know. You inherited nearly all of your Soul stats back, correct? Your Soul power was always monstrous. I have no doubt you’ve also already figured out the pattern behind how much of their old Soul stats a player can inherit into this life of theirs.]

[Zero: A pity, Nine Heavens. You’ve always neglected your Soul stats, focusing mainly on physical traits and martial techniques. Look at you now.]

[Nine Heavens: Hmph. I’m still ahead of you, aren’t I? This time, I’ll be the one reaching the apex first—and you’ll be the challenger.]

Xuan smiled.

[Zero: Do your best… to entertain me, that is.]