Shen Qingci didn't mind the trouble and muttered it another six or seven times.
A sudden, violent tremor shook her sea of consciousness, as if a certain system had lost its patience and slammed the table in exasperation.
A huffy emoticon popped up on the system panel: ( ง °皿°)ง⁼³₌₃
Right below it, an image appeared.
The picture showed a woman with her hair in a ponytail holding a wooden ruler, with a line of text next to her: “If the child doesn't listen, a few smacks will usually fix it.”
Before Shen Qingci could even react, a numbing electric current surged out from her sea of consciousness, crackling and popping along her meridians toward her limbs.
Two hundred and twenty volts???
She looked down at the electrical arcs dancing on her fingertips, falling silent for a brief moment.
She had a Lightning Spiritual Root!!!
This tiny amount of electricity didn't even hurt as much as a poisonous mosquito bite from her past life. That mosquito had bitten her on the ankle, causing it to swell for two whole days and itching so badly that she had to get up in the middle of the night to apply toilet water.
System Mama probably knew this too.
After the shocking ended, she was completely unharmed, without even a single strand of hair out of place.
Shen Qingci pursed her lips, but she couldn't suppress her smile and simply let it show.
【System Mama can't bring herself to actually hit me.】
This realization made her happier than drawing a Gold Card.
She opened her mouth, wanting to coax it with a few more words, when a gentle light suddenly illuminated her entire sea of consciousness. The system roulette wheel began to spin on its own, turning so fast that it left afterimages, spewing out gray light as if it were emptying a warehouse.
Every single one of them was "Thank you for playing."
Ten cards, fifty, a hundred, three hundred, five hundred, eight hundred...
Shen Qingci watched the gray cards pop out like dumplings dropping into boiling water, her heart completely untroubled.
The speed at which the system ran the wheel itself was far faster than when she initiated the draw herself. In just over ten breaths, all nine hundred-plus gray cards had popped out.
The wheel was still spinning, but the gray light gradually thinned out and the rotation slowed down.
The 997th card, gray.
The 998th card, gray.
The 999th card, gray.
The wheel stopped.
Shen Qingci held her breath.
On the 1,000th draw, a dark-golden light spilled out from the center of the wheel. It wasn't piercingly bright, and its touch upon her sea of consciousness was warm and soft.
The pillar of light supported the phantom image of a fist-sized bead, floating upward. The bead was completely translucent, sealing a miniature world of mountains and rivers within it.
【Ding! Congratulations to the host for obtaining: Gold Card · Nine Heavens Cloud Realm】
Shen Qingci reached out to lightly touch the phantom image. Her palm passed right through, contacting a layer of cool ripples.
Ripples spread outward from her fingertips, and the entire secret realm trembled a few times. She withdrew her hand, the lingering coolness still remaining on her fingertips.
The description text of the Gold Card lit up line by line beneath the phantom image.
Name: Nine Heavens Cloud Realm
Grade: Heaven-grade Mid-rank (Growable)
Age: Asking again would be impolite, you know (ฅ՞Ⱉ՞ฅ )
Origin: An independent spatial magic artifact refined by ancient cultivators from a damaged grotto-heaven and blessed land. Requires the host's daughter (two words crossed out) to personally travel to the Northern Region's Shuofang Mountain Range to open the entrance of the secret realm. Once the entrance is opened, cultivators below the Tribulation Transcendence stage cannot detect, lock onto, or attack it...
Size: One hundred thousand miles in radius.
Complete spiritual veins. The concentration of spiritual energy is approximately three times the average level of the Four Regions. Within its borders are mountains, rivers, lakes... with a complete range of terrains and landforms, capable of supporting high-rank cultivators for long-term residence and cultivation.
Features twelve spirit beast habitats, eight spiritual plant growth zones, six spiritual mineral veins... complete resource structure and self-sustaining ecological cycle.
Binding: The Heart of the Secret Realm is hidden at the core of the secret realm. Once the host refines it, the entrance of the secret realm can be bound to the Shen family bloodline. Anyone holding a Shen family token can open the entrance at any time and teleport into the secret realm by silently reciting the secret command.
Growth: Every time the host breaks through a major realm, the boundary of the secret realm extends outward by ten thousand miles, the spiritual energy concentration increases by ten percent, and there is a probability of triggering the generation of new resource zones.
Intelligence: When the secret realm is first opened, its intelligence is weak. It can sense the aura of entrants and make its own judgment on whether to grant passage. Anyone who forcibly intrudes without bloodline verification will be locked onto and expelled by the secret realm's intelligence.
Remarks: This realm is not a dead object; it also possesses a spirit. Treat it well, and over time, you may understand its intent.
Shen Qingci's divine sense lingered on the final line of remarks, hesitant to look away.
“This realm is not a dead object; it also possesses a spirit.”
As her finger brushed over those words, a circle of warmth enveloped the surface of the Gold Card. It could hardly be called a standard spatial magic artifact, nor was it a simple warehouse piled with spiritual veins and spiritual mines.
The Nine Heavens Cloud Realm possessed intelligence, which was weak at its birth, but it would grow, distinguish the aura of entrants, and judge for itself whether to let them in or expel them.
【The Shen family is about to have a living home.】
Shen Qingci safely put away the Gold Card, a sense of anticipation rising in her heart, but then she remembered a pressing matter.
System Mama had spun the wheel a full thousand times for her. Did she have enough Belief Value to cover the cost???
Opening the Belief Value panel, she swept her gaze toward the string of numbers at the bottom. Shen Qingci's eyelashes fluttered.
Belief Value: -32,600.
She stared at that negative number, taking a long while to digest it.
Her original balance was only enough for six hundred-plus draws. The system had spun it a thousand times for her, putting the extra three hundred-plus draws entirely on tab.
There were no interest clauses, no repayment deadlines, and not even a collection notice.
It was just a quiet negative number, hanging there.
She couldn't help but curl her lips into a smile.
Calling it System Mama really did work.
If she had to draw it herself, who knew how long it would take. When she brought her Senior Sister back to her clan's ancestral land, she couldn't possibly drag it out until the Soul Transformation stage!
System: (￣～￣)
The emoticon popped up on the panel, accompanied by two words: Noisy.
Shen Qingci obediently withdrew her thoughts, glanced at that string of negative numbers again, and closed the panel with a clear conscience.
A mountain of debt was no burden. Besides, once she went to the Gu family a year from now, wouldn't her Belief Value shoot up rapidly anyway?
She rested both hands on her knees, sinking her mind into her dantian.
For now, the matter of the Nine Heavens Cloud Realm could wait.
Opening the entrance required a personal trip to the Northern Region's Shuofang Mountain Range, and refining the Heart of the Secret Realm required absolute concentration. Neither of these could be accomplished in the near future.
Right now, the most urgent matter was her cultivation.
She pulled out her original plan, reviewed it, and then scrapped it.
She had originally thought to slowly polish her foundation, not rushing to establish her foundation before the age of eighteen. But now that the 'Nine Heavens Cloud Realm' was in her hands, and her Aunt and clan uncle had also laid out their plans in Qinghe County.
Things were being pushed forward one by one, making her cultivation the shortest plank in her barrel instead.
The ninth level of Qi Refining was considered top-tier among the new disciples of the Azure Cloud Sect, and it wasn't embarrassing among the younger generation of the Southern Region either. But she had to face the geniuses of the Four Regions.
She couldn't take her time.
One year.
She drew a line for herself: she had to achieve Foundation Establishment within a year.
Going from the ninth level of Qi Refining to the twelfth level of great perfection would normally take at least two years of cultivation.
She couldn't wait that long.
But even if she couldn't wait, she absolutely could not compromise her foundation. She would rather spend more time polishing it than leave even a single hidden defect.
Polishing her foundation through bitter cultivation alone was not enough.
The accumulation of spiritual energy required for each of the last three levels far exceeded the sum of the first nine levels. Relying solely on absorbing spiritual energy made the progress too slow.
Natural treasures supplemented by body-tempering and foundation-strengthening were unavoidable paths.
For these matters, she only needed to send a transmission to her Aunt, who would arrange everything perfectly.
Shen Qingci exhaled a breath of turbid air, closed her eyes, stopped thinking about other things, and immersed herself in meditation.
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