Deep Demon

@tylee

On the seventh ring highway of Jin City, a truck loaded with construction waste overturned, and all the debris spilled onto a nearby Wuling Hongguang vehicle.

Lin Xiao was a recent college graduate. In this era where everyone had a bachelor’s degree, he hadn’t found a job after graduation. He used all his savings to buy a Wuling Hongguang and packed up his belongings to return to Pan City, where he planned to take over his father’s hundreds of acres of orchards and farmland. But just as he got on the highway, an accident occurred.

In the darkness, a murmuring voice came from an unknown source.

“This might be Earth’s last hope, but it’s a pity this soul is so inadequate.”

Then, silence.

A baby slowly opened its eyes, looking at the world in confusion. This was Lin Xiao’s third day after being born. It took him three days for his consciousness to clear from the chaos. He saw a person beside him emitting a faint green glow, seemingly transmitting something to the woman lying on the bed.

Lin Xiao didn’t know what was happening, where he was, or why he had become a baby. Shouldn’t he be in a hospital, or had he already reincarnated? But why did he still have his memories?

A few days later, Lin Xiao finally confirmed that he had crossed over to another world. Fantasy novels had been popular on Earth, and Lin Xiao had read extensively during college. As an outstanding young man of his time, he quickly understood his situation, although he never imagined such a thing would happen to him.

Three years passed in a flash. During these three years, Lin Xiao constantly recalled his past life, especially the survival skills from the cultivation novels he had read. He didn’t want to die before experiencing the joy of cultivation, and he hoped to one day return to Earth to show off. So, surviving was crucial.

Over three years, Lin Xiao gained a preliminary understanding of this world. There was no technology here, only artificers who created various spirit tools powered by spirit stones, which could be used for farming, lighting, or allowing cultivators to travel through the sky and earth. There were no doctors, only alchemists and pill refiners who made medicines with miraculous effects.

People in this world didn’t study physics or chemistry; they only learned to read and then the basics of cultivation. Because of the presence of spiritual power, children here gained intelligence at the age of three and started attending early education classes, continuing until they were six when they underwent a talent and spiritual vein test. If they were talented, they would be recommended to a primary academy for cultivation. Lin Xiao was reborn as the newborn child of a couple in Salt City. His father, Lin Shuang, had learned to cultivate a common spiritual herb by chance and got a job at the city lord’s mansion, while his mother, Li Wan’er, ran a teahouse. Their income was decent. Therefore, when Lin Xiao was born, even though it was a difficult birth, Lin Shuang found a junior alchemist to save his wife and child, though it drained several years of savings.

The currency here was similar to ancient Earth, using various precious metals to mint coins of different values, with minting rights held by the state. The lowest were copper coins, followed by silver coins and gold coins, with one silver coin equivalent to a thousand copper coins and one gold coin equivalent to a thousand silver coins. A typical family’s monthly expenses were about three to four silver coins. Above that were spirit stones, with an ordinary low-grade spirit stone worth a thousand gold coins, but they were rarely exchanged.

Lin Xiao’s family was quite well-off. The teahouse business was good, and his father’s skill brought in significant savings annually. However, his father hoped he could become a cultivator, so he continuously bought various herbs to improve Lin Xiao’s physical condition. As a result, Lin Xiao, at three years old, had the physique of a ten-year-old Earth child. Due to the presence of spiritual power in the air, ordinary people in this world had superior physical qualities, and children grew and developed faster, reaching school age at three.

This world also had nine years of compulsory education, but it was focused on cultivation knowledge instead of traditional subjects like physics and chemistry. Children entered basic education schools at three, learning foundational cultivation knowledge, including how to cultivate, identify materials for artifacts, and basic medicinal herbs.

Although Salt City was a small town nestled between mountains, it was rich in resources, producing various delicious fruits that sold well in the empire's major cities. The surrounding mountains were home to numerous, but weak, magical beasts, ideal for small and medium adventurer groups to hunt.

This made Salt City economically prosperous despite its remote location, boosting its educational development. Children studied until six years old, then participated in the annual spiritual vein awakening ceremony, where a special array was used to awaken and sense their spiritual veins, giving them the basic conditions for cultivation. Some couldn’t awaken, and these children stayed in basic education schools to continue learning, participating in the awakening ceremony annually until they were ten. If they still couldn’t awaken, they could choose to enter vocational schools or join the military.

It wasn’t impossible to awaken spiritual veins after ten, but it was rare. However, the Grand General of the New Moon Kingdom awakened his spiritual veins at fifteen and became a legendary strongman. But since his fall, there hadn’t been any stories of those over ten becoming strong cultivators.