The Path Toward Heaven - Chapter 18: Not in One Cold Day

The Immortal Dao is ethereal, and Immortals are hard to find.

Li Nianfan had descended into the cultivation world as a mortal. After learning that he has no hope in cultivation, he only wants to live a peaceful life.

However…

The dog he adopts becomes a demon king of a generation when it sees his poems and paintings. It manages to suppress an entire world.

The tree he plants behind his house becomes a World Tree after listening to his zither music, forming a bridge between heaven and earth.

He meets a passerby who is enlightened by him and becomes an immortal sage who leads an entire generation.

When he looks back—

It turns out that the scholar who had been pestering him for his calligraphy and paintings despite having crappy chess skills, is a chess saint from the Immortal Realm. The beautiful woman who comes to listen to his music every night is the number one saintess of the Immortal Realm…

[From the Author of Author's POV...]

Emotions are like a drug to us.

The more we experience them, the more we become addicted.

The hardest part is not letting them consume us.

But it's already too late for me.

I've already been swallowed whole.

***

I had no knowledge of the game.

I was meant to have died.

And yet, I found myself in this situation.

A game I had never played before. A character I was unfamiliar with, and... A world that seemed to want to swallow me whole with every move I made.

What the hell is going on?

...and who am I?

……………………………………………………………

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I am currently re-writing the first chapters of this story. They are quite rough and bounce around a lot and I can do better. At some point, I will replace these with the better chapters.Sometime in 2024 Aethon Books will publish the first volume of this story on Amazon, KU, and audible. This will mean the story will be stubbed. I will notify people far in advance of that.In the dystopian world of the future, life is rough when you live at the bottom. Jobs are non-existent. Far too many people live in poverty, crammed into huge buildings called Habitats. With no jobs in the real world, many people can only find work online in VR worlds as servants to the very rich. And it's getting worse. The old internet is unusable and hacked to pieces. The new system needs AI to run things, but all but one of them were destroyed. The last sentient AI is ordered to create a new game world so the rich can have a playground, and the corporations that rule the world can have a new global market place. Everyone wants a piece of the new game. The guilds are competing to be the first to find the dungeons and kill the biggest monster. The corporations are claiming land and putting in their online market places. Ozzy and his friends just want a paycheck.Four friends sign five year contracts as virtual serfs in a small village, and can't go adventuring at all to gain money. They don't have many choices. They can work as a blacksmith, barmaid and shepherd for all those years....or they can cheat and find ways to take advantage of the system and carve out a section of the game world for themselves, and earn a fortune in the real world.When they give you a mop and not a sword, you have to find the loopholes and change the rules.

“Kind? What’s kind about it? Taking on such quests isn’t being kind. It’s just being a pushover. A total pushover.”As the voices faded behind him, Kai glanced back at them.Me? A pushover? No way.[You have performed a good deed for an NPC in trouble.] [+1 Benevolence.]A reward given for doing a good deed?!Calculative, yet compelling enough to continue doing good deeds whether it’s healing or dealing damage.The Healing Solaris Cleric, Kai’s, journey to conquering MID Online!