Chen Yu was reborn from a previous life as a game industry worker into a modern cultivation world with immortals, sects, and cultivators. He awakened his spiritual root at seventeen, ten years later than most, receiving a high spiritual root rating of ninety-one but unable to close the foundation gap. His comprehensive scores across the five subjects of morality, intelligence, physique, beauty, and labor totaled only two hundred and seventy, placing him near the bottom of Tianyuan City Third Cultivation High School. His morality score was particularly low at twenty, which he suspected might be linked to a hidden aspect of his constitution.The Tianyuan Cultivator Committee sent him a black encrypted envelope containing news that his cultivation body showed signs of awakening. They provided a cultivation body awakening liquid, a rare and expensive potion worth three hundred thousand yuan. Chen Yu took the potion and immediately unlocked the Heavenly Demon Body, accompanied by a game-like notification. The cultivation body manifested as a semi-transparent panel showing known traits: the ability to absorb emotions as provisions for cultivation, with negative emotions recommended as positive emotions would be very tiring. Other traits remained unknown and required exploration.Chen Yu analyzed the possibilities for testing his cultivation body's effects. He needed a method that could affect many people, cause stable emotional fluctuations, and maintain confidentiality. His friend's message about a dream realm gave him the idea. Dream realms are virtual environments created by Dream Weavers where cultivators can enter using their primordial spirit. Chen Yu recalled an old Dream Weaver account he had registered but abandoned due to low cultivation level. Now at Qi Refinement Level One, he could barely condense magical power to use more functions.He purchased a small dream realm with limited capacity, roughly equivalent to a five hundred megabyte game. He decided to create a simple video-playing dream realm based on his memory of the phenomenal work Daoist Ghostly Immortal. This story was known for its confusion, mental impact, and indistinguishability between worlds, perfectly suited to generate strong emotions. The dream realm's limited construction functions and poor image quality actually matched the indescribable atmosphere of the original. He planned to adjust the plot, starting with a new character to avoid driving away users with excessive tragedy.He constructed the first scene: a hospital where the player wakes as a patient in Tianyuan Mental Hospital. The scene was built with aged aesthetics despite using free materials. Death would return the player to the starting point. Capacity ran short, so he ended the first scene as a trial version named Daoist Ghostly Immortal: Dream Dweller. He purchased magical power and spent one hundred yuan on platform promotion. The platform's intelligent magical techniques automatically wrote a promotional line calling it an invincible youth story and an ultimate thrilling drama, then recommended it to random users.Lu Ziqi, a student from Tianyuan City Fourth High School, a visualization school, received the notification. He was preoccupied with anxiety about his college entrance examination. His family was poor, and he could only afford to cultivate at the visualization sacred place Sky-Gazing Cliff for short sessions before exams. His score was three hundred and thirty, ranking after ten thousand in the city. He decided to rest his mind by trying the free dream realm before class. He set a timer and entered.Inside the dream realm, Lu Ziqi found himself in a mental hospital as a patient named Sun Huowang's roommate. A seemingly kind doctor with a warm smile examined him, creating a subtle sense of incongruity and unease. Sun Huowang, tied to a bed, suddenly struggled and twisted his neck, his eyes turning cold then astonished. He roared at Lu Ziqi, insisting that he was not from here, demanding that he open his eyes forcefully to escape. Male nurses removed Sun Huowang. Lu Ziqi closed his eyes and opened them forcefully, finding the surroundings changed. The hospital was gone, but his experience was only beginning. The dream realm's first scene ended here, leaving him intrigued and disturbed.
