On a floating island drifting about somewhere in the Void
"Oh my god! This! Is! Awesome!!!"
BOOOOM!!!!
"Take that! Shock Palm for days!!! And another one!! Aaaaand another ONE!!!"
"Hahahahahaha! I've missed the feeling of leveling up! Oh~, the burst of two energies flowing through my veins! The expansion of my mana reserves and the capacity to absorb more amounts of martial qi! Yes~! Oh, how I wish for this feeling to never end!!"
*Ahem*...It seemed that either Blake had gotten a little mana drunk...Or that he was too ecstatic about advancing 2 levels...One of the two, but it better not be both.
After Blake finished that recent breakthrough, he decided it would be best to travel into the Void for a quick test and evaluate how well this breakthrough benefited him. He first coated his right fist in both martial and magic energies before proceeding to punch the air with full force. This simple action of his immediately tore a hole in his own plane of existence, a hole that leads to a plane that only has the darkness and space elements a.k.a. the Void.
After flying for about 20 minutes in absolute darkness, Blake finally found an island with some ancient city ruins.
Blake didn't really care about the treasure here, it was actually useless to him either way. He was more excited to try out the various spells and skills he now had access to.
Now back to the present...
He started out by using simple Shock Palms at the pillars of the ruins. Then he exerted a bit more energy into his fists and legs or as he calls it, Limit Enhancer. He began to sprint around the ruins and rubble like a hyperactive kid, jumping about and sending a couple more Shock Palms towards skeletons and broken remains of monsters.
Oh yes, monsters...mythical beasts born from the blood and sweat of the Forgotten Gods of Twisted Creations. They don't immediately dissolve into dust after being defeated, therefore their parts were well sought after by merchant sects across the Magic Martial Multiverse.
'Heavenly Piercing Spear...Dragon Slaying Ax...Immortal Lion Shield...Why is everything here trash?? I see trash everywhere...I mean, they are Immortal grade items but...that's about it...trash. Garbage will always find trash, and that's the truth!' Blake gave each item he picked up a disdainful look before moving on to the next area.
To normal cultivators, the pieces of equipment Blake was simply throwing around were in fact real Immortal grade Artifacts and Martial Arts that would only appear once every few thousand years. But to Blake, it truly was useless. Absolute garbage. Never before seen trash in a million years. You get the point.
'Hmmm, what's this?' Blake stopped at the steps of a broken church, looked down and picked up a broken dagger hilt. Dragon markings can be clearly seen engraved on the grip and yet it exuded a faint majestic aura.
'So, whose blade were you separated from??' Blake asked the hilt in his hand as he began to pour mana into the dagger hilt itself. The hilt's aura remained faint whereas the dragon markings on the grip began to shine a bright white light. Within the next second, countless dragon roars can be heard everywhere. It was quite clear to Blake that this dagger hilt was not so simple as it looked.
Then again, Blake had already poured more than half of his mana reservoirs into the hilt. The dragon roars were indeed getting louder, and the hilt was starting to get hotter but...that was about it. It seemed as though Blake would need to supply the hilt with an insane amount of mana to possibly get a small reaction from it.
'Hmmm, this is a tough choice...I mean, the day this hilt will become useful to me will probably be the day I've finally reached the Magic King stage...Yeah, but if this is what I think it is, it will probably be worth keeping...'
'...Whether to keep it for future use or to put it back so that others can utilize it better...'
'Sigh...'
In the end, he kept it.
Back at Blake's current Mortal Realm
'Oh my god! I'm exhausted~! Those Void beasts didn't even give me a split second to catch my breath!! This...This is why I hate the Void! Alas, the Void is the only place where I can unleash my full strength without fussing over the deaths of innocents.'
And so Blake literally complained about his indecisiveness for 3 hours straight before cooking a nice dinner for himself.
"Ouch! Freaking oil sparks. It's been 300 years since I've touched a stove that still uses a gas tank. Back in Elysium, the heroic souls of the dead all used electric stoves that were 100 times safer than these normal fire stoves. I...personally wouldn't say 1000 times safer because we could still get electrocuted from time to time. And yes, most of us were Spectrals while only a small percentage of the dead living in Elysium were skeletons and mummies." Blake grumbled to himself.
'Wala! Fried rice with miso soup!' Blake definitely outplayed himself this time! I'm being serious right now. Blake has never successfully cooked white rice with a rice cooker, much less a decent edible meal. And since he was reborn with barely any money in hand, he can only do experiments with the materials he is sponsored by the city's government. And in the past few weeks after Blake awoken, he had already blown up 6 six stoves and 3 rice cookers.
You know, not every cultivator is adept with technology. Especially those cultivators who stood at the peak of the world, where everything was handled by their subordinates and disciples.
Now, Blake was alone. In a world where cultivators are nothing more but pure Chinese fiction. And where Martial Qi was surprisingly abundant because there were absolutely no Martial Cultivators here in this realm.
After having dinner and washing himself up, Blake sat cross legged on the floor and started to meditate. This was his daily routine of cultivating for 2 hours before bedtime. Any and all disturbances of the outside world have been cut off via the World Exclusion Array he had set up previously. Also, he would sometimes skip school and go to the library to look for materials and info about arrays.
Because Blake personally felt that his own knowledge on arrays from his past life was insufficient, therefore he would willingly use his available sick days and plenty of other excuses to skip school so he could study about the world's knowledge and views on arrays, be it modern or ancient arrays.
Apparently, this World Exclusion Array was once created and used by the Ancient Chinese 3000 years ago to shield refugees and escaped prisoners of war after the fall of their kingdoms throughout the years. It was a defensive array that could shield off even the most powerful of Golden Core Taoists back then. Pretty cool when you think about it, right? Blake didn't.
He immediately found multiple errors in the use of runes and words in the array, he then questioned the old Chinese Taoists about the half-assed technique they cultivated back then, because they were so weak, that even if they reached the peak of Nascent Soul realm, they would still not be able to break this poorly designed array, making them look even more useless.
Anyways, so Blake was cultivating peacefully into the night until this happened...
'Ding Dong!' 'Ding Dong!' 'Diiiiing Dooooong!!!' 'Diiiiiiiiiiiinnng! Dooo--'
"Whaaaaaat do you waaaant?!?!??!!?" Blake's voice thundered through the house.