Having finished all his tasks, Jiang Lu finally had time to return to his room and lie on the bed, playing with the nearly brand-new Exorcist panel he had just acquired.
He had only briefly looked at his gains and some personal attributes; he hadn't yet had a chance to check out the lists for the Spirit Domain Pool, forums, and marketplace.
But he only glanced at the Spirit Domain Pool and the marketplace before losing interest.
Since he had played some console games on the dean's son's PlayStation before, he knew that the Spirit Realm was essentially just an instance.
And with instances, you only study the strategies when you're about to enter; other times, even dogs wouldn't glance at them.
Why would you bother thinking about an instance you're not even entering, huh?
You've never heard of someone starting a census the moment they meet a passerby of the opposite sex in search of a partner, have you? Isn't that just a waste of time?
As for the marketplace, that was even less worthy of attention.
How could anyone know whether those highly praised items, weapons, or even skills in the shop were actually worth a dime without having tried the instances first?
What if the items in the marketplace only had impressive reference images and descriptions?
Wouldn't you be at a loss if you bought those?
Here's a callout to a certain open-world anime-style game.
Anyway, it took less than five minutes for Jiang Lu to start browsing the forums with relish.
However, after aimlessly reading for a while, he realized that most of the posts were either exchange threads or recruitment for teams, essentially people showing off or seeking play partners, very uninformative.
For a rookie like him who hadn't even grasped the basic rules and mechanics, diving into character pairing discussions was rather hasty.
So he set his search keywords to "newcomer," "precautions," and "strategies," then clicked search.
The first post that popped up was—"Precautions for Newcomers' Guide," with tens of thousands of replies from other Exorcists below it.
Jiang Lu sucked in a breath of cold air, "A perfect fit!"
With a desire to learn, Jiang Lu clicked into the post, trembling with anticipation.
The title was terrifying, but the content was actually very friendly, filled with solid advice that was very helpful for newbie Exorcists.
The post was dated twenty-two years prior and had been revised or added to nearly a hundred times, with the most recent update being a year ago.
"So 'guiding newcomers' means guiding new Exorcists in the Spirit Realm, right?" Jiang Lu suddenly lost interest.
Despite the result matching his intentions, he felt a weird sense of disappointment.
After reading it carefully, Jiang Lu found that instead of being merely basic precautions and a beginner's guide, the post was more like a history of Exorcists to date.
According to the post, the earliest Exorcists were actually ordinary people who had stumbled into the Spirit Realm by accident and managed to clear it by chance.
It's likely that out of thousands of people, only one could become an Exorcist.
In other words, from the initial panic at the resurgence of the supernatural to gradually gaining the ability to resist, and then to gradually controlling this disaster, the number of sacrifices made in the process was unimaginable.
The past twenty plus years of supernatural resurgence have also been years of humanity's stars shining.
As the first batch of Exorcists eventually became adept at dealing with most of the Spirit Realm, they established safe zones, which are the cities of today, with clear signs of reconstruction.
Because the Spirit Realm was so perilous, once the number of Exorcists reached a certain level, they were able to significantly reduce their impact on ordinary people. Over time, a new pathway for the emergence of Exorcists appeared, which quickly became the mainstream.
From a brutal survival of the fittest to a peaceful old-experienced-leading-new method of transformation.
In recent years, without exception, all Exorcists have been selected from ordinary people by large Exorcist organizations and then led by experienced Exorcists to tackle less difficult co-op Spirit Realms to earn their Exorcist qualifications.
This information also matched the "Stowaway" achievement Jiang Lu gained after completing "Family Portrait."
"I see," Jiang Lu mused, "I'm an undocumented guy now, huh?"
The initial joy of becoming an Exorcist was diluted by this sudden realization.
However, as for worry, he wasn't really concerned.
Even if he were undocumented, so what? Even if the Exorcist organization had a record of all the Exorcists under their control, could you still check within the Spirit Realm?
The Spirit Realm has a barrier mechanism; once you're in, whether it's communication devices from the real world, or the Exorcist system, you would lose the ability to contact the outside world.
So it would be impossible to find him.
Moreover, once you become an Exorcist, you don't need to be present exactly where the Spirit Realm descends; you can directly enter through the Exorcist system. Of course, if you don't mind the trouble, it's also fine to go to the descending location of the Spirit Realm to enter.
So it would be impossible to catch him as well.
In the Spirit Realm, there is ample leeway to test out other Exorcists' views on undocumented individuals, and then there would be plenty of time to decide what to do about it.
With this in mind, Jiang Lu put the matter of being undocumented to the back of his mind.
There was much more content in the post; it was very detailed.
Detailed to the point where it specified which level was best suited for what equipment, how to choose tools, how to allocate attribute points wisely, how to match skill sets according to need, and even clearly listed one hundred different survival techniques in the Spirit Realm.
The only thing missing was the method to conquer the Spirit Realm itself.
But that was no surprise, given the sheer number of Spirit Realms; the "Awaiting Conquest" column alone contained several thousand options of varying levels and difficulties to choose from, not to mention the "Already Conquered" column where a glance can't even clarify just how many digits there are.
Besides that, the Spirit Realm mechanism is quite special, not only possessing a barrier mechanism, but some also have a secrecy mechanism, and more importantly, conquered Spirit Realms will not continue to descend. Although they still exist in the "Already Conquered" column of the Spirit Domain Pool, becoming a place akin to a training room open to Exorcists, the danger remains while the rewards are greatly reduced.
Therefore, apart from new Exorcists or those who repeat raids on the Spirit Realm to unlock achievements and additional rewards, almost no one enters an already-conquered Spirit Realm.
In other words, before a conquest, no one knows how to conquer it; after a conquest, no one wants to attempt it again.
So posting a method of conquest is essentially meaningless.
After researching all of this, Jiang Lu became interested in the person who made the post.
The poster's ID was "Survivor", which, unsurprisingly, was likely one of the very first Exorcists.
Looking at the update time, at least a year ago he was still a survivor.
"Must be an old hand," Jiang Lu mused, clicking into his personal homepage.
The posts were few and far between, totaling less than ten.
The last post was from twenty years ago, with the title "Family Portrait: Recently Established Exorcist Guild, Sincerely Inviting Like-minded Individuals to Join".
Yep, still CPDD (content-pushed, duty-driven).
"An old hand from the Exorcist Guild, huh? Seems like he might hold a high position."
Jiang Lu didn't click further; after all, he was still a stowaway and wasn't in a hurry to find protection or a benefactor.
Moreover, if the poster was referring to the now thriving Exorcist Guild, it definitely wasn't a place where following a few thousand floors and leaving a "PMed" would get you in.
Times have changed; the era had moved on!
Therefore, he focused his attention on the first post.
"Is anyone here? Can anyone tell me where this terrifying Spirit Realm comes from?"
From these brief words, Jiang Lu sensed the poster's helplessness and panic.
Luckily conquering a copy, surviving by a fluke, getting a strange panel, everything was unknown, everything needed exploration. It was hard enough to find a forum where one could communicate with others, only to discover that there wasn't a single post inside, not even knowing if there were any living people.
Now this post's view count was immeasurable, even last year there were still replies.
But initially, facing a silent forum, the poster must have felt despair.
Jiang Lu took a deep breath, clicked into the post, and replied without a second thought:
"The Spirit Realm is born of a mother."