Dustlight Across the Nine Realms

(I wrote this out of boredom. Give it a try if you're interested; if not, feel free to move on. Honestly, I don't think it's very appealing.)

(The early chapters are quite dull, so feel free to skip ahead. It's a lighthearted story.)

(I just hope to bring readers some joy. Feel free to skip the beginning.)

(You can skip the first volume and start with a later one.)

Su Chen figured he'd probably been born into the wrong family.

When other people transmigrated to the world of cultivation, they either had extraordinary talent or a golden finger. He, on the other hand, had spent three years as a chore disciple at the Qingyang Sect, stuck at the third level of the Kaiyuan Realm without making the slightest progress. His only special skill was running fast, especially when the cafeteria auntie came chasing after him with a spatula.

But Su Chen had one flaw: he didn't believe in fate.

Every day, he practiced three hours longer than his fellow disciples, drilling the same beginner sword technique eight thousand times. When people laughed at him for being stupid, he grinned and said, “The early bird catches the worm. Even if I can't fly high, why can't I fly far?”

What he didn't know was that the white-browed old man who had been fishing behind the Qingyang Sect for ten years was watching him practice, eyes narrowed, muttering, “This kid's even more stubborn than Ye Lingyun was back then.”

He also didn't know that, in the darkness along the borders of the Nine Realms, a power sealed away for a thousand years was awakening. The mysterious seal he'd carried since birth came from the very same source.

When calamity struck, when darkness swallowed the Northern Frontier, and when the legendary powerhouses returned one after another, the boy who knew only clumsy techniques tightened his grip on the most ordinary iron sword.

“I don't have the talent of the Great Emperor Lingyun, the bloodline of the War King's heir, or the constitution of the Withering Queen. My name is Su Chen. Chen, as in dust.”

“But dust in your eyes can make you cry.”

“And dust in a fire can burn.”