The Immortal Cultivation Clan: Starting with a Game

Lin Zhao, twenty-five, full-time web novelist, a total flop. Three digits in savings, two months behind on rent, an editor who won’t reply, and a life with no prospects. Until one day, a game of unknown origin appeared on his phone: Family Tree. Inside was a cultivation world called the Cangxuan Realm. His role: the Lin family’s founding ancestor, a spirit of their forebears who had been dead for years. And the so-called Lin family had only seven people left. They had been without food for three days, and bandits would descend from the mountain in another three. They called themselves a cultivation clan, but in truth they were just a bunch of gaunt, miserable people. Lin Zhao laughed. They were in this state, and still trying to cultivate? But he tried tapping “Send a Dream and Bestow an Item,” granting them a rusty blade from his warehouse. The next day, Clan Head Lin Changqing knelt in the ancestral hall, tears streaming down his face, proclaiming that the founding ancestor had manifested. That rusty blade turned out to be a magical weapon that could slice through iron like mud. Meanwhile, a callus shaped like a blade appeared in Lin Zhao’s palm in the real world. He suddenly realized that every action he took in the game was the true will of heaven in that world. Every breakthrough, act of gratitude, and prayer from his clansmen became “incense,” allowing him not only to send down more miracles in the game, but also to receive their blessings in the real world: marrow cleansing, body tempering, and spiritual energy flowing into his meridians. He was cultivating in the real world too. And he was always one major realm stronger than the most powerful member of the clan. But the incense was limited, so every “divine manifestation” had to be carefully budgeted. Bestowing techniques and spiritual treasures, sending dreams, possessing people, striking traitors with heavenly lightning... Even life as a broke founding ancestor left him scraping by. Worst of all, he couldn’t let his clansmen find out that the “founding ancestor” they worshipped was actually just a mortal.