Chapter 3: The System
The Basic Meditation Technique was the most widely spread meditation method in the Blue Star Alliance.
When students entered middle school and their bodies and minds began to mature, every school arranged for professional instructors to teach the Basic Meditation Technique.
Even the orphanage where Zhou Ming’s previous self had lived offered education in the Basic Meditation Technique.
The Basic Meditation Technique was easy to learn, simple, and safe. Almost every Beast Tamer began their journey in the beast-taming cultivation system with this very method.
Zhou Ming’s former self was an orphan, and apart from this method, he had no other options—so he poured all his energy into practicing it.
The only benefit it brought was that Zhou Ming could instinctively enter a meditative state within seconds of closing his eyes. His earlier worries instantly vanished.
His Spiritual Sea was vast and void, resembling the boundless night sky.
The flickering starlight within the night sky represented the spiritual power within his mind, radiating a mysterious, dazzling brilliance.
However, when Zhou Ming entered his Spiritual Sea, the familiar scenery had already vanished—the starlight that symbolized his spiritual power was gone.
Zhou Ming immediately began to probe his Spiritual Sea. If there was a problem with it, given his circumstances, he would live out his life as an ordinary man.
As for encountering some miraculous opportunity that could repair his Spiritual Sea—Zhou Ming was not delusional enough to be admitted to a mental hospital.
“Spiritual Seed?”
Before Zhou Ming could investigate further, he noticed a bright moon hanging high above his Spiritual Sea.
“There’s a problem.”
Zhou Ming did not let the apparent surprise cloud his reason. If he had truly condensed a Spiritual Seed, he would have sensed it even without entering the Spiritual Sea. There was no need for him to actively explore.
After a moment of thought, he quickly understood the cause—this Spiritual Seed did not belong to him. It must have belonged to his former self.
To attain the Dao through the body.
As Zhou Ming stared at the bright moon before him, this thought suddenly surfaced in his mind.
Yet he felt a faint sense of melancholy—some people’s lifelong pursuit was merely the starting point of another.
After a brief sigh, he refocused his attention on the Spiritual Seed before him. He wanted to see whether he could enjoy the shade from the tree his predecessor had planted.
Moreover, given his current situation, Zhou Ming had to understand what was going on. His consciousness transformed into tendrils that reached toward the Spiritual Seed.
“Crack…”
There should have been no sound in the Spiritual Sea, but when he saw cracks appearing on the moon-like Spiritual Seed, a shattering noise echoed within his mind.
Before his consciousness tendrils even touched it, an unexpected change occurred.
Once the first crack appeared, more spread across the entire surface of the Spiritual Seed, like a mirror on the verge of breaking into countless fragments.
“Please don’t shatter…” Zhou Ming silently prayed as he watched the change.
When his consciousness finally made contact, he immediately understood the reason.
A rootless tree, a spring without a source.
After his predecessor’s death, the Spiritual Seed naturally began to fade without its foundation.
However, because Zhou Ming had transmigrated into this body, the Spiritual Seed had persisted until now—but judging by its current state, it could no longer hold on.
At the instant the Spiritual Seed completely broke apart, Zhou Ming’s soul and consciousness merged entirely with the collapsing Spiritual Seed.
“Boom.”
A rootless tree, a spring without a source—yet now, Zhou Ming had reconnected them.
However, what followed brought him no joy. The shattered Spiritual Seed did not reform.
Nor did it revert to countless scattered stars—it instead took on a nebula-like structure, spiraling slowly within Zhou Ming’s Spiritual Sea.
“This… is still a Spiritual Seed?”
Looking at the nebula formed by hundreds, even thousands, of tiny star-like fragments, Zhou Ming was filled with confusion.
After repeatedly examining and sensing it, and recalling what his predecessor had learned, Zhou Ming became certain—the nebula before him was indeed the Spiritual Seed that his predecessor had exchanged his life to form, and that he had just inherited.
“Damn it.”
Zhou Ming no longer cared whether the heavens existed—his luck couldn’t possibly get any worse. From what should have been a beginner’s level of difficulty, his situation had now become impossibly hard.
Someone ignorant of beast-taming knowledge might think he had stumbled upon a tremendous fortune—hundreds or thousands of Spiritual Seeds! Wouldn’t that mean he could control hundreds or thousands of Ferocious Beasts?
With beasts surrounding him, a mere wave of his hand could summon a small-scale beast tide—he would be a revered guest among countless factions.
Yet his predecessor’s memories immediately shattered that fantasy.
In a Transcendent world, quality crushed everything—quantity was merely embellishment.
To tame a Ferocious Beast, one had to plant a Spiritual Seed within its consciousness. The Spiritual Seed’s quality determined the strength of the tamed beast.
The weaker the Spiritual Seed, the lower the chance of successfully taming higher-quality Ferocious Beasts.
In Zhou Ming’s current condition, he could at most tame the lowest-level creatures—rats, sparrows, and the like.
But what use were hundreds of rats or sparrows compared to someone else’s tiger or giant python?
Not only in combat—high-quality Ferocious Beasts could also help their masters increase their chances of breaking through to higher ranks.
And with the current beast-taming system, Zhou Ming wasn’t even sure whether his situation could fit into it.
Successfully taming a Ferocious Beast was merely the entry-level requirement of an Apprentice Beast Tamer.
Among apprentices, perhaps only one in a hundred could advance to the Official Rank—and that was just an estimate.
Breaking through beyond the Official Rank was no longer a matter of simply increasing one’s spiritual power, as human spiritual capacity had its limits.
To surpass the limits of spiritual power, one had to rely on Transcendent Rituals.
These were systems created by humans on Blue Star, who had studied the transcendent knowledge of other races, in order to truly master extraordinary power.
For example, Phantasmal Tamers—they used rituals to transform their beasts into Phantasmal Beasts that could control elemental forces.
By borrowing their Phantasmal Beast’s power, they broke through their spiritual limits and continued cultivating, while the Phantasmal Beast also grew stronger through its master’s spiritual power.
A Phantasmal Beast had three forms. The first existed in the world like an ordinary beast, following its master’s commands in attack and defense.
The second form turned into armor, granting its master control over elemental powers.
The third entered its master’s body, transforming into a tattoo to absorb spiritual power for growth or rapid recovery from injuries.
It could be said that only after breaking through the Official Rank did a Beast Tamer truly master transcendent power.
Aside from Phantasmal Tamers, there were also Beast Knights, Shepherds, Beast Spirit Sorcerers, and many other advancement paths.
But all these professions assumed a normal Beast Tamer foundation as their prerequisite.
With Zhou Ming’s current abnormal condition—could he even fit into this established system?
Would he have to create an entirely new one himself?
When Zhou Ming reopened his eyes, his gaze was utterly blank.