Astoria the Sage

Astoria felt a few emotions after the anger-filled shout sounded in her mind, but above them all, she felt annoyed.

'Why don't I dare? Who the hell are you to stop me?!' 

Filled with annoyance and indignation, Astoria didn't even bother to think about whether or not that shout was directed at her. All she wanted to do was find out who shouted and beat them into the dirt.

Putting her thoughts into action, Astoria quickly scanned through Rictoli's memories, which were now bound to her soul. Very quickly, she found what she was looking for—the method of undoing the seal that was containing her.

Knowing what to do now, Astoria's hands turned into an undetectable blur as she rapidly formed over a dozen hand seals.

'Open!' 

Pushing her outstretched pointer and middle finger outward, Astoria finally felt something change in the air.

Looking around, she suddenly found that her once-white surroundings had started to morph, turning from a blank expanse with nothing inside to a small paradise.

Housing fertile grasslands that stretched as far as the eye could see, a large black tower that seemingly climbed toward the heavens themselves, and even a calm lake that wrapped around the entire grasslands like a coiling dragon, Astoria's new surroundings were breathtaking, to say the least.

'From that pervert's memories, it seems that he found this ring during his childhood years, and because of it, he became the man he was. If he weren't such a heinous human being, I would've thought that this dude was a protagonist. After all, which protagonist doesn't have a pocket space with an herb garden?'

Though Astoria only got around a tenth of Rictoli's memories, all of the ones she did get were the core and important ones.

Rictoli's main plan was to possess the body of a talented youngster and cultivate it all the way to his previous peak, the right way, without any hidden injuries. He also planned to cultivate other paths beyond the single path he took in his last life.

However, since he would possess a youngster's body, its feeble soul wouldn't be able to carry his tens of thousands of years of lifelong experience and memories. So, by combining his core memories into one section, Rictoli would know everything he needed from the first day of his second life.

Of course, fate spat on his plans and left him without anything, but his plan was still genius.

Despite this, even without 90% of the memories, Astoria could still be called an expert on the pervert's life.

Rictoli had heaven-defying talent. No one argued against that. But he was born from nothing in a backwater town.

No matter how skilled one is, even the best chef in the world can't cook without ingredients.

Rictoli was in a similar situation. He had all the talent in the world, but without a mentor or resources, he couldn't even open a single one of his dantians, let alone become one of the strongest cultivators in the Nine Desolate Domains.

It was only once he found this ring that his fate was altered.

Through the memories, Astoria came to learn what exactly this herb garden did.

Apparently, its soil was dozens, if not hundreds, of times more fertile than anything in the outside world. Some mortal plants that already grew quickly, like strawberries, would ripen so fast that their progress was visible to the naked eye.

Natural treasures and spirit herbs were much slower to grow and would take any amount of time depending on how powerful they were, but it was still a true treasure that flipped Rictoli's previous destined fate on its head.

Once the pervert figured this out, though, he stole almost every medical herb he could find. Then, he replanted them in his garden. Once they ripened, he plundered the ready products, sold them, and restarted the process.

He was basically a farmer, but it was honest work. Using the money he could make from his stolen goods, Rictoli built a small fortune that he then invested in his Body Tempering journey.

And the rest was history.

Rictoli's talent was unburied. He grew fast, lived ruthlessly, acted upon all of his suppressed desires, lived an infamous life, and then died in a random cave, leaving everything behind for Astoria to take for herself.

'Hehe, but now it belongs to me! The real protagonist!'

After arrogantly laughing to herself, Astoria suddenly remembered the goal she had set literally seconds ago.

'Right, some idiot wants me to stay in this stupid ring! How dare he yell at me!'

Still fuming, Astoria quickly formed another set of hand seals and teleported outside the ring, seeing the outside world for the first time.

Astoria's old physical body was probably cremated long ago on Terra, as that was the law there. But even without a body, she was still able to cultivate, which was unique to the Nine Desolate Domains.

Unlike what she was used to writing about, this world had three main cultivation paths.

Qi Refinement, Body Tempering, and Soul Cultivation.

Astoria, the ghost, couldn't possibly temper her body, which crossed that off. Qi Refinement didn't directly require a physical body, which Astoria could cultivate under special circumstances, but it required a lower dantian and connecting meridians.

Astoria didn't know if she had either of those at this moment since she really didn't have much time to investigate her new ghostly body, but she didn't have too high of a hope.

But even if she couldn't follow two of the three paths, she was still left with one more.

Soul Cultivation.

This was a foreign path of transcendence that Astoria didn't know about, but thanks to Rictoli's vast knowledge, she was able to study it deeply and rapidly.

A quick scan revealed three bits of knowledge: two broads covering all three cultivation paths and one focusing on only the Soul Cultivation path.

The first overall fact was that each of the three paths in the Nine Desolate Domains was divided into three parts.

The Three Mortal Realms, the Four Earthly Realms, and the Heavenly Seal Realms.

For instance, since he was one of the strongest people in this world before his death, it made sense that Rictolie was at the peak of the Heavenly Seal Realms for the Body Tempering path, the Life and Death Seal Realm.

Each of the three main cultivation paths had ten cultivation realms in the Nine Desolate Domains. That was just the lower limit, though. She was skeptical of the fact that there were only ten cultivation realms.

But Astoria was skeptical of whether or not this was the true peak of strength.

Sure, she had seen Rictoli fighting from his memories. It wasn't all just adult-rated content.

But while he could sever mountain tops and vaporize entire lakes, it wasn't anything THAT crazy. She was expecting someone to Rictoli pluck a star out of the night sky, or swallow a mountain and contain it in his own body to enhance his strength. So she was in the mindset that either Ricotoli was just a frog at the bottom of a well and didn't know where the true powerhouses of this world were or that he truly was the strongest and that there was a whole other one above this one with stronger people.

'Perhaps there was an immortal world above, like in most novels, or even a celestial realm!' Astoria grew giddy at the thought.

Sadly, whether or not there was a realm above this plane had little to do with Astoria at the current time. She was far too weak to worry about that for now. She had merged with a great portion of Rictloli's Soul Essence, and because of that, she skipped over the Three Mortal Realms of the Soul Cultivation path and was now at its fourth realm, the Child Soul Realm.

This was also where the fact about the Soul Cultivation path she learned came into play.

Using her Child Soul Realm strength, Astoria could not just survive in the open air and not be blown away like a gust in the wind, but she could also even influence the physical world, albeit only a small amount.

Her few new powers included the ability to sway and heavily influence the minds of mortals and the ability to turn herself invisible.

From the memories, Astoria knew that anyone in the Three Mortal Realms of all three paths could not truly call themselves cultivators. Only once someone entered the Four Earthly Realms did Soul, Qi, and Body Cultivation truly begin.

And, with her first appearance in this new world, Astoria was a true cultivator.

No, she wasn't a cultivator. 

The second fact told her otherwise.

She was a Soul Cultivator, a Sage!

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