Because, as a transmigrator, I have no foundation to begin with. If I also have no plan for the future, it’s hard for my mind to find peace. Only when I have a direction, steps, and goals can I truly feel grounded. To borrow a common saying nowadays, only then can I feel a sense of security. First, one must settle the heart, and only then can the spirit be at ease. Don’t you see, in modern society, how many people are spiritually empty, restless, and anxious simply because they have no goals, or have goals but no plans or steps to achieve them?

Of course, the information I have now is still limited, so I can only make a rough plan. As I gain more experience or encounter new things in the future, I’ll make adjustments.

This is also the logic most familiar to a cautious and careful science-and-engineering type like Ryan Clark.

Chapter 2: Planning for the Future

As someone who has always been fascinated by xianxia, as someone who longs for freedom and ease, and as someone who fears death, now that I have the chance to cultivate immortality and seek longevity, Ryan Clark will certainly pursue it without hesitation.

And to cultivate the Dao, wealth, companions, methods, and land are all indispensable.

As for wealth, I inherited the old Daoist’s legacy, so I have a thousand or so taels of silver, but as for resources for cultivation, there’s very little. In Old Brooks’s words, “In the Central Plains, items for cultivating immortality are scarce.”

As for companions, according to Old Brooks, the highest cultivation in the two capitals and thirteen provinces is only at the level of the soul leaving the body. So, in the future, when my cultivation is higher and I hit a bottleneck and need to seek advice from others at the same level, it will be very hard to find someone to discuss or explore with. Not to mention, if I encounter a difficult problem or a sentence in the Daoist arts I don’t understand and need to consult someone of a higher realm, it will be even harder.

As for methods, I already have the fundamental great method that points directly to the Dao, so I don’t need to seek outside. But judging from the content of the first volume of the treasured record, it leans more toward the Dao, and as for techniques, there are only a dozen or so Daoist arts that naturally derive from the main Daoist method.

As for artifact refining, there are only a few methods for crafting magical artifacts that Logan Reed himself excerpted and placed at the end of the first volume. Judging from my memory, I only recognize a few of the materials for these artifacts; the rest only appear in myths, storybooks, or folk tales, and some I’ve never even heard of. What’s more, there’s no foundational content on artifact refining at all. Ryan Clark was nearly moved to tears—when I first saw things like the Map of Heaven and Earth, the Life and Death Disk, the Five Fires Burning Heaven Banner, and so on, I was really excited, but in the end, it was just too much of a letdown!

The content on alchemy is the same. It seems these aren’t actually part of the treasured record, but just a few pill recipes and artifact diagrams that Logan Reed attached at the end. Plus, he lived a very, very, very, very, very, very long time ago, which explains the situation.

As for land, according to Old Brooks, there are quite a few famous mountains and great rivers with good environments.

Ryan Clark sighed. It seems that in the future, I’ll inevitably have to set out on the same path as Old Brooks, traveling the world in search of immortals and the Dao. Then, excluding the places Old Brooks has already visited, it looks like there are only three places in the Central Plains that I need to explore: Tongxuan Mountain, Mang Mountain, and the Imperial Capital. The last one is my own addition, because if there really is an immortal cultivation world, and they need to interact with the mortal world, aside from famous mountains and great rivers, probably only the capital of a dynasty would meet the requirements—whether it’s for gathering items, spiritual herbs, and other resources, or for recruiting exceptionally talented disciples. All of this is based on the various novels I’ve read before, plus some logical reasoning. If I’m wrong, it’ll just be a wasted trip.

Once I’ve finished traveling the Central Plains and still haven’t found any immortal fate, I’ll prepare to set sail for the Eastern Sea immortal islands often mentioned in myths and legends. After that, the order will be south of the Hundred Thousand Mountains, then the Western Wastelands.

Ryan Clark took a sip of cool water. The long-term goals and steps for the future are now roughly planned out. In the short term, I need to heal my injuries first, then hopefully restore my cultivation to the previous level of this body. Once I have the ability to protect myself, I’ll move on to the next step. After following the old Daoist for ten years, I’ve learned enough about medicine, pharmacology, and treating injuries to recover my body within half a month.

But the main problem is that my body and soul are at different levels. The body is Brian Foster’s, which has already passed the body-tempering stage and reached the level of generating internal energy and strengthening the soul. But the soul is Ryan Clark’s. Back in school, I was fine, but after starting work, I neglected exercise, so my soul is only at the early stage of body-tempering and soul-nourishing. This is also why Ryan Clark hasn’t started visualization cultivation right away—visualization guides internal energy to strengthen the soul, and at my current soul level, it’s very likely I’d end up with the problem of being too weak to benefit from the nourishment. To be cautious, I’ll keep tempering my body every day, and only start visualization once my soul, slowly nourished by the body, reaches the initial strength of the soul-strengthening stage.

Previously, it took Brian Foster seven years to go from the beginning of body-tempering to entering the soul-strengthening stage. But now, the body is already at the soul-nourishing stage, and the nourishment it provides to the soul is far greater than before. Ryan Clark estimates that reaching the soul-strengthening stage should take much less time than before, but exactly how long will depend on the effects of the nourishment over time.

Moreover, the medicinal bath recipes and decoctions Brian Foster used during body-tempering were all from the true teachings Old Brooks received. Now, Ryan Clark has even better options—the treasured record provides three recipes, each with both a medicinal bath and an oral decoction.

But just like the pill recipes and artifact diagrams, they’re a real headache—many of the herbs are unheard of or only exist in legends. Especially the first recipe, Dragon Emperor Blood-Refining Pill, about seventy or eighty percent of the ingredients are either unknown or from myths and legends. The second recipe, Human Immortal Body-Tempering Decoction, is about forty or fifty percent.