He stayed there for two years. With the help of volunteers, his “condition” gradually improved, he learned Japanese, adapted to the environment, and even got a new name in the process—the place where he was found by the police was by the Kirikawa River in autumn, so he was given a new name, “Autumn Whitman,” for registration purposes.

Of course, none of that really mattered. What mattered was... he was struck by lightning before he even finished creating his character, and didn’t get the legendary “system.” Aside from his innate talents and his life-bound artifact, he got nothing else.

Talents were random, and he got three: [Light of the Righteous Path], [Body of Solar Flame], and [Blood Demon’s Hand].

[Light of the Righteous Path] is an orange legendary talent that can greatly increase the favorability of “righteous people” and ordinary citizens toward the character, starting at “respect.” It can also boost the character’s attributes; as long as you act chivalrously and fight evil, the boost continues to grow, up to a maximum of 20%.

But if you do bad things, like robbing or stealing for no reason, you’ll get penalized, and even have your stats deducted in reverse, up to a maximum of 20% off all attributes.

So, as long as you don’t plan on being a criminal, all your stats like strength, stamina, and speed can be increased by 20%, which is quite impressive. But in practice... it’s just so-so. In the past two years, he’d helped old ladies cross the street countless times, but the improvement felt extremely slow—he barely noticed any difference, and who knows how many years it would take to reach that 20%.

This talent could only be described as promising for the future, but not much help at the current stage.

[Body of Solar Flame] is a purple epic-level talent: +15 to constitution, +15 to vitality, all healing effects +100%, resistance to yin-type spells +33%, and damage to yin-type monsters +33%. Thanks to this talent, his body was much stronger than it looked, his resistance to blows far exceeded that of ordinary people, and he could recover quickly from both external and internal injuries.

[Blood Demon’s Hand] is a blue elite-level talent, which simply gives +1.5% lifesteal. But paired with [Body of Solar Flame], it’s not bad—if he got hurt or overtrained and his body couldn’t take it, he could ambush a tree spirit, hack at them a few times, and recover quickly. It saved him a lot on medicine and allowed him to keep up his intense self-training.

Overall, these three talents were pretty good, but to be honest, in 2020, in a law-abiding modern metropolis, these talents for fighting and brawling weren’t all that useful.

No matter how good your physical stats are, how many bullets can you take? If a handgun can’t hurt you, what about an automatic rifle? If that doesn’t work, what about cannons and missiles?

In the end, he was still just a mortal. These talents didn’t bring any fundamental change.

That left only his life-bound artifact, which he randomly got: the “Demon-Refining Pot.” This “Demon-Refining Pot” had two main functions: refining monsters and the world inside the pot.

It sounded great, full of potential, quite impressive. Unfortunately...

If he wanted to refine monsters, he’d been in Hokkaido for over two years, searching hard, but hadn’t seen a single monster—not even a hair from one. He didn’t even have the raw materials to refine.

That function was basically useless.

As for the world inside the pot, don’t even mention it. To get in and out, he had to pass a stone mountain, surrounded by a ring of thick-skinned, tough tree spirits who constantly wanted to gang up on him or whip him, blocking his way out. After two years, he still had no idea what was outside the forest, let alone making any progress in his cultivation journey. If it weren’t for the fact that, for some reason, those tree spirits refused to leave the forest, he probably wouldn’t even dare enter the “world inside the pot” by now.

He had no cultivation techniques, was a standard mortal, couldn’t use sword flight or spells, and had no idea where to learn them. Faced with countless tree spirits, what could he do?

All he could rely on were three talents that didn’t fundamentally change anything, and the Demon-Refining Pot. But the pot had no effect on those tree spirits at all—maybe because they were part of the world inside the pot, and the pot couldn’t refine itself. He’d even tried bringing out the remains of tree spirits, but still got no reaction. Relying on the pot for cultivation was a dead end.

He’d really tried everything, but just couldn’t get out. It was incredibly frustrating.

After all, humans have their limits.

Maybe it really was time to give up on unrealistic fantasies, to stop dreaming of achieving immortality, marrying nine wives, surpassing Tang Bohu, looking down on Lord Wei, and returning home in glory.

It was time to just live life properly.

……

He sat there cross-legged, thinking for over half an hour, and let out a long sigh. He felt it really was time to cut off distracting thoughts, give up on this golden finger, and put his energy and time elsewhere.

If you don’t make a clean break, you’ll only get more tangled up. Otherwise, would he really waste his whole life on this?

At this rate, forget about nine wives—he probably couldn’t even find one.

Of course, it wasn’t like he was giving up on this golden finger entirely. Even if he couldn’t cultivate or gain supernatural powers, the Demon-Refining Pot still had plenty of other uses and was a huge help in life. He hadn’t lost out, and wasn’t forced to immigrate for nothing.

At most, he’d just lost two years of time.

Thinking about it that way, he felt much better.