Chapter 001: Madman William Clark

Fengjiang City, Jiangnan Province.

Room 203, second floor of Qing'an Psychiatric Hospital—a young man of average appearance and a pale face lay motionless on the bed.

His name was William Clark, but he was no longer the fifth son of the Lin family, William Clark.

William Clark had been here for three days now. To be precise, he had been reborn here for three days. Over these three days, he had finally come to roughly understand his situation.

William Clark was born on the Tianhong Continent, and his family was considered a relatively small cultivation clan. The Tianhong Continent was a place where technology was far more advanced than on Earth, and it was also a world where technology and cultivation coexisted. As for "cultivation," it was just a general term, encompassing cultivators, soul cultivators, qi cultivators, object cultivators, and so on.

To put it simply, all these forms of cultivation aimed to increase the practitioner's lifespan and combat ability. All cultivation required spiritual energy, but the places with the richest spiritual energy on the Tianhong Continent were concentrated in human-inhabited areas. As a result, there were often magical beasts or other races trying to seize these lands, so battles were frequent and unavoidable.

To resist the invasions of other races, even the human nations often went to war over technological and cultivation resources. Thus, the people of the Tianhong Continent constantly cultivated themselves while also developing technology.

William Clark was cheerful, easygoing, and generous. Not only was he a top-tier electronics expert in the Tianhong Ganyu Nation, but he was also a top-tier pharmacologist, and he practiced the art of Star Cultivation.

Strictly speaking, Star Cultivation was a type of object cultivation, but very few people on the Tianhong Continent practiced it. First, because a cultivator's body and soul had to possess a "star source"—just as cultivators needed a spiritual root and soul cultivators needed a soul root. Second, practitioners could not cultivate beyond the fifth star; if they did, their soul would be destroyed instantly.

Yet, star cultivators had the strongest combat power among all cultivators. It was said that those who reached the ninth star could ascend, but that was only a legend. In the history of the Tianhong Continent, no one had ever ascended through cultivation, let alone through Star Cultivation.

Very few people possessed a star source, and as for the second point, few cared, since star cultivators couldn't even reach the third star, let alone the fifth. The highest achievement in the history of the Tianhong Continent was reaching the fourth star, and the highest Star Cultivation technique available only went up to the fifth star. Even if you succeeded, there was no technique to continue cultivating.

Yet William Clark, who possessed both a spiritual root and a star source, chose to practice Star Cultivation. This was because William Clark had once accidentally obtained a complete nine-star Star Cultivation technique, left behind by a predecessor who had supposedly ascended through Star Cultivation. The manual even stated that as long as one's soul power could survive the crisis at the fifth star, there was hope of reaching the ninth star. It also described in detail how to overcome the fifth star crisis—essentially, it just corrected the mistakes in the original cultivation method.

This discovery made William Clark extremely excited, and he chose Star Cultivation without hesitation, believing he could overcome the fifth star barrier and definitely reach the fifth star. But William Clark greatly overestimated himself. He did reach the fifth star, becoming the first genius in the history of the Tianhong Continent to do so.

But the day after reaching the fifth star, the other races attacked. During the battle, William Clark's unstable fifth star power suddenly erupted. Under the dual pressure of the alien beasts and his own immense star soul power, William Clark's soul was destroyed.

What William Clark considered lucky was that his soul seemed to be wrapped in his own fifth star soul power, passing through a wormhole and being reborn in the body of a mental patient on Earth.

William Clark gave a bitter smile—this actually fit his identity quite well. Back on the Tianhong Continent, his nickname was "Madman." Whether it was scientific research, combat cultivation, or even chasing women, others called him "Madman." And now, he really had been reborn into the body of a madman.

After three days of investigation, William Clark finally understood the identity of this body and his current location. From what he could tell, this place was called Earth, but its technological development was only equivalent to the Tianhong Continent two hundred years ago—in other words, it was quite backward.

This body was also named William Clark, the fifth son of Edward Clark, the head of the prominent Lin family. The Lin family was one of the top ten families in China, with business all over the world, and even among the top five central leaders, there were Lin family members.

William Clark only became mentally ill later on. Originally, he was just a notorious, good-for-nothing playboy, indulging in every vice imaginable—drinking, whoring, gambling, you name it. But he had no business sense or political acumen whatsoever. Among the other young masters of the Lin family and his peers, there were plenty of other profligates, but at least they could do something, not just indulge in debauchery all day long.