Chapter 6: Chapter 6

Having consumed so much, Ron’s gains were naturally substantial as well.

First and foremost, he had identified several practical and effective exercise programs. Out of professional habit, Ron referred to specific sets of mysterious pattern changes as 【Programs】.

Or to put it another way, calling them 【Cultivation Methods】 would also be perfectly acceptable.

However, Ron still preferred to call them 【Programs】, not only because his primary profession before transmigrating had been a programmer, but also because a 【Program】 could run automatically and operate in the background, whereas a 【Cultivation Method】 required hands-on practice.

Still, to satisfy his identity as a web novel creator, Ron named the set of effective exercise programs he had distilled 【Comprehensive Body Refinement Technique】.

As the name implied, as long as one executed the 【Comprehensive Body Refinement Technique】 program suite, one could achieve an all-around body refinement effect.

Of course, one could also execute individual modules within the suite, but doing so would only train specific parts of the body.

One could say that the 【Comprehensive Body Refinement Technique】 was Ron’s greatest harvest from pulling an all-nighter!

…

Beyond the standout achievement of the 【Comprehensive Body Refinement Technique】, Ron had also gained far deeper insights during his experimentation into his true form’s state, the interactive mechanisms between his true form and the “Ron” vessel, and even the nature of this world itself.

First was the world. During his experiments, particularly his observation of the mysterious pattern changes after “Ron” consumed the miraculous beef Liya had brought, Ron discovered a mysterious element that pervaded this world.

He tentatively named it the 【Transcendent Factor】.

After Ron ate the beef, a large quantity of free-floating mysterious patterns would reactively emerge within the pattern system representing “Ron” on his Light Orb’s surface.

Through concentrated probing of those mysterious patterns, he confirmed that the body’s tissues were undergoing spontaneous changes influenced by some unknown force.

The beef Liya had brought was primarily consumed by Ron as he chased down the root cause of these changes. In the end, he never actually found the so-called 【Transcendent Factor】, but he could confirm its existence.

Moreover, it wasn’t just the beef. A smaller quantity of Transcendent Factor also existed within “Ron’s” body itself, because even after the beef was fully digested, Ron could still find traces of the Transcendent Factor’s effects on the Light Orb’s surface.

He hadn’t found it before not because it was unfindable, but because he had lacked the concept entirely!

It was like mixing a spherical diamond among glass marbles of the same size. For someone with absolutely no concept of what a diamond was, let alone telling them apart, they might not even entertain the idea of distinguishing them in the first place.

That was exactly Ron’s situation. He had previously speculated about how transcendent power might manifest in this world, even suspecting that the foreign-colored patterns on the orb’s surface were a manifestation of transcendent power.

That he was simply too weak, unable to contain such formidable power, and therefore perceived it as a threat.

But he had mostly followed the same imaginative train of thought from before transmigrating, thinking that transcendent power might be some concrete, distinct element or energy. If it did exist, then it should leave some trace on his Light Orb’s surface.

Now, he had simply confirmed that hypothesis.

…

Besides the 【Transcendent Factor】, Ron’s other major discovery was that “Ron’s” body was in fact also being continuously subjected to external contamination!

But the rate of contamination was countless times slower than that of the Light Orb’s true form. If “Ron” could continue living in the Sis Territory without any mishaps, he would most likely live to the end of his natural lifespan.

However, now that the transmigrator Ron had arrived, he had previously assumed that all the foreign-colored patterns mixed into “Ron’s” pattern system were the result of “Ron” glimpsing the evil spirit. But in reality, glimpsing the evil spirit was probably only part of the story.

There was also a very small portion that had accumulated from everyday exposure to external contamination over time.

Upon understanding this, Ron grew deeply curious: if a native human received enough contamination, what would become of them?

And furthermore, could transcendent power counteract this contamination?

…

With a thread of curiosity and anticipation, Ron opened his front door. Outside, the sky had already brightened and the snow had stopped, though heavy clouds still stretched as far as the eye could see, seemingly brewing the next major snowfall.

He had returned in a rush yesterday, and with the sky already dark, he hadn’t had the chance to properly take in this exotic border town. Now it was daylight, and the greatest crisis of his assumed identity had been tentatively weathered.

At this moment, Ron felt relatively relaxed. Only now did he have the state of mind to properly observe the place where he might be living for a long time to come.

His hasty glance last night had indeed not deceived him. Apart from the wooden cabin behind him, rows of identical wooden houses were neatly arranged on all sides, their styles largely uniform.

It gave him an overwhelming sense of déjà vu. At this moment, he was not in some border town of a classical era, but rather in a mock-historical residential complex at a tourist spot back home!

This kind of neatly arranged housing layout and relatively uniform architectural style was truly hard to imagine in a classical-era town.

Looking at it this way, Ron felt even more strongly that some immense secret must be hidden behind this bizarre order.

…

Stuffing a warm flatbread inside his cloak, Ron took one final glance around the cabin, then closed the door without any reluctance and headed east.

Thinking about the person he was about to face, Ron still felt somewhat nervous. After all, the other party genuinely wielded transcendent power. If the man saw through him, how would he handle it?

But not going was not an option either. Liya had surely already told her father what he said last night, and from “Ron’s” understanding of Jason, the man would absolutely want to meet with him face to face.

As for whether that meeting would involve trying to talk him out of joining the territory guard like Liya had, or something else entirely, “Ron’s” memories offered no further basis for judgment.

However, from the perspective of Ron the Earthling, if it was truly “Ron” who wanted to join the territory guard, Jason probably wouldn’t stand in his way.

…

Lost in these scattered thoughts, Ron soon spotted a “familiar” wooden cabin. Outside it, a patch of open ground had been cleared, revealing a dark stone slab surface.

Only then did Ron realize that he hadn’t felt the slightest bit of mud underfoot during his entire walk. He scraped his foot hard against the ground and, sure enough, rubbed away a patch to reveal a similarly dark stone slab underneath.

Good lord! Was every road in Sis Town paved with this kind of stone slab?

Ron was somewhat baffled. Through the eyes of a transmigrator, the productive capacity of the Sis Territory didn’t seem to support this level of infrastructure construction.

But then again, thinking about the uniform residential houses, the eerily lawful governance, and the confirmed existence of transcendent power, the presence of these neatly laid stone roads didn’t seem so hard to fathom after all.

As he was looking around, the door of Liya’s house suddenly opened. A man built like an iron tower stepped out, looked toward Ron, and called out:

“What are you dawdling for over there! Get over here!”

Ron’s heart tightened. He knew a new trial had arrived. As long as he could get past Jason, no one in the entire Sis Territory should be able to tell that he had swapped his “inner core.”