The light vanished, and Ye Tiancheng disappeared with it.
Everything that had accompanied him also vanished…
What is this? It felt like passing through a thin membrane.
This unprecedented experience filled his heart with dread.
"Perhaps, I am the kind of unscrupulous system you speak of."
A voice, familiar yet dreamlike.
Real, yet fantastical.
"I want to ask what exactly is going on?" Ye Tiancheng asked.
"Because your worldview was flawed and you were not tolerated by the world, you must be tempered in a harsh world. Answer complete."
Ye Tiancheng felt utterly dejected.
Did all his struggles disappear with him?
His world dominance, his women, his wealth.
"Sorry, you have been exiled!" the system said.
Ye Tiancheng felt ten thousand curses fly through his mind.
He wasn't the only wicked person in the world, so why was he the one being exiled?
"I cannot answer your question. There are no answers for this."
"Then what is your use? Just to chat with me?" Ye Tiancheng was very unhappy.
"Cherish your opportunities, do not mistake tempering for torment, or you will be exiled again," the system replied. Ye Tiancheng's heart was utterly crushed.
But he had to accept the reality before him.
He remembered seeing a light and then inexplicably transmigrating.
The process of transmigration was also rather anticlimactic.
It was simply passing through a thin membrane.
The world on the other side of the membrane completely overturned his understanding.
It was desolate, no different from a wilderness in a game.
Lush trees, clear streams, rocky mountains…
"This world is truly good, untouched by humans, very primitive, very beautiful, a great place for cultivation." Ye Tiancheng praised, completely carefree. He had been unhappy moments ago, but now he let it go.
The faster one lets go, the more happiness one finds.
On the surface, it was exile, but in reality, it was a blessing…
However, Ye Tiancheng's pleasant feeling didn't last long before he was disturbed by the sound of fighting.
"What, this place isn't peaceful either!" Ye Tiancheng grumbled.
Where there are people, there is the martial world.
He was not surprised to encounter such things frequently.
He hurried towards the location of the fight, and what met his eyes was a group of bare-chested men… they were fighting.
Many were already injured.
"System, what should I do?" Ye Tiancheng knew nothing about this world and wanted to know what to do.
"Choose to intervene, or not to intervene?"
"Of course not to intervene. I, Ye Tiancheng, don't want to meddle in other people's affairs, as too much involvement leads to too many troubles."
"Intervening can earn you a golden finger, a must-have artifact for anyone reborn in another world. Don't you want it?"
"I want a chicken leg. I just want to be a lazy salted fish." Ye Tiancheng wanted to exist in a different way. In his previous life, he had done many things he thought were good, but heaven had shown him no mercy.
He was exiled for being unsatisfied.
A place with no beautiful women, only a group of savages.
This was truly unfortunate.
He resolutely refused to help others, wanting only to be a lazy salted fish.
"Understood!" After saying this, the system no longer cared what Ye Tiancheng did.
Ye Tiancheng left the place. He was initially energetic, but after a while, he was tormented by hunger.
"I forgot, I still need to eat."
He looked around, everything was wild, nothing else.
But he felt his pocket and found a liquid lighter.
"Fortunately, I have this, otherwise, I would truly be done for."
With fire, he could cook things. Otherwise, eating raw food would lead to bacterial infections and even death.
He had always wanted to go to the wilderness, but now that he was here, he realized it wasn't a fun place.
In games, he always fantasized about escaping the world he disliked, but now that he was truly here, it was like the story of Ye Gong loving dragons.
Ye Tiancheng gave a wry smile and then calmly began to hunt.
In that world, hunting meant going to jail.
But in this wilderness, as long as you had enough strength, you could hunt as much as you wanted, and no one would stop you.
"Primitive society is better." He immediately concluded.
However, he didn't know that hunting was a very skillful activity.
When he actually started hunting, he realized that what he had learned from books was completely useless.
Ye Tiancheng was disheartened.
He sat on the ground, threw the hunting fork he had just made onto the ground, and stomped on it fiercely with his foot: "What kind of bullshit learning materials, I understand now, those learning materials are all deceptive!"
After venting, his stomach growled even louder.
"No, I need to find food. I don't want to die like this. Although I'm a salted fish without any fighting spirit, being a salted fish doesn't mean I can starve to death, right? Staying alive is the key."
Ye Tiancheng muttered to himself, then started to use his brain.
He saw a river not far away.
Immediately, he grinned slyly: "Wow, this is great, I can catch fish!"
So, he made a simple trap.
A while later, the trap started to move. Ye Tiancheng quickly picked it up, and inside were several large black fish.
"Wow, this is great, and each black fish weighs several pounds!"
Ye Tiancheng was overjoyed. He then dug out the fish's innards and cleaned off the scales.
After starting a fire, he placed the fish nearby to roast.
Within a quarter of an hour, a fragrant aroma wafted from the fish.
Starving, Ye Tiancheng grabbed a roasted fish and took a big bite.
A fresh fragrance entered his mind. Although it lacked salt, when you're hungry, you don't care if it's delicious or not.
After eating his fill, Ye Tiancheng found a good spot, lay down, and went to sleep.
Since he aspired to be a salted fish, eating and sleeping was the way to become useless.
What was in the past is in the past; enjoying every moment now is the great way of life.
For Ye Tiancheng, he didn't wish for any great mission to befall him.
No matter what happened to this world, it had nothing to do with him.
He fell into a deep sleep.
He had a dream, a familiar face appeared in his mind.
It was the face of a beautiful woman, so gentle, so beautiful, making him want to be with her.
When he woke up, he realized it was just a dream.
"Did I forget someone?"
"You forgot your wife." the system said.
"I had a wife?" Ye Tiancheng found that all his past memories had become blurred.
That beautiful face was also gradually becoming difficult to remember.
But he found that the more he couldn't remember, the more he longed for her.
How strange, what was going on?
"You did, and she was also exiled to this world."
"Should I go look for her?" Ye Tiancheng asked.
"You can choose to go or not. Not going means you'll be alone for the rest of your life. Going means you'll be happy for the rest of your life." the system said.
"Forget it, my ideal is to be a salted fish." Ye Tiancheng looked around and found it was completely dark. He knew it was night.
This was truly unfortunate. He really disliked the night.
Because the nights in the wilderness were very dangerous.
Many fierce beasts were active at night.
"Ah, I don't like the night here." Ye Tiancheng stood up and looked for dry firewood.
After lighting a fire, he went back to sleep.
Wilderness survival knowledge told him that he had to do this to survive.
Otherwise, he would be eaten by wild beasts.
Death was a terrifying thing.
He had to survive to be a beautiful salted fish.
"Only salted fish are good in this world, the salted fish of the salted fish are truly wonderful. Leaving the embrace of the salted fish, where can happiness be found?" Ye Tiancheng hummed, and despite his lack of musical talent, he was very happy.
He had finally left the world he detested.
A new world, a new mood.
Naturally, he had to sing.
You might think something miraculous would happen at night, but nothing did. Ye Tiancheng slept soundly until dawn.
He woke up when the sun warmed his backside.
Rubbing his sleepy eyes, he looked up at the beautiful sun and felt very happy.
"Hello, Mr. Sun."
Unfortunately, Mr. Sun did not answer him.
Ye Tiancheng grinned: "I knew you wouldn't talk to me. Wow, I'm a madman. No one will control me when I do crazy things, it's so cool."
Unfortunately, he was hungry.
"Go find food." Ye Tiancheng grinned and made a victory gesture to the sun.
The sun still shone as brightly as ever, unaffected by his madness.
This day, he adopted a very lazy method, which was to wait by the stump.
Because there were many animals in this world, even a lazy approach could yield good results.
Throughout the day, he caught over a dozen wild rabbits.
He skinned the rabbits by the stream and roasted them over a fire.
Impatiently, he bit into a cooked rabbit, and not only was it hot, but it also tasted terribly fishy. He spat out the rabbit meat he had eaten. Without salt, it was truly tasteless.
Moreover, in this world, salt was as precious as gold.
Getting salt was a pipe dream.
Therefore, for tasty food, he had to make salt.
Otherwise, he would be miserable in this world.
As a lazy person, he basically had no dreams, but for the sake of delicious food, he had to try.
Being poor at chemistry, he only remembered that salt was made by boiling seawater dry, and the white residue stuck to the pot. He didn't know that deep within the inland strata, there was a brine that could also be used to refine salt. However, in this wilderness, getting a metal pot was also a dream. Therefore, this massive undertaking of salt production first required solving the problem of the pot.
The method of making pottery by shaping clay and firing it!
An idea formed in his mind.
Although pottery pots were not as sturdy as iron pots, they would suffice if they could be used. And with a pot, he could braise rabbit brains, but what about spices? One by one, problems arose, and his head was about to explode.
However, the sky had already darkened, and dreams were for tomorrow.
Without salt, he couldn't let his stomach go hungry.
Enduring the fishy taste of the rabbit meat, Ye Tiancheng ate it all.
Afterward, he slept by the campfire.
The next day, he woke up and still shouted at the sun: "Hello, Mr. Sun."
Unfortunately, the sun still ignored him.
But he was very happy, finally living in a free world.
No matter how much this world lacked the civilization of his previous world, none of that mattered.
What mattered was escaping the constraints of that world.
No cars, no trains, no planes, no excessive exhaust emissions, no global warming…