May 27th, Sunday, 6:03 a.m.
Jiang He walked out of his bedroom refreshed. Old Jiang was sitting in the living room, legs crossed, watching TV.
He raised his hand in greeting: "Good morning, future me!"
"It's not all that good of a morning." Old Jiang said helplessly: "I know you haven't rested for ten days straight, all for the unlimited resources of the Twisted Time Domain, and came home especially to sleep for a bit…"
"But I am a Heroic Spirit, I don't need sleep."
"I finally managed to return to this era. Isn't it too much if you don't even let me take a stroll while you're asleep?"
Jiang He chuckled: "You should go complain to White Crane. It was his nonsense before that made you all lose the right to go out at night… Besides, he spent all the money, now there's less than two hundred left in the account. Even if you went out, you couldn't do much."
"I'd say your treatment is already pretty good, at least you can watch TV."
"White Crane was locked in his room, watching me sleep for an entire week."
White Crane sneaking out in the middle of the night to kill people wasn't a good thing.
But now, it gave Jiang He a reasonable excuse to restrict other Heroic Spirits.
Old Jiang couldn't even refute it—
Because Jiang He did indeed have reason on his side in this matter.
These future Heroic Spirits didn't belong to this era in the first place. If they wandered outside freely, it could cause immeasurable consequences.
Perhaps now it wasn't a big deal, but once Jiang He's strength increased and he could summon two or even more future Heroic Spirits at the same time… dozens of different versions of Jiang He, each with different personalities, experiences, and thoughts, running around outside—the scene would be terrifying.
In a way, that already counted as a world-ending disaster.
So it was a good thing Jiang He had set this rule from the start.
It was just unfortunate for Old Jiang, who didn't even get a single chance to move freely, becoming a personal guard right away.
"World Destroyer, huh? Next time don't rush to summon. Wait until my cooldown is over and summon us both together… I want to see how much he's really worth."
Old Jiang complained, then said: "Grounded is fine, but at least find a way to make some money, buy me a set of phone, computer, and game console or something, so I can kill some time."
"That's no problem."
Jiang He nodded.
This was a reasonable request, and he naturally had to fulfill it.
Come to think of it, this could be extended to the future—prepare a whole set of internet-addict gear for every Heroic Spirit. It would effectively relieve their boredom and reduce their interest in the outside world.
In fact, once he could summon multiple Heroic Spirits at the same time, they could even play co-op games against each other…
By then, the whole team could be called the Hall of Heroes.
While Jiang He let his imagination run wild, he washed up.
After washing, he changed clothes and walked out of the bedroom lightly.
"Old Jiang, let's go, breakfast together."
"Oh?" Old Jiang raised a brow: "I don't need to stay hidden?"
"It's just breakfast, throw on White Crane's appearance and you're fine. Go back to being invisible afterwards."
After dealing with so many high-level Transcendents, Jiang He simply stopped pretending.
After all, everyone could already guess the existence of the "white-haired man." If he kept trying so hard to disguise it, wouldn't that make him look cute?
He would stop acting. It was enough that everyone knew there was such a person.
This way, whether it was Old Jiang or another Heroic Spirit, they could all just use White Crane's disguise. Much more convenient.
Even better, to keep the Heroic Spirits' disguises consistent—
Jiang He let Old Jiang take White Crane's form, then altered his features into a completely unfamiliar face. He snapped a picture with his phone and saved it.
According to Old Jiang, in this era the person with this face hadn't been born yet, and wasn't in any database.
Considering that he might never even be born, this was a "clean" identity.
With this new identity, Old Jiang walked out of the house comfortably.
On the way, when they bumped into Auntie Yang walking her dog, he even introduced himself, claiming to be Jiang He's distant uncle, born with premature white hair…
Because Old Jiang was very talkative, sunny, and cheerful, Auntie Yang didn't notice anything strange. She really thought he was Jiang He's uncle, and kept praising Jiang He while inviting him over for a visit sometime.
Old Jiang politely declined her invitation, leaving the neighborhood with Jiang He.
Once outside, Old Jiang wore a proud smile: "Well? I did pretty well, didn't I?"
Jiang He said: "Not bad."
If it weren't for the Council having established a new population verification system, where basically everyone had identification…
It would actually be fine to disguise each Heroic Spirit as a distant relative, making them all his uncle refreshing weekly.
As things stood, it could only be their personalities refreshing weekly.
Jiang He openly took Old Jiang for breakfast before letting him disappear back into invisibility.
Afterwards, Jiang He didn't head to the training school, but instead took a detour straight to the fire department—
There were too many people at school now. Jiang He still wasn't used to being in the spotlight, and he didn't want to be stuck with Yunyang, facing another battle challenge.
Bullying weaker opponents was fine once or twice, but after that it got boring.
As for the resources provided in training…
The Council's arrangements for the students were clearly half focused on raising their energy levels and half on training combat skills.
So at school, only on Thursdays when the Twisted Time Domain opened were there unlimited resources. On other days, only places like the Combat Hall and library were open, and resources had to be obtained by the students themselves.
Jiang He wasn't in a rush to challenge the Metal Knights, or to learn combat skills from Old Jiang.
His current overall energy level was 486, just 14 points shy of the E-rank shackle, but his base attributes were very low. His highest was spirit at only 297.3, and his physical strength was just 151.2.
He wanted to first boost his physical strength in the Fire Department's Blood Refining Chamber, stacking his overall energy up to the E-rank shackle.
"Just a little short of full experience, leaving it be feels too uncomfortable…"
On his way to the fire department, Jiang He passed the wet market, and with 20 yuan bought a cheap grass carp for Xiao Mi.
If he was going to build rapport, he might as well go all in.
But when he arrived at the fire department, no matter how he called, Xiao Mi was nowhere to be seen—probably off playing somewhere.
Instead, he saw He Xue, who usually loved slacking off, training alongside Zhang Zhiyong early in the morning. That was rare.
Sure enough, with doomsday approaching, even salted fish learned to flip over.
Jiang He greeted the captain and the others, placed the grass carp in Xiao Mi's food bowl, and stepped into the Blood Refining Chamber.
Counting the quota given by the captain, he still had more than a thousand grams of unused C-rank Spiritual Blood, enough to sustain training for quite some time.
Just like this morning, with only 6 grams of Spiritual Blood, combined with his boosted Word-Spirit effect, he efficiently absorbed the essence of the blood, greatly enhancing his constitution.
After two more hours of training, he fully digested the essence of the blood.
In just one session, his physical strength rose by 15 points!
Of course, this was largely because his physical strength had been too low.
Just like approaching an energy bottleneck made growth efficiency drop,
Jiang He's physical strength was still far from the bottleneck, so his growth efficiency was relatively high.
In one morning, Jiang He trained three times, and his physical strength soared by 43.1 points!
From 151.2 up to 194.3!
His attribute shortcoming was compensated, and his overall energy level shot up as well, reaching 496 points, just 4 short of the bottleneck!
It was just then—
As Jiang He walked out of the resting chamber, preparing for his next training session, he felt the ground suddenly shake violently, with a deafening rumble coming from the distance.
"An earthquake?"
In the corridor, Zhang Zhiyong had just finished training with his squad.
As everyone looked around in confusion, his phone buzzed. He pulled it out, glanced at it, and his face changed slightly.
"Xinyun Breeding Farm was destroyed by an unknown exotic beast. The beasts are rioting!!"