Chapter 1: Jian Jin

April 21st, the third year of Jingping, the capital.

The second metropolitan examination after the new emperors accession to the throne had been over for more than a month. Today was the day for the successful candidates of the metropolitan examination to take the palace examination.[1]

Shortly after midnight, Jian Jin, who had placed 42nd in the exam, woke up and carefully prepared to get up.

Two-year-old Jian Xun, who was lying next to him, probably sensed something and wiggled his body toward him.

Jian Jin patted the childs back and used his mental power to soothe him. When he saw that he was asleep, he put his mind at ease and quietly went out the door.

Jian Jin lived in a small one-storey courtyard that he had bought when he first came to the capital a few months ago. When he went out, Big Sister Jian was already busy in the kitchen of the west wing. When she saw him, she asked, Ah Jin[2], I made patties. Do you want to eat it?

Yes. Jian Jin smiled gently.

Ill go get it right away. Big Sister Jian turned around and went into the kitchen. In a short while, she took out a mutton patty wrapped in greasy paper.

The heavy stink of the mutton patty made Jian Jins brow furrow. He used his mental power to shield his sense of taste before he finished the patty in his hand in a few bites. He then said, Big Sister, keep an eye on Ah Xun. Im going out.

Ill definitely keep an eye on Ah Xun. Big Sister Jian wiped her hands with her apron and took it off again to hang it on the wooden hook at the door of the west wing. Ah Jin, do well in your exam and come back as the Zhuangyuan[3]!

Jian Jin laughed a little helplessly. Big sister, you think too highly of me.

Jian Jin didnt think he would be able to get the top score the ancient imperial examinations werent easy!

Yes, for Jian Jin, this place was ancient. He didnt belong to this time and space at all, or maybe not to this planet.

He was born in the interstellar era. He was caught in a space-time rift during a cosmic voyage and accidentally transmigrated to this planet. It had been five years since he arrived.

Although he called Big Sister Jian sister, in fact they had no blood relationship it was a disguise.

When he first came here, he was badly injured. His mental power was also severely damaged, and his whole body was in a very bad state. In addition, he didnt understand the civilization on this planet, so he didnt dare to make contact with the people on this planet.

For a long time after transmigrating, he hid in the mountains near a small village. While recovering from his injuries, he relied on his mental power to secretly learn everything about the planet.

In the interstellar era, every human had mental power, which was even more important than their body bodies could be replaced or modified through advanced technology, but each persons mental power was unique. It could only grow and couldnt be modified. In addition, mental power had many functions.

On a small scale, people with strong mental power had a strong learning ability, and on a larger scale, mechs and warships and the like all relied on mental power to operate.

They even reproduced offspring through mental power.

When mental power became the hallmark of a person, and a bodys genes could be modified, human reproduction no longer relied on the physical body. Instead, two people needed to achieve mental resonance, establish a mental link, and fuse their mental powers.

If those two people loved each other deeply and trusted each other absolutely, after the fusion of their mental powers, a mental seed would be conceived, equivalent to the childs soul.

The mental power seed would be placed into an embryo cultivated with the right genes, allowing it to fuse with the embryo and slowly grow, and a new life would be birthed.

If there was no seed of mental power and only genes were used to grow the embryo then the embryo wouldnt be able to grow at all because it wouldnt have a soul.

Jian Jins mental power was very strong. Although he was badly injured in the space-time rift, he was still able to extend it out about ten meters. After transmigrating, he always sneaked close to a nearby village to learn the language of this world.

He also used his mental power to adjust his appearance so that he looked more similar to the people on this planet.

In fact, his original appearance was similar to the people on this planet, with two eyes and a nose. However, in his era, after generations of genetic adjustment, everyones appearance had been refined to the extreme, which caused him to look like a mannequin.

If he went out with his original appearance, he would probably scare the people on this planet.

Thinking about the days when he was living rough and trying to adapt to this planet, Jian Jin secretly sighed.

Compared to that time, he was already doing very well now that he was able to eat stinky mutton patties.

He wondered how his partner was doing now.

Jian Jin had transmigrated five years ago, and for the first few months, he lived alone.

Thankfully, the space button he had bound with his mental power hadnt been damaged. The ten cubic meters of space held many of the daily necessities he had previously purchased. In addition, he had strong mental power and his physical force value wasnt bad, so he was able to get by quite well in the wilderness.

However, just when he had almost recovered from his injuries and was planning to make up an identity to contact the natives of this planet, he picked up a severely injured young man.

The young mans body was densely covered with wounds and scars. There wasnt a single piece of good skin on his body, and he had obviously suffered abuse and injuries since he was a child.

Although in the era he came from it wasnt a big deal to swap bodies or modify ones own body, and some people even chopped off their arms and legs and replaced them with mechanical devices, this was a primitive planet!

People here didnt know how to use mental power and didnt have high-tech equipment. Having such an injury would be incredibly painful!

This young man looked like he was close to death because of his physical injuries.

Luckily, this young mans mental power was very strong. He was the strongest person he had ever seen after transmigrating to this planet. Because of this, the man held on and didnt die.

Jian Jin saved the young man, healed him, and kept him alive. However, the young man was so traumatized that he forgot all about the past.

Jian Jin, whose mental power was already in a bad state, was even injured again during the healing process.

The two of them could only continue to shelter in the mountains to nurse their wounds and recuperate. As they did, they developed feelings and eventually became partners.

Jian Jin once again missed his simple, sweet, kind and innocent partner.

From the moment he woke up, his partner was particularly clingy and close to him, and he couldnt bear to be separated from him. It was the first time since he was a child that he met someone so affectionate.

In the interstellar society he used to live in, there were clear boundaries between people. It took years for two people to become partners, and after they did, they often failed to conceive mental seeds, or children, because they didnt have enough trust and love for their partners.

Jian Jin loved children, and even prepared a baby pouch[4] early on and kept it in his space button, but he had long been prepared for a lifetime without children.

How could it be so easy to have a child?

However, his partner was really too passionate and loved him too much.

His partner pursued him passionately. In just two months, he couldnt resist falling in love, and they formed a mental contract with each other to become partners. After another month, when he was performing mental healing for his partner, their mental powers accidentally fused together, and a mental seed was conceived.

Only when both people loved each other and were willing to open up their mental power completely could a mental seed be conceived, and he and his partner conceived one!

The average life expectancy in the interstellar era was very long. It wasnt a problem to live for a thousand years. However, a large part of the population couldnt find a partner in their entire life.

Even if they did find a partner, only a third of them could conceive a child.

However, in just three months, he actually had a partner and a child.

Jian Jin originally had no sense of belonging to this planet, but the moment the mental seed condensed on his partners mental power, he immediately fell in love with the planet.

He was willing to trade all that he had for a partner who loved him, trusted him absolutely, and was willing to open up his mental power completely, and was also willing to fall in love with a backward planet for such a person.

Regarding children actually, more than anything else, children were a testimony of true love.

At least nine out of ten people in the interstellar era were childless. However, the main reason why the human race didnt go extinct was because a loving couple tended to have a lot of children.

Anyway, when that mental seed suddenly appeared, you could say he was ecstatic. He immediately began to study ways to build a career on this planet he always wanted to give his partner and children a good life!

After he transmigrated, he could no longer receive any signals. Although his mental power was strong, there was absolutely no way that he could go into space. The things he carried with him were mostly daily necessities. Since he didnt think he could go back, he might as well stay in peace.

Unfortunately, although he had good thoughts, things didnt turn out the way he had hoped.

The people on this planet generally had very weak mental power. His partner was already one of the top two in terms of mental power, but he was still very weak, not to mention that his partner had been seriously injured and lost his memory and his mental power was still unstable.

The small mental seed fell into his partners mental power, which caused great harm to his partner and may have even caused his partners mental power to completely collapse.

In order to protect his partner, he could only find a way to detach that mental seed from his partners mental power and use his own mental power to nurture it. He was going to wait for it to grow a bit before putting it into a body grown in the baby pouch.

However, his own mental power was also traumatized during the transmigration.

After he finished detaching it and letting the mental seed make its home in his own mental power, he passed out.

When he woke up, his partner was gone.

He couldnt find his partner. Then, he asked around and found out that his partner had gone to the county town to find a doctor for him, but there was no news after that.

In this ancient society, the circulation of information was poor. It was very difficult to find a person, not to mention that it seemed that his partner was even being hunted

In desperation, he had no choice but to get himself an identity first, then find a way to make money while slowly looking for his partner. After realizing that he needed to be powerful enough to find him, he also started studying for the imperial examinations at the same time.

By relying on the ability to never forget that came with his strong mental power, he passed the imperial exams all the way to the present.

However, although he participated in the imperial examinations, he didnt intend to honestly work his way up through the ranks slowly. If that were to happen, he feared that he would be even less free than before and it would be more difficult to find him.

He participated in the imperial examinations just to give himself a higher status and use it to get to know the upper echelons of the country.

After getting to know those people, he could then find a way to get the emperor or a minister to notice him, and he could use their power to find his partner.

As for how to make people notice him he had mental power!

After eating Big Sister Jians mutton patties, Jian Jin went out the door.

Big Sister Jian was a village woman he rescued from a river after his partner disappeared.

Her real name was Jian Daniu. She had fled from a famine and married someone in a village when she had no food to eat. Her husbands family treated her badly, scolding her at every turn, and she was forced to jump into the river because she hadnt been able to have a child.

After Jian Jin saved her, after some discussion with her, he pretended to be her brother to get an identity, and stood up for her, so that she could divorce her husband.

After that, Big Sister Jian lived with him and helped him with the household chores. Although they called each other brother and sister, she didnt really treat him as a little brother, but as a master. When he was busy, Jian Xun was also taken care of thanks to Big Sister Jian.

Jian Xun was the child he and his partner conceived.

The child started out as a small mental seed. He used his mental power to nurture it for more than a year, and then placed it in an embryo that was cultivated with his and his partners genes. He used the baby pouch to nurture it for nine months before Jian Xun was finally born. He was now just two and a half years old.

A child with strong mental power was always different from other children. The two-year-old Jian Xun was far smarter than other children, but he looked just like other children, except that he especially resembled Jian Jins partner before his partner disappeared, he had already extracted the genes of both of them to cultivate an embryo, and when cultivating it, he chose all his partners genes when it came to appearance.

The appearance Jian Jin now had was a total fake that he made up himself based on the people here. As for his original appearance

When it was first possible to change a childs appearance by adjusting genes, parents in the interstellar era adjusted their childrens looks toward perfection, so much so that in time, every child looked especially exquisite and perfect, and also especially similar.

So, a handsome face like his became a common face, and as a result he didnt like his own face and didnt want his child to look like him.

The author has something to say:

The gong is actually handsome, but he himself dislikes his common face hahaha

T/N

The order of the ancient Chinese imperial civil service exams was: county exam college exam provincial exam metropolitan exam palace exam. Passing an exam was similar to earning a degree, and titles were earned based on what exams you passed and what place you came in, and granted social privileges and civil service appointments. Saying Ah before a name is a way to create an affectionate nickname Zhuangyuan: the top scorer of the Palace examination