I woke up confused. Everything hurt. I couldn’t feel my own beating heart or the wind on my face. It was just pain. Pounding, searing pain. My Soul smoldered in my Sea of Consciousness, fragmented, yet still held together by the glowing Divine strings.

I mentally breathed a sigh of relief. I was so freaking glad it worked. I was pushed to the edge of death once more. Bloody bastard, that Lao Huli.

I opened my eyes, or tried to, but then realized I didn’t have any. I mustered some Qi and reformed them, pulling on my stores of Essence from my bones to rebuild my flesh. I opened my eyes and looked around. I was at the edge of a crater, a polished piece of orange rock, a deep hole in the ground.

I slowly moved and turned to my side, getting my hands beneath me.

I had only seen bones. Black, obsidian bones.

Wobbly standing I looked at myself and saw nothing but bones. There was not a speck of flesh left on them. How was I moving? How was I breathing? How was I pumping my blood?

Simple. I wasn’t.

I collapsed on the ground again, panicking as I realized I was dying for the second time. I immediately reversed my transformation and my bones opened, a thousand pores on them releasing matter, flames, and Essence into the outside world.

Instantly my flesh began to form from the fire, my muscles expanding, my blood bursting into existence and my breath returning to give me life.

I gasped and then coughed as my lungs had yet to fully form.

What craziness had I done? I pulled my flesh into my bones, condensing it further and nearly killing myself in the process. My Soul was luckily anchored into my body extremely tight, or I would have been a goner.

I knew my flesh could not sustain the blast, so I tried to hide it. My bones were the strongest part of my body, remaining unbroken even against the strikes of a Spirit Realm Cultivator. I just didn’t know if they could resist that magic. By draining my flesh and concentrating all the Essence in my bones, I reinforced them further, managing to resist the blast.

I haven’t saved all my flesh, of course. A great chunk of it was still destroyed. About a third, I would guess.

That made me mad. I worked so hard for that!

I slammed my fist into the ground and then stood up. I looked around. There was no trace of any man or beast. Everything was destroyed. Wiped from existence.

Then I noticed I was naked. Again. All my pouches were gone. The only thing that survived were my rings. Spirit-grade relics. And, ofcourse, the box.

[Damn… bastard!] I ground my teeth in anger.

“Gerald?”

I whipped my head around and saw Yaji walking into the crater, looking beyond confused.

“What happened here? Where is everyone?”

I rubbed my eyes to confirm I wasn’t seeing things and then put on a simple robe before speaking.

[Yaji? You are still alive? I thought you were dead.]

Yaji laughed and averted his eyes, rubbing the back of his head. “Yeah, well… I got hit really hard in the head at the start of the fight and blacked out. Looks like I missed the entire thing. What happened?”

[Well…] I frowned. [We beat the giant lizards, but then some kind of tentacled monster came out of the ground and overpowered us. The old man then prepared some kind of weapon to take it out, but I think he killed the rest of the group as well.]

“He did?!”

I nodded and looked at the crater we were standing in. It was a few hundred meters across and carved deep into the solid rock. Water already began pooling at the bottom as the river was cut in half.

I then looked at the place where the Watcher burst out of the wall and found it weirdly intact. As intact as a broken piece of rock could be. Anyway, it was spared by the blast.

“Well damn… Guess I should be lucky I was unconscious then. What about you? How did you survive?” He eyed me with suspicion. He did find me in the crater after all. Naked.

[I have my ways.] I answered flatly, not giving him anything.

“Hmm, okay… I’ll take a look around to see if I can find anything.”

[You do that.] I said and then waited till he disappeared from sight. I then dashed towards the gaping hole in the wall on the other side. As I suspected, it led to a cavern deeper into the underground.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

I activated my Arcane Eyes but couldn’t see far due to the interference of the surrounding Qi. That blast must have made the canyon environment quite a mess. Or there was something in the walls obscuring my sight.

Either way, I couldn’t see much. So, I slowly made my way into the darkness where I picked up a dense smell of iron as the ground became slick with blood.

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Lao Huli held a meat cleaver in one hand, chopping pieces into smaller chunks and tossing them into a pile. He wiped the sweat off his brow with the back of his hand and continued chopping the meat.

He absentmindedly reached into his storage and pulled out a deformed head. He laid it on the ground and gave it a few good whacks, breaking bone and spilling out the gray matter. It was as if he was in a trance. He chopped and cut, not even really looking at what he was doing in the dim light of the cavern.

The only thing giving off some light were the thin purple lines of the mushrooms that grew all around him. He hummed quietly, the sounds reverberating through the empty space when he heard the sound of footsteps.

He jerked his head around with the meat cleaver in one hand and a partially cut-up human leg in the other. A small light sphere floated in through the wide tunnel behind him, followed by the form of a man.

Lao Huli stood up and faced the newcomer.

[Hmm… Oh, so that’s it, huh?]

The outsider didn’t look at all surprised even as his eyes landed on the small mountain of flesh off to the side. Neither did he really comment on his appearance, as he was covered in various bodily fluids and blood.

It took a while, but as the young guy turned around and took a walk around, Lao Huli recognized him.

“Oh, it’s you. You survived...”

[I did.] The man replied. He was taller than him and looked down at him as he slowly came closer, yet Lao Huli couldn’t get away from the feeling he was being looked down upon in more ways than one.

[Hmm, I must have been out for a long time then, since you managed to do all that in the meantime. Maybe I don’t need to breathe after all? I’m clearly still alive.]

Lao Huli leaned back, his spine releasing some popping sounds as the tension left him. “Well… We can fix that.”

He tossed the meat cleaver away and replaced it with his staff.

[No thanks. Your stupid magic already almost destroyed my body once already. Not to mention that it did a number on my Soul. I’m just here to collect what I’m owed. Your pound of flesh… or something like that.]

Lao Huli frowned.

[Those are the Netherworld Corpse Yin Fungus, correct? I’ve never seen them before myself. You are using the corpses to feed them? No wonder I couldn’t find any on the surface...]

That put him on high alert. Lao Huli was a man of many talents, but Cultivation wasn’t one of them. However, with his knowledge and grit, he managed to achieve some success in that as well.

It took him his entire life to find a way to break the restrictions placed upon him by the Heavens. And in his twilight years, he finally found the final ingredient to defy them. The Netherworld Corpse Yin Fungus.

It was such a shame they were guarded by a group of Drakes. Drakes mind controlled by a Watcher no less. It was a dangerous Spirit Beast. He wasted a decade preparing to take it down, yet in the end realized he was still not ready.

Time was of the essence, and he needed distractions to carry out his plan. It didn’t matter what he promised the greedy Cultivators for he had no money left. He just needed them to be his shield for a day. The few Spirit Stones remaining were to power up his relics, nothing more.

He was concerned when the fight with the Drakes was easy, but then the beast came and everything turned out alright. They distracted it just as he hoped, and exhausted as they were, they were no match for the final attack. All of them died. Well, most of them did. Somehow the weakling remained alive, probably hiding in some hole far away, hoping to make some easy cash.

Lao Huli didn’t care. He had plenty of corpses to feed the mushrooms and then turn them into potent elixirs to fuel his breakthrough just as the Watcher did. They both walked on the Path of Yin and its beast core would help him form his first seed.

He just needed to get rid of the distraction first.

[Hey. You still there?]

Lao Huli lifted his gaze, annoyed. He hated it when people disrupted his thoughts or spoke without his permission. Especially when they sounded condescending while at it.

“What do you want, kid? Looking for an apology for the death of your friends?”

[Friends? Oh, no… Not at all. I don’t have any friends here. See, when I said I am here to get what I am owed, I meant it.] He took a step closer, a head taller than him. [And my flesh is expensive, old man. Could up the dough.]

Lao Huli snorted. The weird expressions aside, the fool willingly stepped into his reach. He didn’t even blink, and a dagger already found its way into the youngster’s heart. Easy as that. Another job well done.

But that’s when the problems began. When Lao Huli tried to pull the dagger out, the thing wouldn’t budge. A large hand covered his own hand holding the dagger and squeezed.

Lao Huli sucked in a lungful of cold air as pain shot along his arm and he rapidly tried to blink it away as he heard his bones cracking one by one.

[Mine now.] The youngster grinned and slowly pulled out the blade while still holding his, now mangled, hand.

Lao Huli grunted and managed to pull back by exerting his full strength. As soon as his hand was free, he pointed his staff and flared his Qi.

“Whirlwind Fury!”

Magic exploded point blank, the Spirit Qi from the staff forming a thousand small, razor-sharp blades that spiraled with the wind, cutting anything in their path. His opponent stood there, rooted in place, taking head on the full might of his magic.

[Seriously?] The man said in an irritated tone. [What do you people have against my clothes?!]

“Hah?!” Lao Huli nearly popped his eyes out as he watched the flesh get sliced up and then merge back together a second later. Large chunks of skin and muscle were cut off, only to be reformed like nothing ever happened.

He was stunned into silence as his attack did nothing to hinder the young man, except make him more and more naked as time went on.

A metal box suddenly landed on the ground as a sleeve was shredded to pieces, and both of their gazes landed on it. Lao Huli immediately recognized it and opened his eyes wide. A Ferrite stasis box. Made for storing only the most expensive herbs and pills.

He jerked his head back up and looked into the eyes of the monster standing before him. The beast in human form had glowing red eyes and an expression of pure rage. His lips parted and his sharp white teeth began to elongate, lips turned into an angry snarl, and his skin began turning red, scales growing instead of hair.

[I’m going to eat you now. Please resist for as long as you can.]

Lao Huli shouted and released a blast of Qi in terror, yet the beast ignored it and pounced, sinking its fangs into his neck.

As his life was rapidly leaving his body, his last thought was…

“It’s not fair…”