Lan Jin wakes up and lets out a loud groan before quickly stretching out his body. He finds that things that shouldn’t be are making a lot of noise, and just the act of stretching lets out several loud pops that he doesn’t think his body should be making.
“God,” Lan Jin complains while shifting onto his side. “Why does everything hurt so much? Is this what my dad’s always complaining about?”
Doing a quick inspection of his body, he finds that he looks mostly fine. Even his bruise is looking quite a bit better. But he sure as hell doesn’t feel fine. There isn’t a single muscle in his body that doesn’t ache and just sitting up made him want to go right back to bed.
“Man, I miss my bed. And my pillow. And my blankets! Fuck, this place sucks!”
Shaking his head, Lan Jin resents ever touching the Omega rune on his phone a few days ago. But, with nothing to be done about it, he can only complain about it for a few minutes before turning his attention to other things.
“I’ve really got to start body cultivating sooner rather than later. If I’m going to be going out past the mountains frequently in order to search for natural treasures, I have got to be in better shape.”
When he thinks about it, he realizes that there were a few natural treasures they passed on the way to the city that they just couldn’t pick up due to a lack of space and things to hold them. If they took a slightly longer route, then it might be worth it to carry two packs and several more Jadewood Boxes instead of Gongniu being responsible for everything. And if that happens, Lan Jin can see himself carrying one of them since Hu Qiuping is the one who takes care of gathering the natural treasures and Hu Shentian is probably better at watching for wild animals than he is. But carrying a pack so many miles through the forest would suck so he wants to prepare for that before he ends up biting off more than he can chew.
“Well, the little star’s energy should be back now. And I already planned to look up the Great Desolates Body Transformation, so now is as good a time as any.”
With that said, Lan Jin closes his eyes and enters the Omega Browser’s Space.
As he expected, his little purple star is full of energy. In fact, judging by its appearance, it not only has energy enough to search for something, but it may even have energy remaining after the fact. It probably has to do with how much purple mist he shoved into it last night, but compared to the little speck of light he had on his first night in this world, the glowing star he is looking at right now seems much more encouraging.
Using his thoughts, Lan Jin controls the purple star and slowly writes out ‘Great Desolates Body Transformation’. With how long the search is, just writing it takes a good chunk of the purple star’s energy away. But even still, he is encouraged by the fact that more than half of the little star’s energy still remains.
Once he’s done writing it out, the Omega Browser’s Space begins churning once again and as Lan Jin waits for what he presumes to be the inevitable appearance of countless scrolls, steles, stone walls, and jades, he is left surprised in the end.
There are certainly a large number of the things he was expecting, and, if that was all there was for him to look through, he would just casually choose something that might be the most relevant to him as he isn’t entirely sure what he should be looking for. But, far more numerous than the things he expected to find are the countless skeletons that turn the entire Space into a boneyard of monstrous creatures.
Lan Jin doesn’t know what to think as he looks out at the endless field of bones. There are things he recognizes like fish, apes, elephants, snakes, birds, and so on, but there are also many things that he doesn’t know what they are, and there are even things like the giant echidna that have features that seemingly belong to multiple animals. Some of them are pearly white and others seem to be blackened by soot, but they all have various images and characters carved into their surfaces.
In fact, when he looks at some of the images carved into the surface of the bones, Lan Jin realizes that the skeletons are absolutely massive. Without a proper scale, he can’t be sure just how big they are, but when he uses an image of a person he sees etched into one of a skeletons’s bones, he finds that, compared to the overall size of the creature, it looks more like a grain of sand than an actual person.
“Did things like this really exist in the past?” Lan Jin wonders aloud, a slight tremor in his voice as he considers how terrifying these things would be.
“And did the people who wrote on these bones find the skeletons or… were they responsible for killing the creatures in the first place?”
That thought unnerves Lan Jin as he doesn’t think anything should be that powerful. But that thought goes two ways as not only does he think humans shouldn’t be that powerful, but he also doesn’t think that the universe should give birth to such horrifyingly massive creatures that can leave behind skeletons like these.
Lan Jin can’t help but lick his lips nervously as he wonders if he has any right to look at all of these skeletons. Judging by what humans were said to have done in the past, what with raping and murdering the people of the Divine Realm, Lan Jin thinks that these bones, regardless of what information is etched into them, should stay buried in time. But, having been the victim of an immortal’s ruthlessness himself, Lan Jin also doesn’t want to give up the opportunity to grow stronger.
So instead of giving up his search for the Great Desolates Body Transformation, Lan Jin instead begins searching for the largest skeleton he can find under the presumption that the bigger the skeleton, the more powerful the beast that left it behind after death, and simultaneously, the more powerful the person who managed to kill it in the first place.
After a while of searching, Lan Jin finds a snakelike creature with curling ram horns attached to its large head, a jaw full of mountain-like teeth, arms and legs that end in five vicious talons, and plate-like spines going down its back.
Lan Jin thinks it looks similar to an Eastern dragon. But, the Eastern dragons he had seen depictions of, though wild, had a certain dignity to them whereas this thing, even dead, looks absolutely vicious.
As Lan Jin looks at it, he can’t help but feel nervous. Whatever this creature was in the past, it was so gargantuan that the depictions of people on its massive bones don’t even have the good fortune to be considered the size of a grain of sand.
“Is it really alright for me to download this? This thing looks straight-up evil.”
Lan Jin hesitates for a while, but he figures that he might as well download it since he already used the energy to search for it. As for using the information etched into its bones, he is sure he will have a better idea of whether or not he should use it after he has a chance to look it over.
Once again, as Lan Jin reaches out with his mind to confirm his choice, everything else disappears with only the largest of the skeletons Lan Jin could find being left behind.
Looking at the serpentine creature, Lan Jin wonders which part of its body he should examine first. With as massive as the skeleton is, the amount of information etched into its bones is practically unquantifiable. But, operating under the assumption that anything important would be closer to the beast’s skull than its ass, Lan Jin decides to start his search there and quickly comes across massive, uneven trenches carved into the beast’s bones that resemble letters.
And fortunately for him, even though the language etched into the bones isn’t one that he’d come across before, he understands it immediately with the help of the Omega Browser.
It’s just that he could do without the first several lines of text he reads through.
***
I carve my resentment into the flesh of my enemy so that all may know my pain!
My wife was cursed with a short life.
I had to raise our children alone.
My wife was blessed to not know of our suffering.
I had to carry that burden without her.
My home was conquered.
I could only kneel.
My people were slaughtered.
I could only weep.
My son was devoured.
I could only grieve.
My daughter was stolen from me.
I could only beg.
I begged.
I begged!
I BEGGED!
My begging was ignored.
I could only grieve some more.
I grieved for that which I lost, and I grieved for what little I had yet to lose. But I grieved, and I grieved, and I grieved some more because I knew that all that I had once held dear was lost to me.
In my sorrow I found rage.
In my rage I found power.
In my power I found desire.
In my desire, I found the will to Devour!
I Devoured first the monster who stole my daughter from me!
I tore into its home and slaughtered its kin!
In front of its eyes, I raped its blood as it had my own and scattered their disembodied corpses across salted earth to rot with the feces of base animals!
I claimed its wives, one and all, and from their wombs, I birthed an army!
I brought vengeance upon the creature that devoured my son and Devoured it in turn! And in my rage, I brought an end to its kind! From the greatest to the weakest, I Devoured them all!
My hunger grew and grew again, and the blood of all who took from me ran in rivers down my gullet! Their flesh mere scraps between my teeth! I claimed all that had been taken from me, and returned my vengeance ten thousandfold!
I hunted across the fertile lands of my once beautiful home and in my wake I brought destruction. Destruction to soothe my sorrow! Destruction to quell my rage! Destruction to satiate my desires!
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
My rampage continued until I was satisfied, having Devoured all that dared live upon the lands where my people once thrived.
I found myself lost.
My sorrow was soothed.
I found myself empty.
My rage was quelled.
I found myself searching.
My desires were satiated.
In my revenge, I left behind none who would tell my tale. And so I write with flesh and blood, a message etched into my very bones, my sins visible to all.
I am all that I have become, and all that I have Devoured!
I am that which consumed fields aplenty and defiled the earth!
I am that which sired and devoured an army!
I am he who lost wife and son in turn.
And I am he who having lost everything was willing to do anything.
My daughter, the last of my kin, despises me for that which I have done.
I can change nothing, though I would only change one thing.
I cannot ask for forgiveness, but I can offer my apology and a single gift to make amends.
My apology, flesh and blood to restore the land, ten thousand years of bountiful harvests within the shelter of my shadow.
My gift, knowledge and pain. The ability to Devour! Carve my rune into your flesh and you might welcome power, but I warn you this, my dearest daughter, all power comes with a price. And the price you must pay for this power is endless slaughter.
***
Lan Jin finishes reading and he doesn’t know what he feels most. Rage, pity, disgust, sadness. He can fully understand why the man claims to have done what he did. If something happened to his family, Lan Jin feels he would do whatever it took to make sure the bastard who hurt them suffered for it.
But, after having read the message the man wrote to his daughter at the end, Lan Jin can’t help but wonder what crime he committed, and whether the reason why his daughter hated him was because of what he did to others, or because he did something to her.
The thought is invasive, and considering the man had claimed he was going to kill himself, Lan Jin can’t help but believe he did something horrible to his own daughter.
Shaking his head to clear out his disturbing thoughts, Lan Jin wonders if it was a mistake to choose this massive skeleton instead of one of the countless other skeletons. From the sounds of things, this might actually be the remains of the man who once wrote that disturbing message. But if that is true, what about the countless other skeletons? Do they have similar stories? Did they all have grievances so large that they chose to become massive monsters just to get even with the world?
Lan Jin can’t help but shake his head and lay back down.
“Is this the kind of power I want?” He asks himself while staring up at the ceiling. “The Great Desolates Body Transformation probably has its name for a reason, and I don’t see anybody wanting power that can turn them into a monster unless they feel like they don’t have any other choice. But, from the way things look, this man probably didn’t think he had a choice at all. Practically everything was taken from him.”
Lan Jin lays down for a while before closing his eyes and sending Moxian a message.
“Master, I found something to do with body cultivation and it made it sound like people can transform into monsters if they cultivate it. Can that actually happen?”
It takes a few minutes for Moxian to respond.
“Mmm. I cultivate my body and I can transform if I want to. Do you want to see?”
Moxian’s voice sounds equal parts teasing and seductive, and Lan Jin wonders if he should answer that question truthfully or just not at all. He doesn’t even think she can actually show him, but in the end, Lan Jin’s curiosity wins out and he decides to go with the truth.
“Yes.”
Almost immediately, Moxian responds, “Too bad! Master says I can only transform around her, and she’s not happy with you right now because you didn’t tell her where you are. So you don’t get to see.”
She follows up by sending her laughter into his mind and Lan Jin rolls his eyes at her behavior.
“You know, I’m really looking forward to seeing how Master punishes you. She always punishes me for the things I do, and I’m her favorite. She doesn’t even have a reason to like you. So what do you think she’ll do when she finds out where you are? Do you think she’ll punish your body? Or maybe your soul? She can do both, you know. I’ve heard some stories about the things she’s done in the past. Do you want me to tell you?”
Furrowing his eyebrows, Lan Jin rushes to send, “No thank you!”
In response, Moxian laughs again and begins teasing him, her words entering his mind in a disturbingly tempting whisper, “But why not? It’s just a little suffering. Just think, one of the most beautiful women you could ever meet will have you under her thumb and doing whatever she wants to you.”
Lan Jin can’t help but stand up and shake out his limbs as Moxian’s voice sends tingles down his back. He had never heard something so creepy sounding so enticing before, but it gives him the chills.
“La~an Ji~in, aren’t you curious? Come on, I’ll tell you everything!” Moxian laughs again and Lan Jin begins to regret asking for her input. Unfortunately for him, she doesn’t seem to care how much energy she uses to message him, so a flood of tempting whispers keeps entering his mind.
Wanting them to stop, Lan Jin shoves the eleven strands of purple mist that he had saved into Moxian’s blood bubble without any warning. She lets out a groan that, in any other situation, would have made Lan Jin blush. But given that she was just talking about him being tortured, his ‘appreciation’ for the sound ends up making him incredibly uncomfortable.
“Oh my fucking god, she is so screwed up in the head!” Lan Jin groans while covering his face. He’s very careful not to look down, and he judges himself harshly for his reaction toward her words. Granted, he blames the way she was speaking and her final, disturbingly-sexual groan for sending him over the edge, but he doesn’t think he should be having this kind of response after all of her talk about him suffering.
“Fucking hell!”
Smacking his cheeks to clear his thoughts, Lan Jin enters the Omega Browser’s Space again and looks at the rune the man was talking about in his final message to his daughter.
In his opinion, the rune doesn’t look very impressive. It isn’t particularly complicated, and, to his mind, it is just a bunch of squiggling lines that somehow mean ‘Devour’. Lan Jin can’t even come up with any reason for why it’s something special other than the fact that it’s supposed to be carved into someone’s flesh.
“How come the most important message is carved onto the monster’s skull though? How would someone even come across it without already being super powerful?”
Curious, Lan Jin looks over different parts of the skeleton and finds that, with the exception of the largest message on its skull, everything else seems to be scenes depicting the beast’s life. And other than a small number of scenes that look to involve the man’s family of four, everything else is pretty gruesome.
Turning his attention back to the rune on the skull, Lan Jin hesitates again. He heard from Hu Qiuping and Hu Gongniu that body cultivators need to consume a large amount of vicious beast flesh in order to create blood essence within their bodies. From the sounds of things, this rune should match up with that idea pretty well because it is all about consuming things. And with Moxian’s assurance that transformation is normal and reversible, he isn’t worried about becoming a monster. And as for the warning about the price for the Devour rune being endless slaughter, Lan Jin doesn’t place too much stock into it.
Regardless of what the man did over the course of his revenge, he seemed lucid and repentant while writing the message to his daughter— or at least as lucid as a person can be while carving words into their flesh. To Lan Jin, this means that the man was cognizant that he had choices and that he made terrible ones. But Lan Jin views the man himself as being responsible for his choices, and not the rune carved into his skull.
But even still, the thought of carving it into his flesh is pretty disturbing so he decides to hold off for now— especially considering the only thing he has available to do it right now is a poor-quality bronze saber that had recently cut through trees, fish, and even a monster.
With that being said, he isn’t opposed to the rune in principle, but if he uses it, he’d rather have it inked into his skin like a tattoo than cut up his flesh and permanently disfigure himself. Unfortunately, he would need some needles and some ink to give himself a tattoo, and he doesn’t have either of those things right now.
“I wonder if there is an embroidery shop around here. Or maybe a medical supply store. And for that matter, how would I go about making blood essence in the first place after eating vicious beast meat?”
Closing his eyes again, Lan Jin looks at the little star and wonders if he has enough energy to search again. After his earlier search and messaging Moxian several times, the energy within his purple star is largely gone. But if he chooses something quickly, he thinks he might just be able to get one more search out of it.
“Should I just go for it or should I try to convert more of the Qi from the spirit stone first? Where’d I put that thing anyways? I know I had it when got here. Is it outside with my clothes? And what about my saber? That should have been with my hoodie, right?”
Distracted, Lan Jin gets off of his wooden bed and walks outside. It’s still early outside and a blanket of mist is covering the ground, looking like a flowing river of clouds surrounding the wooden walkway of his new house.
He uses the walkway to head into the backyard and finds both the severed hand of the Stone Prophet and his bronze saber lying in the grass near the well. As for his clothes, shoes, and hoodie, they are still where he left them hanging from a low branch of a tree, but due to the mist in the air, they didn’t do much drying over the night.
“Crap. Well, this sucks. I should have hung them up inside somewhere… I wonder if there’s a kitchen or something so I can light a fire and dry them that way.”
Grabbing all of his belongings, Lan Jin begins opening each of the doorways in the house until he finds a kitchen before heading right inside. Along the way, he also finds what looks like a barren study, a room with a solid stone floor, and a dining room, but he doesn’t care about any of these for now.
Inside the kitchen, Lan Jin finds and approaches what looks to be a stone oven. Noticing some wood and kindling nearby, he fills up the oven and begins looking for a way to light it. He ends up finding a striker stick and a blade hanging from a hook over the oven, so he grabs both of them, uses them to ignite the kindling and spends a few minutes building the fire up.
Once he’s finished, he lays all of his clothes over the top of the oven and places his shoes closer to the fire. Not wanting to risk anything burning, he sits down with his back against a nearby wall and begins examining the spirit stone again.
After having used it to send some purple mist into the Great Physician’s palm, it has another small crack on its surface. Given how small the spirit stone is, the cracks seem pretty large. But even still, there is a large amount of Qi remaining inside it; easily enough to not only repeat the creation of the three clouds in his Dantian but also to supply him with a large amount of purple mist to fuse into his soul.
“Judging from how people were treating me last night, cultivation is a lot more important than I originally thought. It’s not just about being allowed to enter the city or being more powerful, it’s about whether or not people are willing to respect me and treat me as an equal. Nobody even cared about my opinion last night. They just treated me like some sort of curiosity and even blatantly ignored me after the Great Physician showed up and took control of the situation. So before I start working toward anything else, I should at least make it seem like I’m more competent than I actually am.”
Looking at the stone arm, Lan Jin grimaces.
“But using my spirit to absorb Qi is a pain in the ass. And it’s so fucking nauseating!”
Not wanting to make himself sick to his stomach first thing in the morning, Lan Jin hesitates to do anything for several minutes. But as an idea enters his head his eyes widen and he grabs both the stone hand and his saber before rushing outside and into the backyard.
Taking his saber in hand, Lan Jin lays the stone hand against a rock and begins bashing off the fingers one by one with its hilt. He works carefully, slowly chipping away at the stone surrounding the spirit stone, and when he’s done, he has a mostly-clean crystal the size of his fingertip resting in his palm.
He quickly heads back into the kitchen to check on his clothes, and seeing that everything is alright, he sits back down against the wall and holds up the spirit stone in front of his face.
“This stone is basically pure Qi, so if I use the Auspicious Tri-Colored Flame on it, it should be able to purify it directly into Providence. Then, I can just swallow it without having to worry about using my spirit to rip chunks of Qi out of it!”
Grinning, Lan Jin puts the spirit stone under his tongue and brings the Auspicious Tri-Colored Flame into his mouth.
Working slowly so he doesn’t absorb too much of the purple mist at once, Lan Jin touches the edge of the flame to the spirit stone and begins receiving small amounts of purple mist that he divides evenly between his Dantian and a quickly growing reserve within the Omega Browser’s Space.
Strand after strand, the flame licks through the spirit stone like water washing away snow, and Lan Jin spends the next hour burning away at the spirit stone and only occasionally takes a short break to check on the status of his shoes and clothes.
It doesn’t take long for him to form a fourth cloud within his Dantian, and before the hour is done, he even forms a fifth cloud while only making a small dent in the total Qi inside of the spirit stone. If he only absorbed the purple mist into his Dantian, he thinks he could have even formed a sixth cloud, but with so much of the purple mist heading to the Omega Browser’s Space, five clouds are all he can manage.
Looking inside the Omega Browser’s Space, Lan Jin can’t help but exclaim, “Holy crap!”
There are hundreds of strands of purple mist within the Space. With them, he is confident that he can not only search for some information about body cultivation but also have quite a bit of energy to spare.
But, as he looks at them, Lan Jin can’t help but grin as an intrusive thought enters his head.
“Moxian had to have sent her groan to me on purpose, and based on her character, I think it’s because she’s messing with me. So I wonder what her response would be if I sent her exactly one strand of purple mist every half hour.”
Lan Jin thinks it over for a few minutes and decides he has more than enough purple mist for his own use right now, so losing a bit of it isn’t a big problem. But more importantly, he realizes that Moxian also has a master to take care of, and Moxian seems to like making sure that her master receives exactly one more strand of purple mist than her.
“Only sending one strand of purple mist is a bit mean. Since good things have to be shared between master and disciple, I’ll send three and let Moxian figure out how to divide them with her master.”
With a smile on his face, Lan Jin quickly groups thirty-six strands of purple mist together. Then, he takes three of them and casually throws them into Moxian’s blood bubble.
After that, Lan Jin begins the process of fusing the freely floating strands of purple mist into his soul while waiting for his clothes to finish drying.