Cold mud pressed against my cheek, smelling of rot and old iron.
Copper tasted thick in my mouth, hot and metallic. I tried to draw a breath, but my lungs seized, sending a violent spasm through my chest that painted the gray stones red.
Rain began to fall, thin and freezing, washing the blood from my eyes only to replace it with a stinging blur.
"Struggle all you want, Senior Brother," a mocking voice sneered from above.
Mo Fan stood over me, his pristine white outer-disciple robes untouched by the filth of this dumping ground. He bent down, his fingers digging brutally into my swollen knuckles to tear away my cheap iron storage ring.
Pain flared, sharp and blinding, screaming through my shattered meridians. I wanted to fight back, to tear his throat out, but my body refused to obey.
"This belongs to the sect now," Mo Fan muttered, tossing the ring lightly in his palm. "Or rather, it belongs to someone who can actually use it. A crippled dog has no need for spiritual stones."
He spat, a thick glob of phlegm landing right on the embroidered emblem of my blood-soaked collar. Turning on his heel, he walked away without a backward glance, his boots clicking softly against the damp shale.
Darkness threatened to swallow my vision. I pressed my forehead against the freezing stone, my teeth grinding together until they cracked.
Only three hours ago, I had been staring at a glowing computer screen in a cramped cubicle, my heart fluttering erratically before everything went black. I had died a nameless wage slave, only to wake up in this nightmarish world of cultivators.
Memory fragments of this new body flooded my mind, a chaotic rush of humiliation and neglect. Lin Tian. That was his name. He was a disposable senior brother of the Myriad Dao Sect, worked to the bone and discarded the moment his cultivation stagnated.
Every memory of this world was painted in shades of cruelty. My elders had forced me to ingest a flawed Yang-accumulating pill to test its efficacy, destroying my cultivation path in an instant.
When my meridians shattered, they didn't offer medicine. They offered a swift kick out of the mountain gates and down into this rancid pit where the sect threw its garbage.
Now, those memories were all I had left as my life dripped into the dirt.
Spiritual energy in my body was turning toxic. My broken meridians, shattered during that failed breakthrough, felt like they were being filled with molten lead.
Death was coming, cold and absolute.
Reaching out with trembling fingers, I clawed at the wet earth. I refused to die twice in the same day. I refused to let these hypocrites leave me here like garbage.
My fingernails tore against the sharp shale, ripping back to the quick. Hot, sticky blood mingled with the mud as I dragged my broken frame forward an inch.
Underneath the loose gravel, my hand struck something hard and strangely warm.
Curving my fingers, I dug deeper, ignoring the agony screaming through my joints. My palm closed around a rough, fibrous material.
Pulling it free, I held a scarred, rusted leather pouch. It looked ancient, its surface covered in jagged scratches that resembled tiny, closed eyes.
Suddenly, a violent jolt shot up my arm.
Leather fibers writhed against my skin like living worms. Before I could scream, the pouch sank directly into my palm, melting into my flesh with a sickening squelch.
Burning heat raced up my forearm, black veins bulging beneath my skin.
Blinding crimson light flashed before my eyes, burning through the dim gray of the discard pit.
---
[WARNING: SOUL BOUND ARTIFACT DETECTED.]
[PRIMORDIAL POUCH SYSTEM INITIALIZING...]
Staring at the floating text, my jaw slackened. The characters glowed with a deep, bloody hue, pulsing in sync with the agonizing thud of my heart.
[HOST LIFE SIGNS: CRITICAL (0.4% REMAINING)]
[MERIDIANS: DESTROYED]
[SOUL STATUS: FRAGILE]
[TO FULLY BIND THE PRIMORDIAL POUCH AND SAVE YOUR LIFE, THE SYSTEM DEMANDS A SACRIFICE OF BLOOD ESSENCE. DO YOU ACCEPT?]
"Accept," I croaked, my voice barely a whisper. I didn't care what the price was. Anything was better than rotting in this pit while Mo Fan and the elders laughed in their grand halls.
---
Instantly, a horrific suction force erupted from my right palm.
Every remaining drop of warmth in my veins rushed toward my hand. It felt as if a branding iron were being pressed into my bones, melting my marrow into liquid fire.
My vision went entirely red. I screamed, but no sound escaped my throat, only a thick spray of dark, corrupted blood.
[BLOOD ESSENCE ABSORBED: 90%]
[BINDING PROGRESS: 25%... 50%... 100%]
[PRIMORDIAL POUCH FULLY BOUND TO HOST: LIN TIAN]
[CURRENT LEVEL: TIER 1 - QI CONDENSATION (LEVEL 0)]
[SYSTEM FUNCTION UNLOCKED: REFINE. HOST CAN CONVERT ANY DEAD SPIRITUAL BEAST OR TREASURE INTO EXP AND PURE QI.]
Cold hope surged through my shivering frame, replacing the agonizing heat with a numbing, icy clarity. I could feel the pouch now, not as an object, but as an extra organ suspended inside my soul. It was a bottomless void, hungry and waiting.
Lying in the dirt, I let out a ragged laugh. The Myriad Dao Sect had thrown me away, thinking I was nothing but a broken tool. They didn't know I had just gained the key to tear their entire world down.
But my triumph was cut short by a low, vibrating growl.
Leaves rustled violently at the edge of the pit above. A foul, rotting stench rolled down the stone walls, thick enough to choke on.
Slowly, I turned my head, my neck clicking with the effort.
Two burning yellow eyes stared down at me from the darkness of the overhanging cliff.
---
My right hand throbbed, the skin around the fused leather pouch turning a deep, bruised purple. Black veins pulsed up my arm like cold iron wires being threaded through my flesh.
Deep inside my soul, a strange, metallic hum grew louder, drowning out the sound of the falling rain.
[STABILIZING HOST MERIDIANS...]
[CURRENT QI STATUS: EMPTY]
[WARNING: TO INITIATE BASIC REPAIR, THE PRIMORDIAL POUCH REQUIRES IMMEDIATE REFINEMENT OF ORGANIC OR SPIRITUAL MATTER.]
"Refinement," I muttered, my fingers scraping against the cold shale.
Looking around, the discard pit was a graveyard of broken dreams and failed experiments. Bones of giant, mutated rats lay scattered nearby, their ribcages cracked open and picked clean by scavengers.
I dragged myself forward, my knees scraping against the sharp gravel. The pain was still immense, but the icy energy from the pouch was acting like a localized anesthetic, keeping me from passing out.
My left hand brushed against a pile of discarded trash. It was a pile of broken spirit swords, their blades rusted and their formations shattered beyond repair.
"Can I refine these?" I asked the empty air.
[TARGET DETECTED: BROKEN IRON SPIRIT SWORD (TIER 0 - DAMAGED)]
[REFINING WILL YIELD MINIMAL METAL ESSENCE. DO YOU WISH TO PROCEED?]
"Yes," I thought, placing my right hand onto the rusted hilt of the broken weapon.
Instantly, the scarred pouch in my palm seemed to pulse. A dark, miniature vortex materialized at my fingertips, swallowing the broken sword in a matter of seconds.
My hand tingled as the sword dissolved into a fine gray dust, its metallic essence drawn straight into my palm.
[REFINING COMPLETE.]
[OBTAINED: 1 EXP, 0.5 POINTS OF METALLIC QI.]
[METALLIC QI CONVERTED TO RECONSTRUCT MERIDIANS...]
A sudden, sharp warmth flared in my forearm. I watched in disbelief as the blackened, bulging veins began to recede, the flesh returning to a pale, albeit sickly, color.
My breath came a little easier. The crushing weight on my chest lifted slightly, allowing me to draw a full breath of the damp, cold air.
It was a miracle.
Back in my old life, if you broke something, it stayed broken. If you were worked to death, you simply died, replaced by another resume in a hiring manager's inbox.
Here, in this ruthless world of cultivation, the rules were supposed to be even harsher. The strong ruled, and the weak were ground into dust.
Rejecting the hypocritical teachings of the Myriad Dao Sect was easy. I didn't need their expensive pills or their favor.
If I could refine anything—dead beasts, broken treasures, discarded garbage—then this entire world of trash was my ultimate resource.
"Zhao... Mo Fan..." I whispered, my voice growing colder, harder. "You thought you threw me into a grave. You threw me into my kingdom."
I clawed my way toward another pile of debris, my eyes scanning the darkness for anything else to feed the insatiable hunger of the pouch.
A few feet away lay the carcass of a low-grade spiritual beast, a three-eyed crow that had likely died of some spiritual corruption. Its body was half-rotted, covered in a sticky, black film.
I reached out, my fingers brushing the greasy feathers.
[TARGET DETECTED: CORRUPTED THREE-EYED CROW (TIER 1 - LOW GRADE)]
[REFINING CORRUPTED BEASTS WILL YIELD CORRUPTED QI. CONVERSION TO PURE QI WILL INCUR A 20% LOSS. PROCEED?]
"Do it," I commanded.
Swirling violently, the black vortex flared again, dragging the decaying bird into my palm. The sensation was different this time—hotter, more chaotic.
A wave of dark, turbulent energy flooded my arm, fighting against my remaining meridians before the system processed it, filtering out the corruption and sending a pure, cold stream of Qi into my dantian.
[REFINING COMPLETE.]
[OBTAINED: 15 EXP, 4 POINTS OF PURE QI.]
[EXP: 16/100]
[MERIDIANS REPAIRED: 8%]
My heart hammered against my ribs, a wild, soaring sensation of power beginning to root itself in my chest. I could feel the first faint threads of Qi settling in my lower abdomen, spinning in a tight, stable circle.
I was no longer a mortal. I was rebuilding my path from the absolute bottom.
Heavy rain began to pour harder, drumming against the stone walls of the pit.
Suddenly, the hair on the back of my neck stood on end.
A heavy, suffocating pressure descended upon the pit, so thick it felt like the gravity itself had doubled.
Sharp scents of ozone and rotting copper filled my nose, drowning out the scent of the mud.
Up on the lip of the pit, the thick, black vines parted.
Two huge, sulfur-yellow eyes glared down at me, glowing with an unnatural, infected light.
Hot, ragged huffs of breath escaped the creature, sending plumes of steam into the cold night air.
I froze, my hand pressing flat against the wet stone.
Clearly, this was a predator of the mountain, drawn by the scent of fresh blood and the energy of the refined beasts.
A massive, corrupted Shadow-Leopard leaps into the pit, its fangs dripping venom onto Lin Tian's face, but instead of fleeing, the pouch in his hand opens like a toothless, screaming mouth.