Jade slipped heavily in his hands, Lin Xuan slipped away from the shrine. The village was still alive with music, and the words of the system rang in his head.
**Objective:** Obtain your first Cultivation Art.
**Reward:** Qi Gathering Stage (Advance Automatically).
His corporate mind, the one that pieced together billion-yuan deals from scraps, automatically spatially mapped the problem.
**Step 1:** Look for cultivation Technique.
**Step 2:** Master it.
**Step 3:** Reap the rewards.
Simple.
Of course, this wasn't Eastern Horizon City — a place where money was omnipotent. Techniques here were held as secrets in iron chests. Sect libraries were locked. Family manuals were handed down to the most promising of offspring. And in Stone Creek Village… he was the lame.
---
**Finding the Key**
He walked the dirt alleys between vegetable beds that ran behind the shrine. Up ahead, lantern light spilled out of doorways, families coming together to share a meal and some spirits and memories. He knew the village in his adopted memories—knowing what would persuade whom, who was generous, and who was greedy.
The first person to appear in his mind was Old Man Wu. Qi Gathering cultivator, retired since he shattered his dantian in a hunting accident decades ago. His days were spent repairing baskets and recounting legends to the children, but Lin Xuan remembered something: There was a tattered, dusty beginners' manual in Wu's hut. The "old" Lin Xuan had secretly watched others take a look at the scene and was later handcuffed. This time would be different.
Half-buried in the persimmon grove across town sat Old Man Wu's hut. The sweet fragrance of fruits ripening on the vine mingled with the old scent of wood and lamp oil borne by the night wind.
Lin Xuan approached quietly. He peered through the window, and his heart sank when he saw Wu sitting at the hearth, asleep in a rocking chair with a clay pipe. It sat on a shelf in worn blue bindings behind him.
The voice of the system sounded in his head a little:
**{Target} Martial Skill Manual – Breathing of the Early Dawn**
[Novice-grade cultivation method] Incomplete. Poor efficiency. Significant flaws.
Would you like to acquire?
"Yes," Lin Xuan whispered.
He didn't even touch it. The instant he cast his eyes over its spine, something changed in him, a knowledge unfolded complete and exact, mending itself during the process. Their breathing pattern, the visualization, and even the hugging position were all scorched on his brain instantly.
**Breathing of the Early Dawn (Perfected):**
[Skill Acquired: Breathing of the Early Dawn]
Lin Xuan drew a slow breath. It was easy to come by now; the altogether simple once again, not a ripped and sewn together version from Old Man Wu, but pure fluidity that urged his meridians thrumming excitedly.
---
**The First Attempt**
Before Wu even woke, he slipped off to the brisk brook that bent around the village. The mist clung like the shroud of a ghost to the top surface of the cool rushing water lit by the pale silver light of a near full moon. Lin Xuan sat cross-legged on the grassland, straightening.
"System," he murmured, "activate cultivation."
No chime. No guiding hand. Just silence. The system had provided him with the how — what he did with it was up to him.
He closed his eyes, replaying the perfected rhythm of breathing. He drew the world into himself, breathing into his lungs via the slow steady rhythm of inhalation. Take the energy downward, down into your dantian up below your belly just above the pelvis. Exhale fully, visualizing all stale air and weakness exiting with the breath.
The third time through, something changed. Unseen filaments thickened the cool night air. His skin tingled. The barest wisp of energy… Qi realigned with his air in and out, seeping into his body. It was like sipping lightning.
The energy within his meridians wiggled, fought, then slowly leaked out. Muscling back, inch by hard-fought inch. Sweat beaded on his forehead. The dantian throbbed slightly, insatiable. He persisted. And then, breath after breath, the trickle turned into a small flow. His muscles relaxed and then tightened in time, and the world he saw behind his closed lids felt more immediate.
Then —
**[Hidden Quest Completed]**
**[Reward: Automatically entering the Qi Gathering Stage]**
It came out like a floodgate opening up.
Everywhere around him Qi, pouring into his dantian as it shone with the light of a sun made from liquid metal in his mind's eye. They broadened, hardened, greedy for the aether until it ran through him like his own blood.
Lin Xuan slowly opened his eyes after the blood restraint disappeared. The world was different. He could hear the lifeblood flowing under the creek, see the faint beating of life in the grass on which he stood. It wasn't cold anymore; the night air felt like it had power rolling off of it.
---
**The Wrong Kind of Attention**
A twig snapped behind him. Then Lin Xuan floated up, and his back facing the other side.
Comprised of three figures that stepped from the woodlands where shadow met tree line. He knew these body memories from the moment he understood who Luo Feng and his goons were. Village children, all with low-grade spiritual roots, and all too happy to try to repress him.
Luo Feng drawled, stepping forward. His smile was broad, but his eyes were keen. "The Cripple cultivating over here. You thought you had a place where the moonlight settled into the soil and grew roots, didn't you?"
The old Lin Xuan would have looked away, mumbled something, taken the shove that always followed. This Lin Xuan did not.
"I suggest you leave," he said evenly.
The grin faltered. "What was that?"
Lin Xuan replied, calmly. "I said,"
"What?"
"I said, leave. Before you embarrass yourselves."
Luo Feng's face darkened. "You think you can talk like that to me?" he said, and he gestured, and the two behind him moved forward.
They weren't trained fighters. Their stance was lazy, predictable. Lin Xuan's body moved before thought – sidestep, palm strike, sweep. In three heartbeats, one was gasping in the grass, the other clutching his wrist.
Luo Feng backed up again, his face going blank, shock flickering. "You – what did you –?"
Lin Xuan let the silence hang. The truth was, even without proper martial training in this world, the reflexes and godly body control he'd perfected in his past life made these boys look like toddlers swinging sticks. He said nothing.
"You should go," he said once more.
They did. But the look Luo Feng threw back over his shoulder was not one of defeat. It was promise.
---
Back in the village, the music was fading, lanterns dimming as the festival wound down. Lin Xuan felt more awake, more alive, than he had in years.
Qi Gathering Stage. The first step down the path to true power. He'd gotten the system to deliver. He'd backed up the bluff. But he knew enough about men like Luo Feng, and enough about gossip in tight-knit fighting towns, to know that tonight's victory would not stay small.
Somewhere on the other side of the village, thunder rumbled. Lin Xuan looked up at the moon. "Come then," he said, the jade slip heavy in his sleeve. "Let's see who's ready for what's coming."