(This chapter is dedicated to Neko_himiya for their incredible and consistent support! Thank you for all the Power Stones! 🙏)
The heavy redwood door to the suite clicked shut, the sound echoing in the opulent room. For the first time since his rebirth, Li Xuan was truly alone. He stood on the balcony, his new, clear eyes taking in the entirety of Yan Town spread out before him like a massive, intricate chessboard.
He had a base. He had a shield. He had a source of income. The tedious, foundational work was done.
'A good week's work,' he thought with cold satisfaction. 'But this is all just noise. The game has been set up. Now, it's time for the player to get stronger.'
He turned his back on the world and sat in the center of the room, crossing his legs. His mind began to work with brutal clarity.
'My meridians are clogged sewers; aggressive Qi cultivation is suicide for now. That leaves two paths: Body and Soul.'
He considered the Body path for a moment. His mind held a thousand memories of god-tier body techniques, arts that could let a man wrestle dragons, stolen from the most powerful warriors he'd ever isekai'd. They were compatible with this world's Qi, but they were not for the weak or the poor. Their foundations required baths of rare spirit herbs, diets of monster meat, and mountains of spirit stones just to begin. The daily food intake alone to sustain such a technique would cost more than this entire town earns in a year.
Attempting to practice them now wouldn't just make his body crumble under the strain; he would literally die of poverty trying to buy the first meal. They were a goal for the distant future, not a solution for today.
That left only one option. The most fundamental, most important path of all.
'The Soul,' he thought, a grim smile touching his lips. 'The engine of everything. Alchemy, blacksmithing, arrays… they are all fueled by Soul Power. A stronger soul is the foundation. And in this world, the choice is permanent.'
He sneered at the thought. 'Fucking mortals and their one-shot gambles. Choose the wrong technique, and your entire pathetic existence is crippled. No pressure.'
But for him, this was no gamble. He closed his eyes and plunged his consciousness into the vast, silent archive of souls. He walked through a library of lifetimes, flicking past the memories of swordsmen and kings, discarding their life's work like trash. He was looking for something specific.
Then, he found it. The memory of a crippled, genius mage from Earth, reborn into a high-level cultivation world. The man had no talent for Qi but had forged his own path, a masterpiece of pure spiritual refinement.
'That old bastard was brilliant,' Li Xuan analyzed, his divine knowledge seeing the flaws. 'But he was still thinking like a human. He saw the soul as a weapon to be sharpened. He didn't understand. The soul is not a weapon. It is a universe to be expanded.'
With the cold precision of a god, he deconstructed and rebuilt the technique, elevating its entire concept. He named the new, more perfect version the 'Buddha Soul Sutra.'
He opened his eyes and took out one of the two remaining Lesser Soul-Healing Pills.
'Alright,' he thought, a flicker of black humor in his mind. 'Let's see what this crude fuel can do with a divine engine.'
He tossed the pill into his mouth. A wave of pure, cold fire erupted not in his stomach, but directly in his mind. He immediately began to circulate the energy according to the first stage of the Sutra. He felt his soul, once a faint, flickering candle, stabilize and begin to burn with a steady, golden light.
Hours passed. As the first rays of dawn touched the balcony, the last of the pill's energy was gone. He opened his eyes. The world had not changed, but his perception of it had been fundamentally altered. He extended his consciousness.
And he saw.
It was not sight, but a new sense entirely. He could feel the faint Qi in the air like a fine mist. He could sense the solid, sleeping energy of the wooden floor beneath him. It was a rudimentary form of Divine Sense. He pushed it outward, past his door, and felt the nervous, respectful aura of Lu Wen standing guard. He pushed further, measuring the limit.
'Fifty meters,' he concluded, his internal voice a low growl of pure disgust. 'Pathetic. I can't even see the whole street. This technique is as energy-hungry as I thought. I'm not even at the first level. This is just the entry point.'
The first pill had only been enough to knock on the door. He looked at the last remaining pill in the jade box.
'Waiting to accumulate more resources is the mortal way. The slow way,' his arrogance and impatience took over. 'I have another pill. The logical choice is to use it now. Double the investment, double the return.'
Without a second of hesitation, he swallowed the final pill. The second wave of cold fire was even more intense, but this time his soul was prepared. The energy surged through his consciousness, and he greedily absorbed it, his soul growing from a steady flame into a small, confident bonfire.
The sun was high in the sky when the second pill was fully exhausted. He opened his eyes again, a new, more profound sense of awareness radiating from him. He pushed his Divine Sense outward. Fifty meters was no longer the limit. It flowed past the hallway, down the stairs, through the main hall where he could perceive the apprentices working, their life forces like small, flickering candles. He pushed further, past the walls of the association and out into the street.
'One hundred meters,' he confirmed with grim satisfaction. 'Acceptable progress. I am now at the initial stage of the first level.'
Arrogance, the eternal flaw of gods, stirred within him. He decided to test his new toy on the most powerful target nearby.
'Let's see what a Rank 3 Alchemist's soul really looks like up close,' he thought with a smirk.
He focused his new, stronger sense, directing it like a silent whisper towards the secluded courtyard where Master Feng was deep in meditation. His Divine Sense passed through the walls and into Feng's chamber. He saw the old man's soul—a bright, powerful flame, far stronger than any of the apprentices, but still chaotic and unstable from his recent breakthrough.
Li Xuan's probe gently touched the edge of Feng's spiritual aura. It was a single, silent finger touching the surface of a still lake.
In his secluded chamber, Master Feng, deep in meditation, suddenly snapped his eyes open. A powerful wave of Soul Power, far stronger than Li Xuan had anticipated, erupted from his body, not as an attack, but as a reflexive, impenetrable shield.
The old man sat bolt upright, his heart pounding, a look of pure, utter shock on his face. He had felt it. A probe. A spiritual probe of impossible purity and subtlety had just touched his own soul. It felt as ancient and vast as the heavens, a brief glimpse into an abyss of power that made his own Rank 3 soul feel like a dying ember.
'A probe?!' Feng's mind screamed, his every sense on high alert. 'Who in all of Yan Town has such a pure, powerful, and utterly terrifying soul?!'