"Show me," he begged, his voice shaking with excitement. "Please, show me!"
[Activating Treasure Sense.]
Suddenly, a new perception awakened in his mind. It felt like gaining a new sense, an instinctive tug towards valuable things. He concentrated, extending this new sense outward. He didn't feel anything from the other disciples' rooms, they were as poor as he was. He scanned the sect's small herb garden, detecting only a weak pull from the low-grade herbs there. It was disappointing.
Then, he pushed his new sense further, beyond the sect's walls, toward the abandoned houses that bordered their land. These were rundown homes, long deserted since the sect was founded. Most disciples avoided them, as stories claimed they were haunted.
And there, he felt it.
A clear tug coming from one of the crumbling houses. It felt… medicinal.
"There's a treasure there," he whispered, eyes wide with disbelief.
He slipped out of his room, moving with a stealth he never knew he had. The other disciples were passed out drunk around their dying fire. He crept past them, a shadow in the night, his heart racing with a mix of fear and excitement.
He reached the sect's edge and slipped through a gap in the decaying wall, entering the eerie cluster of abandoned homes. The pull grew stronger, guiding him to a specific house with a caved-in roof.
He pushed aside the rotting remains of a door and stepped inside. The room was filled with dust and debris. The pull came from a loose floorboard in the corner. His hands shook as he knelt and pried it up.
Beneath it was a hidden compartment. Inside that compartment was a jade bottle, sealed with wax. He sensed a faint medicinal aura coming from it. He uncorked it and tipped it into his palm. Three green pills rolled out.
He recognized them immediately. Qi Enhancing Pills. Low-grade, yes, but for an outer disciple like him, they were a luxury he could only dream of. Each one was worth a month of his grueling chores. Some previous resident must have hidden them here, either forgetting or dying before they could retrieve them.
"System," he said in his mind, his voice trembling. "Can you… can you devour these?"
[Affirmative. Present the treasure.]
He held the pills in his palm. "I present them."
As soon as he gave the command, the three pills dissolved into motes of pure light. The light flowed from his palm, up his arm, and into his chest, disappearing into his body.
And then he felt it.
A wave of warmth spread from his Dantian, flowing through all of his meridians. He felt his stagnant cultivation base, stuck at the Second Layer for so long, start to stir. The spiritual energy in his body grew denser.
[Devouring complete. The host's cultivation has increased.]
He quickly sat and focused, cycling the new energy. The bottleneck that had held him back for years felt… fragile. With a deep breath, he pushed the new energy against it.
Crack.
It shattered like glass. The energy in his body surged, settling at a higher level.
He had broken through. He was at the Third Layer of Qi Condensation.
Tears of pure joy streamed down Lin Fan's face. Three years. Three years of pain, humiliation, and despair had been overcome in a single night. He clenched his fists, feeling the newfound strength and the more substantial Qi flowing through his meridians. He was no longer the trash of the sect. He was a man with a future. He was a man with a system.
He looked up at the moon, a determined light shining in his eyes for the first time in his life. This was just the beginning. With the Treasure Devourer System, he would find more, devour more. He would become stronger than Senior Brother Zhang, stronger than the elders, stronger than anyone who had ever looked down on him.
He would devour the world.
As the initial wave of joy faded, he focused on the new feelings within him. His body felt lighter, his senses sharper. The world seemed clearer; the chirping of crickets was more distinct, and the moonlight brighter.
[Host's cultivation has increased. Treasure Sense range has expanded.]
The System's voice was a welcome confirmation. He eagerly activated the sense again, pushing it outward. Previously, its range barely extended beyond the sect's walls. Now, it spread out like ripples in a pond, covering the entire abandoned district and reaching even further, toward the looming shape of the forest bordering the city.
He scanned the abandoned houses again, but the faint pull was gone. He had already claimed the treasure there. Just as he was about to give up for the night, satisfied with his breakthrough, he felt it.
A new pull.
It was weaker than the first, but undeniably there. It came from the forest, from a specific spot not far from the edge. It felt… metallic. An ore of some kind.
Greed, a feeling he had never experienced before, surged through him. Why stop now? The night was still young. His breakthrough filled him with restless energy.
Staying in the shadows, he moved through the rundown streets toward the forest's edge. The pull grew stronger, guiding him to an ancient oak tree with gnarled roots gripping the earth. The signal came from a hollow at the base, hidden by overgrown moss and ivy.
He reached into the damp hollow, his fingers brushing against something cold and hard. He pulled it into the moonlight. It was a chunk of unrefined ore, the size of his fist. It was greyish but extraordinarily heavy, and silvery veins pulsed with a weak spiritual light.
"System, what is this?"
[Item Identified: Starfall Iron Fragment. A low-grade spiritual ore. Contains a trace amount of metallic essence. Useful for forging Spirit Tools.]
Starfall Iron! He had heard the senior disciples mention it. It was a valuable material, worth at least fifty low-grade spirit stones for a piece this size. To him, it was a fortune. In the past, he would have thought of selling it, exchanging it for pills or a better cultivation manual.
But now, he had a better option.
"Devour it," he commanded, anticipation filling his voice.
He held out the ore. Just like the pills, the heavy chunk of iron dissolved into a shower of silvery light, flowing into his body. This time, the energy felt different. It was sharp and heavy, a metallic essence coursing through his meridians, strengthening them. The energy was potent, far more than the three pills combined.
His Dantian, which had just stabilized at the Third Layer, began to swell with this refined power. The barrier to the next level, a wall that should have taken him years of hard work to approach, was already right in front of him.
The sheer volume of pure energy slammed against the bottleneck, and it shattered without any resistance.
Boom.
A small shockwave of Qi erupted from his body, rustling the leaves around him. The spiritual energy within him settled once more, thicker, stronger, and more vibrant than ever before.
[Devouring complete. The host has broken through to the Fourth Layer of Qi Condensation.]