Firstly, I took over Yanjie. This man... he was pitiful, really. A slave of the Li family, born into chains, shaped by silence. He spent his youth chasing whispers of hope in dusty scrolls and second-hand stories about cultivation. Years passed—grueling, hollow years—and all he managed to acquire was a trash-grade manual that barely qualified as a cultivation technique. Yet he clung to it like a drowning man to driftwood. Day after day, he practiced it with devotion, failure following failure, never once yielding to despair.
He wanted to change his fate. That was his only crime.
And a few days ago, that dream pushed him too far. He stumbled upon a spirit seed—damaged, decaying, and long discarded by the Li family. It was a broken thing, fractured at its core, but still glowing faintly with energy. He stole it. A desperate, reckless act. A slave stealing from his masters, trying to become an immortal.
And now, here I am—left with the wreckage of his dream. I inherited his body, his fate, and his mess.
Let me start with the basics: Yanjie's appearance is utterly average. Not striking, not repulsive. Just... forgettable. His presence inspires no friendship, no interest. People avoid him instinctively, as though his existence is contagious. Alone. Always alone.
And then there's the core of the problem—his spirit root. Or rather, what passes for one. When Yanjie consumed that broken spirit seed, it rooted itself in his body, yes. That much was a miracle in itself. Normally, seeds are chosen carefully—measured by attribute, purity, age. A good seed blooms into a powerful root, giving cultivators affinity with fire, water, metal, or other elements. Some rare seeds align with more exotic forces: space, time, fate.
Yanjie's seed? A shattered remnant. Something that had been rejected and discarded by the Li family for good reason. A seed with a cracked core, its attribute corroded and indistinct. The result: a malformed spirit root. Unstable. Weak. Incomplete.
Technically, it let him step onto the path of cultivation. He had achieved the bare minimum—a Qi Refiner, in name. But in practice, he was like a cripple trying to run. The root couldn't circulate energy smoothly. It leaked. It spasmed. Worse, it caused him pain whenever he pushed it too hard. This was no blessing. It was a slow death disguised as a miracle.
Oh, and he's forty. Let me not forget that detail. Forty years old, with a broken root and a manual so bad it might as well be firewood. Everyone knows cultivation becomes harder with age. Your body stiffens. Your meridians narrow. Your spirit dulls. Starting at forty? You might as well start digging your grave.
No, this wasn't a rebirth. It was a punishment. I had chosen the wrong difficulty setting.
So. Survival. That was the new goal.
This world—this brutal, beautiful world—is driven by cultivation. And cultivation requires more than just talent or resources. It demands knowledge. It demands creativity. There are sub-professions, side paths to support and empower cultivators: alchemy, artifact forging, formations, talismans, rune inscription. Each of them is a world unto itself.
Yanjie knew none of them.
He wasn't dumb, but he was ignorant. He'd never had the time or chance to study these fields. His days were spent cleaning floors, hauling water, kneeling in servitude. Even the trash manual he clung to had taken him years to acquire.
At least, I told myself, he had become a Qi Refiner. That's not nothing.
After calming myself from the initial panic and bitterness, I decided to try cultivating—just to see what this broken root could manage. I followed the manual's crude instructions. Sat in a lotus position. Straightened my back. Emptied my thoughts. Then I visualized the root inside me—the malformed thing twisting through my core.
I tried to connect with it. Tried to feel its texture, its presence. It was like trying to grasp smoke. But then, something shifted. The root pulsed. A flicker of energy responded to my call. Just a trickle, but real.
I could manipulate energy. Not well, not easily—but I could.
I focused it outside my body. Reached for a pebble nearby. The energy extended like a weak thread from my palm, trembling, inconsistent. The rock shivered and rose an inch off the ground before tumbling again.
It was like a telekinetic muscle, stretched far beyond its limit. I tried again—this time, a feather-light twig. It lifted, hovered for a moment, and then dropped.
Distance? About five meters, max.
Weight? A few grams.
Impressive? Not even remotely. But it meant something important: I was not completely crippled. I had a foothold.
The spirit root, for all its flaws, functioned. Barely.
And if it functioned... it could be trained. Strengthened. Refined.
I leaned back and exhaled. It was a shallow breath, tired but not hopeless.
Now came the harder decision.
The Li family. A lower-ranked cultivation clan, but powerful enough to own slaves and control a small region. I'd heard they had four ancestors who had reached the Qi Refining stage. There is only Qi Refining—no Core Formation, no Golden Core, no Nascent Soul. Yet even among Qi Refiners, some are more dangerous than others. A clan like that ruled over people like Yanjie with casual cruelty.
He was born into bondage. His father too. And his father before him. Five generations of servitude. Born, used, and discarded. Yanjie had watched his siblings sold. Watched his mother die of untreated illness. His father—the one who gave him hope—died protecting a Li child from a boar attack, unarmed. He was praised for a day and forgotten the next.
Yanjie never recovered from that.
He wanted to be free. He wanted to carry on his father's will. He wanted to become someone who could stand tall.
And in his desperation, he found that broken seed.
Now I carried it.
Now I carried him.
I don't know if I should pity him or curse him. Maybe both.
So what now?
I had two choices:
Option one: Return to the Li family and declare that I had awakened my spirit root. Announce that I had stepped onto the path of cultivation. That might earn me praise... or suspicion. Or death. Likely the last. A slave stealing a spirit seed—even a broken one—is still a crime punishable by torture.
They might strip me open, root and all, just to make an example.
Option two: Run. Leave everything behind. Escape into the wilderness.
Live.
It wasn't even a real choice.
I would run.
But I would not run like Yanjie would have. I would run smart.
First, I needed supplies—food, water, clothes, tools. I had no weapons, no artifacts. I couldn't afford to be reckless.
Second, I needed knowledge. I would find a way to study—learn alchemy, formations, whatever I could get my hands on. I would become more than this root. I would use my mind to compensate for my body's failures.
Third... the seed. The broken seed. I wasn't done with it yet.
When I meditated, I felt something strange buried in it. A resonance, a whisper of something deeper. It was broken, yes—but not dead. There was something sleeping inside. Something... twisted. Warped. A malformed echo of what it once was.
Not ancient. Not noble. Just... wrong.
Yanjie hadn't lived long enough to see what it could become. But I would.
The world was vast, brutal, and hungry. I was a crippled slave with a broken root and no allies.
But I was no longer Yanjie.
And I would not die a slave.