Chapter 1
In the remote, jagged valleys of the Azure Mist Continent, nestled among peaks perpetually veiled in a thick, suffocating fog, lay the ancestral territory of the Huo Clan. This modest family held a fragile dominion over a cluster of wind-swept villages and a handful of dwindling spirit stone mines, their influence barely extending beyond the surrounding limestone hills.
With only three cultivators currently occupying the Foundation Establishment realm—Patriarch Huo Ling, and the two Elders, Huo Wei and Huo Mei—the clan teetered perpetually on the precipice of obscurity. They survived primarily through desperate alliances with larger, more predatory sects, purchasing protection against wandering demonic beasts and the territorial hunger of rival factions.
Resources remained scarce, and genuine talent remained scarcer still; most clan members possessed spirit roots of middling, mortal quality, condemning them to a life of agonizingly slow progress upon the arduous path of cultivation.
Huo Chen, at twenty-five years of age, functioned as the very embodiment of this mediocrity. Born to a distant branch family within the clan's hierarchy, his spirit roots underwent testing at the age of seven.
The ritual stones revealed a messy, triple mixed root: earth, fire, and water affinities, all of the lowly mortal grade. Such roots occurred frequently among the lesser clans, acting as a diluted vessel that struggled to absorb and refine Qi with any measure of efficiency.
In this world, purity dictated destiny. Single-element geniuses surged through the Qi Refining realm by their mid-teens, reaching the ninth layer or even attempting the transition to Foundation Establishment before their twentieth year. Dual roots, if of earth grade or higher, promised a respectable rise by the early twenties.
However, triple mixed roots, especially those of mortal grade, imposed a crushing burden. Qi circulation felt sluggish, resembling thick mud crawling through narrow pipes. Bottlenecks appeared at every minor stage, and the comprehension of even basic techniques required years of laborious repetition.
At best, an average cultivator cursed with such roots might achieve the fourth or fifth layer of Qi Refining by age twenty-five, provided they enjoyed a steady supply of basic pills and long periods of secluded meditation. Huo Chen had managed exactly that, lingering at the fourth layer of Qi Refining after a decade of relentless, soul-crushing effort.
His days blurred into a gray routine of mining spirit stones to fill the clan's coffers, practicing the rudimentary Huo Clan Flame Palm technique until his skin blistered, and enduring the sharp, subtle disdain of his more talented main-line cousins. Whispers followed him through the damp stone halls like a persistent shadow: "A pity for the branch line—average roots, average destiny." Average destiny, he thought bitterly, wiping sweat from his brow during yet another fruitless meditation session.
Is that all I'll ever be? Another nameless nobody who dies without ever seeing Foundation Establishment? Yet, beneath this unremarkable facade lay a secret Huo Chen guarded with a fierce, silent intensity. He belonged to a different reality entirely. His soul had transmigrated from a distant, metal-choked realm called Earth, a place where cultivation existed only in myth and technology reigned supreme. Memories of towering skyscrapers, roaring automobiles, and the cold logic of scientific laws clashed daily with the Qi-infused reality around him.
These alien memories fueled a quiet, burning ambition to transcend the limitations of his current flesh. "I refuse, he had sworn to himself countless times in the darkness of his chamber. I refuse to live an average life in this world ." On this fateful morning, as the first sharp rays of dawn pierced the mist-shrouded peaks, Huo Chen sat cross-legged in his modest courtyard chamber.
The air hummed with a faint, rhythmic spiritual energy bleeding from a nearby ley line. He circulated his thin Qi through his meridians, attempting to consolidate his shaky foundation for a potential breakthrough to the fifth layer. Sweat beaded on his brow and soaked into his coarse gray robes; progress remained agonizingly slow, each cycle of his breath yielding only minuscule, almost imperceptible gains. "Nothing, he thought with growing frustration.
Hours of meditation and not even a tremor of advancement. At this rate, I'll be stuck at the fourth layer until I'm thirty." As the sun crested the horizon, marking his twenty-fifth birthday—a day of zero fanfare within the clan—a peculiar resonance stirred within the center of his dantian.
It felt like a stone dropping into a perfectly still pond, the ripples vibrating through his very marrow. Ding! The sound echoed not through the air, but deep within the sanctuary of his consciousness—a sharp, mechanical chime entirely devoid of warmth or natural origin. Huo Chen's eyes snapped open, his Qi circulation halting with a jarring abruptness.
"What?!" The word escaped his lips in a strangled whisper. A surge of unfamiliar, crystalline energy coursed through his limbs, invisible to the eye yet profound in its weight, as if the very laws of heaven and earth had suddenly imprinted a new set of rules upon his soul. 'What is this?' His heart hammered against his ribs.
'This energy—it's nothing like Qi. It feels... mechanical? 'he thought Before him, in the dark recesses of his mind, a translucent interface materialized, stark and impersonal against the backdrop of his thoughts. [System Activation Complete.] [Initial Integration: Earth Element Clone Unlocked.] [Clone Attributes: Full mobility equivalence to host. Offensive and defensive capabilities at 50% of host baseline. Shared consciousness established. Clone transfer range: 20 li.]
Huo Chen stared at the words burning in his mind's eye, his breath caught in his throat. "A system? Like the ones in those web novels I used to read on Earth? His hands trembled as he pressed them against the cold stone floor. This can't be real, he thought in disbelief." The interface faded as swiftly as it had appeared, leaving Huo Chen in a state of stunned, deafening silence.
No further explanations emerged. He extended his inner senses, probing this new, pulsating anomaly within his core. There, tethered firmly to his dantian by a silver thread of energy, pulsed a secondary presence—a clone, dormant yet shivering with the readiness to manifest. "If this is real...
He swallowed hard, his mind racing between disbelief and desperate hope. If this is truly real, then everything changes." With a single, focused thought, he willed it into existence. A shimmer of warm, earthen light coalesced in the air beside him, forming a perfect, anatomical replica of himself.
The clone shared his lithe, wiry build, his dark hair tied in a simple topknot, and the same coarse gray robes of the Huo branch members. Huo Chen's jaw went slack. He stared at his own face staring back at him, at the exact replica of the scar on his left hand, at the way the clone's chest rose and fell with breath it didn't technically need.
"This is..." His voice came out hoarse, barely audible. "This is impossible." The clone blinked. He blinked. They were the same motion, felt from two different positions in space. For a moment, Huo Chen could only gape in absolute, flabbergasted silence. Then, as the sheer absurdity of it all crashed over him—the years of suffering, the hopelessness, the despair, all rendered meaningless by this single, inexplicable gift—laughter bubbled up from deep within his chest.
It started as a chuckle, then grew louder, more uncontrolled. "Ha... haha... HAHAHA!" He clutched his sides, tears streaming down his face as wild, cathartic laughter filled his small chamber. The clone, sharing his consciousness, wore the same manic grin. Twenty-five years! Twenty-five years of being called mediocre, of being looked down upon, of scraping by in life! His laughter bordered on hysteria. And now—NOW—heaven decides to drop this in my lap? He wiped his eyes, his laughter slowly subsiding into breathless chuckles.
"Alright. Alright, let me... let me test this properly." As the clone's eyes opened, mirroring Huo Chen's own startled gaze, a seamless link of awareness snapped into place. Information and sensory input flowed bidirectionally. 'Incredible. He marveled at the sensation. I'm here, but I'm also there. I can feel the cold stone beneath me and the draft from the window against... against my other shoulder.' He occupied two points in space simultaneously; he felt the cold stone of the floor beneath his own seat, while simultaneously feeling the slight draft from the window against the clone's shoulder.
He moved the clone's arm with the same intuitive ease as his own. It's like controlling a second body. No—it IS a second body. This isn't a puppet or a technique. This is ME, split into two. A quick test—channeling a burst of Qi into a basic punch toward a nearby training dummy—confirmed the system's constraints. The clone's strike cracked the wood with a solid thud rather than shattering it as his primary body might.
It possessed the speed, but lacked the raw, destructive mass of the original. "Fifty percent baseline, Huo Chen noted, his analytical mind from Earth kicking into gear. Half the offensive power, but the same speed and mobility. And if it shares my consciousness..." His mind raced, his modern Earth logic clashing with his cultivator's instincts. This "system" defied every manual and oral tradition he had ever encountered within the Azure Mist Continent.
It felt like a manifestation of deeper, primordial elemental laws, perhaps tied to the ancient cosmic rules whispered about in forbidden scrolls. "Why now? The question gnawed at him even through his excitement. Why on my twenty-fifth birthday? Is it tied to my age? My cultivation level? Or is it something else entirely?" But the revelation had arrived with a suddenness that left him reeling.
And what invisible price accompanies such a world-breaking gift? He'd read enough stories to know that power never came free. As he pondered the implications of his new power, a sharp, rhythmic knock echoed at his chamber door. Huo Chen's eyes widened. Someone's here— "Cousin Chen," came a voice, youthful and edged with a familiar, sharp impatience. It belonged to Huo Lian, his seventeen-year-old cousin from the main line. She already occupied the sixth layer of Qi Refining, a feat attributed to her superior dual fire-earth roots of the earth grade.
To her, Huo Chen was merely a slow-moving relic of the branch family. "Damn! " Without thinking, Huo Chen willed the clone back into his shadow the instant the knock sounded, his heart hammering against his ribs. The earthen light dissolved in a swirl of ochre Qi, flowing back into his dantian. "Elder Huo shun summons all branch members to the main hall immediately," Huo Lian continued, her voice muffled by the heavy wood.
"There's news of a spirit beast incursion near the southern mines. Your shift starts in an hour—don't dawdle and hurry up." A spirit beast incursion. Huo Chen's pulse quickened, not from fear but anticipation. The door creaked open slightly, revealing Huo Lian's sharp, aristocratic features. Her eyes scanned the room with a flicker of mild curiosity, lingering for a moment on the space where the clone had stood only a second before. Huo Chen kept his expression carefully neutral, even as his thoughts raced.
Did she sense anything? No... no, her cultivation isn't high enough to detect the residual Qi. He stood up, smoothing his robes and masking his face with the usual expression of tired, "average" compliance. "The game has changed, he thought, a small, secret smile threatening to break through his careful mask. The board has been reset entirely." He moved toward the door, his movements slow and unremarkable, just another branch disciple responding to yet another summons.
But inside, something had ignited. Something that had been dormant for twenty-five long years. Hope. For the first time in twenty-five years, Huo Chen realized as he prepared to follow Huo Lian to the main hall, I'm actually looking forward to this summons. He wasn't walking toward another day of mediocrity and obscurity. He was walking toward his first real opportunity. His first real test. And this time, he wouldn't be facing it alone.
Chapter 2
CHAPTER 2 Huo Chen steadied his breath, the air in the small room still vibrating from the clone's recent presence. The sensation was strange—like an echo of movement in a space that should be still. With a thought, he triggered the recall.
The clone dissolved before his eyes, transforming into a swirl of dense, ochre-colored earthen qi. The energy flowed inward like water finding its level, spiraling toward his abdomen as it returned to his dantian. Huo Chen watched, fascinated, as the manifestation he'd created mere minutes ago ceased to exist as a separate entity and became part of him once more.
The integration felt instinctive, yet profoundly bone-deep. It was as if a second heart had suddenly started beating in rhythm with his own, then merged back into a single pulse. As the earthen qi settled into his core, warmth spread through his meridians—a grounding sensation that stabilized his usually scattered Qi.
The energy that normally felt like it was trying to flow in three different directions at once suddenly had direction, purpose, stability. "The system didn't just give me a puppet, he realized, pressing a hand to his chest where he could feel the steady thrum of power. It's woven itself into my foundation and changed something fundamental."
The thought was exhilarating and terrifying in equal measure. Yet as the warmth faded and his breathing returned to normal, cold reality began to set in. The initial rush of discovery gave way to calculated thinking—the kind of survival instinct he'd developed over years of being unremarkable in a world that valued strength above all else. Caution.
That was his only real ally now. In the Huo Clan, displaying abilities beyond your known cultivation level attracted attention. Not the good kind—the dangerous kind. Questions would be asked. How did a fourth-layer disciple with trash-tier roots suddenly manifest a perfect elemental clone? Where did this technique come from? Who taught it to him? Questions led to investigations.
Investigations led to Elder scrutiny. And Elder scrutiny meant being studied, tested, possibly even dissected to understand the source of an anomaly. "This is my secret, Huo Chen thought firmly, standing up from his meditation mat;Nobody else needs to know". The system had given him an advantage—possibly the only real advantage he'd ever have in this life. He couldn't afford to waste it by being careless or arrogant. Every use of the clone would need to be calculated and carefully assessed.
Rising smoothly, Huo Chen adjusted his coarse linen robes, feeling the familiar grit of stone dust that seemed to permanently cling to anyone who worked the mines. It was in the fabric, in his hair, probably in his lungs by now. The mark of a laborer, not a cultivator. He stepped toward the door, and the wooden hinges groaned in protest—a sound so familiar he barely noticed it anymore.
These older quarters weren't maintained with the same care as the main family pavilions. The wood was weathered, the stone cracked in places, but it was home. Had been for most of his life. When he opened the door, Huo Lian was waiting outside. She leaned against a weathered stone pillar with her arms crossed over her chest, looking like she'd been there for a while. Her robes were finer silk than his rough linen—not ostentatiously expensive, but clearly better quality.
Her cultivation aura sat firmly at the sixth layer of Qi Refining, and she never bothered suppressing it. The energy pressed against the air around her like a subtle weight. Her eyes, sharp and analytical, scanned him from head to toe. Not looking for injuries or signs of distress—looking for changes, for anything out of place. "You look different today, Cousin," she remarked, her tone carrying that particular mix of curiosity and casual superiority she always had.
"Did you finally break through that wall you've been stuck at? Or is it just birthday lethargy making your eyes look heavy?" She noticed something, Huo Chen realized with a flicker of concern. Just from looking at me for a few seconds, she can tell something's changed. He kept his expression carefully neutral, his gaze steady.
"Just a long night of meditation, Cousin Lian. The breakthrough remains elusive, as always." The lie tasted bitter—like copper on his tongue—but he maintained his humble posture, shoulders slightly slumped, hands relaxed at his sides.
The body language of someone who'd spent years accepting their mediocrity. Huo Lian studied him for a moment longer, then seemed to accept the explanation. She pushed off from the pillar with fluid grace. "Well, you're needed at the main hall. Come on." Together, they began the walk across the compound.
The morning sun had fully risen now, burning away the last of the mist and casting everything in sharp, clear light. The Huo Clan ground sprawled before them like a small city carved into the mountainside—a maze of modest pavilions built from grey, weathered stone that seemed to grow directly out of the rock.
The architecture was functional rather than beautiful, designed to withstand the harsh mountain weather rather than impress visitors. The paths between buildings were lined with spirit herbs, though calling them "spirit" herbs felt generous. They looked yellowed and stunted, struggling in the thin, nutrient-poor soil of this altitude.
Their leaves were pale, their stems weak. A visual representation of the clan itself—hanging on, surviving, but not exactly thriving. In the training grounds to their left, the rhythmic thud-thud-thud of disciples striking wooden posts echoed across the compound. Some were younger than Huo Chen, their faces red with effort and concentration as they practiced the Basic Earth-Tremor Fist over and over again.
The same techniques he'd practiced at their age. The same grinding repetition that built foundation but rarely led to greatness. In the far distance, the main hall loomed like a sleeping beast against the mountain. Its roof was adorned with faded emblems—flames encircled by earthen motifs, the symbols of the Huo Clan's heritage. Once, those colors had probably been vibrant.
Now the paint was faded and peeling, exposed to decades of sun and wind and rain. "Like everything else here, Huo Chen thought. Faded glory. Better days long past." As they walked, a strange sensation washed over him. His mind felt... different. Larger, somehow. More spacious. Even with the clone fully dismissed and integrated back into his dantian, his consciousness felt expanded.
Part of him was fully present, navigating the stone path and keeping pace with Huo Lian. But another part—a new part—seemed to exist in a different space entirely, lingering on the system interface that had been burned into his mind. The "Sovereign Clone System," it had called itself. A name that promised power and dominion over the elements itself.
His mind churned with possibilities as they walked. If he sent the clone into the deepest, most unstable parts of the eastern mines—the sections where cave-ins were common and cultivators refused to go—he could harvest spirit stones without risking his actual body. The clone could work in conditions that would kill him. "And if the clone touches a vein of ore, he wondered, his fingers twitching slightly at his sides, will I feel the vibration through our shared consciousness? Can I use it to sense hidden pockets of Qi that even the Elders have missed?" The system had mentioned earth affinity.
Full earth affinity for the clone, synchronized with his own mixed roots. That meant the clone could potentially detect things his original body couldn't, sense gradations in the stone and soil that were invisible to normal spiritual sense. The possibilities felt endless.
The applications were staggering. But his face remained a careful mask of dull acceptance—the expression of a branch disciple who'd long since made peace with a life of mediocre cultivation and manual labor. They arrived at the main hall to find it already crowded. About two dozen disciples had gathered, filling the space with the low hum of conversation and speculation.
The atmosphere was thick with the scent of old incense—the cheap kind that left a residue—and the faint, salty tang of sweat from people who'd come straight from morning training. Most of the disciples here were at the early layers of Qi Refining, their robes stained with the distinctive red clay of the mining district.
These were the workers, the laborers, the ones who kept the clan functioning through sheer physical effort rather than cultivation prowess. On a low platform at the front of the hall stood Elder Huo Shun. He was a man who looked like he'd been carved from the very mountain they all lived on—deeply cracked skin weathered by decades of sun and wind, deep-set eyes that missed nothing, and a back that refused to bend despite his age.
At the ninth layer of Qi Refining, he represented the ceiling for most clan members. The absolute peak of what someone without exceptional talent could achieve. The three Foundation Establishment elders—Patriarch Huo Ling, Elder Wei, and Elder Mei—were nowhere to be seen. They remained in their private pavilions on the higher slopes, in areas where the Qi was richer and the spiritual energy more concentrated.
They dealt with clan politics, negotiations with other sects, and matters they considered worthy of their attention. Spirit beast incursions in the mines didn't qualify. Elder Shun's voice cut across the murmuring crowd, reinforced with a thread of Qi that made it carry clearly to every corner of the hall. "Disciples," he began, his tone flat and businesslike. "A pack of Iron-Fanged Wolves has breached the eastern mine perimeter.
They were drawn by the exposed spirit stones from last week's vein discovery. The scent of raw spiritual qi attracts them like blood." A low murmur rippled through the gathered disciples. Some looked nervous. Others excited. Huo Chen felt a prickle of genuine interest run up his spine. Iron-Fanged Wolves. He'd heard stories about them from other miners. Their hides were tough as leather, capable of turning aside weak blade strikes.
Their bite could snap a low-grade iron pickaxe clean in half. They were equivalent to cultivators at the second or third layer of Qi Refining—deadly for a lone worker caught by surprise, but a manageable threat for a coordinated team with proper preparation. "Elder Wei has already assigned a suppression team from the inner disciples," Shun continued, his eyes scanning the crowd as if measuring each person's courage.
"However, we need additional volunteers for perimeter patrol and cleanup duties. There will be carcasses to haul, tunnels to reinforce, and the area to secure." He paused, letting the weight of the request settle. Then came the part that made eyes light up across the room. "Participants will receive merit points. These can be redeemed for low-grade qi-gathering pills, basic earth-path techniques, or contribution tokens for library access."
The murmurs grew louder now, tinged with interest and calculation. For most disciples in this hall, merit points represented the only realistic path to advancement. The clan's monthly stipend was minimal—Huo Chen received three low-grade spirit stones per month, barely enough to prevent his cultivation from regressing, much less make actual progress with his triple mixed roots. Pills, techniques, resources—all of these required merit points earned through service to the clan.
Huo Lian glanced sideways at him, a smirk playing at the corners of her lips. "Well, Cousin? Here's your chance to earn some points and buy a pill that actually works. Or will you stick to your usual routine—swinging a pickaxe in the dark and hoping the ceiling doesn't collapse?" The provocation was casual, almost playful, but Huo Chen heard the underlying assessment. She was curious whether he'd volunteer or play it safe.
He didn't answer immediately. Instead, he watched as several disciples hurried toward the registration table that had been set up in the eastern wing of the hall.
Their faces were alight with a mixture of hope and determination—the expressions of people who saw danger as an acceptable price for opportunity. To them, this was a risky assignment that might yield some modest rewards.
To Huo Chen, it was something else entirely. Perimeter patrol means distance from watchful eyes. It means shadows, tunnels, and space to work. The perfect environment to test the clone's twenty-li range without anyone noticing.
He stood amid the shifting crowd, his expression calm and unremarkable. His heart beat steady in his chest. But inwardly, the system interface flickered at the edge of his consciousness: [Earth Element Clone: Ready for Manifestation]. "I'll go," Huo Chen said quietly, his voice cutting through Huo Lian's expectant silence.
"Merit points are merit points. Better than nothing." Huo Lian let out a sharp, mocking laugh. "Try not to get eaten, Chen. I'd hate to have to tell your father you were killed by a mangy wolf because you were too busy daydreaming." She turned and walked away, her better-quality robes swishing with each step.
Huo Chen watched her go, his expression never changing. But his mind was already racing ahead. Calculating distances. Weighing the clone's fifty-percent baseline capabilities against an Iron-Fanged Wolf's strength. Considering terrain, opportunities and risks.
He moved toward the registration table with steady, unhurried steps. His mind was already twenty li ahead, in the eastern mines, planning exactly how to turn this dangerous assignment into his first real test of the system's capabilities. For the first time in twenty-five years of mediocrity and grinding labor, Huo Chen was actually looking forward to a clan assignment.
Chapter 3
Huo Chen let Huo Lian's words slide past him without a visible reaction. He'd learned years ago that responding to mockery only made things worse. Better to stay quiet and beside he had bigger things to think about now.
He turned away from his cousin and moved toward the eastern wing of the hall. There, under the shadow of a massive stone pillar carved with the likeness of a mountain, a simple wooden table had been set up.
A junior disciple sat behind it—no more than fourteen or fifteen, his face still soft with youth but his eyes already carrying the tired look of someone who spent too much time with ledgers and not enough cultivating.
The boy didn't look up as Huo Chen approached, his brush moving in a rhythmic scratch-scratch across a bamboo ledger. "Name and layer?" the boy asked, voice flat and monotonous. "Huo Chen. Fourth layer, Qi Refining." The brush paused for a fraction of a second—a flicker of recognition.
Fourth layer at twenty-five was perfectly average. Neither impressive nor pathetic. The boy made a quick notation. "Patrol auxiliary," the disciple stated.
"You'll be assigned to the rear guard. Your job isn't to kill—it's to survive and maintain order. You'll be marking retreat paths with chalk and collecting any scattered spirit stones the Iron-Fanged Wolves might have dislodged after the main team clears the area. Expected duration: two to three hours. Merit reward: eight points if completed without incident.
Ten if you recover at least five mid-grade stones from the debris." He slid a small jade token across the rough wood. As Huo Chen's fingers brushed it, he felt a sharp, cold sting that quickly warmed against his palm. The internal tracking array activating.
"So they can monitor our positions, Huo Chen noted, slipping it into his sleeve. Standard procedure for dangerous missions." "Eight points. The number echoed in his mind as he stepped away from the table. It wasn't much—would barely buy a single low-grade Qi Gathering Pill."
But for someone with his roots, even one pill made a difference. His meridians leaked energy like a cracked vessel. Without constant supplementation, his cultivation would stagnate or even regress. Better than nothing.
"And if I find mid-grade stones, that's ten points total." He noticed seven or eight other disciples gathered nearby, mostly fifth or sixth-layer cultivators. Young men and women with hungry eyes who saw this wolf incursion as an opportunity rather than just danger. The truly cautious ones had already declined, preferring the relative safety of mine work to facing spirit beasts.
Leaving the hall through a side exit, Huo Chen made his way back to his courtyard chamber. He needed privacy before the muster bell rang. His Earth Clone pulsed dormant in his dantian—a steady rhythm he could feel like a second heartbeat. The system's parameters were burned into his memory: Mobility: Full speed, identical to his own. Combat: Fifty percent baseline. Range: Twenty li—a massive radius that could cover the entire eastern mining district. "Twenty li.
That's enough to scout the entire area while I stay safely with the patrol." He reached his small chamber. The air inside was cool, smelling of old parchment and the faint metallic scent of the training dummy he'd been practicing on. He closed the door and slid the heavy iron bolt into place.
Sitting cross-legged on his thin, frayed mat, he exhaled slowly. Time to test this properly. "Manifest," he whispered. A faint shimmer of earthen qi coalesced beside him, emerging with the quiet weight of settling stone. The clone took form—an exact mirror image down to the smallest detail. The callouses on his palms from mining picks.
The slight fraying at the hem of his gray robes. The same steady gaze. There was no separate mind, no other consciousness. This was him, split into two forms. With a shared impulse, the clone moved. Three smooth strides carried it across the room to the narrow window slit. It slipped through and vanished into the afternoon haze outside.
Immediately, Huo Chen's world doubled. The sensation was overwhelming. His physical body felt the hard floor beneath him and the stillness of the enclosed room. Simultaneously, his second "body" felt wind against its face and the gritty texture of flagstones under its boots. His mind split into two distinct streams of awareness. Left eye: The dim interior of his chamber. Right eye:
The sprawling compound seen from a crouched position on a nearby roof. :This is insane, Huo Chen thought, struggling to process both perspectives simultaneously. I'm in two places at once." As the clone touched down on solid ground, something else became apparent. The earth affinity wasn't just a passive trait—it was active and responsive. The soil beneath the Huo Clan compound wasn't just dirt anymore.
Through the clone's senses, it became a map of information. He could feel the subtle vibrations running through the ground. The density variations in the bedrock. The hollow spaces where old mining tunnels had been sealed and forgotten. The whole mountain seemed to whisper its secrets through that connection. "So this is what real earth affinity feels like."
The clone tasted the air—dry, dusty, carrying the distant musky scent of the wolves from the east. Huo Chen guided it toward the low eastern wall, keeping to the shadows and avoiding sight lines from the training grounds.
Through this second set of eyes, the clan ground looked different. The herb gardens came into sharper focus—wilting stalks of Spirit-Heart Grass that were clearly starved for better qi. The training grounds where disciples practiced with techniques that looked sloppy to his experienced eye, even from a distance.
As the clone pressed a palm against the cracked stone of the outer wall, the earth responded. His enhanced affinity registered something important—a faint instability in the ground along the path the patrol would likely take.
The soil had a different resonance there, a hollow quality that suggested a shallow subsidence beneath the surface. "Old tunnel collapse, probably, Huo Chen analyzed. A century old, maybe more.
The ground looks solid but it's not." He filed the information away. If the wolves tried to drive the patrol back toward that area, the ground would give way under weight and pressure. Knowledge like that could be useful. Could save his life, or give him an advantage.
After about five minutes, a dull ache began building at the base of his skull. Maintaining two bodies at this distance required intense concentration—more than he'd anticipated.
The mental strain was real and growing. " I'll need more practice with this, he noted", willing the clone to return. It retraced its path with ghost-like silence, slipping back through the window and approaching his seated form. In a swirl of warm, dense energy, it merged back into his chest. The integration was instantaneous.
Every scent the clone had detected, every vibration it had felt, every detail it had observed—all of it was now in his memory as clearly as if he'd experienced it himself over hours of careful study. "Awesome" he marvelled DONG—DONG—DONG. The muster bell rang out across the compound. Sharp, clear, demanding. Huo Chen rose to his feet, his legs feeling strangely heavy after the shared consciousness experience.
The sensation of being in two places at once left a lingering disorientation that would take time to fade. He adjusted his robes, checked that the jade token was secure in his sleeve, and stepped out into the afternoon light.
The information he'd gathered was solid. He knew the terrain along the patrol route better than the patrol leader likely would. He knew where the ground was unstable and where the wolves' scent was strongest.
"Knowledge is an advantage, truly." He paused at the threshold of his chamber, hand resting on the doorframe. His Earth Clone sat ready in his dantian, a tool he could deploy whenever needed.
Whether he used it to scout ahead, to gather resources unseen, or to act from the shadows while his main body remained visible to the patrol—the possibilities were endless. The Iron-Fanged Wolves were dangerous. Fourth-layer disciples had died to spirit beasts before. This mission carried real risk.
But for the first time since awakening the system, Huo Chen didn't feel helpless. He had information. He had the clone. He had options beyond just hoping to survive through luck. "Eight merit points minimum.
Ten if I find mid-grade stones. And a chance to test the clone in a real situation without anyone knowing." He stepped out of his chamber and closed the door behind him, heading toward the eastern gate where the patrol would assemble.
Other disciples were already moving in the same direction—some looking nervous, others confident, all of them motivated by those promised merit points. Huo Chen walked with steady steps, his expression calm and unremarkable. Just another fourth-layer cultivator volunteering for dangerous work because he needed the resources.
Nobody looked at him twice. Nobody suspected what he was carrying inside his dantian. And that was exactly how he wanted it. The eastern gate loomed ahead, and beyond it, the mining district where Iron-Fanged Wolves had breached the perimeter.
Where spirit stones lay exposed and danger waited. Huo Chen's mind was already running calculations, already planning how to use every advantage the system had given him. First real test, he thought as he joined the gathering patrol members. Let's see what this clone can actually do.