[POV: Yi Mengyao]
Mengyao stared at the fruit Changgui had just handed her, momentarily caught off guard.
Another new fruit?
Over the past several days, Alexei had been distributing different fruits almost daily. She recognized very few of them, which was saying something considering her past life's extensive knowledge of cultivation resources.
But she knew this one all too well.
In her previous life, her eldest sect brother had possessed two of these fruits. Supposedly obtained from some secret realm expedition. One of them had been gifted to Yan'er.
Later, that fruit had gone missing.
After a thoroughly theatrical search, the pit had been found beneath a cabinet in Mengyao's room. Because of course it had. Only her junior sister's tearful pleading had supposedly saved her from punishment. Looking back now, with the clarity of a second lifetime, the whole situation was laughable.
She'd been young then and hadn't known how to defend herself properly. Every attempt to explain had only made things worse, digging her deeper into the hole they'd prepared for her.
The truth was, with even the slightest bit of critical thinking, the frame-up had been obvious. The simplest method to verify would've been examining the residual spiritual energy on the fruit pit to determine when it was consumed.
When her sect siblings had "found" her in the Technique Pavilion, she'd already been away from her residence for three full days. Yet the pit they'd used as evidence hadn't even dried out yet.
Any reasonable person would've noticed that glaring inconsistency. Her "beloved" sect siblings had simply chosen to ignore it.
In their eyes, she would always be nothing more than a mortal beggar who'd gotten lucky enough to join an immortal sect. No amount of talent or achievement would ever change that fundamental contempt.
Mengyao bit into the emerald fruit.
Since she'd only recently discovered her spiritual root and hadn't yet opened her qi sea, the mysterious spiritual energy within the fruit circulated once through her body before dissipating uselessly.
Her face immediately scrunched up.
Sour.
So incredibly sour her eyes watered.
Changgui quickly offered her the yellow fruit from his other hand. "Here, Alexei sent this one for you too. He said this one's not sour."
Mengyao accepted it reflexively, examining the unfamiliar fruit.
She didn't recognize this one, but she nodded her thanks anyway.
Changgui scratched his head with a slightly sheepish expression. "They're all from Alexei. He's been really generous with sharing food."
"Alexei..." Mengyao's gaze drifted toward his house.
The boy was something of an enigma. Over the past few days, aside from brief morning conversations during qi-sensing practice, during which he'd share food and make sarcastic observations, he was constantly busy with mysterious projects.
She got the distinct impression he viewed both her and Changgui as children to be placated with snacks and then promptly ignored.
Which was... annoying, considering she was mentally older than him and had lived an entire lifetime already.
Then again, she thought, glancing down at her current seven-year-old body, maybe his assessment wasn't entirely unfair from an outside perspective.
She shook her head sharply, dispelling the thought. According to Yan, Alexei was sixteen years old. From a normal person's perspective, she was the child here.
Not that it mattered. she had no intention of disturbing him regardless. Cultivation was like that. Once practitioners reached Qi Refinement and committed to serious training, going weeks without seeing fellow sect members was normal unless you needed a sparring partner.
Better to focus on her own progress. This life would be different.
----------
[POV: Alexei]
Deep inside the mountain, Alexei stood at the bottom of a very shaft, counting blocks under his breath.
"Eighteen... nineteen... twenty... twenty-one... twenty-two... twenty-three..."
He paused and nodded to himself. "That should do it."
For good measure, he dug one more block down, then placed an open trapdoor at the twenty-third block position.
This was the execution mechanism. The killing floor.
In Minecraft, mobs that fell exactly twenty-three blocks took damage that left them with one hit point remaining. A single sword strike would finish them off, granting full experience as if he'd done all the work himself.
At night before bed, he could close the trapdoor. Mobs would then fall the full twenty-four blocks, dying on impact and leaving only their drops behind. Every morning, he'd just collect the loot and go about his day.
Eventually, once he had enough iron for hoppers and access to redstone, he could upgrade the whole system into an automated sorting facility. No more manual collection required.
The only downside was that fall damage counted as natural death, which meant equipment drops were disabled. Mobs killed by falling wouldn't drop armor or weapons. But that was fine. Skeletons still dropped bones and arrows regardless of how they died. And bones were valuable.
Another advantage: twenty-four blocks wasn't enough to kill witches. If one spawned, he'd know immediately because it'd still be alive and probably poisoning everything in range.
His current mob farm design had six layers total. The top layer had a four-meter ceiling. Each of the five layers below had three meters of vertical space including floor thickness. Added together: nineteen meters of vertical structure.
The top five layers were dedicated spawning zones. Mobs that spawned there wouldn't fall directly onto the execution platform. Instead, water streams would carry them to an eight-block-wide buffer zone he'd built on the bottom layer.
From there, another water current would flush them uniformly into the execution platform. The water spread mechanic in Minecraft was consistent: seven blocks of flow from each source block, eight blocks total counting the source itself. He'd carved one block into the wall specifically for water placement, which meant the buffer zone was seven blocks wide.
The sixth layer served a specific purpose: preventing mobs from the upper four layers from falling far enough to die prematurely. Fall death meant reduced experience gains, which defeated the entire purpose of the farm.
As for converting zombies into drowned?
He'd considered it but decided against implementing that feature in this version of the farm. It would interfere with the pickaxe-repair efficiency he'd optimized everything around. Maybe later, after he finished excavating the mountain interior, he'd rebuild with drowned conversion.
He stepped back, examining his work.
The execution platform was perfect.
He clapped his hands together. "Time to test this thing."
The testing process was simple: remove the torches currently preventing mob spawns, wait for the farm to populate, and see what happened.
He climbed the ladder shaft, ascending vertically toward the top layer. The climb took about fifteen seconds, and along the way he passed several placed openings in the walls.
Those gaps were for torch placement, temporary lighting to shut down mob spawning when needed. Eventually, he'd replace them with redstone lamps controlled by levers. Much more convenient.
The creeper problem had resolved itself naturally thanks to his decision to skip drowned conversion. Creepers would just flow along with everything else into the collection platform, same as zombies and skeletons.
He'd also discovered something interesting about MC-assimilated materials: wooden stairs didn't require climbing. You could just step on them and ascend automatically.
The experience was identical to using an escalator.
Descending was even simpler.
Water drop.
From the top corridor to the execution platform forty-three meters below: three seconds of freefall, ending in a water block that negated all damage. With armor equipped, the descent would be even faster thanks to increased weight.
Round trip, start to finish: under twenty-five seconds.
Alexei emerged from his "secret base" into the late afternoon sunlight. Based on the angle of the shadows, probably around three or four PM.
He'd planned to go fishing first, replenish his pickaxe's durability while the mob farm populated. The spawning process would take some time anyway. Standing on the execution platform wouldn't interfere since he'd be more than twenty-four blocks away from the spawn zones, but the mobs still needed time to pathfind their way into the water streams.
No point wasting that time standing around.
As he passed the stone table on his way to the fishing spot, he noticed Changgui struggling through what looked like painful memorization. The kid's face was scrunched into an expression of pure suffering, clearly not enjoying himself.
Mengyao, by contrast, appeared completely composed.
They were probably working on the Qi Cultivation Chapter of the Body Tempering Art manual. Now that both new disciples had finished learning basic cultivation world knowledge, and since both were literate, Qingxue had given them each a copy to study.
When Changgui had first learned the manual contained over a hundred thousand words that needed to be memorized, Alexei had watched the color drain from the kid's face in real-time.
That kind of despair couldn't be faked.
He dismissed the thought and continued toward his usual fishing spot.
The pickaxe had been sitting at about fifty percent durability when he started, which meant half an hour of fishing was enough to repair it completely via the Mending enchantment.
He returned to the mountain, descended to the execution platform, and officially began the mob farm's inaugural test run.
The results exceeded his expectations.
Mob spawning rates were higher than he'd calculated, averaging around eleven mobs every ten minutes. Roughly sixty-six mobs per hour.
That was double his initial conservative estimate of thirty per hour.
The experience gain far outpaced his pickaxe's durability consumption. Item assimilation could easily keep up with the farm's output.
The math was elegant:
Level zero to level one required seven experience points.
Each zombie, skeleton, or creeper dropped a minimum of five experience points on death. If they spawned with equipment, each piece added an additional three points.
Which meant: if he assimilated one block every time he hit level one, he'd get at least nine assimilated MC blocks every ten minutes.
In ideal conditions, that translated to fifty-four assimilated blocks per hour.
Of course, that was pure theory. Real-world performance would involve variables, like time spent mining, mob AI quirks, occasional gaps in spawn rates.
Realistically? Thirty-plus blocks per hour was more likely.
But even that was absurdly efficient compared to manual mining and assimilation.
---
By the time Alexei called it quits for the day, he'd expanded the interior of the mountain to more than double its original size.
The excavation had been surprisingly efficient. Every block of stone he'd mined had been collected, none of it wasted.
The raw cavern was rough, unfinished, but it had potential. Good bones, as construction people might say.
All the cobblestone he'd collected was currently sitting in a row of furnaces, slowly smelting into smooth stone blocks. Eventually, he'd craft those into stone bricks, maybe even polish some into smooth stone bricks for accent walls.
These blocks would form the primary building material for the mountain's interior. This place would be livable, maybe even impressive once he was done with it.
The fuel situation had been an interesting optimization problem.
Coal from Verdantree City worked well enough, but the assimilation costs followed unusual rules. Assimilating a single piece of coal required one level of experience. Assimilating a coal block required only three levels.
Yet the difference in output was enormous.
A single coal block could smelt eighty pieces of cobblestone, which was ten times more efficient than using individual pieces of coal.
Nine pieces of coal could be crafted into one block. That block required only three levels to assimilate. In return, it provided eighty smelting operations.
The conclusion was obvious.
By crafting coal into blocks before assimilating them, he dramatically reduced the total experience cost per smelt. The system effectively rewarded him with efficiency simply for understanding its internal logic.
"Economics… Maybe I could have been a professor if I hadn't dropped out. Nah," he muttered, watching another piece of cobblestone turn smooth inside the furnace.
He'd briefly considered trying to set up a carpet duplication machine for infinite fuel, that was a thing in Java Edition Minecraft, an exploit that let you duplicate items endlessly using specific mechanics.
Unfortunately, he was running Bedrock Edition physics.
On the bright side, bamboo farms could serve as renewable fuel once he got those set up. Slower than duplication exploits, but at least it was something. Besides, this was a cultivation world. Bamboo grew everywhere. Finding a steady supply should not be difficult.
He sealed the furnaces for the night and headed back to his house.
He climbed the stairs to his bedroom. When he reached the bed, he collapsed onto it without bothering to change his clothes. He was too exhausted to care.
His last thought, before sleep claimed him, was a simple mental note to expand the furnace array tomorrow.
----------
[POV: Yi Mengyao]
Midnight in Yan's residence, and Mengyao was discovering that her temporary living situation had some complications.
The sect's disciple quarters had fallen into severe disrepair over the years. Most of the buildings were structurally unsound, their roofs half-collapsed and walls crumbling. Until proper repairs could be made, or new structures built, she was staying with her master.
Which would be fine, except Yan was a cuddler and talked in her sleep.
"So many fruits... Bees... so cute..." Yan mumbled, tightening her grip and pulling Mengyao closer.
Mengyao stared at the ceiling. This woman has problems.
She'd tried to politely request that Alexei help build her a house, he seemed to be good at construction, given all the mysterious projects he worked on, but every time she'd attempted to bring it up, the words had died in her throat.
Asking favors felt too much like owing debts. And in cultivation society, debts were dangerous.
Better to just endure the cuddling for now.
Besides, it was not as if she truly minded all that much.
The sentiment surprised her. In her previous life at Celestial Path Sect, she'd never experienced anything resembling affection from fellow disciples. Everything had been transactional.
The sect had been dominated by powerful cultivation families, all jockeying for position and influence. Disciples without family backing, like her, were forced to either pledge loyalty to a faction or remain disadvantaged.
Even with her exceptional spiritual root, she'd been treated as an outsider.
On paper, Celestial Path had provided her with top resources. In reality, true scions of great families wouldn't have touched those "generous" allowances.
Her junior sister, for example, had consumed more spirit stones in a single month than Mengyao used in years. Pills and spiritual fruits had flowed to her without limit. Magical artifacts accumulated faster than she could use them. The sect master himself had personally instructed her on a regular basis.
Meanwhile, she had seen the sect master exactly twice in a hundred years.
Looking back now, Celestial Path had marked her as disposable from day one.
Her master had probably viewed her as nothing more than a future sacrifice. And she'd been naive enough to believe their treatment was normal. That all top sects operated this way.
The truth had revealed itself after her death. Celestial Path Sect received massive support from the family that had backed her junior sister. Within years, they'd dominated the Eastern Territories completely, crushing all rival sects until none challenged their supremacy.
That position had remained unshaken until the moment of Mengyao's reincarnation.
She'd been a commodity.
Yan shifted in her sleep, pulling Mengyao even closer. Despite the awkwardness of the situation, there was something oddly comforting about it.
She closed her eyes. Sleep came easier than expected.
---
Early morning found Yan awake and organizing supplies while Mengyao washed up and prepared for the day.
"Ready?" Yan asked cheerfully, tucking a jade container into her sleeve. "We should get going soon."
Inside that container were body-tempering medicinal seeds.
So far, only Mengyao had successfully sensed qi. Changgui seemed close, judging by his progress. As for Alexei...
Well. Better not to dwell on that particular frustration.
They left the residence and took to the sky, Yan's sword-flight technique carrying them both. Mengyao held onto her waist, looking down at the sect below.
The whole place was a disaster. Some buildings were already collapsing, while others did not look far behind. Pathways were choked with weeds and wild growth. Some structures looked so fragile that a strong breath might bring them down. And yet this was the same sect where everyone ate Earth-grade spiritual fruits.
If she told anyone from her previous life about this, they'd never believe it. The servant disciples at Celestial Path had lived in better conditions than this.
The flight from Yan's residence to Qingxue's courtyard took less than five minutes, essentially just a short loop around the mountain. Through the forest canopy below, she could see the remnants of mountain paths, now thoroughly overgrown with vegetation.
They descended into Qingxue's courtyard smoothly, landing near the stone table.
Someone was already waiting.
"Senior Quan," Mengyao said formally, offering a respectful bow.
Quan nodded in acknowledgment.
Mengyao had long since stopped being surprised by his seriousness. Since meeting him, she had never once seen him smile. No matter the situation, his expression remained stern and composed.
But she could tell it was not coldness or arrogance.
It was simply his nature.
"Go ahead, Mengyao."
Yan settled into her seat at the stone table and picked up the tea Quan had already prepared before they even landed. She took a sip, looking perfectly content.
Mengyao stood there for a moment. When nothing happened, she sighed internally.
"Master, did you perhaps forget something?"
Yan thought about it for quite a while, clearly not noticing anything amiss.
"Forget what?"
"...My breakfast."
"Oh." Yan blinked. "Right." She didn't sound particularly concerned.
After several days with her master, she had formed a fairly accurate understanding of the woman's personality. She appeared reliable on the surface, but underneath she was chaotic. She was forgetful, overly affectionate, and possessed no sense of personal boundaries.
At least she meant well.
Mengyao made her way to her meditation cushion. Changgui was already deep in meditation. He had probably been here for at least half an hour already.
On the other side, Alexei's cushion sat empty.
Still asleep, most likely.
Since she had already successfully sensed qi, continuing the meditation exercise served no real purpose. She simply closed her eyes and rested, letting her mind wander.
Time passed slowly. After about ten minutes, she heard footsteps approaching from the courtyard entrance. They crossed the space, unhurried, and stopped at the cushion beside hers.
A soft voice spoke near her ear. "No slacking off, understand?"
The tone was cool.
That would be Qingxue.
Mengyao kept her eyes closed, but she could predict exactly what would happen next. Qingxue would leave. Alexei would immediately start dozing off. Then Qingxue would return, catch him sleeping, and stand over him to make sure he stayed awake.
It happened every single morning without fail.
She still could not figure Alexei out.
By all observable measures, he registered as completely ordinary. His qi signature was no different from a normal person who had never cultivated. He had not even successfully sensed spiritual energy yet.
And yet he possessed absurd physical strength.
A few days ago, Changgui had tried to help Alexei with his fishing. The boy had grabbed the fishing rod with both hands, face turning red from exertion, and had not been able to move it even slightly.
Mengyao had attempted it herself out of curiosity. She had failed just as thoroughly.
That was when Yan had explained: the fishing rod, which appeared to be only about a meter long and should have weighed almost nothing, actually weighed close to 650 kilograms.
At minimum, one would need to reach mid-stage Body Tempering just to lift it. And lifting it was entirely different from using it to fish.
She had watched Alexei sit by the square pond for half an hour at a time, holding the rod with one hand. Maintaining that position required far more than the strength needed to simply lift it.
Without at least 5,000 kilograms of raw power, sustaining that position would be impossible. For normal cultivators, even with spiritual energy enhancement, reaching that level of strength required Foundation Establishment at minimum.
In her previous life, she herself had not achieved that benchmark until age nine.
Most cultivators took twenty to thirty years to reach Foundation Establishment. Some took seventy or eighty years. Many never reached it at all.
If word got out that Alexei possessed strength equivalent to decades of cultivation, or strength some cultivators would never achieve in their entire lives, without needing to cultivate at all?
Dao hearts would shatter across the Eastern Territories.
"Zzzzzz..."
Mengyao resisted the urge to facepalm.
He had fallen asleep again.
Right on schedule, Qingxue's footsteps returned. There was a pause, presumably as she noticed the sleeping teenager, followed by a quiet sigh.
"Alexei. Wake up."
"Mmmph."
"You need to focus. At least try."
"M'trying..."
"You are asleep."
Mengyao kept her expression neutral, but internally she was amused. There was something oddly endearing about the whole routine. Despite Alexei's tendency to brush her and Changgui off with minimal interaction, she could tell he did not dislike them.
He just had his own priorities. And apparently, staying awake during meditation was not one of them.
---
The qi-sensing session ended, transitioning into free time.
As expected, Alexei immediately produced an absurd quantity of spirit fruits from his spatial storage. He stuffed some fruits into both Mengyao's and Changgui's arms before disappearing without further conversation.
Mengyao looked down at her haul.
One Everlasting Peach. three Brightglow Fruits, three Emerald Cloud Fruits, three Yellow Dragon Fruits, and several others she did not recognize and which Alexei had not bothered to name.
Even after experiencing this routine for days, she still could not wrap her mind around it.
Who consumes spirit fruits like this?
She bit into the Everlasting Peach.
Crunch.
...Okay. This is incredible.
The texture was soft and glutinous, bursting with juice. The flavor was complex. It was easily the most delicious spirit fruit she had eaten since arriving at Aureate Summit Sect.
She knew this fruit's reputation well. Everlasting Peaches were the primary ingredient in Beauty-Preserving Pills. Despite being classified as only mid-grade Earth-tier, their market value rivaled or exceeded that of high-grade Earth-tier fruits like the Brightglow Fruit.
The trees took five hundred years just to mature enough to flower. After that, they bloomed once every thirty years and bore fruit once every thirty years. Each fruiting produced exactly three peaches.
Supply never met demand.
Moreover, Everlasting Peaches could only be obtained from secret realms. Every time one appeared in the Eastern Territories, female cultivators across the region took notice.
Before her death in her previous life, only six had ever appeared in the entire Eastern Territories.
The Brightglow Fruit she recognized as well, the same high-grade Earth-tier spirit fruit that Celestial Path Sect had purchased at auction for an enormous sum of spirit stones. It supposedly enhanced talent. Sweet and sour, crisp texture. Very tasty.
The Emerald Cloud Fruit was mid-grade Earth-tier. An old acquaintance from her past life. Very sour. Not tasty.
The Yellow Dragon Fruit ranked lowest among the four types at low-grade Earth-tier, but in terms of flavor and texture it was not much worse than the Everlasting Peach. Pure sweetness.
She froze mid-bite.
When had her standards become so warped that she used phrases like "only low-grade Earth-tier" and "not much worse than"?
When had her criteria for liking a spirit fruit shifted from its cultivation effects to its taste?
She bit into an Emerald Cloud Fruit to ground herself.
"Mmph..."
Her face immediately scrunched up. "So sour..."
Even after eating them for days, she still had not adjusted to the Emerald Cloud Fruit's acidity.
She glanced over at Changgui, whose face bore an identical expression of sour-induced suffering.
At least she was not alone.
Still, these were Earth-tier spirit plants. Wasting them would be unconscionable. And since she had no jade container for proper storage, finishing them quickly was the best option.
While Mengyao was still working through her three Brightglow Fruits, Changgui had already finished his entire allotment.
He rummaged around in his robes and produced a brand-new cloth bundle. When he unwrapped it, the savory aroma of grilled fish drifted into Mengyao's nostrils.
Her attention immediately shifted. Her stomach, rather inappropriately, growled.
Mengyao's face flushed.
"Uh, would you like to try some?" Changgui scratched his head, looking slightly embarrassed. "Alexei said if we want to eat anything, we can just take it freely from those boxes over there. No need to stand on ceremony."
"I took this grilled fish from one of the boxes yesterday."
Following his gaze, Mengyao spotted the two rows of treasure chests against the wall. But unlike yesterday, today there was something new added above each vertical row of chests. Display frames had been mounted, each one containing a single item.
For example, the outermost display frame held a shiny golden apple.
She followed Changgui over to the treasure chests. She watched as he lifted the lid of one, rummaged around inside briefly, and when he withdrew his hand, there was suddenly a round, fist-sized sphere in his palm.
"This is a baked potato. The flavor is very unique, I had never tasted anything like it before."
Mengyao reached out and accepted the offered potato.
It felt slightly heavy in her hand. Not extremely so, but at least two and a half kilograms or more.
So this was another one of those miraculous foods.
Changgui's eyes were full of anticipation, as if her praise for the food would make him happier than if he received praise himself.
Mengyao took a small bite.
Her previously empty stomach was instantly full. The sensation was bizarre, but it was not unpleasant, just strange.
"How is it?" Changgui asked immediately.
"It is acceptable."
Having just consumed delicious spirit fruits, this potato really could not be considered tasty in comparison. Aside from a faint sweetness and that indescribable starchy flavor, there was nothing particularly special about it.
But Changgui's face lit up as if she had given it the highest praise.
"Right? They are really filling too! You can eat one and be satisfied for hours!"
Mengyao nodded politely, still trying to process the strange texture.
----------
[POV: Alexei]
After making sure his junior disciples were properly fed, Alexei headed straight for the mob farm beneath his house.
Last night had been the first time the grinder ran at full capacity. He would be lying if he said he was not excited to see the results. The moment he climbed out of the water block at the bottom of the drop shaft, he looked toward the collection platform.
"Holy shit."
The platform was covered in drops. Rotten flesh, bones, arrows, bone meal, all scattered across the area in quantities that made his inner hoarder very happy. There had to be at least three to five hundred items in total.
No equipment drops, which tracked. The skeletons and zombies up in the spawning chambers were apparently stingy bastards.
He was still standing more than twenty-four blocks away from the platform, which meant monsters above were continuing to spawn and fall. Every few seconds, another one would plummet down the shaft and splat wetly against the stone.
Items in this world took about eight hours to despawn. He had been gone for roughly ten hours, which meant he had only wasted about two hours' worth of materials.
Completely acceptable losses.
And if he really wanted to prevent despawning, all he had to do was pick items up and place them back down. The act of interacting with them reset their despawn timer.
He approached the collection platform. The moment he got within range, all the scattered drops started flowing toward him like iron filings to a magnet, slipping through gaps in the blocks and absorbing into his inventory.
As he walked along the platform, he closed each trapdoor mechanism to prevent future mobs from falling to their deaths. No point wasting XP.
By the time he reached the end and checked his inventory:
[Rotten Flesh ×151]
[Bone ×131]
[Arrow ×139]
[Gunpowder ×105]
Right now, he only really needed bones and arrows. Rotten flesh was technically edible but tasted like garbage, and gunpowder was useless until he set up a proper TNT production system.
He dumped the excess materials into a storage chest and started climbing the ladder back up toward the spawning chambers. Might as well check if anything interesting had happened overnight.
He was about two blocks up when he heard a metallic clink from inside the spawning area.
"Something good dropped?"
He grabbed the edge of the one-by-one inspection hole he had left in the wall and poked his head through to get a better look.
Two pairs of empty eye sockets stared back at him from about a meter away.
"Ah, fu—"
TWANG.
TWANG.
The sound of bowstrings releasing was immediately followed by two arrows flying at his face at point-blank range.
Alexei jerked his hand up to block one arrow, which tore through his forearm.
The second arrow went straight through his right eye.
Pain exploded through his skull. His health bar dropped below half instantly. The force of the impact knocked him backward, and he fell off the ladder, plummeting back down the shaft.
SPLASH.
He hit the water block at the bottom. No fall damage, thank god for MC physics.
He lay there for a second, stunned, an arrow sticking out of his forearm and another jutting from his eye socket.
"Suka blyat," he said, his voice slightly muffled by the water.
He climbed to his feet, water streaming off him, and checked his health.
Five hearts remaining. The arrows were still embedded in his flesh, and based on the way his health bar was flickering, he was taking minor damage over time from the wounds.
His first instinct was to eat something and recover his health. He opened his inventory.
It was empty.
There was no food. He had left everything in the storage chests upstairs because he was an idiot.
He had rotten flesh and raw potatoes in his inventory from the mob drops, but there was no way in hell he was eating those. The rotten flesh gave you food poisoning, and raw potatoes were only slightly better.
"Fine," he muttered, pulling out his bow. "We are doing this the hard way."
He notched an arrow and started climbing the ladder again. As he climbed, he drew the bow back.
Do not ask how you draw a bow while climbing a ladder with one hand. It worked in the game. It worked here. Minecraft logic was beautiful.
Today, he was having a proper archery duel with these skeletons.
He pulled the bowstring to full draw. A targeting reticle appeared directly in his vision, floating in space wherever he aimed. When he reached the inspection hole again, he could see the lower legs of both skeletons through the gap. They were standing just inside, probably waiting to ambush him again.
He aimed and released.
THWIP.
The struck the first skeleton in the leg. The knockback effect from his [Punch I] enchantment sent it flying backward four or five meters, and the [Flame I] enchantment ignited it instantly. Flames engulfed the skeleton's entire body.
It collapsed in a heap, burning.
The second skeleton reacted faster, raising its bow. He was already drawing another arrow.
They fired simultaneously.
The skeleton's arrow grazed his shoulder. His arrow hit it in the chest, but this one was wearing an iron chestplate and iron leggings, so it did not die immediately.
He fired again.
THWIP.
The second arrow struck the skeleton's skull. It staggered, flames spreading across its armor, and then collapsed.
He lowered his bow, breathing slightly harder than normal. His health was down to about four hearts now. And to add insult to injury, neither the iron chestplate nor the iron leggings had dropped. He had taken two arrows for nothing.
He climbed fully into the spawning chamber.
The weird thing was, even though an arrow was sticking out of his eye socket, his vision was fine.
He collected the bone and arrow drops from the skeletons, then headed back toward the exit tunnel. He needed to get upstairs and eat something before he bled out from these wounds.
He was halfway through the tunnel when he heard footsteps approaching from the other direction.
A moment later, a figure rounded the corner. Yan stopped dead when she saw him, her eyes going wide.
Her gaze locked onto Alexei. Half his body was stained red, blood soaking through his robes from the arm wound and dripping steadily from the arrow protruding from his eye socket.
"Alexei!"
"Oh, hey." He raised his arm in greeting. "What are you doing down here?"
She crossed the distance between them in a single step, spiritual energy flaring around her hands. Before he could protest, she pressed her palm against his arm, and the bleeding stopped immediately.
The arrow was still there, but the blood flow ceased.
"Uh, thanks."
"Do not talk. Do not move."
Alexei blinked, or tried to. The arrow in his eye made blinking complicated.
Yan's spiritual energy flowed through the wound in his arm. The arrow trembled, then slid out smoothly, dissolving into golden motes as her qi consumed it. The wound sealed behind it, leaving only a thin scar.
The eye was a different problem entirely.
She stared at the arrow jutting from his left eye socket. The shaft had entered through his eye and exited out the back of his skull. By all rights, he should be dead. The fact that he was standing, talking, and apparently fine was impossible.
The arrow had clearly penetrated his brain.
If she pulled it out, he would die. No question.
"Okay, so this looks worse than it is..."
"I said do not talk!" Yan snapped. Her eyes were slightly too wide, her breathing slightly too fast. She was on the edge of panic.
Alexei felt bad. He had not meant to scare her. This whole situation was probably pretty horrifying from her perspective.
While she was still trying to figure out how to safely remove the arrow, he reached up and grabbed the shaft.
"Wait, do not!"
He yanked it out.
"Ow. Okay, yeah, that hurt." He poked at the hole in his head experimentally. His finger went in about two centimeters before hitting something squishy. "Huh. That is weird."
Yan looked like she might faint.
He tried to reinsert the arrow along the same path, but Yan grabbed his wrist and pressed her other hand against the wound.
Spiritual energy poured from her palm into his skull, golden light surrounding the injury. She could feel his life force draining away. All she could do was slow it down, keep him alive for as long as possible.
"You really do not need to worry," Alexei said with a faint smile. "Can you just get me the apple from the chest? The golden fruit in the display frame above the treasure chests."
"Apple? Stop talking nonsense. You need proper healing, not... not fruit! Even if it is a spirit fruit, you are losing too much blood!"
His health was down to three hearts and dropping. Yan's spiritual energy had slowed the drain from one HP per second to about one HP every fifteen seconds, but that was still a countdown to death.
Alexei could see the panic in her eyes. She genuinely thought he was dying. And technically he was, but he had a solution for that.
"That fruit is special," he said as calmly as he could manage. "It will heal me completely. Trust me on this."
"Alexei—"
"Please, just get the apple."
Yan stared at him for a moment, torn between wanting to believe him and thinking he had gone delirious from blood loss. But finally, she nodded.
"Do not die. I will be right back."
She released the healing energy maintaining his wound, which immediately started bleeding again, and sprinted back up the tunnel toward his house above the mob farm.
Alexei pressed his own hand against the hole in his head. Two and a half hearts now. This was cutting it uncomfortably close.
He could hear Yan's footsteps echoing through the tunnel system, moving fast. Then silence for a few seconds. Then the footsteps returning, even faster than before.
She rounded the corner, slightly out of breath, holding the golden apple in both hands.
The moment Alexei saw it, he felt a wave of relief.
But Yan had stopped moving. She was staring at the fruit in her hands.
"This... this life force..." she whispered. "What is this fruit?"
The golden apple was radiating energy so dense it was visible even without cultivation senses. The life force emanating from it was overwhelming, like holding a piece of the sun itself.
"Something that will fix my brain," Alexei said, reaching for it with his hand. "Can I have it?"
Yan handed it over, still looking stunned. "Where did you get something like this? I have never felt anything remotely comparable. Not even Heaven-tier spirit fruits carry this much vitality."
"I found it," Alexei said, which was technically true. He had found it. The details were not important right now.
He bit into the apple.
Golden light exploded from his body, so bright that Yan had to shield her eyes. The wound in his head sealed itself in seconds, flesh knitting back together, bone reforming, even his eye regenerating from nothing. The hole in his arm vanished without a trace.
His health bar shot back to full. The bleeding stopped and the pain disappeared.
Within seconds, he was completely healed. Not even a scar remained.
Yan lowered her hand slowly, staring at him.
"How do you feel?" she asked.
Alexei flexed his fingers, rolled his shoulders, touched the spot where the arrow had been embedded in his skull.
"Perfect," he said honestly. "Like it never happened."
Yan reached out and pressed her hand against his forehead, checking his life force with her spiritual sense. Her eyes widened further.
"Your vitality is completely restored. No, it has surpassed recovery. It is overflowing. That should not be possible from a single fruit, regardless of how potent it is."
She pulled her hand back, looking at him.
"What exactly is an apple?"
"A very good fruit," Alexei said, which was the truth. "I told you it would work."
"You could have died. If that... apple had not worked—"
"But it did work." He gave her what he hoped was a reassuring smile. "See? Everything is fine."
Yan looked like she wanted to argue, or possibly shake him. Instead, she just pulled him into a hug, which was somewhat unexpected.
"Do not do that again," she said quietly.
Alexei awkwardly patted her back. "I will work on that."
She released him after a moment, stepping back and wiping at her eyes quickly. Then she seemed to remember why she had come down here in the first place.
"Right. I came to discuss the herb garden plans. But perhaps we should do that somewhere with less blood on the walls."
"Yeah, probably a good idea."
They headed back up the tunnel together.