The air tasted of dust and cold iron.
Qui Beichen opened his eyes.
Agony, sharp and precise, registered in his ruined chest cavity. He wasn't dead, but his body was certainly dying. He lay on a thin, straw pallet in a dilapidated wooden shack; the outermost fringe of the Azure Spire Sect's forgotten disciple quarters.
A runaway tractor. The last memory of Li Wei, the hyper-efficient, patient modern farmer, was the grinding impact of reinforced steel.
Now, he was Qui Beichen.
The flood of new memories hit him like a mudslide. This world was a breathtaking, terrifying expanse of mystical cultivation. It was a place where disciples flew on swords and mountains were mined for Spirit Stones. But beneath the surface of soaring pagodas and rigid martial laws, a deep, pervasive horror was spreading: the Corpse Qi Plague.
Qui Beichen, the original owner of this body, had possessed weak spiritual roots; the most despised rank of aptitude. His death was mundane yet cruel: beaten half to death by the inner-sect bully, Jiang Yunli, for the crime of possessing a younger sister deemed desirable.
Martial Arts?
Qui Beichen dismissed the concept instantly. His new memories confirmed the bitter truth: he possessed no talent for the path of Qi circulation and smashing mountains. The best he could hope for was being cannon fodder, a quick feast for a low-level Ghoul Fiend when the plague finally breached the Azure Spire's defenses.
He needed a normal, slow life. A silent retreat.
He inhaled, tasting the dry earth beneath the floorboards.
The breath didn't circulate Qi. It drew something else:
Life.
The profound quietness of the internal world, where true cultivators circulated their profound energy, was replaced by a roaring, vibrant hum. He didn't feel the meridians that governed martial strength; he felt the network of tiny, unseen capillaries and cells within the wooden structure supporting the shack, the moss clinging to the walls, and the single, struggling weed pushing through the earthen floor beside his head.
Affinity: Wood of Ten Thousand Life.
A legendary, mythical aptitude, long rumored to be inexistent. It wasn't about fighting; it was about fostering, healing, and command over all organic growth. The ultimate power of the farmer.
His heart, broken by Jiang Yunli's strike, was rapidly sealing itself. Not through medicinal pellets or internal martial Qi, but by drawing pure, raw vitality from the wooden structure itself. The shack groaned slightly, its already frail fibers turning paler, sacrificing their own longevity to sustain the life within Qui Beichen.
He focused, pushing the stolen Life Qi into the rupture. Fast. Efficient. He was optimizing the repair process, treating his body like a prized, slightly damaged crop.
One day. He lay there, still, cold, outwardly weak. Cultivators required months, years, to mend critical wounds. Qui Beichen required twenty-four hours to reroute the life force of his immediate environment and reconstruct the broken core of his vessel.
When he finally sat up, there was no explosive martial breakthrough. He was still frail, thin, and pale. But his mind was razor-sharp, and his connection to the surrounding nature was absolute. He could hear the drip of condensation on the nearby roots, feel the strain in the fibers of the bamboo wall.
He flexed his hand. No martial power. Just absolute control over anything that grew.
He picked up a small, dried twig from the floor. He channeled a sliver of Wood Qi into it. The twig, brittle moments before, suddenly possessed the tensile strength of tempered steel and a point sharp enough to pierce iron.
This was his weapon. Subtlety, speed, and environmental mastery.
His goal: peace. His immediate task: survival.
The thatched door scraped open.
A girl stepped in. Her name was Qui Meili. Her robes were patched, and her face, though exquisite and sculpted with the delicate beauty characteristic of the Xuan Realm, was etched with fatigue and fear. She was the reason the original Qui Beichen died.
"Brother," she whispered, her voice cracking. Her small frame rushed forward, collapsing against him.
Qui Beichen, the ruthless farmer-turned-genius, felt a strange, unwelcome surge of warmth. The original host's consciousness, thin and fading, fully integrated into his own. This bond was real. This sister was his responsibility.
"Meili," he said, his voice quiet but steady. "I apologize for worrying you."
She clung to him, sobbing. "They said... they said Yunli killed you. That they would throw you out for the ghouls to eat tonight. I knew you wouldn't leave me, brother. You are all I have left."
The ghouls. The creeping Corpse Qi. The reality of the apocalypse was never far.
Qui Beichen patted her back, his eyes hardening. He had planned a slow retreat, a gradual relocation to a remote valley where his Wood Qi could build a peaceful haven. But first, he had to clear the immediate threat.
Jiang Yunli.
He gently pushed Meili back, wiping her tears. "Rest now, Meili. I need to handle a small matter."
Before she could question him, a grotesque, booming laugh rattled the fragile wooden walls.
"Look, the little bitch is still here! Qui Meili! Your useless brother smells like ripe corpse rot already. Come out, little worm, and let Senior Brother Yunli teach you a lesson in obedience before I let the plague handle your miserable bloodline!"
Jiang Yunli. The name tasted like ash.
Qui Meili froze, her face turning blood-white. "Brother, please, don't go out. He is a Third-Level Body Refinement Disciple! He knows martial techniques!"
"I know," Qui Beichen said simply. He stood up, towering over his sister, a cold genius calculating trajectories. "And I know he's an idiot."
He pushed the door open without hesitation.
Jiang Yunli stood outside, flanked by two snarling cronies. Yunli was thick-necked, barrel-chested, and wore the arrogant yellow robes of the outer-sect bully. His hands were red from recent exertion, and his eyes were full of avarice.
A cluster of twenty or so low-level outer disciples stood nearby, watching the spectacle—some with pity for Meili, most with morbid curiosity.
"Look at this," Yunli roared, pointing a fat finger. "The dead man walks! Did you crawl out of the refuse pit, Qui Beichen? You look even weaker than before! I heard they needed a new training dummy for the Fanged Wolf spirit beasts!"
One of the cronies, a rat-faced youth named Xiao Ming, snickered. "Maybe he wants to watch us break his sister, Senior Brother Yunli! A little perverse entertainment before he dies again!"
Qui Beichen ignored the insults, his attention focused entirely on the earth beneath Yunli's heavy boots. He registered the subtle pressure points where the roots of a long-dead, poisonous Ling tree still laced through the packed soil.
"Jiang Yunli," Qui Beichen's voice was shockingly calm, cutting through the bully's bluster. "You ruptured my heart meridian and planned to discard my body for scavengers. You also carry traces of Corpse Qi on your boots, suggesting you've been near the infected zones, spreading contamination."
The unexpected shift in topic stunned the crowd.
Yunli's face flushed. "You dare accuse me, you good-for-nothing farmer! I kill a ghoul on the path sometimes, so what? That's duty! Now, step aside, or I'll cripple you limb by limb and—"
*He moved.*
It wasn't a charge. It was a step, calculated to look like weakness. But as his foot landed, Qui Beichen channeled a heavy spike of Wood Qi into the ground.
*Focus: Xiao Ming, Rat-Face.*
A lightning-quick spike of Ling tree root—already dead, hardened, and sharpened by Qui Beichen's intent—shot vertically from the packed earth near Xiao Ming's shin. It was thin, moving too fast for a martial artist of this level to perceive, powered by pure life force manipulation.
*Shhhnk.*
Xiao Ming stopped mid-snicker, his eyes wide. He looked down at his yellow robe. A crimson flower bloomed instantly where the hardened root had pierced his femoral artery. He tried to scream, but the root retracted instantly, leaving a tiny, fatal puncture.
Xiao Ming collapsed, already dead.
The sudden, silent violence shocked the crowd into paralyzed silence.
"Ming! You little worm, what trick was that?" Yunli bellowed, staggering back a half step, fear finally overriding his rage.
*Focus: The second crony.*
Qui Beichen didn't wait for Yunli to process the situation. He shifted his attention to the bamboo walls of the shack, channeling a powerful surge of Qi. The fragile, dried reeds instantly bowed, vibrating violently before releasing five razor-sharp bamboo splinters—natural darts propelled by internal strain.
The crony had started to raise his hands defensively. Too late.
*Paff. Paff. Paff.*
Three splinters hit the man's eyes and throat. The fourth pierced his weak cultivation core in the abdomen. The fifth went clean through the thin flesh of his wrist.
The crony stumbled, gargling blood, already dead before he hit the dirt.
Two bullies, eliminated in three seconds, without a single thrown punch or circulated martial Qi. The crowd gasped, stepping back violently. This wasn't martial skill; it was dark, precise execution.
Qui Beichen looked at Jiang Yunli, his expression utterly devoid of emotion.
"Your brothers are already gone," he stated, echoing the calculated brutality of the supreme genius from the memory source, now flavored with the farmer's cold efficiency. "Now, it's your turn to join them."
Jiang Yunli was strong, but he was a bully, not a warrior. The sight of the sudden, inexplicable deaths of his allies shattered his bravado. He didn't understand the attack. He just knew this frail boy had become a lethal, uncanny assassin.
"Die, you freak!" Yunli screamed, abandoning all pretense of sect rules. He launched himself forward, throwing a furious, meaty punch imbued with the full force of his Third-Level Body Refinement Qi. The wind from the blow whistled ominously.
Qui Beichen didn't meet the punch. He was still physically weak.
Instead, he channeled all his current, reserved Wood Qi, forcing it into the packed earth directly beneath Yunli's lead foot.
The effect was instantaneous and invisible. The soil beneath Yunli's foot didn't shift; it momentarily solidified. A single, tiny, unseen root wrapped tightly around the bully's ankle, holding it rigid.
Yunli, committed to the momentum of his heavy strike, found his pivot foot locked. His weight distribution instantly shifted from balanced power to unbalanced forward lunge.
The powerful punch sailed high and wide, missing Qui Beichen by a full foot.
In that microsecond of failure, Qui Beichen was already moving. He reached down and snatched the reinforced Ling-root spike he'd used earlier, pulling it from the body of Xiao Ming.
Qui Beichen sidestepped the wild punch, closing the distance. He drove the root spike, guided by the cold calculation of a man optimizing a harvest, not toward a martial core or a lung, but into the precise, soft indentation beneath the bully's ribcage.
The kidney. A death as quick and messy as any tractor accident.
Shhhhk.
The thick spike plunged deep.
Jiang Yunli froze, his eyes bulging wide with disbelief. The roar died in his throat, replaced by a wet, bubbling cough. His Third-Level Body Refinement Qi was useless against the internal rupture.
He fell to his knees, staring up at Qui Beichen, who stood utterly unharmed, holding the bloody root.
"You are an obstacle to a quiet life," Qui Beichen explained calmly. "Obstacles are removed."
The crowd stared in horror. They had seen brutal fights, but never such cold, clean slaughter from the weakest disciple in the outer sect.
Qui Beichen withdrew the bloody root, wiped it clean on Yunli's robes, and let the bully collapse face first into the dirt.
He turned back toward his shack, ignoring the sudden rush of terror and confusion from the surrounding disciples.
The problem was solved. The immediate threat neutralized. Qui Beili was safe, for now.
But as Qui Beichen stepped back into the relative safety of the shack, the lingering stench of Corpse Qi on Jiang Yunli's robes seemed to cling to the air, a reminder that the quiet life he craved was being devoured by a world rapidly going mad. The Corpse Qi Plague respected no walls, no sects, and certainly no frail wooden shackles.
Qui Beichen looked at the bloody spike in his hand. If survival meant shedding blood and controlling life force in ways the world had forgotten, then so be it.
His slow life plan just got exponentially faster.