The cold wind outside howled like a beast denied prey.
Inside the crumbling hut, Qin Zhen stood motionless, eyes fixed on the half-moon casting silver light through the shattered roof. His breath curled in the frosty air.
Behind him, the ruined door groaned slightly on rusted hinges.
He didn't flinch.
Pain still lanced through his ribs with every breath echoes from his past life and this new body's recent torment. His fingers curled and uncurled as he flexed them, testing his grip. Weak. Barely any spiritual energy stirred in his dantian, but compared to the void he had felt moments ago, it was progress.
Then
BANG!
The door slammed open so hard it cracked in half.
Splinters flew across the room as a towering youth stepped into the shack, casting a long shadow over the dusty floor.
"Still alive, trash?"
The voice was harsh. Familiar. Loathsome.
Qin Han. His cousin in this life. Bulky, brutish, and dumb as a spirit ox. His cultivation had reached the 3rd Layer of the Skin-Refining Realm, but it was his arrogance that towered higher.
He stepped forward, the floor creaking beneath his heavy boots. His eyes glittered with malice. A thick scar ran across his chin probably self-inflicted from training with weapons he didn't understand.
"I was sure you were choking your last breath when I left you," he sneered. "Guess even the heavens don't want your corpse."
Qin Zhen remained seated on the dirt, legs crossed. His back was straight. His gaze calm. Cold moonlight framed him like a statue in a shrine.
"You shouldn't be here."Qin Han blinked.
"What?"
"You made a mistake walking in."
Qin Han burst into laughter, loud and ugly.
"Oh? And what're you going to do, cripple? Bite me?"
He took another step, then another, until he loomed over Qin Zhen like a mountain of meat.
"No one cares if you die, cousin. The elders already said it: you're a stain. A failure born without a dantian, without a beast spirit.
Useless from the day you were born."
He lifted one leg, twisting his torso for extra force
"Let me fix that face of yours, like last time."
His boot came crashing down toward Qin Zhen's head
But this time...Qin Zhen moved.
Fast.
Too fast for a cripple.
His right hand shot up like lightning, fingers coiling around Qin Han's ankle in midair.
Qin Han's eyes widened. "Wha?"
CRACK.
A savage twist. Bone snapped like dry wood.
"AAAAARGH!"
Qin Han screamed as he crashed to the ground, clutching his broken ankle.
Qin Zhen stood, slow and deliberate. He was shorter, thinner, but something in the air had changed. The wind stopped howling. Even the shadows recoiled.
His gaze, ice-cold, locked on his cousin.
"I remember this moment," Qin Zhen said, voice soft and emotionless. "In my last life… this was when you beat me with a firewood stick and forced me to eat dirt."
He stepped forward. Each footfall echoed unnaturally in the tiny room.
"You said I deserved it for shaming the Qin name. For not being born with a beast spirit. For crying when Father died."
Qin Han scrambled backward, dragging his broken leg, eyes wild with confusion and fear.
"You were just a cripple! H-How are you moving like this?!"
Qin Zhen's lips curled into a thin smile.
[System Notification]
Minor Meridian Repair: Complete
Strength: +0.5
Speed: +0.3
Temporary Martial Skill Unlocked:
Bone-Severing Palm – (1 Use Remaining)
"I was a cripple," Qin Zhen replied quietly.
He raised his hand, and his fingers trembled
only slightly. Not from fear, but from lack of control. His body was still weak. Fragile. But for one instant...
He could strike like thunder.
"Bone-Severing Palm."
His palm blurred.
SMASH
The strike landed squarely on Qin Han's chest.
The boy's eyes rolled back as his body sailed across the room, crashing into the far wall with a dull crunch. Dust rained from the ceiling. A beam cracked overhead.
He slumped to the ground, unconscious. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth.
Three ribs broken. Maybe four.
Qin Zhen stood still, arm extended. His palm stung. His breath came hard.
Too weak.
Too slow.
But
It was a start.
He flexed his fingers, watching as sensation gradually returned. The muscle memory of a war god remained, but this vessel was just a shell. A boy's body, not yet honed.
"I'll need to rebuild it from the marrow up."
He turned to the table nearby a rotting plank held up by bricks. On it sat three items: a cracked beast core, faintly glowing with residual qi; a rusty dagger, once ceremonial, now just a sharp rock with a hilt; and a moldy scroll the Qin Clan's lowest-grade cultivation manual.
He reached out and brushed the scroll.
He didn't need to read it. He remembered every line.
The Breath of Shifting Stone technique an earth-aligned foundation art, barely good enough to reach the Muscle-Refining Realm. A joke compared to what he once wielded.
Still...
Even jokes had their uses.
Then his gaze shifted to the beast core. It pulsed with unstable energy
too wild to absorb safely without a proper spiritual root or guiding technique. In his past life, ingesting such a core directly would have torn apart a novice's veins.
In this life, the risk was even higher.
But time wasn't a luxury he could afford.
The System agreed.
[New Objective Generated]
Begin Cultivation Path: Activate Spiritual Foundation
Suggested Method:
Refine Feral Beast Core using Nine Abyss Breathing Technique
Warning:
Host lacks stable spiritual root.
Estimated Failure Chance: 73%
Override Safety Protocol?
Yes / No
Qin Zhen exhaled slowly.
Seventy-three percent failure. That meant death. Vein rupture. Brain explosion. Heart collapse. He'd seen it before in others who pushed too hard.
He reached out and picked up the beast core. It was warm. Humming. Like holding a storm in your hand.
His fingers tightened.
He smiled.
"Override."
The core glowed brighter red and blue hues dancing in chaotic flashes.
Qin Zhen sat down cross-legged, placed the core against his chest, and closed his eyes.
He inhaled.
A long, drawn-out breath that didn't end in his lungs but spiraled deeper.
[Nine Abyss Breathing Technique: Activated]
Opening First Gate: Root of Severance
Dantian Compression Initiated...
Internal Flow Reconstruction: 2%... 7%... 12%...
A burning river of qi surged from the beast core, flooding into his meridians like molten iron.
Pain exploded in his chest.
He bit down on his lip hard enough to draw blood, fists trembling as he guided the chaotic energy through his broken channels. His vision blurred. His muscles spasmed.
"More," he growled.
Fragments of his old power stirred just instincts, long-dormant techniques buried in soul memory.
He clenched his jaw and pushed the energy downward, toward the base of his spine.
A pop. Then another.
SNAP. SNAP. SNAP.
One by one, blocked meridians burst open rivers long dry now flooding again. Energy spiraled, twisting, reshaping his dantian from an empty shell into a dim spark.
[System Update]
Dantian Core: 14% Formed
Spiritual Circuits: 3/12 Reactivated
Foundation Level: Initiated (Unstable)
Qin Zhen exhaled.
Smoke curled from his mouth.
His entire body ached. Every nerve felt raw.
But for the first time in seventeen years of this new life…
He had cultivation.
Weak. Fragile. But real.
He stood again. Slower this time.
Qin Han groaned from the corner. The boy was still alive. For now.
Qin Zhen walked over to him and crouched down.
He studied his cousin's face the one who had tormented him for years. The one who had killed him in this life, suffocating him with a rope, laughing as he died.
He raised the rusty dagger.
Paused.
Then drove it deep not into flesh, but the floor, inches from Qin Han's ear.
"I want you awake," Qin Zhen whispered. "I want you to crawl back to the clan. I want you to tell them I'm not broken anymore."
He leaned closer.
"Tell them I'm coming."
He stood and walked away, not bothering to look back.
Outside, the wind had stilled. Snowflakes drifted gently from the heavens, the world now eerily silent. The night had stopped breathing.
Qin Zhen stepped into the cold.
His shadow stretched across the white-covered ground like a scar.
[Heaven-Slaying System Update]
New Objective Added:
Restore Peak Cultivation
Retake Control of Qin Clan
Locate Celestial Fracture Site (Locked)
He looked toward the distant horizon, where mountains pierced the sky like blades.
That was where his path began again.
Not as a cripple.
But as a storm.