Jing Qian had only just set foot on the path of cultivation. To him, the memories he'd freeloaded were nothing to cling to.
But even from those stolen fragments, he quickly realized how treacherous the so-called four great professions, Rune Engraving, Alchemy, Weapon Forging, and Tailoring/Skin-Crafting, truly were.
Forget ordinary rogue cultivators, even if you were a blood-born heir of the Life Furnace, a scion of a great island clan, blessed with talent, wealth, opportunity, and time all at once, investing in these four trades still didn't guarantee proportional returns.
Because of this, in the cultivation world of Hunzhou, people had nicknamed them the Four Great Money Pits.
To avoid falling into such traps, many cultivators changed their approach, abandoning high-barrier industries in advanced manufacturing and instead turning upstream, focusing on the development and exploitation of raw materials instead.
Jing Qian immersed himself in this new knowledge, converting it into nourishment for his cultivation.
Once he finished digesting the memories, he withdrew from the Fate Stele Space and returned to the real world.
After a surge of Life Essence replenished him, his state improved dramatically, sweeping away the weariness and decline from before.
Rising from his wooden raft, he gazed out around him. The vast ocean stretched endlessly, its waves surging with power, sky and sea blending into one.
He drew in a deep breath, the cool sea breeze brushing across his face, but his heart burned with heat.
Reborn into this life, disaster after disaster had piled upon him, each tied to life and death. He'd barely had time to think at all.
Only now did he finally have a chance to consider his future.
In the long run, cultivation was his ultimate pursuit, unyielding, unshakable, and his truest goal.
Though the road ahead was harsh beyond compare, his heart brimmed with anticipation and fervor.
But that long-term dream was still distant.
At present, his body was frail, his cultivation shallow, and he was adrift in a deserted, boundless ocean.
If this had been his previous life, he would have been dead already.
So his most urgent, short-term priority was clear: escape the sea, reach solid land, and find a safe place where he could steadily grow.
Jing Qian glanced down at the raft beneath his feet. The "fish engine" of five hundred large fish had long since vanished in the tsunami.
He needed a new source of propulsion!
Fortunately, with the Soul-Weaving Life Pattern, he could snare big fish.
He raised a hand and flicked his finger. A strand of pure white silk shot forth, diving straight into the seawater and rapidly extending toward the ocean depths.
The silk was strange; it carried his divine sense with incredible efficiency. Wherever the strand reached, it was as if he were there himself, his perception razor-sharp.
With just one thread, he could explore the seabed freely. It was an exquisite experience.
Unlike Qingzhuzi, however, he could only keep one fish bound at a time. That meant he needed to choose a truly powerful one to serve as his beast of burden.
His right hand toyed with the strand, sending it twisting and weaving through the depths, probing and comparing, picking and discarding.
It felt exactly like a young man who had just gotten rich, scrolling through car reviews on a forum, carefully comparing specs to select his new ride.
Too skinny? Rejected. Too ugly? Rejected. Too flat? Also rejected.
Jing Qian was determined to find a fish that was well-built and strong, one worthy of towing his raft.
The sun shone brightly overhead; the boy sat patiently fishing, waiting for the perfect catch.
Meanwhile, he continued to mull over the fragments of memory he had absorbed two tasks at once, neither interfering with the other.
Just as he was sinking into this rhythm, a huge shadow flickered across the seabed, grazing the edge of his divine sense!
Startled, Jing Qian jolted awake and extended his senses further.
But before he could probe again, the raft beneath his feet suddenly lurched, slammed by an overwhelming force from below, and was sent flying.
Jing Qian, perched atop it, was hurled into the air like a startled squirrel.
As he struggled to steady himself midair and glanced downward, his temper flared instantly.
"My raft!"
A massive crab claw suddenly burst out of the water, snapping open as it clamped down on Jing Qian's raft and sheared it clean in two!
The claw was more than ten meters wide, dazzling with rainbow hues, a sight both fearsome and magnificent.
Yet the way it crushed the coconut-wood raft was like breaking a stalk of sweet sugarcane, two simple clicks, and it was gone.
That raft, which had carried Jing Qian across a thousand li, weathered multiple brushes with death, and even survived a tsunami unscathed, had finally met its end.
Now, in the vast and boundless ocean, with no foothold beneath him, Jing Qian's chances of survival became all the slimmer.
For the enemy to dare destroy his raft was no less than cutting off his very lifeline. This was a blood feud, irreconcilable!
How could he possibly let it go?
Falling from the sky, Jing Qian vanished just before he hit the waves, slipping into the void.
Counting his trial in the Fate Stele Space, this was already his third time using the Sumeru Life Pattern to escape into the dimensional void.
Each entry and exit made him more familiar with that strange subspace.
To his eyes, this dimension seemed to exist apart from reality itself, like a fourth dimension governed by its own peculiar rules.
Drifting through it, he was surrounded by endless darkness streaked with fractured shards of real-world light like a secret realm outside of both time and space.
Within this strange dimension, he moved as freely as a creature born of the void, instinctively slipping through its folds.
In just moments, he had crossed several dozen meters and reappeared near his enemy.
Through the thin membrane separating the void from reality, Jing Qian finally saw his foe.
A colossal crab, nearly thirty meters long, was rising from the seabed, brandishing its claws as it shredded the remnants of the raft.
It even picked up a few splinters of wood, tossing them into its mouth and crunching them down before swallowing.
Its body was thick and gleaming with multicolored hues, its stalked eyes swiveling left and right with sharp awareness.
Through the barrier, Jing Qian could see the glow of white radiance flickering across its shell. It was a ninth-rank "White Fang"–level demon-beast, one that possessed a Life Pattern.
But Jing Qian felt not the slightest fear.
With a flicker, he slipped past its snapping claws, appearing beneath its belly as it sank into the sea, and stepped out of the void behind it.
Back in the day, I could eat three and a half jin of river crabs in a single sitting, tearing them apart barehanded without even needing crab scissors. And you think I'll be scared of you, you overgrown brute?
The iron skewer in his hand thrust forward like lightning, carrying the momentum of void traversal, parting the seawater as it drove straight for his carefully chosen target.
It was the seam where the crab's carapace joined its underside, the very spot he always favored when cracking crabs open.
It was also the one blind spot in a crab's anatomy that no natural predator could normally strike.
The skewer gleamed with cold light, infused with White Fang Life Essence, piercing effortlessly through the water toward its mark.
The one-meter skewer sank deep, right into the joint, burying itself to the hilt.
The giant crab reacted instantly, its stalked eyes contracted sharply, its legs kicked out, and it howled in pain, stirring up a massive wave.
But by then, the shameless attacker had already slipped back into the void, vanishing without a trace.
Inside the dimensional space, Jing Qian held his bloodied skewer and calmly observed the crab through the translucent barrier.
One strike, then retreat. This hit-and-run strategy was his standard, and its effectiveness was undeniable.
Watching the crab's frantic response, Jing Qian even let out a cold laugh.
The wounded giant, convinced the enemy was still underwater, turned its body around, thrusting its rear high into the air while plunging its upper half into the depths.
It flailed its claws wildly below, searching desperately for its unseen foe.
Poor crab, it had misjudged entirely and knew nothing of the fate awaiting it.
Jing Qian wasn't about to waste the opportunity. With the weak spot practically shoved in his face, he lunged from the void once again, iron skewer in hand.
Now unhindered by seawater, his thrust was faster, sharper.
This time, he didn't just stab the skewer in; he twisted it hard, savoring the feel before withdrawing back to safety.
The crab's hindquarters, struck twice in succession, had it reeling. It had yet to even glimpse its attacker, and the humiliation was unbearable.
It plunged to the seabed, curling atop a reef. Both claws were pressed tightly against its rear, shielding the wound, not daring to move an inch.
Truthfully, Jing Qian's attacks, while painful, were not lethal.
But to a White Fang–rank, Life Pattern–bearing demon crab, the real injury was not the puncture wounds; it was the insult to its pride and intellect.
Never before had it faced such an elusive foe. To be toyed with by unseen hands, powerless to respond, it filled the beast with both terror and rage.
And to understand its plight… well, put bluntly: even a Super Saiyan, if violated twice in the same humiliating way, would surely tremble with fear, unable to contain it!
From the depths, the giant crab roared, venting its terror and fury.
Meanwhile, back in the void, Jing Qian found himself in a stalemate.
His strategy's weakness was becoming clear.
Yes, he had the skewer, and yes, he could traverse the void, but relying on brute force alone, his damage was simply too limited. It wasn't enough to land a decisive blow.
Even when he had slain the Snow Maiden, leaping across realms to kill a Dragon-Elephant, that success had relied entirely on Qingzhuzi exhausting his power to break through her protective Manifestation Form. Only then had Jing Qian found a chance.
Without that, his pitiful iron skewer could never have pierced her defenses.
Now, though he had struck the crab twice, its vitality was more than enough to weather the injuries. Its life was not in danger.
Jing Qian, on the other hand, had already burned through a large portion of his Life Essence with just those two void-walking strikes.
His reserves were more than half gone.
If he couldn't find a way to end this fight soon, the tide could turn against him at any moment.