Jin's life was an endless cycle of dust. He was a sweeper, the lowest rung of the Golden Willow Sect, a place where spiritual power determined one's worth. His days were spent dragging a bamboo broom across flagstone courtyards, the rhythmic swish-swish a constant, lonely companion. He was an outer disciple, but that was just a title. With a "trash" spiritual root—a root so weak it barely absorbed the ambient Qi—he was little more than a janitor in a world of soaring geniuses. He was sixteen, but his face was gaunt, his robes threadbare, and his spirit was, by all accounts, broken.1
The only thing he had left from his family, a small, polished jade pendant, was currently clutched in his hand. Its cool surface was a small, comforting anchor in a sea of ridicule. He'd polished it so many times he knew every minuscule fissure and every perfect, gleaming curve. It was the only thing his mother had left him, and the only thing no one had dared to take.3
"Well, well, if it isn't the sect's resident trash."
The voice was like acid, and Jin flinched, instinctively stepping back. Young Master Lin, the Golden Willow Sect's most promising talent, stood before him. His robes were a dazzling white, and his chin was held so high it looked like he was trying to sniff the heavens. Behind him stood a small retinue of sycophants, their snickers a chorus of cruelty.2
"Didn't your mother ever teach you not to stand in the path of your betters?" Lin sneered, gesturing with a hand that glowed with a faint, golden Qi. The spiritual energy was so potent it made Jin's entire body ache. He was at the peak of the Foundation Establishment realm, just one step away from forming his Core, a realm Jin couldn't even dream of reaching.4
Jin stammered a quiet apology, trying to move around him, but Lin's foot shot out, tripping him. Jin stumbled, falling forward, and the jade pendant slipped from his grasp. It clattered to the ground, the sound swallowed by the laughter of the onlookers.
Lin's eyes, cold and calculating, fell on the heirloom. "What's this? A little trinket from his pathetic family?" He bent down and picked it up. "How touching." With a casual flick of his wrist, he crushed the pendant between his fingers. The sharp crack of breaking jade was followed by a moment of shocked silence. A single, crystalline shard fell to the ground, reflecting Jin's horrified face.3
That was it. That was the line. Jin had endured the insults, the scorn, and the loneliness, but he couldn't stand the casual destruction of his last, precious memory. A guttural cry of pure, raw grief escaped his lips, and he lunged forward, but Lin simply stepped aside, the sneer on his face unchanging.
Suddenly, a voice, a melodious, ethereal hum, resonated not in the air, but in the center of Jin's mind.
The voice, a chorus of a thousand chimes and a single, loving whisper, was so beautiful and out of place that Jin froze. He just stared at the broken jade on the ground, completely baffled. The voice continued, a new message appearing like shimmering characters in his mind's eye.
[Failure Penalty: Loss of all dignity and future prospects]
Jin didn't understand. A system? Soulbound divinity? And a quest? He had no idea what any of it meant, but the "Failure Penalty" was a sharp jab. He had nothing, so how could he lose anything else? He was about to give up entirely when another message, this one far more personal, flashed in his mind, its tone exasperated and fond.
Oh, for the love of the stars, he's just staring at the floor again. Honestly, he was so much more decisive as the God of Cosmic Fury. We really have our work cut out for us.
The thought was so utterly bizarre, so deeply intimate, that Jin felt a shiver run down his spine. It was a woman's voice. A woman who was now, apparently, in his head.
He stumbled away, ignoring the continued laughter of Lin and his friends, and sought the quiet refuge of the sect's alchemy pavilion. The "quest" seemed simple enough. He'd watched the other disciples practice a hundred times. He gathered the materials—a few mundane spiritual herbs—and clumsily tossed them into a cauldron, a cheap iron pot that was only used by the most hopeless of cultivators. He recited the pill-refining mantra he'd overheard from a passing Elder, and tried to channel his meager spiritual Qi into the concoction.
What resulted was not a pill. It was a dense, foul-smelling gray sludge that smoked ominously. Jin coughed, wiping a tear from his eye. The smell alone was enough to make a lesser man faint. He had failed spectacularly.6
But as the smoke began to clear, a new, private message popped up in his mind. Honestly, I knew his spiritual root was trash, but this is a new low. No matter. A bit of divine power should fix that.
A faint, golden light pulsed from within the sludge. It was invisible to Jin, but the air around the pot shimmered with an unbearable pressure. The sludge condensed, solidifying into a perfectly round, milky white sphere, the size of a thumb. A soft, divine aura, so pure and majestic it felt as though the heavens themselves had descended, emanated from the sphere.
At that exact moment, Elder Han, the sect's Pill Master, happened to be passing by. He'd come to scold the sweeper for using the public pavilion, but as he stepped into the courtyard, he saw it. The faint, pearlescent glow radiating from the open window. It was the purest Qi he had ever sensed in his long life, so potent it made his Nascent Soul tremble in his dantian. His eyes widened in disbelief as he saw the figure in the room—the lowly sweeper, Jin.
He saw the boy holding a perfectly-formed, supreme-grade Qi Condensation Pill. The pill wasn't just good; it was a divine treasure, something that could only be refined by a peerless Pill God. And the Elder had just been about to scold this person.8
A cold sweat broke out on Elder Han's forehead. He backed away slowly, his feet light and unsteady. This young man… he was not a "trash" disciple. He was a hidden master, a true genius who had disguised himself and was training in secret. His power was so far beyond the Elder's own that it made him dizzy.
Jin, still oblivious to the pill's true nature, sniffed it cautiously. The foul odor was gone, replaced by a fresh, floral scent. The pill itself felt cool and dense in his hand. He heard the sound of footsteps hurrying away from the door, but paid no mind to it. Probably someone else who was disgusted by his earlier failure.
He popped the pill into his mouth. A torrent of pure, unadulterated Qi, a thousand times denser than anything he'd ever felt, surged through his meridians. It was a painful, overwhelming sensation, but it pushed his pathetic spiritual root to its limits. His body was refined, his meridians widened, and his stagnant cultivation base surged forward. In that instant, he felt a monumental shift. He was no longer at the bottom.10
A final, triumphant message flashed in his mind.
Jin stared at the final message, his mind still reeling. He had broken through! In just a few minutes, he had accomplished what years of desperate training could not. He looked at the final reward, "Soulbound Divinity," with a small, confused frown. What was that? Some kind of religious ranking? He shrugged. Whatever it was, it had helped him.
Meanwhile, the System's voice, a private, amused whisper that only he could hear, said, Honestly, what am I going to do with this idiot? He was so much smarter as the God of Chaos... Ah well. More fun this way. The words left Jin with a profound sense of dramatic irony he didn't even know he had....
to be cont.....