Confined to my own place? Just like the good old days, isn't it?
Wu Han sat cross-legged in the hut built over a pond inside the Wu Clan estate. Fish swam in the water below, but every one of them instinctively kept its distance, circling away from the aura he exuded.
What was he doing? Cultivating? Hardly.
After engraving runes into his body, meditation was no longer necessary. His qi supply now absorbed and refined itself automatically, a continuous cycle that needed no conscious effort. At his current rate, he estimated he would reach the Fifth Stage within a week.
That was the good thing about energy. Once you cracked the code, it became nothing more than a calculation.
And calculation was the essence of spellcraft.
Magic has nine tiers before godhood. At my current power, I can only manage cantrips and first-rank spells.
Wu Han had tested his magical capability in this world. With his soul still not fully in tune with this universe, controlling energy felt awkward, clumsy in places. But with his innate grasp of fundamental laws, he was able to revise and adapt his basic spells until they responded.
First-rank magic: Silent Image.
With a flick of his hand, a translucent veil shimmered into place around the hut. From the outside, it would appear as if he were sitting quietly in meditation, cultivating like any other dutiful youth. Only from within could one see the truth — that the veil itself was a spell.
Convenient. Prying eyes would see nothing unusual, even if they wandered too close.
And all I'm left with is this dark affinity… Do I really need to recollect the others one by one? What a nuisance.
It seemed his journey across the multiverse had stripped him bare, leaving only his original self. Though his soul still carried the weight of divinity, the power to express it had been consumed. It was like owning a lamp forged from the core of a neutron star, yet having no light to shine within it.
For now, he could only wield dark-element magic, with the faintest traces of lesser techniques in other elements.
But some things, once you've done them enough, become second nature.
He extended his hand toward the pond. A thin stream of mist rose from the fish beneath the water, drawn into his palm. One by one, the creatures rolled belly-up, floating lifeless on the surface.
Soul draining. His bread and butter. His signature spell.
Back when he had still been a mage in the so-called hero party, this technique had been his answer to impossible opponents. Beasts born of pure magic, corrupted elementals, even deranged demi-gods, knowledge alone could not defeat them. He had lacked the raw power to manifest his understanding.
Luckily, or perhaps inevitably, war had changed the rules. Dark magic had been sanctioned, and he had discovered a way to cheat his limitations. By stealing the life force of others and molding it into his own reserves, he could fuel spells far beyond his natural capacity.
He closed his fist, dispersing the mist. "At this level, the limit I can instantly kill is cultivators below Qi Condensation Stage Two."
Wu Han's gaze sharpened as he ran the numbers in his mind. It was like trying to crack open a tough shell to drink the juice within. He could not simply rip a cultivator's soul away intact; their qi veins and spiritual foundations were barriers, protective shells. He needed to break them open first.
Mortal humans, though?
They were little more than walking vessels of qi, convenient supplies waiting to be tapped.
-
"Talking about cultivation, I should practice some of these so-called martial arts. Using spells to fight would draw too much attention."
Wu Han searched through the memories he had absorbed, selecting martial techniques once practiced by both Wu Han and Wu Yaoshi. Within an hour, he had assimilated them into his mind, instantly learning the sequences. Such was the advantage of possessing a divine soul.
"A sword technique, huh? Interesting."
He had never wielded a sword before. Knives, ceremonial blades for rituals, or cuts to fuel blood magic, but never for direct combat.
--
He began practicing the movements, body shifting with surprising ease. Yet he knew memorization alone was not mastery. Understanding when and how to apply a technique mattered just as much as knowing its form. To avoid being caught off guard in battle, he repeated the drills again and again until the motions flowed with familiarity.
"This body truly has talent. I'm lucky the last owner was such a waste," Wu Han muttered, pleased with how well the vessel performed in physical trials. Since he did not yet possess a soul avatar, or a Nascent Soul, as this world called it, his current limits remained tied to the physical strength of his body.
"Now… let's see how this world's alchemy works."
After training until sweat dampened his brow, he summoned a cool gust of wind to dry himself, then opened the pouch he had received from Wu Wei. His senses tingled with excitement. He knew alchemy — he had even taken it as a minor discipline during his years at the wizard academy.
Then his eyes widened, surprise flashing across his face for the first time since entering this world.
"This…?"
He held up a pill. "Perhaps I was too quick to call this universe nothing but meat-heads."
It was a Body-Refining Pill, a Rank Two treasure. For a town like Azure Peak, something like this appeared once in a decade.
Yet from an alchemist's perspective, it was far more valuable, especially for someone like Wu Han, who had never seen this world's version of pills before.
"They managed to extract the essence of living plants, condense it into a pill, and make it absorbable by the human body. And yet the best method of cultivation they came up with afterward is… sitting in a cave? What were they thinking?"
The principle mirrored his own soul-draining arts. Instead of seizing life force from living beings, these pills offered refined vitality in portable form. If they focused their efforts on human essence instead of plants, they might even stumble upon his own methods, perhaps some already had.
Back in his old world, potions had been the standard. More convenient to brew, but fragile, short-lived, and designed for immediate effects: instant healing, invisibility, bursts of speed. These pills, however, focused on long-term transformation, strengthening the body permanently.
Wu Han rolled the pill between his fingers, a grin slowly spreading across his face.
"I could work with this..."
He suspended the pill in the air with magic, weaving a spell circle around it like a crucible. Black tendrils spread from the glowing lines, sinking into the pond below. The water darkened, rippling as if plagued.
When the tendrils touched a fish, its body stiffened, soul ripped upward in a wisp of light. One after another, the fish floated to the surface, lifeless, while their essence streamed into the hovering pill like roots nourishing a tree.
A few breaths passed. Every fish in the pond was dead.
The stolen life force surged into the pill, mingling with Wu Han's own dark energy. The pill trembled violently, spinning midair, its surface cracking as it began to transform.
An ominous glow spread from within, green light mixed with black shadows, pulsing like the heartbeat of something alive.
Wu Han's face paled. The method was untested, reckless even for him, but the pill began to stabilize, its violent shaking calming into steady pulses.
Then it stopped.
The air hummed with raw vitality.
Wu Han's lips curled into a manic smile. "Would you look at that. My professors would give me an A+ for this!"
He laughed, inspecting his creation. What had once been a plain brown pill was now a gleaming emerald, radiant with condensed life force. Its rank had leapt from a humble Rank Two treasure to Rank Three.
A pill once rare enough to appear once in a decade… now elevated to a miracle seen only once in a hundred years.
But any true alchemist who witnessed this would call it madness.
Wu Han had force-fed the pill raw vitality, shoving external life energy into the fragile essence still lingering within. The pill had mutated, growing more potent, but also far more unstable.
For an ordinary cultivator, consuming it would mean certain death. At best, their qi would riot and deviate beyond control. At worst, their body would detonate from the overload.
Wu Han clenched his fist.
CRACK.
The pill shattered into shards, fragments scattering like glass. To most cultivators, it would be a crime, a blasphemy. Crushing a pill destroyed its delicate structure, erased its efficacy entirely.
But only to blind eyes.
With his divine sense, Wu Han seized the escaping vitality, dragging every wisp of energy back into himself instead of letting it disperse into nature.
Rule one of the universe: nothing is ever lost.
When fruit rots, when a spell fails, when fire burns out, the energy does not vanish. It scatters, flowing back into the world in another form.
The same with the pill. When its shell cracked, its refined essence should have dissolved into the earth, rejoining the cycle of growth. But not if someone intercepted it first.
By pulling the energy directly into his meridians, Wu Han bypassed the instability of the pill entirely. He skipped the digestion process, absorbed its essence immediately, and erased the danger of overdosing.
His body stretched half an inch taller, muscles tightening with a faint gleam, flesh thrumming with vitality.
At his current stage, without a Nascent Soul, he could not yet reshape his form at will. But by draining essence from pills and merging it with stolen life force, he had discovered the next best method. At the very least, he could rapidly increase his physical strength this way.
Wu Han flexed his hand, a sharp grin splitting his face.
He felt it, his heartbeat pounding like war drums, his muscles coiled with raw power.
Stronger than he had ever been as a mage.
He had known three bodies before: a human mage, a lich, and the Dark God.
But this… this was something else.
Looking at his reflection in the pond, Wu Han saw not a frail youth, but the image of a tall, muscular man. For the first time in eons, something stirred in his chest.
If I had been this strong back then… maybe you wouldn't have needed to take that spear for me.
Regret? Perhaps. But that time, that world, were far too distant for him to ever return to.
He exhaled slowly, clenching his fist. "But now that I'm physically capable, I would like to—"
Power howled through his veins. His eyes widened, then narrowed, a low growl tearing from his throat as his qi burst outward, rattling the air and sending ripples across the pond.
"Wu Han!!"
Suddenly, a woman's voice cut through the silence force him to stop.