Dawn.
The second day since Wang Yu was brought to the Reverse Blood Sect as a Spirit Slave.
Before the sun rose, the iron bars at the stone hut's entrance were unlocked. Wang Yu, as always, woke up on time and followed the flow of slaves toward the bluestone plaza ahead of the Stone House District.
Twenty cultivators stood atop a small platform before the crowd, their expressions indifferent as they gazed down upon the gathered slaves.
The plaza was filled with thousands of people—not just those captured from Stone Lake City yesterday, but others from countless places, all possessing mixed or wasted spiritual roots.
Though Wang Yu didn't know the differences between the Taihu and Chiyuan regions, he could tell one thing for certain:
this Stone House District was far from the entirety of the Spirit Slave force.
Each of the nine peaks likely had its own pen full of captives.
Among the crowd were many gray-haired, wrinkled slaves—clearly veterans, the so-called elders of this wretched fate.
The misfortunes of the first batch are warnings to the next.
Wang Yu clenched his fists.
He must never fall to such a state!
The twenty outer disciples of the Reverse Blood Sect wasted no time. They began lecturing immediately on the basic principles of cultivation—Qi circulation, meridians, and the flow of the Great Cycle.
They didn't bother to teach the Bloodburn Art itself—just enough for these Spirit Slaves to understand the text and start practicing it on their own.
For those who couldn't read, they were told to just listen for now.
After an hour of general instruction, five cultivators would handle a separate literacy class.
But not everyone got that chance.
You had to fight for it—compete for it.
Wang Yu noticed a few fellow townsmen from Stone Lake, farm boys who intentionally avoided joining the literacy session, trying to be clever.
They didn't even realize that without understanding the manuals distributed yesterday, they wouldn't know the sect's rules—or how to cultivate properly.
If they were lucky, they'd just die.
If not... they'd learn what it truly meant to live worse than death.
Only by producing value far beyond their worth could a Spirit Slave earn the mercy of death.
Two hours later, the session ended.
The crowd dispersed quietly.
No one spoke.
No one dared to run.
A suffocating silence blanketed the Stone House District.
When Wang Yu returned to Stone House No. 83, he had barely sat down when something was tossed through the window—a cloth bag containing water and food, the same as yesterday.
Except… there was one more thing.
"A note?"
Unfolding it, Wang Yu wasn't surprised.
Where there are people, there's hierarchy—relationships, favoritism, and politics.
Even among slaves. Especially among slaves who can produce profit.
The Reverse Blood Sect's Third Peak was called Cold Blood Peak.
The Spirit Slaves' output belonged to the sect, of course.
Assuming there were three thousand of them, and each produced twelve spirit stones' worth of Spirit Sand per year—that was 360,000 lower-grade spirit stones in a decade.
Not a small fortune.
With so much wealth in play, internal strife was inevitable.
The note came from one of the overseers—Steward Duan, one of three managers in the Stone House District, each representing a different faction of Cold Blood Peak.
The note wasn't just a greeting.
It was an invitation, a promise—a painted dream.
"Once you break through to the Qi Refining Stage, offer 1 tael and 4 qian of Spirit Sand to Steward Duan every month.
The extra 4 qian will be credited to you.
You may exchange it for spirit pills, basic spells, or body-nourishing tonics.
Accumulate enough credit, and you could even earn a spot as an outer disciple."
Wang Yu stared at the message, momentarily dizzy.
Even after living through the schemes of modern society, he felt its pull.
If he was tempted, what about the others?
They would go mad with desperation—risking their lives to refine more Spirit Sand.
Truly, the demonic path understood human nature well.
Desire and profit—those were the purest motivators.
He set the note aside, pondering in silence.
Just then, something stirred inside him.
A gentle current of energy—unlike any he had felt before—appeared in his body.
"Is this… Qi Refining stage spiritual power?"
He focused.
The warm current rose from his dantian, spreading through his limbs and bones, filling him with vigor and strength.
Normally, a cultivator's qi began in the meridians and flowed toward the dantian.
But his was reversed—the energy had appeared directly within the dantian, skipping the usual process entirely.
Thanks to the Idle Slot, of course.
From point to surface, instead of surface to point.
The feeling was incredible.
Qi Refining, First Layer — achieved.
No complex meditation, no painful effort—he simply broke through.
By the standards of a wasted root, that was absurd.
For someone like him, sensing qi alone could take years—much less refining it into spiritual power.
But the Idle Slot had done the impossible.
Every half hour, it drew in a trace of spiritual energy; now, for the first time, that trace had been refined into true qi and fed back to him, pushing him past the first threshold.
According to the Bloodburn Art's description, accumulating ten threads of spiritual power would allow a cultivator to advance to Qi Refining Stage Two, opening more energy nodes and refining qi faster and purer.
The strand he now possessed would naturally regenerate if used—his own, truly his.
But if refined into Spirit Sand, it would be lost permanently.
He couldn't afford that.
"At this pace," Wang Yu muttered, "even with help, this progress is too fast—unless I pretend to be using the Bloodburn Art's lifespan-burning effect."
He frowned.
He didn't want to shorten his life.
But hiding his true cultivation speed would soon become necessary—especially if the steward's message was legitimate.
He'd need a spell that could conceal one's cultivation realm.
"No… a mere Spirit Slave acquiring such a spell would raise suspicion."
Lowering his realm manually—by consuming cultivation and refining it into Spirit Sand—was madness.
Wang Yu understood clearly:
only power could change his fate.
The higher his realm, the greater his chance of escaping servitude and entering the sect as a disciple.
He had only one viable path—
use the Bloodburn Art's lifeburn mode to disguise his progress.
Just a little. Enough to make it look normal.
"Faster progress must come with a price," he thought grimly.
"That's the logic everyone expects."
He prepared to activate the Bloodburn Art manually, to burn a sliver of his lifespan—when suddenly, something changed.
His Idle Slot interface flickered.
Perhaps because he had broken through to Qi Refining, it was updating itself.
[Idle Slot 1: Bloodburn Art]
[Idle Slot 2: Empty]
"…What?"
Wang Yu blinked, stunned.
A second slot had appeared.
He didn't know whether it was a reward for his breakthrough or something else entirely, but he had a theory: if another appeared when he reached Qi Refining Stage Two, he would know for sure.
Unfortunately, he had nothing new to place inside.
He sighed—then froze as a thought flashed through his mind.
"What if…"
He tried placing the same Bloodburn Art into the second slot.
Success!
[Idle Slot 2: Bloodburn Art]
Bloodburn Art (1/100): Trains 48 times per day; achieves mastery in one year.
The description hadn't changed.
But the progress bar—
was shared.
Two machines running in perfect sync.
Double the grind. Double the power.
(End of Chapter 5)