Pain was his entire universe. Lei Man lay on the forest floor, his consciousness a flickering candle in a hurricane of agony. His ribs were a mesh of broken glass, his fingers were a mangled ruin, and the Azure Scale Constrictor's venom was a black, creeping fire spreading through his veins. He had won the Mortal Kombat of his soul, but the price was his life.
Through a blurry, fading haze, he stared at the corpse of the magnificent snake. A single, nagging thought, a fragment from the original Lei Man's limited knowledge, pushed through the pain: Powerful beasts guard treasures.
Why was the snake here? Its territory couldn't just be this random patch of forest. It had been protecting something.
With a surge of adrenaline-fueled desperation, he began to crawl. He dragged his broken body through the damp leaves, every movement an exercise in pure torment. He followed not a path, but a feeling—a subtle, almost imperceptible thrum of life energy in the air, a faint, sweet fragrance that cut through the stench of blood and mud.
His agonizing journey ended at the base of a gnarled, ancient-looking tree that was strangely bare of leaves, its bark a pale, silvery-white that seemed to faintly glow in the dim forest light. And there, hanging from its central branch, was the treasure.
It was a single, perfect fruit. Shaped like a serpent's egg, its skin was a pearlescent, shimmering silver, and it pulsed with a soft, internal light. It was the source of the sweet fragrance, the focal point of all the life energy in the area. This was the serpent's gift, the treasure it had died to protect.
There was no hesitation. With his good hand, he reached up, his fingers trembling, and plucked the fruit from its stem. It was cool to the touch, like a smooth river stone. He didn't know what it was, and he didn't care. It was his only chance. He brought the fruit to his lips and bit into it.
The taste was not a flavor, but a sensation: cool, clean, and pure, like drinking liquid moonlight. The moment the juice touched his tongue, another trip began, but this one was entirely different from the violent, chaotic journeys that had come before.
He was floating in a warm, silver sea. The pain was a distant memory. He looked down at his own body, which was now a translucent vessel of light. He could see the venom inside him, a network of black, viscous threads clinging to his meridians and pooling around his heart.
Then, from the point where he'd eaten the fruit, a wave of pure, silver energy spread through him. It wasn't a raging fire or a chaotic storm; it was an army of a million tiny, shining fish. They swam through his spiritual pathways with a relentless, single-minded purpose. They were hunters.
The silver fish swarmed the black threads of venom, tearing them apart, devouring them, purifying everything they touched. He watched as they herded the last, most stubborn remnants of the poison, driving it all towards a single point: the twin fang marks on his arm.
Back in the real world, Lei Man's body spasmed on the ground. The wound on his arm, which had been turning a sickly black, began to glow with a brilliant silver light. The skin around it sizzled, and with a sound like a high-pressure valve being released, the wound erupted.
A geyser of black, foul-smelling liquid shot out, splattering against a nearby tree with a corrosive hiss. The venom hadn't been neutralized; it had been violently expelled.
The moment the last of the poison was gone, the real healing began. In his trip, the silver sea suffused his entire being, mending his broken form. On the forest floor, his skin steamed as the torn flesh of the snake bite knitted itself back together at a visible rate. He felt a series of sickening, wet crunches as his cracked ribs fused back into place, stronger than before. He held up his shattered hand and watched in horrified awe as his bent fingers straightened themselves with a series of sharp, painful snaps.
The remaining silver energy, its primary task complete, surged into his dantian. The miniature sun at his core roared to life, absorbing the pure, potent energy and expanding violently. A deep, resonant thrum shook his entire frame as he smashed through the barrier to the next level.
The trip faded, leaving him kneeling on the forest floor, the silver glow receding from his skin. He took a deep, shuddering breath—the first breath he'd taken without a chorus of screaming pain. The exhaustion, the poison, the broken bones—all gone. In their place was a deep, thrumming well of power that resonated in his very bones.
He was a sixth-level Body Strengthening cultivator. He was now as powerful as the beast that had nearly killed him.
He stood up, clenching his newly reformed fist. He looked at the dead snake, then at the now-empty tree. This was the cycle. This was his path. A crisis that would kill any other cultivator triggered a trip that granted him a miracle. It was a dangerous, addictive cycle of chaos.
He gathered the boar hides, then set to the grim but profitable task of harvesting the Azure Scale Constrictor. Its hide, its fangs, its venom sac, and most importantly, its sixth-level beast core—they were a fortune. He was no longer a desperate boy hunting for his next meal. He was returning to Verdant Creek City a wealthy man, forged anew by a battle he had survived only by losing his mind.
The journey back to Verdant Creek City was a brutal exercise in determination. Lei Man, his body thrumming with the power of the sixth level, carried the four heavy boar hides on his back. His true trophy, however, was the Azure Scale Constrictor, which he had coiled around his torso and shoulders. Its head lolled over his right shoulder, its tail draping down his left leg, an immense, shimmering azure cloak of power and death.
He walked directly to the Mercenary Pavilion. When he pushed open the heavy wooden doors, a few heads turned, some eyes widening at the sight of the colossal serpent, but the general roar of conversation barely dipped. This was a place where strange and bloody sights were a daily occurrence.
Lei Man ignored the curious glances and walked directly to the counter. He reached the one-eyed clerk, the same man who had mocked him just a day ago. With a grunt of effort that was only slightly exaggerated, he began to uncoil the massive snake, its immense weight hitting the thick wooden countertop with a series of wet, heavy thuds. He then unslung the boar hides, dropping them beside the magnificent corpse.
The clerk looked up from his ledger, his single eye taking in the scene with a practiced, dispassionate gaze. He glanced at the boar hides, then at the snake, his expression unchanging.
"Four Stone-Hide Boar hides, untarnished," Lei Man stated, his voice calm. "And one Azure Scale Constrictor."
The clerk grunted, showing no surprise. He leaned over, prodding the snake's hide with a gnarled finger and briefly inspecting the wound behind its eye. "Sixth level. Clean kill. Not bad." He gestured to a pair of burly workers loitering nearby. "Haul this to the appraisal block. The usual cut."
The workers efficiently carted the carcasses away. The clerk made a few notes in his ledger, his abacus clicking rapidly. He didn't need a master appraiser for a common king-beast. He'd seen dozens. While a sixth-level beast was a good haul for a solo newcomer, Qi Gathering and Foundation Establishment cultivators—real, powerful cultivators—brought in far more impressive trophies on a weekly basis.
After a few minutes of calculation, he looked up, his face a mask of professional boredom.
"Hundred for the boars. Snake hide's worth three hundred. Venom sac is full, two-fifty. Fangs are fifty. Beast core is a clean sixth-level, five hundred." He scribbled a final number. "Total comes to twelve hundred silver. Pavilion takes its ten percent cut, so your payout is ten-eighty."
He counted out the money, not with awe, but with the mundane efficiency of a bank teller, sliding a few heavy, sealed sacks of silver across the counter.
Lei Man was slightly taken aback. He had expected shock, awe, a dramatic reaction to his incredible feat. Instead, he got… accounting. It was a grounding, strangely humbling experience. His life-or-death struggle, his reality-shattering trip, his miraculous victory—to this world, it was just another transaction.
He took the sacks of silver, the weight a solid, comforting presence.
The clerk looked up from his ledger one last time, a flicker of something that might have been approval in his single eye. "Good work, new meat," he grunted. "Don't die on your next one."
With that, he turned his attention back to his paperwork, the transaction already forgotten.
Lei Man stood there for a moment, the bustling, indifferent noise of the pavilion washing over him. He wasn't the Serpent-Slayer of the Azure Hills. He was "new meat" who had a good day. He was a nobody who had just earned the right to be a slightly more respected nobody.
A slow smile spread across his face. He preferred it this way. He didn't need the awe of others. He just needed the fuel. And with over a thousand silver in his possession, he had more than enough to stoke the flames for his next journey into the beautiful, productive madness that was his only path forward.