The darkness was not empty. It had texture. To Ji Han's enhanced [Perception +1.0], the black void of the cavern was a tapestry of sound waves and air currents.
Scritch. Scritch.
The sound echoed from the far end of the limestone hollow. It was the sound of chitin scraping against rock. Sharp, rhythmic, and heavy.
Ji Han stood perfectly still, his breath held in his chest. The moss-light stone lay doused at his feet, leaving him in absolute darkness. But he didn't need light to feel the displacement of air.
Something was rushing him.
"Up!" Ji Han roared, not to the monster, but to Lin Qinghe above.
He threw himself to the right, his new muscles firing with explosive power.
WHOOSH.
A blur of motion occupied the space where he had been standing a split second ago. A heavy, serrated limb slammed into the stone floor, striking sparks that briefly illuminated a nightmare.
It was a centipede. But it was not of this earth. It was three meters long, its shell a translucent, icy blue. Its legs were like obsidian daggers, and its mandibles dripped with a frothing, white liquid that hissed when it hit the limestone.
[System Notification: Enemy Detected.][Frost-Bone Centipede (Level 1 Beast).][Attribute: Yin/Poison.]
A Level 1 Beast. An equal.
The centipede didn't pause. It coiled its long body, using the momentum to snap its tail toward Ji Han like a whip.
Ji Han raised his rusty iron sword to block.
CLANG.
The impact shuddered through his bones. The centipede's shell was as hard as iron. But the real problem wasn't the force; it was the temperature.
The moment the beast touched his blade, a flash of frost raced down the metal. The rusty iron, already compromised by age and the supercooled water, groaned.
CRACK.
The sword shattered.
Ji Han was left holding nothing but the hilt and a jagged inch of metal. The rest of the blade lay on the floor, broken into frozen shards.
"Weapon failure," Ji Han registered, the logistics officer in his brain screaming. "Asset liquidated."
The centipede hissed—a sound like a high-pressure steam valve—and reared up for a killing strike. Its mandibles opened wide, revealing a throat glowing with pale blue energy.
It was going to spit.
Ji Han didn't retreat. He didn't have a weapon, but he had a mine.
He dropped the useless hilt and dove forward, rolling under the creature's high-arched guard. He grabbed a chunk of the raw Black Iron Ore he had spotted earlier—a jagged rock the size of a bowling ball.
It was heavy. Densely heavy. To a normal human, it would be unwieldy. To a Qi Condensation cultivator with Spirit +1.0, it was a hammer.
"Condense!"
Ji Han pushed his Qi into the stone. The black ore drank the energy greedily, humming with a dark resonance. It didn't reject the Qi like the granite had; it amplified it.
As the centipede's head came down to bite him, Ji Han swung the ore upward with a primal scream.
CRUNCH.
The impact was wet and sickening. The Black Iron smashed into the centipede's mandible, shattering the chitin and driving the creature's head back.
Blue ichor sprayed across Ji Han's chest. It burned like dry ice.
The beast thrashed, its hundred legs scrambling for purchase on the slippery ice-rimmed floor. It was stunned, but not dead.
Ji Han didn't give it a chance to recover. He scrambled on top of the creature's thrashing thorax, pinning it with his newfound mass. He raised the Black Iron rock again.
"Die."
He brought it down. Again. And again.
Smash. Smash. Smash.
He didn't stop until the creature stopped moving. He didn't stop until the blue glow in its eyes faded to grey. He didn't stop until his arms burned and his lungs heaved.
Silence returned to the cavern.
Ji Han sat on the carcass of the monster, his chest rising and falling. He was covered in blue slime and sweat. His hands were shaking, not from fear, but from the adrenaline dump.
"Ji Han?" Lin Qinghe's voice floated down from the hole in the ceiling. It was tight with worry.
"Hostile neutralized," Ji Han called back, his voice hoarse. "Weapon destroyed."
He climbed off the beast. He kicked the shattered remains of his rusty sword. It was gone. The starter gift had served its purpose, but it hadn't survived the first real test.
He looked at the rock in his hand. The Black Iron Ore was undamaged. It was stained with blue blood, but it felt solid. Reliable.
"We need to process this," Ji Han said, looking at the giant insect. "It's not just an enemy. It's a resource node."
He ignited the moss-light again.
The cavern was a mess of struggle marks. But the prize was intact.
Ji Han dragged the carcass away from the water's edge. He couldn't lift the whole thing, so he had to butcher it here. He used a sharp fragment of his broken sword as a knife.
He sliced open the underbelly. The meat inside was white and fibrous, similar to lobster, but radiating a distinct chill.
[System Notification: Loot Acquired.][Frost-Bone Centipede Meat (High Yin Energy).][Centipede Carapace (Crafting Material).][Poison Sac (Alchemical Ingredient).]
"Food," Ji Han whispered. "Armor. Poison."
He looked up at the hole. "Throw down the rope. I'm sending up dinner."
Later, back in the relative warmth of the tunnel (Granite Layer, 20m deep), they sat around a small fire.
They couldn't use wood—they had none. Instead, they burned the dried husks of the Azure Grass roots, which burned slow and hot.
Ji Han roasted a chunk of the centipede meat on a stone skewer. As the heat hit the meat, the blue frost melted away, sizzling into steam.
He took a bite.
It was tough, chewy, and tasted faintly of mint and iron. But as it hit his stomach, a cool wave spread through his body. It wasn't the uncomfortable cold of the cavern; it was a nourishing, soothing coolness that balanced the fiery Yang energy of the sun he had absorbed for months.
[System Notification: Yin-Yang Balance Improving.][Cultivation Efficiency Increased.]
Lin Qinghe ate delicately, her eyes closed as she absorbed the energy.
"The beast was a guardian," she said softly. "It fed on the Yin Qi of the pool. Its flesh is medicine for us. The sun is trying to burn us; this meat cools us."
"We have a cycle," Ji Han said. "We cultivate Yang in the tunnel during the 'day'. We hunt Yin in the hollow. We eat the meat to balance the heat."
He looked at the pile of centipede shell plates he had stacked in the corner. They were translucent blue, light, and incredibly hard.
"And tomorrow," Ji Han said, picking up the chunk of Black Iron Ore he had used as a hammer. "I learn to be a blacksmith. I can't fight with a rock forever."
Lin Qinghe looked at the ore, then at the shell.
"Black Iron for the heavy strikes," she suggested. "Frost Shell for the edge. You don't need a forge, Ji Han. You have Qi. You can cold forge it."
Ji Han looked at his hands. He was a Level 1 cultivator now. He didn't need fire to shape metal; he needed pressure and will.
"Cold forging," he mused. "Fitting for a world where the sun never sets."