Lu Chen still stood at the edge of the dung-splattered clearing, the cold night air rose goosebumps on the filth-make up on his skin.
The thought of freedom, the thought of just walking away from it all, was like a sweet, seductive poison. The thought of no more Zhang Long, no more sect politics, no more being the bottom-feeder. Starting a new life and new beginning.
A smile slowly spread across his face.
"Well," he muttered to the silence. "It doesn't matter. I've been given a chance to change my fate. I'll grab that chance and use it." His voice grew firmer. "Even overuse it, if possible."
Running wasn't changing his fate. It was just delaying the same old powerlessness in a new location. Zhang Long was a symptom. The duel was the test. And he just survived hell. A pretty-boy bully with a grudge didn't even rank on that same scale of threat.
"I shall go back," he announced again to the silence. The decision felt like a weight settling, not lifting, it was a solid, chosen weight of responsibility. You don't run from challenges you face challenges.
"If I had face those challenges in my previous life. I wouldn't have been treated like shit."
As if the silence was fed up with the unrequited mutterings of a filthy, crazed trash, the wind blew. It whipped the stench from his body back into his face, and Lu Chen gagged.
"Curse you wind" he cursed under his breath.
First thing first. He was a sect disciple on a mission. A mission that had, technically, almost failed then gone catastrophically right. He discovered what can be reported for rewards.
With a sigh, he reached out to his storage pouch to retrieve the cheap, jade slip communication device all mission-takers carried but he ended up touching his lap then he remembered he is still in his baby suit.
"Eh?"
"System where is my storage pouch?"
The system who had been silent for a while came back with it's usual snarky comment.
"I don't remember putting it there"
Lu Chen: "_"
Ah where was he? He retrived then activated the cheap, jade slip communication device all mission-takers carried. He recorded a message saying everything that happened while hiding some info like how the beast escaped from him thinking he was a hot shot.
Then he sent it.
Now, for dignity.
"System. Any water sources nearby?."
[Query: 'Biohazard Seeks Spa.']
[Scanning…]
[Scanning Complete...]
Then silence that seemed to go on for hours.
"System."
"Any water sources nearby?."
[Query: 'Biohazard Seeks Spa.']
[Scanning…]
[Scanning Complete...]
Lu Chen stared blankly into the distance: "_"
"The hell? If you don't want to help, just say so."
"Can't you talk normally?"
Lu Chen's eye twitched. With a grunt, he began picking his way through the undergrowth.
A few minutes later, the sound reached him. The clear, musical chatter of water over stone. It was the most beautiful sound he'd heard in what felt like years. He pushed through a final curtain of spirit vines and found it.
The stream was like a serene silver ribbon in the moonlight. The air here was clearer. Moon-lotus flowers, known for calming the mind, their petals were glowing faintly in the far bank.
It was a scene of pristine, untouched beauty.
But Lu Chen was a walking embodiment of shit and filth.
He didn't hesitate. He jumped straight in like a kid seeing water for the first time.
"Cannonball!!!"
He scrubbed. He scraped. He used sand from the stream bed like soap. The system provided unhelpful, snarky commentary.
[Contamination levels changing. Local ecosystem and neighbors filing formal complaints.]
[Alert: You have created a new location. The 'Filth Barren Creek.']
[Achievement Unlocked: 'Environmental Disaster (Minor).']
He ignored it, scrubbing until his skin, which was now a noticeable shade tougher and duller like hammered iron. But he was still naked since his robes were already a lost cause.
He was now clean, shivering, and finally able to breathe through his nose without gagging over his last meal, he climbed out and sat on a rock only to notice the silence.
It was so profound. The kind of silence that would grant a cultivator of the 'Silence Dao' three breakthroughs and seven epiphanies before lunch. No insects chirped at all. Not even beastial noises. The rampage and lingering aura of the Grave Gulper had likely turned this part of the grove into a dead zone or perhaps everything had simply fled the earlier, imperial stench of the Great Lord Stinky.
"Well, it's to my benefit," he said, his voice layered with satisfaction. "I can rest here. Maybe even eat hearty before planning tomorrow's trip."
His stomach growled as if on cue. It was hunger knocking with a knife in hand.
He quickly peered into the now-murky pool. The fish were long gone. Those that hadn't escaped floated belly-up near the surface. Lu Chen smacked his lips, debating whether eating a shit-filled fish would kill him
[Detecting that the host's mental state is currently… full of shit.]
[Warning!!!]
[Host will NOT transmigrate again, even if he dies of… 'shit-full' reasons.]
Lu Chen ignored the system and looked away.
Then it hit him. The Green-Scale Python.He'd killed it before the whole Mo Tian disaster. Yes the blame pusher shamelessly pushed it all on Mo Tian.
Meat was solved.
Now his problems were elemental. Fire and water.
"I should've taken a scoop of water before cannonballing into it." He shook his head. "My bad."
A flicker of memory decided to give him light bulb idea. It was a survival video from his past life. One of the perks of being a transmigrator.
"Voilà,"he muttered. "Leaves could work."
He gave the pool one last, wistful look knowing it would've been a better option than the leaves, then turned toward the forest.
He returned with damp leaves and some tree barks still dripping with moisture.
And immediately faced a new problem:a container. And a filter. His robes were ruined, so he can't use it as a filter.
"First focus on the bowl… which means sigh… this is literally burning money."
He needed to melt metal.
His eyes scanned the stream bank and settled on a black stone about the size of a fist. It had bowl-like depressions.
Lu Chen stared at it for a few seconds muttering "The depression is probably natural. It has to be natural"
But can it handle the heat?
A gamble.
He shaped a crude mold from wet sand. Then, using smaller stones as tongs, he placed the black rock in the heart of his fire, heating it slowly. Once it glowed, he used two flat stones like chopsticks to carefully place the copper and silver coins into the depression.
He watched with his breath held, as his meager funds turned into a fiery liquid. Next he tilted the stone and poured the molten metal into the sand mold.
After it cooled, he pried out the new bowl.
It was ugly, and charred with stone residue. But it could do the job.
Next, he needed clean water. The cloth from his robe wouldn't cut it. Instead, he layered the bowl with crushed charcoal and fine sand to make a filter. He wrung the leaf pulp over it, and the water that emerged, while not yet safe was startlingly clear.
Good enough to boil then roast the python meat over the same fire.
By the time he was done, the moon was already directly overhead.
The meal was hot. Filling. Even without seasoning, it still tasted good.
[Cooking Exp +20]
[Error… no cooking skill detected. Learn a cooking skill.]
"Eh?"
Lu Chen ignored the System.
As he packed up,his fingers brushed something in his storage pouch. It was a piece of paper he'd taken for scrap.
He pulled it out.
It was a map. A detailed regional map.
Under the moonlight, he traced routes with his finger.
'Can't go back the way I came. Can't fly. Can't climb that cliff.'
The only path left was a loop north, cutting through the outer edges of the Bloodwind Forest.
Four days. Maybe five.
It would bring him to the sect just in time to spear for the Outer Court Martial Ascension Meet.
As the plan settled in his mind. Exhaustion followed close behind.
He lay back, with the map still in hand, and slipped into sleep.
Far away, unheard by him, the sect was already in upheaval.
"MO TIAN, YOU PIECE OF SHIT!!!"
[TO BE CONTINUED…]