The room was silent, save for the settling dust and the faint, wet sound of blood dripping from the assassin's nose onto the stone floor.
Rian stood over the corpse. He nudged it with his bare foot. He pressed two fingers against the carotid artery. Zero pulse. Zero respiration. The biological machine had ceased function.
Then, the air shifted. It was something subtle, something not written in the introductory manuals the Zhou family let their servants read. The assassin's body began to steam. Not with heat, but with a faint, grey luminescence.
As a cultivator, this man had spent decades breathing, meditating, and cycling energy to build his foundation. He was a vessel filled with Qi. Now that the vessel was broken, the contents were spilling out. The grey smoke drifted upward, swirling aimlessly, preparing to dissipate back into the Great Cycle of Heaven and Earth.
Usually, this Qi is lost. It is the tax paid to nature upon death. But Rian was no longer just a human. He was a Nether Spider. And in the void of his earlier dream, the Mother had given him a singular directive: A Spider Consumes.
The Qi didn't disperse. It hit an invisible ceiling—the web of Rian's intent. It hovered over the corpse, forming a turbulent, swirling cloud of raw energy. Rian felt a hunger. It wasn't the rumble of an empty stomach. It was a gnawing, magnetic pull in his core. It was the starving emptiness of a void that demanded to be filled. It was the instinct of a banker seeing a pile of cash left on a table with no one watching.
"Waste," Rian whispered, his eyes dilating until the irises were almost swallowed by blackness. "Inefficient."
He extended his right hand. From his fingertips, five translucent, violet-tinged threads shot out. They didn't strike the body; they latched onto the cloud of grey Qi.
Liquidation in process.
He pulled. The cloud didn't drift; it rushed. It was violent. It wasn't the gentle, trickle-like absorption of morning meditation. It was raw theft. It was a hostile takeover. Decades of the assassin's hard work, his winter training sessions, his pills, his breathing exercises—all of it was siphoned out of the dead air and dragged forcibly into Rian's meridians.
BOOM.
Rian gasped as the energy hit his core. It was hot, chaotic, and bloody. It slammed into his fragile, narrow spirit channels like a flood torrent hitting a blocked drain. Pain exploded in his chest, but Rian didn't stop. He spun the energy, grinding it down, forcing the foreign capital to merge with his own portfolio.
Expand, he commanded his body. Scale up.
The barriers to the next rank didn't just break; they shattered like sugar glass under a hammer.
[System Alert: Capital Injection Detected] Rank Up. Qi Condensation: Stage 1... Cleared. The rush continued. Rank Up. Qi Condensation: Stage 2... Cleared. There was still more energy. The assassin was an Iron-Rank expert. Even with the loss during transfer, the yield was massive. Rank Up. Qi Condensation: Stage 3... Stabilized.
A normal cultivator with average talent would need two years of dedicated meditation and expensive herbal baths to jump three stages. Rian had done it in ten seconds.
CRACK.
The sound came from inside Rian's own shoulder. It sounded like a dry branch snapping in a winter storm. Rian stumbled back, clutching his collarbone. He fell to his knees, his breath coming in ragged, hissing gasps.
"Nngh..." His skin. It felt too tight. It wasn't just an itch; it was a burning pressure building up from the marrow outward. It felt like he was wearing a suit of armor that had suddenly shrunk three sizes. His bones were groaning, shifting, lengthening. His muscles were knitting themselves into denser fibers.
The old vessel was too small for the new assets.
"Restructuring," Rian gritted out through clenched teeth, his back arching in agony.
RRRIIIP.
The sound was nauseating—like tearing wet parchment. The pale, sickly skin he had lived in for fifteen years split open down the sternum. Bloodless, grey dead skin peeled back, revealing raw, gleaming alabaster underneath.
It was grotesque. It was painful. It was necessary. Rian reached up with trembling hands and grabbed the edges of the tear on his chest. He pulled. He peeled his own face off. The old mask of the weak, malnourished boy sloughed away. He pulled his arms out of the old skin like taking off a tight, sweaty glove. He kicked his legs free from the dead husks of his shins.
Sloughing off the dead layer, Rian stepped out of the pile of old flesh. He stood naked in the moonlight, steam rising from his new body. He took a deep breath, and for the first time in his life, his lungs filled completely, without a hitch or a wheeze.
He walked to the full-length bronze mirror in the corner of the room.
The reflection stared back. Gone was the scrawny, hunched boy with the hollow cheeks and the eyes full of fear. The new Rian was lean, but it was the leanness of a whipcord. His muscles were defined and coiled like steel cables under the surface. His skin was alabaster white, flawless, and tough as cured leather. His face had sharpened. The baby fat was gone, replaced by high cheekbones and a jawline that could cut glass. But the biggest change was the eyes. They were sharp, cold, and held a predatory grace. They were the eyes of a man who looked at the world and saw only prey and resources.
He flexed his hand. The knuckles cracked—a solid, heavy sound. The power didn't feel like fire. It felt like a trap waiting to be sprung. It felt like potential energy.
Rian looked down at the floor. There lay the assassin, dead and drained of color. And next to him lay the pile of shed skin—a hollow, grey ghost of the victim Rian used to be.
He kicked the pile of skin aside with disdain. "The audit is finished," Rian said. His voice was deeper now, smoother, carrying a resonance of command. "Restructuring complete."
He turned away from the mess. He opened his wardrobe and began to dress. He chose durable clothes, hidden under a merchant's robe. He had a carriage to catch in the morning. Frostreach was waiting.
He looked out the window toward the North, where the snow wolves and bandits roamed. A faint, cruel smile played on his lips. "Poor monsters," he whispered. "They think they're getting a meal. They don't realize... management has changed."
[DIVINE OBSERVATION LOG: ENTRY #007]
Observer: High God of Vengeance Subject: The Anomaly (Rian) Action: Unlawful Acquisition of Assets / Biological Insider Trading
COMMENTARY: I... I need to check the rulebook. Is this legal? Can he do this?
Cultivators act like trees—they absorb the sunlight of the heavens (Qi) slowly, over years, growing ring by ring. Demonic Cultivators act like fire—they burn blood and sacrifice lives for quick bursts of power, but they pay a price in sanity.
This boy? He acts like a Holding Company. He just killed a man, liquidated his spiritual assets (Qi), and reinvested them immediately into his own growth portfolio. There was no loss. No moral crisis. No demonic backlash. Just... pure profit.
And the Molting? He didn't just heal from the poison. He upgraded his hardware to match the new software. He skipped the "Training Montage." He skipped the "Hard Work." He just committed Insider Trading with the Laws of Physics.
If he keeps acquiring assets at this rate, by the time he reaches the border, he won't be a Quartermaster. He will be the CEO of the North.
[END LOG]