Chen Yu's awareness drifted closer to his original body, drawn by an instinct he couldn't quite explain.
The moment he got close enough, something clicked like a key turning in a lock and suddenly he wasn't just looking at the body anymore, he was inside it. He could feel his fingers, his toes, the weight of his limbs settling in ways he remembered. It was his body, the old one from Earth, and he could move it freely.
He flexed his fingers experimentally and they responded perfectly, each digit bending exactly as he willed it. Chen Yu grinned and did a little hop in place, then immediately felt ridiculous about it. Here he was, a grown man, well, a dead grown man's soul, jumping around in some mysterious void like an excited kid who'd just gotten a new toy.
He couldn't help himself though. He tried a few more movements, testing the limits with a little spin and an awkward kick that would've made any martial artist cringe in secondhand embarrassment. He even attempted a backflip but chickened out halfway through and just flailed his arms uselessly instead.
"Okay, okay, calm down," he muttered to himself, though his voice didn't actually make sound here, just sort of existed as intention without resonance.
He looked around the empty void and waited for something, a system notification maybe, or a floating screen with convenient instructions, perhaps some kind of mysterious old man's voice explaining everything in cryptic riddles. Nothing came. Just darkness stretching forever and his floating body suspended in it.
Chen Yu frowned at the emptiness. "So... what exactly can I do here?"
Still nothing answered him, no helpful tutorial or convenient explanation dropping from the void. He was completely in the dark, literally and figuratively, left to puzzle it out on his own.
After a few more minutes of experimenting with walking around, touching his face to confirm it felt solid, checking if the sensations matched what he remembered (they did, perfectly), Chen Yu started feeling tired. Not physically tired exactly, but mentally drained like his brain had been working overtime processing too much information and needed a break. The sensation was strange and unfamiliar, a heaviness settling over his consciousness that felt almost like drowning in exhaustion.
"Guess I can't stay here forever."
He focused on leaving, on separating his awareness from the body again and returning to that outside perspective. His consciousness started to pull away naturally, drifting upward and back like a camera zooming out. But just before he completely disconnected, a thought struck him and he wondered if maybe he could test something interesting.
Chen Yu gave the body a mental command, firm and clear. "Keep jogging in place."
Then he pulled out completely, letting his awareness separate.
His perspective shifted back to that god's-eye view, looking down at his original body from somewhere above it. And sure enough, the body was jogging steadily, not fast but maintaining a consistent pace with legs pumping up and down and arms swinging naturally at its sides. Like some kind of weird autonomous clone just following orders without question or hesitation.
"Holy shit," Chen Yu breathed, or would have if he had lungs available right now.
He watched for a bit longer, completely fascinated by how the body just kept going without stopping or slowing down, completely obedient to the last command he'd given it. It was like having a puppet except the puppet was himself, or his old self anyway, and this whole situation was getting increasingly confusing the more he thought about it.
Before he could explore the implications further, something yanked him hard and his consciousness got dragged out of the space like someone had lassoed his soul and pulled with irresistible force. The void disappeared in an instant and suddenly he was back in his physical body, the young one, gasping for air and lying flat on the wooden floor of the shack.
Chen Yu's head throbbed with sharp mental exhaustion and his thoughts felt sluggish and heavy, like trying to think through thick mud that resisted every attempt at coherent reasoning.
"Can't... stay in there too long," he panted between gasps, pressing a hand to his forehead where the worst of the throbbing concentrated. "Mental energy runs out maybe, or there's some kind of time limit."
He lay there for several minutes without moving, just letting the exhaustion fade gradually while his breathing slowly returned to something approaching normal and the throbbing in his head dulled from sharp agony to a manageable ache.
Once he felt somewhat recovered, though still drained, Chen Yu sat up carefully and looked around the shabby shack with fresh eyes. So he had some kind of mysterious space with his original body inside it, a body he could apparently control like an autonomous clone that followed commands. That had to be useful somehow, right?
The possibilities seemed endless if he could figure out how to use it properly. But how exactly he'd use it, he had no idea yet.
"I'll figure it out later," he decided aloud, his voice rough in the empty shack.
The leather pouch. He'd almost forgotten about it completely in all the craziness of discovering the space and testing its properties. That dead cultivator's pouch that the original Chen Yu had risked his life to take from a corpse in the moonlit forest. It had to contain something valuable inside, didn't it? Otherwise why would someone dressed in those expensive robes be carrying it around?
Chen Yu got to his feet though his legs felt unsteady beneath him, still weakened from the mental exhaustion. He looked around the small shack with growing worry, suddenly panicking about what if it had fallen out of his clothes last night when he collapsed poisoned, or what if he'd dropped it somewhere in the forest during his desperate run home. His eyes scanned the floor frantically, checking the sleeping mat, the table surface, around the water pot, and then he spotted it tucked under the table, partially hidden in shadow.
Chen Yu lunged for it with his heart suddenly racing. He grabbed the small leather pouch and pulled it out into the light, checking to make sure it was intact and undamaged. The leather was worn from use but well-made with quality craftsmanship, closed with a simple drawstring that had some noticeable weight to it.
With trembling fingers that he couldn't quite steady, he carefully loosened the drawstring and opened it wide.
Inside were several items and Chen Yu's breath caught in his throat as he carefully pulled them out one by one, treating each like precious treasure. Two books with covers made of some kind of treated leather, supple but durable, and five stones about the size of his thumb. The stones were translucent like cloudy glass, with a faint glow pulsing inside them that seemed almost alive, rhythmic like a slow heartbeat.
He set the stones aside with careful reverence and picked up the first book, turning it over in his hands. The original Chen Yu's memories told him he could read fairly well since his father had taught him during the long winter nights, which was pretty unusual for poor people in this world where most peasants and laborers couldn't even recognize their own names written down. It was one of the few valuable gifts the original owner's father had left him before vanishing into the forest to become some beast's meal.
Chen Yu squinted at the title written on the cover in elegant calligraphy, each character brushed with obvious skill.
"Spiritual Energy, Cultivation and their Implementations."
His heart started pounding faster against his ribs and he set that one down gently, then grabbed the second book with eager hands.
"The Art Of Talisman Making And Array Creation."
Chen Yu stared at both books laid out before him, his hands shaking slightly despite his efforts to control them. These weren't just random books that some merchant might carry, but genuine cultivation manuals, the kind of thing that could change someone's entire fate in this world where power meant everything and weakness meant death.
He picked up the first book again with reverent care, handling it like it might dissolve if he gripped too hard, and slowly opened it to the first page. His eyes moved across the characters hungrily, drinking in every word and committing them to memory.