Chapter 1: Plunge into the Frigid Abyss
Deep winter. The Eastern Wastelands. The back mountain of the Azure Cloud Sect.
The northern wind whipped up flurries of snow, slicing against the cheeks like ice-tempered blades, stinging fiercely.
Lin Mo wrapped his patched-up gray servant's uniform tighter around himself. His fingers, purple from the cold, maintained a death grip on a mortal-iron woodcutting ax, its edge already chipped in five or six places.
Thwack. Thwack.
He brought it down, blow after blow, against the deadwood that was frozen as hard as a boulder.
Crack—
Wood chips flew, leaving only a shallow groove on the trunk. Lin Mo exhaled a cloud of white mist, his arms aching so badly they felt like they might snap off.
It had been three years since he joined the sect, yet he remained stuck at the early stages of the first level of Qi Refining.
He was the absolute bottom-of-the-barrel trash of the entire Azure Cloud Sect's Servant Quarters. Five Spiritual Roots—universally recognized in the cultivation world as a dead-end aptitude.
His speed in drawing in spiritual energy was less than a tenth of a single-root cultivator's. As for the incomplete Qi Drawing Mantra handed out by the sect, he had practiced it for three years without even touching the threshold.
The life of a servant disciple was basically walking on the edge of a blade. Every day, they had to hand in thirty pounds of dry firewood.
Failing to do so meant no dinner and the deduction of their meager monthly stipend of a single low-grade spirit stone.
And if they offended a steward or a senior servant, a beating was getting off lightly.
Just two months ago, a servant disciple had talked back to someone; he was thrown into the back mountain to feed the demonic beasts, and not even his bones were ever recovered.
Lin Mo had survived for three years not by relying on strength, but on absolute forbearance.
When others slacked off, hiding in windbreak caves to gamble, he kept his head down and chopped wood.
When others robbed him of his firewood, he would smile, cup his fists in a gesture of submission, hand it over, and then turn around to trek deeper into the mountains to find more deadwood.
When the stewards beat and scolded him for no reason, he kept his head bowed and took it, not even daring to raise his gaze.
He understood all too well. In the Azure Cloud Sect, where the strong preyed upon the weak, the lives of the lowest-rung servants were cheaper than the wild grass in the back mountain. To stick out meant death.
"Oh? If it isn't the 'Great Genius Lin' of our Servant Quarters? You're about to freeze stiff, and you're still out here chopping?"
A mocking voice drifted over, accompanied by the crunch of footsteps in the snow.
The ax in Lin Mo's hand paused, and he slowly turned around.
Leading the group was Zhang Hu, a veteran of the Servant Quarters with a cultivation base at the fourth level of Qi Refining.
Backed by an outer sect disciple, his word was law here. His favorite pastime was bullying backgroundless trash like Lin Mo.
Behind him trailed two lackeys, both at the second level of Qi Refining, crossing their arms and looking at Lin Mo with amused sneers.
Lin Mo lowered his head, hiding the ax slightly behind his back, and bowed respectfully. "Brother Zhang."
Zhang Hu glanced at the neat stack of thirty pounds of dry firewood behind Lin Mo. With a sideways glare, he lifted his foot and kicked the pile over.
"This is some good wood. Perfect. I couldn't be bothered to chop any today, so this belongs to me now."
Lin Mo's face instantly went pale.
This was the result of his labor from before dawn until now.
If it was taken away, not only would he go without dinner today, but Steward Wang would also punish him by sending him to clean the latrines, and his entire monthly stipend might be docked.
He gritted his teeth, his head still bowed, his voice tinged with pleading.
"Brother Zhang, I've been chopping this wood all day. Please be magnanimous and leave me a way out. Next time, I promise to chop an extra ten pounds and deliver it right to you."
"A way out?"
Zhang Hu reacted as if he'd just heard a hilarious joke.
He stepped forward and grabbed Lin Mo by the collar, spitting in his face as he barked, "You piece of Five Spiritual Root trash, you think you deserve a way out? Me taking your wood is me giving you face!"
He shoved violently.
Lin Mo staggered backward a few steps, his heels landing right on the very edge of the cliff.
This was the most remote precipice on the back mountain. Below lay a bottomless black abyss.
Normally, even demonic beasts rarely came here. Even if someone fell, they would absolutely never be found.
Zhang Hu looked at Lin Mo's pale face, a flash of ruthlessness crossing his eyes. A few days ago, Lin Mo had stumbled upon him embezzling the sect's spirit herbs.
Although this trash had run away immediately, there was no guarantee he wouldn't blab about it someday.
Today was the perfect opportunity to eliminate the root of the problem forever.
"Trash. When you reincarnate in your next life, remember not to be a servant again."
Zhang Hu let out a savage sneer. He raised his foot and delivered a vicious kick square into Lin Mo's chest.
Lin Mo felt a burst of agonizing pain in his chest. His body instantly lost its balance, falling backward into the void.
A terrifying sense of weightlessness swallowed him whole. The howling, frigid wind roared in his ears. At the top of the cliff, Zhang Hu's sneering face grew further and further away.
Freezing snow flurries battered his face as his consciousness was gradually consumed by the boundless darkness.
Am I going to die...?
This was Lin Mo's final thought before he lost consciousness.
Chapter 2: The Black Stone at the Abyss, Enhancing All Things
"Pain!"
"It hurts!"
Lin Mo didn't know how much time had passed before he was awakened by the bone-piercing cold.
The first sensation to return to his body was pure agony.
It felt as though countless ice-tempered steel needles had been driven into every inch of his bones. With every faint, ragged breath, his fractured ribs triggered a tearing agony in his chest.
Every lungful of freezing air felt like a blade scraping down his raw throat, carrying a heavy, metallic taste of blood.
His left leg was swollen and felt heavy as lead; the slightest twitch sent a dull, throbbing ache shooting straight up into his marrow.
The scrapes on his left palm were caked in freezing mud and snow, numb, itching, and burning all at once.
His eyelids felt as heavy as boulders. He had to muster every ounce of his remaining strength just to force them open a crack.
Dim rock walls filled his vision. The mouth of the cave above was mostly obscured by a dense tangle of vines, allowing only a few meager rays of gray skylight to filter through, barely illuminating his surroundings.
He had landed on a thick bed of leaf litter. The decades of accumulated rot and dead branches had absorbed the brunt of the impact, saving him from being instantly pulverized.
This was a hidden cave at the very bottom of the severed cliff—damp, freezing, and oppressive.
Beads of water constantly dripped from the ceiling, splashing into puddles with a monotonous drip, drop, mixing with the howling northern wind outside to sound like wailing ghosts.
"I actually... didn't die..."
Lin Mo parted his cracked, peeling lips.
His voice was so hoarse it was almost inaudible. Another wave of intense pain racked his chest, sending him into a fit of coughing.
Every cough felt as if it were going to tear his internal organs straight out of his mouth.
Propping himself up with his uninjured right hand, he tried to sit up.
But the moment his fingertips exerted force, his entire skeleton felt as if it were falling apart.
His vision went black, the world spun, and he crashed heavily back into the rotting leaves.
Cold sweat instantly soaked through his already thin servant's uniform, leaving him shivering uncontrollably.
Despair, like an icy tide, slowly submerged his heart.
So what if he didn't die?
His body was broken, and his spiritual energy had been completely drained during the fall.
He couldn't even stand.
The bottom of this abyss was completely desolate; not even patrol disciples ever came down here, let alone someone to rescue him.
And even if he somehow managed to drag his broken body back to the Servant Quarters, the moment Zhang Hu realized he was alive, he would simply strike again. And next time, Lin Mo wouldn't be so lucky.
In his three years at the sect, he had seen too many things like this.
Just two months ago, a servant disciple had talked back to one of Zhang Hu's men.
That very night, he was dragged to the back mountain. By the time he was found the next day, demonic beasts had gnawed him down to half a skeleton.
The sect didn't even bother to investigate; they simply recorded it as an "accidental death" and closed the book.
In the Azure Cloud Sect, the life of a lowly servant was cheaper than the weeds on the mountain.
Just because I saw him embezzling spirit herbs, he wants to silence me forever. How ruthless...
Lin Mo had always lived by the principle that less trouble was better than more.
He knew Zhang Hu was trying to break through to the fifth level of Qi Refining to become an Outer Sect disciple, hence embezzling the herbs to secretly refine Qi Gathering Pills.
Lin Mo had never possessed the slightest intention of reporting him. He had practically forgotten about the incident himself. He hadn't expected Zhang Hu to hold such a deadly grudge over it.
He had heard from other disciples that Zhang Hu's backer in the Outer Sect was his older cousin, a cultivator at the tenth level of Qi Refining who was on the verge of being promoted to the Inner Sect.
Entering the Inner Sect didn't just require breaking through to the Foundation Establishment stage; it also required passing a character assessment.
At the very least, one couldn't have any blatant moral stains on their record.
Perhaps Zhang Hu was terrified that Lin Mo would leak the secret, which could tarnish his cousin's reputation and ruin his promotion. Hence, the killing blow.
"I cannot die..."
Lin Mo gritted his teeth so hard his gums nearly bled. A sliver of pure, unadulterated ruthlessness squeezed its way into his cloudy eyes.
He was only sixteen. He refused to die a meaningless death in this freezing cave, and he absolutely refused to let that piece of trash Zhang Hu live a comfortable life above him.
He had endured three years of suffering, taken countless beatings, and survived it all. He had to survive this, too.
His sheer will to live suppressed the agony. Using his elbows, he began to drag his body across the ground, inch by agonizing inch. With every movement, his broken ribs felt like they were piercing his flesh.
Cold sweat and foul mud plastered his body. He didn't dare move fast; he could only shuffle slightly, stop to catch his breath when his vision darkened, wait for the vertigo to pass, and then crawl again.
He heard the sound of water.
Deep within the cave, the faint trickling of a spring echoed clearly in the dead silence. Where there was water, there was life. With water, he could hold on long enough to return to the Servant Quarters.
It took him a full fifteen minutes to crawl those short few meters.
By the time he reached the edge of the spring, his strength was utterly depleted. He looked as if he had been dragged out of a river of cold sweat.
Propping himself up, he leaned forward to cup some water to drink. But the moment his right hand pressed against the ground, a sharp, piercing pain lanced through his palm.
"Ugh—"
Lin Mo groaned and lifted his hand. A jagged, incredibly sharp black stone had sliced a deep gash across his palm.
Blood welled up instantly, rolling down his fingertips and dripping directly onto the palm-sized rock.
The stone was pitch-black and entirely unremarkable. It looked just like the millions of other ordinary rocks littering the back mountain—rough, devoid of luster, and completely ordinary, save for the unnaturally sharp edge that had just cut him.
But then, an anomaly occurred.
The blood that dripped onto the black stone didn't pool or run off; it was instantly absorbed into the rock, vanishing without a trace. Immediately after, the unremarkable stone emitted a faint, warm glow.
The light was so dim that it was almost invisible in the dark cave, carrying absolutely zero spiritual energy fluctuations.
Before Lin Mo could even react, the black stone dissolved into a dark, warm current. It surged up through the gash in his palm and plunged straight into his meridians.
The current was impossibly gentle. As it traveled up his arm, his previously freezing, numb meridians instantly felt steeped in warmth.
Even the agonizing pain of his wounds was significantly dulled. In just a few breaths, the warm current flowed along his meridians, poured into his empty Dantian, and then erupted outwards, flooding every bone and limb in his body.
Lin Mo's body stiffened. He froze in place as if struck by lightning.
Immediately after, a wondrous perception washed into his mind like a tidal wave. He could clearly "see" every single object in the cave. He could "see" the minute impurities within the water droplets falling from the ceiling. He could "see" a hibernating insect buried deep in the leaf litter. He could even "see" his own broken ribs, his congested meridians, and the incredibly frail, almost non-existent spiritual energy resting within his Dantian.
At the same time, lines of text—comprehensible only to him—floated clearly across his consciousness:
[Item: Mortal-Iron Woodcutting Ax]
* [Quality: Inferior]
* [Material: Impure Iron]
* [Flaws: Chipped edge, high impurity content, unbalanced center of gravity.]
* [Status: Enhancable. Current Enhancements: 0]
* [Cost to Enhance: 80% of total Qi capacity at the 1st level of Qi Refining.]
[Item: Mountain Spring Water]
* [Quality: Ordinary Mortal Grade]
* [Impurity Content: 12%]
* [Contains trace minerals. Lacks spiritual energy.]
* [Status: Enhancable. Current Enhancements: 0]
* [Cost to Enhance: 10% of total Qi capacity at the 1st level of Qi Refining.]
[Item: Decaying Leaves]
* [Quality: Waste Material]
* [Status: Enhancable. Current Enhancements: 0]
* [Cost to Enhance: 1% of total Qi capacity at the 1st level of Qi Refining.]
[Item: Torn Servant Uniform]
* [Quality: Waste Material]
* [Status: Enhancable. Current Enhancements: 0]
* [Cost to Enhance: 2% of total Qi capacity at the 1st level of Qi Refining.]
Lin Mo's pupils shrank violently. The hairs on his arms stood on end, and his breathing hitched.
What was this? A hallucination?
Was he experiencing terminal delirium on the brink of death?
He subconsciously looked at the woodcutting ax tucked into his belt. It was the same old ax he had used for three years.
The blade had five or six chips in it, the iron was heavily rusted, and it was heavy and awkward to swing.
It was the standard-issue inferior mortal iron given out by the Servant Quarters; even a mortal hunter would turn their nose up at it.
Yet, right now, within his mind's eye, every flaw and impurity within the ax was laid bare. Even the words "Enhancable" hovered with absolute clarity.
Lin Mo's heart began to hammer wildly against his aching ribs. Driven by the desperate urge to test it, he gripped the ax tightly.
Focusing all his willpower on the text in his mind, he silently commanded: "Enhance."
The instant the thought formed, the meager dregs of spiritual energy remaining in his Dantian rushed toward the ax like water bursting from a breached dam. The suction force was terrifying.
A sudden, aching sting tore through his meridians, and all the strength was sucked out of his body. His vision went black, and he nearly face-planted directly into the spring.
He bit down hard on his tongue, using his elbows to brace himself against the ground, fighting desperately to stay conscious. He had no way out anyway. Even if it was a hallucination, even if it drained him completely and killed him here and now, he had to take this gamble.
In the span of a few breaths, 80% of his meager spiritual energy was sucked completely dry.
The suction vanished abruptly. Lin Mo slumped limply onto the ground, gasping for air, cold sweat dripping from his chin. He weakly raised his head to look at the ax in his hand.
The ax... looked exactly the same.
The blade was still coated in rust, the wooden handle was still worn shiny from use. Outwardly, there wasn't a single difference. There was no blinding flash of divine light, no earth-shattering phenomena, not even a ripple of spiritual energy. It was dead silent.
Lin Mo's heart plummeted.
Was it... really just a hallucination?
With a trembling hand, he brought the ax closer to his face, inspecting it under the dim skylight filtering from above.
With one look, his breath caught in his throat.
The five or six deep chips that had marred the blade's edge were completely gone. The edge had been honed to a perfectly smooth, mirror-like finish that clearly reflected his mud-smeared, sweat-drenched face.
A faint, almost imperceptible cold glint ran along the very tip of the blade—something you would never notice unless you were looking closely.
He gently touched his fingertip to the edge.
With just the lightest brush, the skin on his fingertip was sliced open, and a bead of bright red blood instantly welled up.
He had to grind this ax on a whetstone for half an hour just to cut through a damp log before. Now, it could break his skin with a feather-light touch?
Lin Mo scrambled to his feet, entirely forgetting the agonizing pain wracking his body. His eyes locked onto a fist-sized blue stone resting nearby.
It was solid granite, incredibly hard. Previously, striking it with this ax would only result in a chipped blade, without leaving even a white scratch on the rock.
He gripped the ax tightly, steadied his breathing, and swung it lightly at the granite.
There was no ear-piercing screech of metal on stone. There was no dull thud of a blade chipping.
The ax passed through the solid granite like a hot knife through butter. Without meeting a single ounce of resistance, it cleaved the rock perfectly in twain. The cross-section was as smooth as glass; not a single speck of stone dust had flaked off.
Lin Mo stood frozen, gripping the ax. For a full ten seconds, his mind went blank.
It cuts through iron as if it were mud.
A piece of trash, inferior-grade mortal iron, had been transformed into a peerless, razor-sharp weapon with just a single enhancement!
Euphoria erupted in his chest like an active volcano. His hands shook uncontrollably, causing the ax to tremble slightly. He wasn't dreaming. It wasn't a hallucination. He had actually obtained a heaven-defying treasure! A mysterious power capable of enhancing all things in existence!
He whipped his head around, his eyes locking onto the puddle of spring water.
In his consciousness, the text materialized clearly once more: [Item: Mountain Spring Water. Quality: Ordinary Mortal Grade. Status: Enhancable. Current Enhancements: 0. Cost to Enhance: 10% of total Qi capacity at the 1st level of Qi Refining.]
The spiritual energy remaining in his body was just under 20%—exactly enough for one enhancement.
Without a moment's hesitation, Lin Mo commanded: "Enhance."
A weak strand of spiritual energy was drawn from his Dantian and merged into the water.
The puddle remained clear. It didn't change color or emit light. But Lin Mo could vividly perceive that all the original impurities had vanished, replaced by a gentle, pure stream of spiritual energy slowly circulating within the liquid.
He crouched down, cupped the water in both hands, and took a deep drink.
As the water slid down his parched throat, it no longer felt bone-chillingly cold; instead, it carried a soothing, moisturizing warmth.
A gentle wave of spiritual energy diffused from his stomach, flowing into his limbs and bones. His completely drained Dantian instantly recovered a sliver of Qi.
The excruciating pain from his fractured ribs began to recede at a visible rate, and even the deep gash on his palm began to itch as it slowly knit itself back together.
Lin Mo greedily drank several more handfuls. He didn't stop until the sharp pain in his chest had mostly faded and he could breathe normally again.
Leaning back against the rock wall, he slowly calmed his wildly racing heart and began to meticulously test the rules of this new ability.
He picked up a dead leaf, mentally commanded the enhancement, and watched as a microscopic trace of Qi was consumed. The leaf, which would normally crumble at a touch, instantly became incredibly tough. It felt like woven hemp; even pulling on it with all his might couldn't tear it.
He picked up a small pebble. After enhancing it, the pebble became astonishingly dense.
When he threw it at the ground, it embedded itself deeply into the solid bedrock without sustaining a single scratch.
Half an hour later, Lin Mo had finally deciphered the fundamental rules of his power.
First, he could enhance almost anything in the cave—whether it was a rock or a blade of grass. At least, everything he had tested so far was valid.
Second, enhancing consumed spiritual energy. The higher the quality of the item, and the more times it was enhanced, the greater the Qi cost. Enhancing an inferior ax drained 80% of his meager reserves, while a dead leaf cost barely a fraction of a percent.
Third—and this was the most crucial point of all—the entire enhancement process was completely silent and formless. There were no visual anomalies, no divine lights, and zero fluctuations of spiritual energy. Besides himself, absolutely no one could detect anything out of the ordinary.
This realization struck Lin Mo like a bolt of lightning, instantly jolting him wide awake.
Just moments ago, he had been drowning in the euphoria of obtaining a cheat.
Now, a bucket of ice water had been unceremoniously dumped over his head, extinguishing the excitement and leaving behind nothing but a bone-chilling clarity.
Having spent three years in the Servant Quarters, he had witnessed too many tragedies born from the idiom: Possessing a treasure is a crime in itself.
Last year, an Outer Sect disciple at the fifth level of Qi Refining had accidentally stumbled upon a low-grade Yellow-tier cultivation manual.
That very night, he was murdered in his own cave dwelling. The manual was stolen, and his corpse was only discovered after it had grown cold. The sect "investigated" for half a month before dropping the case entirely.
Half a year ago, a young boy in the Servant Quarters dug up a medium-grade spirit stone in the back mountain. He failed to hide it well enough, and a steward caught wind of it. The boy's legs were broken that same day, and he was thrown to the demonic beasts.
The spirit stone, naturally, found its way into the steward's pocket.
In the cruel, dog-eat-dog world of cultivation, without sufficient strength to back it up, a heaven-defying treasure wasn't an opportunity—it was a death warrant.
His ability to enhance all things was ten thousand, a hundred thousand times more overpowered than a Yellow-tier manual or a medium-grade spirit stone.
If anyone were to discover it—let alone the stewards or Zhang Hu—even the Sect Master or the legendary Nascent Soul Grand Elders would go utterly insane trying to capture him. They would lock him up, rip out his soul, skin him alive, and exhaust every horrific method imaginable to pry the secret of his power from his mind.
When that time came, his death would be ten thousand times more miserable than those other victims.
This matter... only Heaven, Earth, and he himself could know. There could absolutely never be a third person. He would take it to his grave.
Lin Mo clenched his fists tightly. His fingernails dug deeply into the healing wound on his palm, sending fresh blood trickling through his fingers, but he didn't even notice.
His gaze drifted toward the cave entrance, a flash of icy hatred glinting in his eyes.
Zhang Hu.
That piece of trash who pushed him off a cliff, intending to leave him without an intact corpse.
Right now, he wanted nothing more than to take his razor-sharp ax and sever Zhang Hu's head from his shoulders with a single swing.
But the thought only lingered in his mind for a fraction of a second before he mercilessly snuffed it out.
No.
Absolutely not.
Leaving aside the fact that Zhang Hu was at the fourth level of Qi Refining and had two second-level lackeys by his side—meaning Lin Mo, at the first level, was no match for him in a direct fight—there was a bigger issue.
If Zhang Hu died, the sect would definitely investigate. He and Zhang Hu had just had a public altercation the day prior.
If he miraculously survived a fall from the cliff and Zhang Hu suddenly turned up dead, he would instantly become the prime suspect.
No matter how clean he made the kill, given his status as a lowly servant, the sect wouldn't even listen to his defense. They would fabricate an excuse and execute him on the spot.
Risking his deepest secret and throwing his life away just to kill a thug like Zhang Hu wasn't worth it.
He had to endure.
He had to wait.
He would wait for a foolproof opportunity, an opening where absolutely no one could trace the deed back to him.
Perhaps when Zhang Hu went to the back mountain to hunt demonic beasts, or when he was traveling alone at night.
He would make Zhang Hu disappear without a trace, executing a clean kill and perfectly disguising it as an animal attack, an accidental fall, or a cultivation deviation. He wouldn't leave a single clue behind.
He wouldn't just kill Zhang Hu; he would ensure he himself lived on comfortably, living better than anyone else.
Lin Mo took a deep breath, forcefully suppressing all the hatred and murderous intent bubbling in his heart. His eyes returned to a state of placid calmness, even adopting a hint of his previous cowardly subservience.
Three years of grueling labor as a servant had long since sanded down his sharp edges, teaching him the most vital rule of survival: Hide.
The tallest tree in the forest is the first to be broken by the wind. Only those who hid in the shadows lived the longest.
He looked up at the sky outside the cave.
The light filtering through the vines was already growing pale. It was the fourth watch of the night; in another two hours, dawn would break, and the Servant Quarters would begin roll call. If someone noticed he hadn't returned all night, suspicions would be raised.
He cupped his hands and drank his fill of the enhanced spring water once more. His injuries were now seventy to eighty percent healed.
Though his ribs hadn't fully knitted back together, he could walk normally and even circulate his Qi without issue.
He scrubbed the mud and blood off his body, then carefully brushed over his footprints and the depression where he had sat with dead leaves, ensuring no trace remained to suggest anyone had ever been in this cave.
With everything taken care of, he tightened his grip on the woodcutting ax.
From the outside, it was still a rusty, chipped, inferior tool, indistinguishable from the ones carried by every other disciple in the Servant Quarters.
Only Lin Mo knew that this ax, and he himself, were no longer the same.
Chapter 3: Return to the Quarters, Concealing the Edge
The sky was just beginning to brighten.
At the bottom of the abyss, the frigid wind whipped up flurries of snow, stinging the cheeks like icy needles.
Lin Mo pushed aside the tangled vines at the cave entrance. The moment he stepped out, he froze in his tracks.
There was no gentle mountain path before him—only a near-vertical cliff face.
The rock had been frozen solid and polished smooth by the wind and snow.
There wasn't even a single protrusion to serve as a foothold.
Looking up, the cliff stretched endlessly into the sky; looking down, the black abyss yawned like a bottomless maw.
Beneath his feet lay only the narrow, two-meter-wide stone platform at the cave's mouth. A single misstep meant being smashed to pieces.
It was only then he fully realized that the Soul-Severing Cliff Zhang Hu had kicked him off yesterday was the most treacherous precipice on the Azure Cloud Sect's back mountain.
Surviving the fall and landing in this hidden, mid-mountain cave was already a miracle born of nine parts death and one part life. To get back, he would have to scale dozens of meters of sheer rock barehanded.
Lin Mo's brow instantly furrowed into a tight knot.
He was only at the first level of Qi Refining, and his fractured ribs hadn't completely healed.
Even in his peak condition, free-climbing this smooth, frozen cliff would be absolutely impossible.
Dawn was breaking. The Servant Quarters would conduct roll call and collect the daily firewood quota at the hour of Mao (5:00 - 7:00 AM).
If he missed the deadline, not only would his monthly stipend be docked, but it would also draw the steward's interrogation.
Falling off a cliff and disappearing for an entire night would inevitably arouse suspicion.
Just as anxiety began to burn in his chest, his fingertips brushed against the woodcutting ax tucked into his belt.
"Right! Maybe I can use the ax to climb." Lin Mo pulled the ax from his waist and examined it closely.
Outwardly, it was still a rusty, battered hunk of metal, but its core had been entirely reborn.
After yesterday's enhancement, this inferior mortal iron could easily cleave solid granite.
If he used it to chisel handholds and footholds into the cliff face, climbing up might not be impossible after all.
Lin Mo instantly steadied his mind.
Gripping the ax, he approached the cliff, selecting a spot where the rock looked relatively dense. He took a deep breath, tightened his grip on the handle, and lightly struck the stone face.
There was no ear-piercing clash of metal on stone. The ax blade sank into the frozen, unyielding rock as easily as cutting into tofu, burying itself half a foot deep. It held firm, not budging an inch.
Lin Mo's eyes lit up.
Using the ax as an anchor, he pressed his toes against the cliff, pulling his body slightly upward. With his free hand holding the ax handle, he gently struck another spot higher up, easily carving out a fist-sized hole just large enough for half a foot.
And so, step by step, chisel by chisel, relying on the terrifying sharpness of the enhanced ax, he forcefully carved a ladder of footholds into the smooth, sheer cliff.
The process was far more grueling than he had imagined.
With every upward heave, a tearing agony erupted from his fractured ribs. Cold sweat rolled down his temples, soaking his thin servant's uniform. When the freezing wind hit him, he shivered uncontrollably.
The spiritual energy in his Dantian was already meager, and he was relying entirely on the ax for leverage.
He didn't dare circulate his Qi recklessly—doing so would inevitably agitate his healing meridians and broken bones, exacerbating the excruciating pain.
It took him nearly a full hour to scale those dozens of meters.
By the time he finally hauled himself over the edge and collapsed onto the familiar soil of the back mountain, the horizon was glowing with the pale white of dawn. He had less than half an hour before the Servant Quarters began collecting firewood.
Not even pausing to catch his breath, Lin Mo gripped his ax and hurried toward the remote West Hollow.
The wood he had chopped yesterday had long been confiscated by Zhang Hu's group.
If he couldn't hand in thirty pounds of dry wood today, it would invite serious trouble. The West Hollow was desolate, abundant in deadwood, and he was unlikely to bump into other servants there.
It was his safest option right now.
Upon entering the West Hollow, Lin Mo stopped hiding his capabilities. He raised his ax and swung at a dead tree as thick as a bowl.
The enhanced blade was peerlessly sharp, slicing through without the slightest resistance.
With a single thwack, the dead tree toppled.
In less than the time it takes an incense stick to burn, he had chopped exactly thirty pounds of thoroughly dried hardwood.
He bound it neatly with vines, hoisted the bundle onto his shoulder, and practically sprinted back toward the Servant Quarters.
Rushing as fast as his legs could carry him, he finally arrived at the woodshed door just moments before the steward was about to close up.
The area outside the woodshed was mostly empty.
Steward Wang was holding the roster, impatiently verifying the headcount. Seeing Lin Mo jogging over with a bundle of wood, he frowned and cursed in annoyance, "Dawdling around? Half a minute later and I would've marked you as failing today's task!"
Steward Wang had originally been an Outer Sect disciple.
Due to his mediocre aptitude, he had been stuck at the ninth level of Qi Refining for thirty years without being able to break through.
Lacking any powerful backing, he couldn't secure a lucrative position and was relegated to being a steward in this utterly profitless place.
The Servant Quarters had various divisions: some raised spiritual pets, some cleaned the sect grounds, and some tended to the herb gardens.
Their specific division was primarily responsible for chopping firewood to fuel the furnaces of the Alchemy Pavilion.
"My apologies, Steward Wang. I went a bit further out today, so I'm late," Lin Mo kept his head bowed, placing the wood onto the scale and replying with practiced subservience.
Steward Wang glanced at the scale, then checked the quality of the wood.
It was all thoroughly dried hardwood, and the weight was exactly right. The impatience on his face faded slightly.
He waved his hand and made a mark on the roster. "Alright, leave it. Your monthly stipend will be issued as usual. Go on back."
Saying that, he fished a low-grade spirit stone from his robes and tossed it to Lin Mo.
Lin Mo caught the spirit stone with both hands, bowed deeply to express his thanks, and turned toward his isolated, dilapidated hut.
He kept his head down the entire time, not speaking to anyone, and no one spared him a second glance.
After all, aside from a few exceptions like Zhang Hu and Steward Wang, everyone here was a lowly servant disciple. There was nothing special about him.
Returning to his small hut, Lin Mo reached back and locked the wooden bolt.
He used torn cotton wadding to block the drafts seeping through the cracks in the door and windows.
Only when the room was completely isolated from the outside world did he let out a long, heavy sigh of murky air, leaning against the door as he spent several long moments just catching his breath.
The exhaustion of scaling the cliff, the throbbing pain of his wounds, and the intense mental strain of the journey all crashed over him at once.
He was just about to sit cross-legged on the bed to recover his drained stamina when his door was violently kicked open with a loud bang.
The biting, freezing wind instantly poured in. Zhang Hu, flanked by his two lackeys, blocked the doorway. His eyes were dark and predatory as a wolf's, locking dead onto Lin Mo.
"You actually didn't die." Zhang Hu advanced step by step. His tone was laced with disbelief and undisguised murderous intent.
"Falling off the Soul-Severing Cliff, and you made it back in one piece? It seems to me, boy, that you've stumbled upon some sort of miraculous fortuitous encounter!"
The two lackeys immediately stepped forward, blocking the exit, glaring viciously at Lin Mo.
They were just waiting for Zhang Hu's order to strip-search him.
Lin Mo's heart seized, every muscle in his body instantly tensing. But in the very next second, he forcefully suppressed all of his defensive instincts.
He knew better than anyone that he was only at the first level of Qi Refining, while the Zhang Hu standing before him was at the fourth level, backed by two second-level lackeys. Even holding a peerlessly sharp ax, he had absolutely zero chance of winning.
Although Zhang Hu would normally show some restraint within the Quarters and wouldn't dare kill someone openly, if a fight broke out, Lin Mo would be beaten so badly he wouldn't be able to leave his bed for days, or worse, crippled entirely.
As long as nobody died, no one cared.
Even Steward Wang wouldn't easily offend Zhang Hu for Lin Mo's sake, or rather, he wouldn't dare offend Zhang Hu's cousin, who was about to be promoted to the Inner Sect.
Lin Mo abruptly slouched his tense shoulders. His face instantly contorted into an expression of abject, overwhelming terror.
His body began to tremble slightly, his head bowed impossibly low, and his voice quavered like a man whose spirit had been utterly broken.
"Brother Zhang... what fortuitous encounter... I just have a cheap life... When I fell, I got caught on a gnarled tree protruding from the cliff face... I suffered through the night and barely managed to climb back up..."
As he spoke, he deliberately shifted his sleeve, allowing the low-grade spirit stone he had just received to slide into plain view.
Zhang Hu's gaze was instantly drawn to the spirit stone.
The dark suspicion on his face faded slightly, replaced by sheer greed. He snatched the spirit stone, shoved it into his own robes, and gave Lin Mo a violent shove, knocking him back onto the earthen kang bed.
"Trash is still trash. Even after keeping your life, you're still a spineless coward." Zhang Hu spat.
His eyes swept the room. Seeing nothing but a few torn clothes and a pile of twigs, the last of his suspicion evaporated.
"I'm warning you. What happened yesterday rots in your stomach. If you dare say a single word to anyone, next time I'll throw you to the bottom of the abyss myself and make sure you don't even get the chance to hang from a tree."
"I wouldn't dare, I absolutely wouldn't dare..." Lin Mo lay sprawled on the earthen bed, his head buried deep, agreeing profusely, not even daring to lift his eyes to look at him.
Satisfied, Zhang Hu snorted. He took one last look around the room, found nothing of value, and lost all interest in tormenting him further. With his two lackeys in tow, he swaggered out, not forgetting to kick the door shut behind him.
The door slammed shut, and the room was plunged back into dead silence.
Lin Mo slowly lifted his head.
The cowardice and terror on his face receded inch by inch, leaving behind nothing but an unfathomably deep, abyssal calm.
The spirit stone can be given.
The humiliation can be endured.
But this debt... he had engraved it into his bones.
It was just that right now, he wasn't strong enough. He wasn't strong enough to make Zhang Hu disappear silently into the back mountain without leaving a single trace behind.
He stood up, thoroughly blocked the cracks in the door and windows once more, and sat cross-legged on the earthen bed.
After taking a moment to recover his depleted stamina, he reached into his robes and pulled out a blackened, dog-eared, dilapidated manual—the fragmented Qi Drawing Mantra.
This was the garbage cultivation manual distributed to every person in the Servant Quarters.
It was incomplete, riddled with errors, resulted in cultivation speed as slow as a crawling turtle, and easily induced Qi deviation.
Lin Mo stared intently at the bamboo slips, focusing his mind. Immediately, a line of clear text floated into his consciousness:
[Item: Qi Drawing Mantra (Fragment)]
* [Quality: Inferior Mortal Grade]
* [Flaws: 9 missing sections, Qi conversion rate <10%, 3 meridian routing deviations, highly prone to inducing Qi blockages.]
* [Status: Enhancable. Current Enhancements: 0]
* [Cost to Enhance: 50% of total Qi capacity at the 1st level of Qi Refining.]
"As expected, it's a fragmented manual. Aside from a few disciples with outstanding Spiritual Roots who can use their abundant Qi to force through the blockages, ordinary disciples are basically doing useless work.
They could practice this forever and achieve nothing."
His fingertips tightened around the manual. Word by word, he silently commanded in his heart:
"Enhance."
Chapter 4: Top-Grade Mortal Tier!
The instant the thought formed, half of the meager spiritual energy in Lin Mo's Dantian was abruptly drawn away.
There was no blinding light, no miraculous phenomenon, not even a single ripple of spiritual energy leaked out.
The bamboo slips beneath his fingertips transmitted an almost imperceptible, soothing warmth.
The incantations carved into the bamboo—originally blurred and missing strokes—unexpectedly became clear and complete right before his eyes, bit by bit.
When the Qi extraction ceased, the bamboo scroll's outward appearance remained exactly the same: blackened from use, with curling edges, looking like a tattered mess indistinguishable from the fragmented copies handed out to every servant in the Quarters.
However, the contents of the scroll had undergone an earth-shattering transformation.
The nine originally fatal missing sections were completely filled in; the three erroneous and chaotic meridian routing paths were thoroughly corrected.
The spiritual energy conversion rate, which had previously been less than ten percent, was instantly pulled to a flawless one hundred percent. Even the fatal flaw that made it extremely easy to induce Qi blockages and Qi deviation had vanished without a trace.
At the same time, a line of clear text surfaced in his consciousness:
[Item: Qi Drawing Mantra (Complete Volume)]
* [Quality: Top-Grade Mortal Tier]
* [Status: Temporarily Unenhancable. Current Enhancements: 1]
* [Qi Required for Next Enhancement: 100% of total Qi capacity at the 2nd level of Foundation Establishment.]
Lin Mo's fingertips tightened abruptly, his heart skipping a heavy beat.
His first reaction wasn't ecstasy, but to immediately clutch the bamboo scroll in a death grip, bringing it close to the faint light seeping through the door crack to examine it over and over again.
It wasn't until he confirmed that the bamboo scroll's exterior remained as tattered as before—the depth of the carved characters and the wear and tear identical to the past—and that one could only discover the changed contents by peering closely word by word, did he finally let out a long breath.
A layer of cold sweat had already broken out on his back from the sheer shock.
Having been in the sect for three years, he had long since engraved the cultivation world's hierarchy of techniques into his heart.
A technique's major tier determined one's future.
From lowest to highest, they were divided into Mortal, Spirit, Earth, and Heaven tiers, with the legendary Immortal tier existing only in myths. The major tier directly dictated a cultivator's absolute upper limit.
A Mortal-tier technique could, at best, only support a cultivator up to the peak of the Golden Core stage; progressing any further would be impossible. Only techniques at the Spirit tier or above could touch the Great Dao thresholds of the Nascent Soul and Soul Formation stages.
Within each major tier, techniques were further subdivided into four minor grades: Low, Mid, High, and Top. Within the same tier, the grade solely determined cultivation efficiency, Qi conversion rate, and the number of flaws in the technique.
Even among Mortal-tier techniques, the cultivation speed of a Top-grade was exponentially faster than a Low-grade, completely lacking any hidden dangers of Qi deviation.
The difference between the two was like night and day.
The Azure Cloud Sect was merely a third-rate sect in the Eastern Wastelands.
The very foundation of the sect was nothing more than a High-grade Spirit-tier technique practiced only by the Sect Master and the Grand Elders.
As for the disciples, the techniques they could access were extremely limited: the Qi Drawing Mantra given to every servant was the most rudimentary, fragmented introductory text. It couldn't even be considered a complete Low-grade Mortal technique; it was barely enough to draw Qi into the body.
Only after Outer Sect disciples officially joined could they receive a complete Low-grade Mortal foundation technique, while Inner Sect disciples could obtain Mid-grade Mortal techniques.
Only the sect's core legacy disciples and elders holding actual authority had the right to cultivate High-grade Mortal techniques.
This was already the ceiling for Mortal-tier techniques obtainable within the sect.
Top-grade was completely unheard of. A Top-grade technique represented absolute perfection. Not only was the Qi conversion highly efficient, without any worry of Qi deviation, but it could also forge an incredibly solid foundation, making future breakthroughs far easier.
If a Spiritual Root equated to a person's innate comprehension, then the quality of their technique was akin to the simplicity or complexity of a tutorial.
A good technique was like a guide helping you solve a complex math problem—it not only enlightened you using the simplest, most direct methods, but also allowed you to draw inferences about other cases.
The previous fragmented Low-grade technique was equivalent to solving a problem using the most convoluted method possible, only to abruptly cut off halfway through, leaving a disjointed mess.
Furthermore, during actual combat, a Top-grade technique provided far longer sustained endurance due to its superior Qi conversion efficiency.
With just a single enhancement, this garbage fragment that everyone despised, which couldn't even qualify for a complete grade, had metamorphosed into a complete Top-grade Mortal technique.
For him, currently at the first level of Qi Refining, this was the absolute pinnacle of cultivation techniques he could ever hope to touch.
Even if it was ultimately just Mortal-tier with a fixed upper limit, it was more than enough to let him leave cultivators of the same realm in the dust during the Qi Refining and Foundation Establishment stages.
But if this matter were to leak out, let alone Zhang Hu and the Servant Quarters' steward, even the Golden Core Elders of the sect would go mad trying to snatch this technique.
When that happened, his only end would be having his soul searched, his technique stolen, and dying without an intact corpse.
Lin Mo took a deep breath, suppressing the surging tides in his heart. He tucked the bamboo scroll securely inside his robes, thoroughly sealed the cracks in the doors and windows once more, and sat down cross-legged.
Following the brand-new Qi Drawing Mantra on the scroll, he slowly began to circulate the spiritual energy within his body.
In the past when he cultivated, the thin spiritual energy between heaven and earth would squeeze into his meridians bit by bit, like squeezing toothpaste.
More than half of it would dissipate out of his body along the flawed routing paths. After two hours, the spiritual energy in his Dantian would only increase by a microscopic sliver.
But now, circulating Qi according to the Top-grade Mortal routing path, the surrounding spiritual energy felt as if it were being drawn in by an invisible tractor beam. It surged continuously into his body, flowing smoothly along the corrected meridians.
Without a single trace of dissipation, it entirely converged into his Dantian. The warm spiritual energy flowed through his limbs and bones; even the dull ache from his fractured ribs was alleviated at a visible rate.
His cultivation realm, which hadn't progressed in three years, saw his Dantian completely fill up with spiritual energy in just an hour. The barrier to the first level of Qi Refining was already within arm's reach.
As long as he wished it, he only needed to circulate his Qi for one more cycle to naturally break through to the second level of Qi Refining.
Yet, Lin Mo abruptly ceased his practice. Forcefully circulating the technique, he compressed the overflowing spiritual energy back down into his Dantian, locking his aura firmly at the early stage of the first level of Qi Refining, ensuring he appeared no different from any other day.
A layer of cold sweat beaded on his forehead—not from a cultivation deviation, but from sheer lingering fear.
He didn't possess a technique to conceal his aura. If he rashly broke through to the second level, someone would definitely notice.
Everyone in the Servant Quarters knew he was a Five Spiritual Root piece of trash who had been stuck at the first level for three years. Breaking through overnight would inevitably draw suspicion.
Zhang Hu was already suspicious about him surviving the fall from the cliff. Once he was targeted, his technique and his secrets would be exposed sooner or later.
The tallest tree in the forest is the first to be broken by the wind.
He had carved this phrase into his very bones through three years of forbearance and beatings.
He would rather progress slowly, rather pretend to be trash forever, than risk even a sliver of exposure.
Early the next morning, just as Lin Mo returned from the Dining Hall after breakfast, Steward Wang suddenly called out to him.
"Lin Mo, starting today, head over to the Alchemy Pavilion. You'll be responsible for sweeping and cleaning the Alchemy Pavilion."
"The work isn't heavy. When no one is refining pills, you don't even need to clean."
Hearing this, Lin Mo grew secretly vigilant. How could such a good thing ever fall into his lap?
Though wary in his heart, his face revealed deep gratitude. "Thank you for looking out for me, Steward Wang."
Seeing his expression, Steward Wang actually felt a twinge of guilt. Taking a deep breath, he warned, "Don't thank me just yet. Let me make things clear first. This Alchemy Pavilion has its pros and cons."
"Although you only need to do tasks like sweeping furnace ash, chopping wood, and general cleaning..."
"...However, when some of the more hot-tempered senior brothers or sisters fail in their pill refinement, they tend to get a bit emotional. If you're not careful, they might take their anger out on you."
"Once you're there, you need to be observant, lest you suffer a severe beating."
What?
Lin Mo sensed something was wrong.
He looked around.
Sure enough, many people were giving him a look that said, "You're dead meat."
"Could you assign someone else? This disciple only has brute strength and can only do rough work like chopping wood.
I'm afraid I won't be competent enough for such meticulous work..." Lin Mo acted reluctant, declining tactfully.
Hearing this, Steward Wang frowned and said in a deep voice, "Don't be so quick to refuse. Over there, your monthly stipend will be two low-grade spirit stones from now on."
"Furthermore..."
Steward Wang paused, lowering his voice. "Once you're there, Zhang Hu won't have the time to find trouble with you every day. This isn't a bad thing for you!"
Clearly, he knew Zhang Hu and Lin Mo were at odds.
Hearing this, Lin Mo's face displayed hesitation.
He wasn't actually greedy for the extra spirit stone; rather, it was the fact that he could temporarily get far away from Zhang Hu and far away from everyone who knew him too well.
Seeing this, Steward Wang spoke in a tone that brokered no refusal: "Pack your things and move over there today. There are dedicated rooms over there; you'll live there from now on!"
After saying that, he turned and left without looking back.
Chapter 5: The Alchemy Pavilion
Lin Mo stood rooted to the spot, his fingertips curling slightly inward as his mind rapidly weighed the pros and cons.
The Alchemy Pavilion was one of the most chaotic and complicated places in the Azure Cloud Sect's Outer Sect.
Those who could enter the Alchemy Pavilion were either alchemy disciples heavily nurtured by the sect, or Outer Sect disciples with powerful backers looking to reap benefits through pill refinement.
Every single one of them had eyes on the top of their heads and explosive tempers.
Just as Steward Wang had said, taking out their frustrations on servants after a failed refinement was a common occurrence. The slightest misstep meant a severe beating.
But the benefits were equally obvious.
First, the Alchemy Pavilion was located on the sect's front mountain, separated from the Servant Quarters by more than half the sect's territory.
No matter how arrogant Zhang Hu was, he wouldn't dare barge into the Alchemy Pavilion to cause trouble.
Lin Mo could completely escape Zhang Hu's endless bullying, eliminating his biggest hidden danger.
Second, the Alchemy Pavilion sat atop a branch of a spirit vein.
The surrounding air was perennially wreathed in pill aura, making the ambient spiritual energy several times denser than in the dilapidated Servant Quarters.
This would be immensely beneficial to his cultivation.
Having thought this through, the hesitation in Lin Mo's eyes vanished completely. He turned and headed back to the ruined hut he had lived in for three years.
His belongings were pitifully few: a couple of heavily patched changes of clothes, a rusty woodcutting ax, and the bamboo scroll of the Qi Drawing Mantra, tightly wrapped in oilcloth and hidden against his chest.
In just a few moments, he had packed everything into a bundle no larger than a palm.
Before leaving, he meticulously inspected the room—the hollows of the earthen bed, the corners of the walls, the cracks in the door—ensuring he hadn't left behind a single trace concerning the technique or his enhancement ability.
Only then did he close the door behind him and set off toward the front mountain's Alchemy Pavilion.
Traveling from the Servant Quarters to the Alchemy Pavilion required crossing most of the Outer Sect region.
Along the way, disciples clad in the standard Outer Sect uniform occasionally walked past. Each possessed a steady aura; even the weakest among them was at the fifth level of Qi Refining.
The looks they cast his way were filled with undisguised contempt.
Lin Mo kept his head bowed and his shoulders hunched the entire way, sticking close to the walls to minimize his presence.
His pace was neither fast nor slow, and he kept his breathing extremely light, terrified of drawing even the slightest bit of attention.
Half an hour later, he finally stood before the Alchemy Pavilion.
Three grand halls of blue brick and red tile stood side by side, their eaves carved with simple cloud patterns.
Compared to the drafty, leaky Servant Quarters, it was more than just a little majestic.
The herb gardens outside the halls were planted full of low-grade spirit herbs like Qi Gathering Grass and Dew Condensation Flowers.
The air was permeated with a faint medicinal fragrance, mixed with the scorched scent of burning pill fires.
A dense wave of spiritual energy washed over his face, easily several times stronger than back at the Servant Quarters.
Lin Mo took a deep breath, suppressing the ripples in his heart. Still keeping his head bowed, he entered the Alchemy Pavilion through a side door and sought out Steward Liu, the man in charge of managing the servants.
Steward Liu was an Outer Sect disciple at the tenth level of Qi Refining. He had a long, horse-like face and drooping eyes, and he always looked at people with a critical, mean-spirited air.
He swept his gaze up and down Lin Mo a few times. Seeing his faded, washed-out servant uniform and his aura stagnant at the first level of Qi Refining, undisguised impatience immediately surfaced on his face. He casually tossed Lin Mo a wooden token carved with a number.
"You're that Lin Mo that Old Wang shoved over here?"
Steward Liu's voice was high-pitched and thin, dripping with annoyance. "Now that you've entered the Alchemy Pavilion, there are three ironclad rules you must memorize."
"First: Don't look at what you shouldn't look at, and don't ask what you shouldn't ask. When the senior brothers are refining pills, you are not to approach, you are not to let your eyes wander, and you are not to even glance in the direction of the pill furnaces. If you ruin a pill, I'll skin you alive."
"Second: Every day before the hour of Mao, you must chop twenty pounds of thoroughly dried jujube wood. It must be split into uniform pieces three inches wide and half a foot long, and delivered to each alchemy room one by one. The furnace ash and the medicinal slag on the floor must be swept up immediately; there cannot be the slightest accumulation. The swept-up garbage must all be dumped into the incinerator pit in the back mountain. No hoarding, and no dumping it anywhere else."
"Third: When the senior brothers fail in their refinement, whether they take their anger out on you or not, you are not allowed to talk back, and you are not allowed to make excuses. Do not strike back when beaten, and do not curse back when scolded. Do you understand?"
"I understand, Steward Liu." Lin Mo kept his head bowed, accepting the wooden token with both hands.
His posture was subservient to the extreme, and he kept his voice very low, terrified of provoking the other party's displeasure.
"Your living quarters are in the western annex behind the alchemy rooms. The innermost room is empty; you won't have to share. When you don't have work, stay in your own room. You are not to wander around the alchemy rooms, and you are not to trespass into forbidden areas. Dare to break the rules, and I'll throw you directly to the back mountain to feed the demonic beasts." Steward Liu waved his hand, shooing him away like a fly.
"Go to the woodshed and chop wood right now. You must deliver the wood to the alchemy rooms before the hour of Mao today. Be a single minute late, and you can forget about this month's stipend."
"Yes."
Lin Mo bowed in compliance and slowly backed out of the room, not lifting his head once the entire time.
Except for a few disciples with Fire-attribute techniques who could use their magical power to conjure spiritual flames out of thin air to refine pills, the vast majority of disciples had to rely on firewood.
Consequently, the demand for firewood was quite large, making chopping wood Lin Mo's primary daily task.
He first went to the western annex behind the alchemy rooms. The innermost room was indeed empty.
The room wasn't large—it only had an earthen bed and a dilapidated wooden table—but its advantage lay in its independence and seclusion. It had its own door and windows, isolating him from the prying eyes of others.
Compared to that drafty ruined hut in the Servant Quarters, it was leagues better.
He placed his bundle in the corner of the earthen bed.
Using torn cotton wadding he had prepared in advance, he meticulously sealed the cracks in the door and windows.
Only after confirming that absolutely no movement inside could be seen from the outside did he pick up his rusty woodcutting ax and head to the woodshed in the back courtyard.
The woodshed was piled high with thick jujube logs. These had been specially prepared by the sect for the Alchemy Pavilion.
The wood was incredibly hard and rich in oils, making it the best fuel for pill refinement, but it was also notoriously difficult to chop.
The servant previously responsible for chopping wood had to wake up before dawn every day and toil for over an hour just to chop twenty pounds of wood that met the requirements.
If it was even slightly irregular, the disciples in the alchemy rooms would reject it and order it re-chopped.
But for the current Lin Mo, this wasn't a challenge in the slightest.
He closed the woodshed door behind him, confirmed no one was around, and then raised his ax, swinging it lightly at a jujube log as thick as a bowl.
The enhanced ax blade was peerlessly sharp. It glided through the solid jujube wood without the slightest resistance, nor did it emit any harsh chopping sounds.
It was like cutting into warm tofu. In the span of a single breath, the thick log had been split into perfectly uniform wooden segments.
In less than half the time it took an incense stick to burn, the twenty pounds of dried jujube wood was ready.
Every single piece was perfectly sized, without a single splinter. It entirely met the alchemy rooms' requirements—in fact, it was far more perfect than required.
He bundled the wood and, following the roster Steward Liu had given him, delivered them to the door of each alchemy room one by one.
Keeping his head down the entire time, he dropped off the wood and left. He didn't spare a single extra glance inside the rooms, nor did he strike up a conversation with any disciples.
His footsteps were as light as the wind. Like a completely invisible person, no one cast a second glance his way.
By the time he finished delivering the wood, the sky was just beginning to lighten, and the disciples of the Alchemy Pavilion began arriving one after another.
Holding a broom and a dustpan, Lin Mo shrank into the most remote corner of the grand hall, waiting to clean.
He kept his head bowed the entire time, his eyes fixed solely on the ground beneath his feet, but his ears were acutely tuned to every sound in his surroundings.
The moment a disciple from any alchemy room yelled for cleaning, he immediately hurried over. With quick, deft movements, he swept up the furnace ash and medicinal slag.
He never lingered for even half a second, nor did he ever raise his head to peek at the situation inside the pill furnace.
Over the course of a single morning, he had thoroughly grasped the laws of survival within the Alchemy Pavilion.
These Outer Sect disciples were mostly novices who had just come into contact with the Dao of Alchemy.
If they could successfully refine two or three furnaces out of ten, it was already considered good talent. Furnace explosions and ruined pills were commonplace occurrences.
Once a refinement failed, in mild cases, they would kick their furnaces and hurl curses. In severe cases, they would directly use the nearby servants as punching bags.
Being punched and kicked was a routine affair.
Just that morning, a round-faced disciple experienced a furnace explosion.
On the spot, he slapped the servant responsible for his room five or six times, cursing aggressively as he kicked the man out.
The servant clutched his face, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth, not daring to utter a single word of defense. He could only bow his head and retreat in silence.
Lin Mo watched everything and etched it into his heart, acting with even greater caution and prudence.
When sweeping up the medicinal slag, he specifically kept a close eye out.
The medicinal slag casually tossed aside by the disciples mostly just had the primary medicinal properties severely depleted, but they still retained a considerable amount of residual spiritual efficacy.
There were even some ruined pills left over from furnace explosions; their pill power had simply dissipated and their medicinal properties had become chaotic, rendering them unwanted waste.
Taking advantage of moments when no one was paying attention, he slowly secreted these pieces of slag, ruined pills, discarded fragments of broken cauldrons, and herb scraps into the very bottom of his dustpan.
He covered them completely with a thick layer of grayish-white furnace ash. Absolutely no one would bother rummaging through a servant's garbage dustpan.
It wasn't until dusk, when the disciples of the Alchemy Pavilion gradually left and the grand hall was completely empty, that Lin Mo used the excuse of taking out the trash to secretly transport this "garbage" back to his annex room.
Closing the door, sliding the bolt into place, and sealing every crack, Lin Mo finally dumped his hidden stash all at once onto the earthen bed.
Looking at this pile of waste that was completely worthless in the eyes of others, an extremely faint glimmer flashed deep in his eyes.
He first picked up a pitch-black, pockmarked ruined pill. This was a Qi Gathering Pill that had been tossed out during a furnace explosion that morning. Originally, it was a foundational pill meant to replenish spiritual energy for Qi Refining stage cultivators.
After the explosion, its pill power had dissipated and its properties had gone haywire. Let alone consuming it, no one would even take it if he tried to sell it.
Focusing his mind, a line of clear text immediately surfaced in his consciousness:
[Item: Dissipated Qi Gathering Pill]
* [Quality: Waste Product]
* [Pill Power Loss: 92%]
* [Flaws: Chaotic medicinal properties. Unfit for consumption.]
* [Status: Enhancable. Current Enhancements: 0]
* [Cost to Enhance: 3% of total Qi capacity at the 1st level of Qi Refining.]
It really can be enhanced!! Lin Mo was ecstatic. In that case, this Alchemy Pavilion was literally paved with treasures for him!
"Enhance,"
Lin Mo commanded silently in his heart.
A negligible sliver of spiritual energy was drawn from his Dantian and slowly merged into the ruined pill in his hand.
There were no visual phenomena, no blinding light, only an almost imperceptible soothing warmth radiating from his fingertips.
In the span of a single breath, the pitch-black, pockmarked ruined pill instantly became perfectly round and plump.
Its surface gleamed with a faint, translucent white luster. A crisp, refreshing pill fragrance wafted outwards, its pill power completely stable and overflowing.
From an unwanted piece of trash, it had directly transformed into a Top-grade Qi Gathering Pill. Its medicinal efficacy was several times better than the standard pills produced by the sect's alchemy rooms.
Lin Mo pinched the pill, his fingertips tightening slightly.
With just a tiny sliver of spiritual energy, he could turn a waste product into a Top-grade pill. This Alchemy Pavilion was fundamentally an inexhaustible treasure trove for him.
Suddenly, he sniffed the air.
"Not good!" Lin Mo paled in shock!
The pill fragrance was too dense. At this rate, the scent was bound to drift over to the next room! In a moment of oversight, he had neglected this critical detail.
But he couldn't be blamed; he had never seen a real spirit pill before and had no idea they possessed such a potent characteristic.
Lin Mo frantically looked left and right, unable to find a container capable of sealing a spirit pill at a moment's notice.
Cold sweat broke out on his forehead.
Finally, in a moment of desperate inspiration, he shoved the pill directly into his mouth and swallowed it whole.
"If I die, I die. If anyone notices, I'll just say the spiritual energy here is too dense, and I broke through right after arriving.
They don't know my past anyway. It's about time I broke through!"