The scent of copper and rotting wood was the first thing to register in Wei Chen's mind.
It was a heavy, suffocating odor, the kind that clung to the back of the throat and refused to let go. Following the smell came the pain. It did not arrive as a dull ache or a sudden sting, but as a torrential, all-consuming fire that raged through his veins, tearing at his muscles and boiling his blood. It felt as though someone had poured molten lead down his throat and was now violently churning it through his nervous system with a rusted iron rod.
Wei Chen's eyes snapped open. He gasped, a wet, rattling sound, and immediately rolled over on the damp, hardened dirt floor, vomiting a mouthful of viscous black blood.
He lay there for a long time, chest heaving, staring at the dimly lit surroundings. The walls were made of uneven stone and rotting timber, insulated with dried grey moss. A single, sputtering candle rested on a cracked stone altar, casting long, erratic shadows across the tiny, claustrophobic room.
Where am I? The thought was sluggish, struggling through the fog of agony. He remembered a hospital room. He remembered the steady, rhythmic beeping of a heart monitor that had eventually slowed to a long, continuous drone. He had been thirty-two, an unremarkable accountant in a sprawling metropolis, dying of a congenital heart defect that medicine could no longer manage. He had closed his eyes to the sterile white lights of the ward, accepting the quiet oblivion of death.
But this was not oblivion. And this was definitely not a hospital.
Before panic could fully set in, a sudden, violent spasm wracked his skull. A flood of alien memories crashed into his consciousness, as vivid and brutal as a physical blow.
He saw a young boy, no older than ten, digging through a pile of refuse outside a towering city made of white jade. He saw the boy being beaten by men in flowing blue robes, their hands glowing with a terrifying, unnatural light. He saw years of bitter cold, of gnawing hunger, of meditating in damp caves while trying to absorb the faintest wisps of energy from the air. He saw a desperate, twenty-year-old man, clutching a handful of low-grade spirit stones, buying a defective pill from a shady merchant in a dark alley.
And finally, he saw the man swallowing that pill in this very room, attempting to forcefully break through a bottleneck in his cultivation. The energy of the pill had been chaotic, tainted. It had rampaged through his fragile meridians, shredding them from the inside out. The man's dantian had cracked, his life force had leaked away, and he had died in this desolate shack, alone and forgotten.
Qi deviation.
Wei Chen clutched his head, breathing heavily until the two sets of memories finally settled, merging into a single, continuous stream of consciousness.
"I crossed over," he rasped, his voice sounding entirely different—younger, harsher, roughened by years of poor diet and lack of water.
He forced himself to sit up, leaning his back against the cold stone wall. He looked down at his hands. They were thin, calloused, scarred, and covered in dried blood. He was wearing a coarse, grey linen robe that was frayed at the edges and reeked of stale sweat.
He closed his eyes and looked inward, following the instincts left behind by the body's previous owner. He found his dantian—the spiritual center located just below his navel. In the memories, it had been a small, glowing vortex of pale blue mist. Now, it was a dim, fractured puddle, barely holding together.
Qi Refining Stage 4. In the vast, terrifying hierarchy of the cultivation world, this was the absolute bottom. Below this were merely mortals. Above this were the Foundation Establishment experts who could fly on swords, the Nascent Soul monsters who could level mountains with a flick of their wrists, and the legendary immortals who could pluck stars from the sky.
To those beings, a Qi Refining Stage 4 loose cultivator was not even an ant. An ant could at least bite. Wei Chen was more akin to a mote of dust—entirely insignificant, easily swept away, and completely unmourned when destroyed.
"A nameless loose cultivator," Wei Chen muttered, a bitter smile touching his lips. "No sect backing. No powerful master. No heaven-defying bloodline. Just a body that was seconds away from completely breaking down."
He began to search his immediate surroundings, pulling himself up on trembling legs. The room was bare. In the corner was a bedroll made of moldy straw. Underneath the bedroll, hidden beneath a loose floorboard, was his entire life's savings.
Wei Chen knelt and pried the board up. Inside lay a small, worn leather pouch. He opened it and poured the contents onto his palm.
Sixteen low-grade spirit stones. They were dull, irregular lumps of crystal, holding only the faintest trace of spiritual energy. To a sect disciple, this wouldn't even cover the cost of a single meal at a spirit restaurant. To the previous Wei Chen, it was the result of three years of literal blood, sweat, and scavenging in the dangerous Outer Wastelands.
Next to the stones was a cracked iron sword, heavy and unbalanced, completely devoid of any spiritual enchantments. And lastly, a half-empty porcelain bottle containing three gray, foul-smelling Bigu pills—fasting pills meant to stave off hunger for a few days.
"Sixteen spirit stones and a broken sword," Wei Chen summarized, tossing the pouch back into the hole. "What a fantastic start. I suppose I should just find a sturdy tree and hang myself before a rogue cultivator decides to use my soul to refine a banner."
He was joking, but only barely. He knew the tropes of the novels he had read in his past life. Transmigrators usually woke up as the young master of a prestigious clan, or they found a supreme artifact lying in the dirt, or a gorgeous female immortal fell from the sky and pledged her eternal loyalty to them.
He had woken up in a slum, covered in his own blood, with a shattered foundation.
Wait. Wei Chen paused. He had just suffered a severe qi deviation. His meridians had been shredded. By all the laws of cultivation memory in his head, he should be paralyzed, agonizingly inching toward death. Yet, the burning pain that had greeted him upon waking was rapidly subsiding.
In fact, it was gone entirely.
He looked down at his chest. Underneath the blood-stained robes, his skin was unblemished. He focused inward again. The shattered, dim puddle in his dantian... was healing. The cracks were sealing themselves, the pale blue mist gathering and spinning once more, stabilizing at the peak of Qi Refining Stage 4.
"What in the world..."
Suddenly, a profound, resonant hum echoed through his mind. It did not come from the shack, nor from the world outside. It came from the deepest recesses of his own soul.
Before his mind's eye, the darkness parted. A colossal, ancient ledger materialized in the void of his consciousness. Its covers were bound in dark, weathered bronze, and the pages were made of a strange, indestructible parchment that seemed to be woven from starlight and shadow. Runes older than time shifted and writhed across the surface of the book.
Golden light flared, and the ledger flipped open. Words burned themselves into Wei Chen's mind, presenting themselves in a language he had never seen, yet fundamentally understood.
[The Binding Ledger of Myriad Returns]
Host: Wei Chen
Cultivation: Qi Refining Stage 4
Lifespan: Infinite
Wei Chen stopped breathing.
Infinite?
He stared at the golden text, his heart hammering against his ribs. Infinite lifespan. Immortality. In a world where trillions of beings cultivated against the heavens, fought bloody wars, betrayed their families, and committed unspeakable atrocities just to extend their lives by a few centuries, he had arrived with an infinite lifespan.
He continued reading the golden text as it flowed across the parchment.
[Rule 1: The Flesh of the Eternal]
The Host exists outside the river of time. The Host shall not age. The Host cannot be destroyed. Flesh, bone, blood, and soul will perpetually regenerate to their optimal state from any wound, disease, or curse, regardless of severity.
[Rule 2: The Harvest of Myriad Returns]
Once every ten years, the Host may Bind one living soul. The Binding is absolute and cannot be detected by any entity beneath the Heavenly Dao. When the Bound soul perishes, all of their life's achievements—their cultivation base, their martial techniques, their spell comprehension, their alchemical knowledge, their artifact refinement insights, and their Dao heart—will be harvested and integrated directly into the Host, stacking perfectly onto the Host's existing foundation without conflict or bottleneck.
[Available Bindings: 1]
[Time until next Binding: 10 Years]
The ledger snapped shut with a sound like a thunderclap, slowly fading back into the depths of his soul, leaving Wei Chen standing frozen in the middle of his rotting shack.
He stood there for a full ten minutes in absolute silence.
Then, he moved. He picked up the cracked iron sword from the floor. The metal was cold and unforgiving. He took a deep breath, rolled up the sleeve of his left arm, and without allowing himself to hesitate, he drew the jagged blade hard across his forearm.
Pain flared—sharp, bright, and immediate. Hot red blood welled up from the deep gash, spilling over his wrist and dripping onto the dirt floor.
He watched it intently.
One second. Two seconds.
On the third second, the bleeding stopped. The edges of the wound seemed to blur. Tendrils of pale, invisible energy knitted the flesh together at a visible, terrifying speed. The muscle reattached, the skin closed, and the remaining blood flaked away as dry dust. Within five seconds, his forearm was completely smooth, lacking even a microscopic scar.
Wei Chen dropped the sword. It clattered noisily against the stone.
"I really am immortal," he whispered.
A manic laugh bubbled up in his chest, but he forced it down, clamping a hand over his mouth. He staggered back to the wall and slid down into a crouch, pulling his knees to his chest. His mind was racing a million miles an hour, analyzing, calculating, processing the sheer magnitude of what he possessed.
He was immortal. He could heal from anything. He could steal the lifetime achievements of anyone he bound once they died. He didn't need to cultivate. He didn't need to fight for resources. He didn't need to risk his life in ancient tombs or secret realms. He just needed to bind someone, wait for them to die, and reap the rewards.
It was the ultimate cheat. It was a golden finger that defied the very laws of reality.
And it was the most dangerous thing in existence.
Wei Chen was an accountant in his past life. He dealt with risk assessment, asset management, and the cold, hard reality of numbers. He did not possess the hot-blooded arrogance of a teenager. He did not believe in the power of friendship, nor did he believe that plot armor would save him from a localized apocalypse.
He knew human nature, and he knew the nature of the world he was now in.
If anyone finds out about this, he thought, a cold sweat breaking out on his forehead, I am dead. No, worse than dead.
Immortality without the strength to protect it was not a blessing. It was a curse of unimaginable proportions.
If a Demonic Cultivator discovered that Wei Chen could regenerate endlessly from any wound, they would not kill him. They would chain him to a wall in a lightless dungeon. They would slice off his limbs, harvest his organs, and drain his blood every single day for the rest of eternity to refine their demonic pills. He would become an infinite, self-replenishing resource. A living, breathing blood bag.
If a righteous Orthodox Sect discovered his immortality, they would be no better. They would claim his existence was an aberration. A Nascent Soul ancestor nearing the end of their lifespan would inevitably try to possess his body. They would tear his soul to pieces, scour his memories, and try to steal his eternal flesh for themselves.
Even the Binding ability was a massive risk. If he bound a genius, and that genius suddenly died, and Wei Chen miraculously jumped three major cultivation realms overnight, people would notice. Cultivators were paranoid, ancient beings who lived for centuries. They missed nothing. A sudden, inexplicable rise in power from a trash-tier loose cultivator would immediately attract the attention of beings who could crush him with a thought.
"Stay low," Wei Chen whispered to the empty room, his voice trembling slightly before hardening into absolute resolve. "Stay hidden. Stay alive."
He didn't need to be the protagonist. He didn't need to slap the faces of arrogant young masters. He didn't need to court the jade beauties of the holy lands. Those things brought attention, and attention brought death—or worse, eternal captivity.
What was a hundred years to an immortal? What was a thousand?
Let the geniuses blaze across the sky like meteors. Let the supreme chosen ones fight their bloody wars, steal the heavenly treasures, and dominate an era. Meteors eventually burn out. Eras eventually end. Geniuses, no matter how heaven-defying, inevitably encounter someone stronger, or a tribulation too fierce, and they fall.
And when they fall, Wei Chen would be there. Sitting quietly in his shack, drinking cheap tea, absorbing centuries of their hard work in a single instant.
He would be the ultimate turtle. He would outlast them all.
Wei Chen stood up. His panic was gone, replaced by a cold, calculating calm. He had a plan. A hundred-year plan, just for a start.
The first step was to normalize his existence. He could not act differently than the previous owner of this body. The original Wei Chen was a coward, a scavenger, a man who kept his head down and avoided eye contact with anyone above Qi Refining Stage 5. He must maintain that persona perfectly.
Second, he had to fake the aging process. The ledger stated he would not age. But to the outside world, a man who looked twenty-two for sixty years would be dragged to a dissection table. He would need to learn mortal disguise techniques. He would need to gradually apply wrinkles, grey his hair, and eventually fake his own death and move to a new location every few decades.
Third, he needed to use his first Binding.
He had one charge available. He could use it right now. But on whom?
Wei Chen walked to the wooden door of his shack and pushed it open. The hinges screamed in protest. He stepped out into the Black Ash Market.
The assault on his senses was immediate. The sky above was perpetually overcast, blocked by the towering, smog-producing refinement furnaces of the Azure Cloud Sect's outer disciple peaks in the distance. The market itself was a sprawling, chaotic slum of mismatched tents, dilapidated wooden buildings, and muddy streets running with questionable fluids.
This was the domain of the loose cultivators. The rejects. The ones without the talent to join a sect, but with enough spiritual roots to refuse the life of a mortal.
The street was packed with gaunt, desperate-looking men and women.
"Freshly hunted Iron-Hide Boar meat! Only two spirit stones a jin!" yelled a burly man covered in scars, waving a massive, bloody cleaver.
"Ancient tomb maps! Guaranteed to hold Foundation Establishment opportunities! Three spirit stones!" croaked a hunched woman with half her face burned off, holding up crumbling scrolls that were clearly faked yesterday.
"Low-grade spirit gathering arrays! Slightly used! Will trade for Bigu pills!"
Wei Chen pulled the hood of his coarse robe over his head, hunching his shoulders to make himself look smaller. He shuffled down the muddy street, keeping to the shadows of the overhanging eaves, letting his eyes dart around from beneath his hood.
He needed a target.
His mind calculated the probabilities.
Option One: Bind a young genius. If he somehow managed to get close enough to an inner sect disciple of the Azure Cloud Sect, he could bind them. A genius would have top-tier cultivation methods, massive resources, and incredible martial techniques.
The flaw: A genius is protected. They have life-saving artifacts. They are given longevity pills. A true genius might not die for five hundred years. Wei Chen would be stuck at Qi Refining Stage 4, living in the slums, waiting half a millennium for his first payout. And if the genius successfully ascended to immortality? Wei Chen would never get the payout. Too unpredictable. Too long of a wait.
Option Two: Bind a violent, hot-headed fighter. Someone who lived on the edge. A mercenary cultivator who hunted high-level demonic beasts or took assassination contracts. They had high mortality rates.
The flaw: Their cultivation was usually unstable, built on blood and reckless pill consumption. And they often died without leaving an intact corpse, sometimes getting their souls wiped out, which might affect the harvest. Still, it was a decent backup option.
Option Three: Bind an old, dying master.
This was the golden ticket. An old cultivator who had reached the absolute limit of their talent and lifespan. Someone who had spent eighty years practicing a specific craft—like alchemy, formations, or talismans. They had no future, no potential left. But they had decades of accumulated knowledge, stabilized cultivation, and most importantly, they were guaranteed to die very, very soon.
Wei Chen's eyes scanned the market. He walked past the food stalls, past the weapon merchants, and headed toward the slightly quieter, less crowded section of the Black Ash Market—the crafter's alley.
Here, the air smelled of cinnabar, sulfur, and burnt herbs. The stalls were less aggressive, manned by older cultivators who meticulously drew runes or tended to small, bubbling cauldrons.
Wei Chen stopped near a stall that was barely more than a wooden plank propped up on two barrels.
Sitting behind the plank was an old man. He looked absolutely ancient. His skin was like crumpled parchment, covered in liver spots. He had only a few wisps of white hair left on his head, and his robes, though clean, were patched in a dozen places. He was currently hunched over a piece of yellow talisman paper, his hand trembling slightly as he held a brush tipped with red spiritual ink.
The original Wei Chen's memories supplied the name: Old Man Fang.
Old Man Fang was a fixture in the Black Ash Market. He was a Qi Refining Stage 9 cultivator. Sixty years ago, he had been considered a minor talent. He had attempted to break through to Foundation Establishment without a Foundation Building Pill—a suicide mission for most. He had failed. The backlash shattered his dantian's core, crippling his cultivation permanently and damaging his life force.
For the past sixty years, he had been stuck at Qi Refining Stage 9, slowly withering away, making a meager living selling low-grade warding talismans and fire-starter talismans.
Rumor in the market was that Old Man Fang's internal injuries had finally caught up with him. He had developed a severe spiritual cough, expelling black, necrotic qi every night. The local herbalist had given him, at most, three years to live.
Qi Refining Stage 9, Wei Chen thought, his heart beating a steady, controlled rhythm. Sixty years of talisman crafting experience. A vast foundation of spiritual control. And he will die naturally within three years. No one will suspect foul play. No one will care when a crippled old man passes away in his sleep.
It was perfect. It was incredibly low-risk, and the payoff would instantly elevate Wei Chen to the peak of the Qi Refining realm, skipping decades of bitter meditation. Furthermore, obtaining Old Man Fang's talisman crafting knowledge would give Wei Chen a legitimate, safe way to earn spirit stones without having to venture out to hunt beasts. A talisman crafter could sit in a locked room, completely out of danger, and make a living.
Wei Chen stepped out of the shadows and slowly approached the stall. He made sure to shuffle his feet, keeping his posture submissive.
Old Man Fang didn't look up. He was entirely focused on the intricate strokes of the warding talisman, his trembling hand somehow finding absolute stability the moment the brush touched the paper. It was the muscle memory of a man who had drawn the same rune a hundred thousand times.
Wei Chen waited patiently. He did not interrupt. It was a grave taboo to interrupt a crafter at work; a sudden noise could cause the spiritual energy in the ink to collapse, ruining the materials.
Five minutes later, Old Man Fang completed the final stroke with a sharp flick of his wrist. The yellow paper glowed with a faint, warm light for a fraction of a second before settling into a mundane appearance. The old man let out a long, ragged sigh, dropping the brush and descending into a sudden, violent fit of coughing.
He pulled a gray handkerchief from his sleeve and hacked into it. When he pulled it away, Wei Chen's sharp eyes caught the dark, unnatural stain of corrupted blood.
"Ah... Wei boy," Old Man Fang rasped, his voice sounding like dry leaves grinding together. He wiped his mouth and looked up, his cloudy eyes squinting. "Surprised to see you up and walking. Heard from the butcher that you bought a Blood-Boil Pill from that swindler, Three-Fingered Zhao. Thought for sure you'd be a corpse by morning."
Wei Chen offered a weak, self-deprecating smile, perfectly mimicking the original owner's timid demeanor. "I was lucky, Senior Fang. The pill was mostly dud material. It gave me a terrible stomach ache and twisted my qi a bit, but I managed to sweat it out. I won't be buying from Zhao again."
"Hmph. Youth," the old man grunted, shaking his head. "Always looking for a shortcut. There are no shortcuts in the Dao, boy. Only a long, bloody road over a mountain of corpses. You're better off taking your meager talent and finding a mortal village to lord over. At least you'll live to see forty."
"Senior's words are wise. I am... reconsidering my path," Wei Chen said softly. He looked at the freshly drawn talisman. "Is Senior's health well? Your cough sounds worse than last month."
Old Man Fang's expression darkened slightly, a flash of ancient, buried bitterness crossing his eyes. "My health is none of your concern, little scavenger. Are you buying or just wasting my breath? Warding talismans are two spirit stones each. Fire-starters are one stone for a bundle of three. I won't haggle with you just because you survived your own stupidity."
"I am just looking today, Senior. My pockets are empty from that fake pill," Wei Chen lied effortlessly. He bowed slightly. "I will leave Senior to his work."
As Wei Chen bowed, he closed his eyes and looked inward. He summoned the ancient bronze ledger from the depths of his soul.
The book materialized, opening to the glowing page.
[Target Acquired: Fang Zhi]
[Cultivation: Qi Refining Stage 9 (Damaged)]
[Aptitude: Low-Tier Wood/Fire Dual Roots]
[Lifespan Remaining: Approximately 2 Years, 4 Months]
[Initiate Binding?]
Wei Chen did not hesitate. Yes.
In the ethereal space of his mind, a drop of golden ink materialized above the ledger. It fell onto the parchment, instantly writing out Old Man Fang's name in glowing script.
At the exact same moment, Wei Chen felt a strange, invisible sensation leave his chest. It was like a thread of gossamer spider silk, utterly intangible and completely devoid of spiritual energy. It shot forward, crossing the physical space between them, and sank seamlessly into Old Man Fang's chest.
The old man didn't react. He didn't shiver. He didn't look up. He merely picked up his brush to begin another talisman, completely unaware that his soul, his life's work, and his ultimate destiny had just been irrevocably tethered to the young man bowing before him.
The Heavenly Dao itself remained silent. The Binding was absolute.
[Binding Successful.]
[Host must remain alive until the Bound soul perishes to reap the Harvest.]
[Time until next Binding: 10 Years, 0 Months, 0 Days]
Wei Chen straightened up. The deed was done. The die was cast.
"Take care of your health, Senior Fang," Wei Chen said, his tone perfectly polite, perfectly mundane. "I will bring you some ginger tea tomorrow. It helps soothe the throat."
Old Man Fang waved a hand dismissively, not looking up from his parchment. "Begone, boy. And don't bother with the tea unless you're bringing spirit stones with it."
Wei Chen turned and walked away, blending back into the crowded, chaotic stream of desperate cultivators.
He pulled his hood down slightly, hiding the small, genuine smile that had finally broken through his carefully maintained mask of cowardice.
Two years and four months.
That was nothing. To an immortal, it was less than the blink of an eye. He would go back to his shack. He would eat his stale Bigu pills. He would meditate quietly, never drawing spiritual energy too quickly, never drawing attention. He would bring Old Man Fang tea to ensure the old man lived out his remaining days peacefully and comfortably.
He would be the perfect neighbor. The perfect background character.
The cultivation world was vast, filled with heaven-defying geniuses, arrogant young masters, ancient demonic overlords, and wars that could shatter the heavens.
Let them fight. Let them scheme. Let them die.
Wei Chen, the immortal Qi Refining Stage 4 cultivator, had all the time in the world. And his harvest had just begun.