Chapter 1: The Weight of a Breath
Hunger.
It was not the mild, irritating emptiness of a missed meal or a day of fasting. This was a hollow, scraping agony that felt as though a cluster of ragged iron hooks had been embedded deep within his stomach, violently dragging his insides upward with every shallow breath. It was a cold fire burning in his veins, a desperate void that threatened to consume his very mind.
Lin Yuan gasped, his eyes snapping open to a world of oppressive, suffocating darkness.
He tried to sit up, but his body betrayed him. His limbs felt like they were forged from lead, heavy and unresponsive. His head spun with a dizzying vertigo, and a violent wave of nausea washed over him, though there was absolutely nothing left in his stomach to expel. He collapsed back onto something hard, cold, and uneven—a bed made of compacted earth and dried, brittle straw.
Where am I? The thought was sluggish, pushing through a mind clouded by absolute physical exhaustion. He remembered the blinding glare of headlights, the screech of tires on rain-slicked asphalt, the shattering of glass, and then… nothing. He was a junior architect, twenty-five years old, working himself into an early grave in a modern metropolis. He had been walking home. He had died. He was certain of that fact with a chilling, detached clarity.
Yet, he was breathing. The air filling his lungs was freezing, carrying the unmistakable scent of dry dust, decaying wood, and something far more sinister—the sweet, metallic tang of unburied rot.
Before panic could fully set in, a sudden, agonizing spike of pain pierced his temples. Lin Yuan squeezed his eyes shut as a flood of alien memories violently forced their way into his consciousness, merging with his own soul like boiling water poured over winter ice.
He saw a vast, ancient world. He saw the Great Wu Dynasty, a colossal, sprawling feudal empire ruled not just by emperors and magistrates, but by terrifying individuals who possessed martial prowess that defied logic. He saw men who could shatter boulders with a casual palm strike, warriors whose vital Qi and Blood surged like roaring rivers, capable of leaping over city walls in a single bound. And above them all, whispered only in terrifying myths and hushed legends, were the Immortals—beings who rode the clouds, commanded the elements, and treated the mortal realm as nothing more than an ant farm.
But those legends were far away. The reality of this body was much closer, and infinitely bleaker.
He was in the Black Mountain Village, a miserable, isolated settlement clinging to the edge of the Hundred Thousand Mountains. His name in this life was also Lin Yuan. He was seventeen years old. He was a hunter, or at least, the son of a hunter. His father had died two years ago from a festering wound inflicted by a mountain beast, leaving Lin Yuan alone in a world that offered no charity.
And for the past three years, the Great Wu Dynasty had been cursed.
The skies had dried up. The rivers had receded into cracked, muddy veins. A devastating drought had birthed a famine of apocalyptic proportions. The crops had withered, the wild game had either starved or fled deeper into the perilous heart of the mountains, and humanity had been reduced to its most primal, monstrous instincts.
The memories showed him the horrors of the past few months. He saw neighbors stripping the bark from the few remaining dead trees to boil into a bitter, indigestible sludge. He saw the hollow, sunken eyes of children. He remembered the terrifying rumors of "swapping children to eat" in the neighboring villages.
The original Lin Yuan had locked himself in his dilapidated mud-brick hut, rationing a tiny, hidden bag of dried roots until it ran out. He had grown too weak to draw his father's hunting bow. He had lain down on this very bed of straw, staring at the cracked ceiling, and slowly, quietly, starved to death.
His soul had faded away just moments before the modern Lin Yuan's soul had been pulled across the void of the multiverse to occupy the empty vessel.
Lin Yuan lay still in the freezing dark, tears welling in the corners of his eyes. They were not tears of fear, though he was terrified. They were tears of profound grief. He mourned for his parents on Earth, whom he would never see again. He mourned for the young, desperate boy whose body he now inhabited, a boy who had died entirely alone in the cold. He was not a cold-blooded killer or a stoic machine; he was a modern man suddenly thrust into a hellscape, and the emotional weight of it threatened to crush him completely.
He brought a trembling, skeletal hand up to his face. The skin was paper-thin, stretched tightly over his cheekbones. His hair was dry and brittle, like dead winter grass. He was a walking corpse.
I am alive, he thought, the realization slowly solidifying in his mind. I died once. I cannot die again. Not like this.
The human will to survive is a terrifying, beautiful thing. Pushed past the brink of despair, the grief in Lin Yuan's heart began to harden, cooling into a desperate, razor-sharp resolve. He forced his eyes open, letting them adjust to the dim light filtering through the cracks in the wooden shutters.
It was dawn.
Summoning every ounce of willpower he possessed, Lin Yuan rolled onto his side. He pushed his hands against the earthen floor, his thin arms trembling violently under his own meager weight. It took him three agonizing attempts just to sit up. When he finally stood, the world tilted dangerously, black spots dancing in his vision. He leaned heavily against the rough mud-brick wall, panting as if he had just run a marathon.
He needed food. If he didn't eat something today, he would follow the original owner into the abyss.
He limped across the tiny, one-room hut. In the corner, wrapped carefully in an oiled cloth, was his father's legacy: a longbow crafted from ironwood, reinforced with the sinew of a horned beast. Beside it rested a quiver containing five crude, iron-tipped arrows.
Lin Yuan picked up the bow. It felt impossibly heavy. In his memories, the original owner could draw this bow fully, his youthful muscles corded with the modest strength of a seasoned mountain boy. Now, Lin Yuan tentatively pulled the bowstring. He barely managed to draw it a quarter of the way back before his arms gave out, the string snapping back with a sharp thwack that echoed loudly in the quiet hut.
Damn it, he cursed inwardly, biting his cracked lip. I'm too weak. Even if I find prey, I might not have the strength to kill it.
But he had no choice. He strapped the quiver to his back, using a piece of frayed hemp rope to tie it securely. He found a rusted hunting knife under the straw bed and tucked it into his waistband. He wrapped his body in every piece of tattered clothing he could find, binding a ragged, foul-smelling scarf around his face to protect against the biting winter wind.
Slowly, cautiously, he unbarred the heavy wooden door of his hut.
The cold hit him like a physical blow, stealing the breath from his lungs. The Black Mountain Village was a picture of utter desolation. The sky above was a pale, bruised purple, devoid of clouds but promising no warmth. The dirt paths between the ramshackle mud huts were empty, save for the howling wind that kicked up swirling dust devils.
There were no sounds of life. No dogs barking, no roosters crowing, no children crying. Everything edible had long since been consumed. The trees surrounding the village were stark naked, stripped of every leaf and every inch of bark as high as a man could reach.
As Lin Yuan crept along the edge of the village, keeping to the shadows of the eaves, he saw a wooden cart parked near the village square. Two men wrapped in heavy furs, their faces hidden, were tossing a burlap sack onto the back of it. A pale, lifeless arm flopped out from the sack, bouncing limply against the wood.
Lin Yuan averted his eyes, his heart hammering against his ribs. He suppressed the urge to gag. Stay low, he told himself. Do not draw attention. He knew the hierarchy of this world from his memories. In a feudal society where martial arts reigned supreme, human life was cheaper than dirt, especially during a famine. The village was technically governed by the Village Chief, but true power rested with the Black Tiger Gang—a syndicate of ruthless martial artists from the nearby Qingshui Town. They extorted the villagers, taking whatever grain they could scrounge up as "protection tax." Even now, they would occasionally sweep through the village, taking the young and the desperate to be sold as slaves or cannon fodder.
Lin Yuan slipped out through the broken wooden palisade at the rear of the village, stepping into the desolate expanse of the outer Black Mountain.
The forest was a graveyard of towering, skeletal pines and dead brush. The ground was hard as iron, covered in a thin, powdery layer of frost. Lin Yuan moved with painstaking slowness. His body was weak, but the inherited memories of a hunter guided his steps. He knew how to place his feet to avoid snapping twigs, how to stay downwind, how to read the subtle disturbances in the frost.
Hours passed. The sun climbed higher, casting long, skeletal shadows across the dead forest. Lin Yuan's vision was swimming. His stomach was no longer cramping; it had progressed to a numb, heavy ache that felt like organ failure. He was running on borrowed time, burning the very last reserves of muscle in his emaciated frame.
He had found nothing. No deer, no rabbits, not even a squirrel. The famine had driven everything away.
Despair began to claw at the edges of his mind. He leaned against the rough trunk of a dead pine, sliding down to a crouch, his breath pluming in the freezing air. Was this it? Had he survived transmigration only to die of starvation on his very first day?
No. He gripped the dirt, his knuckles turning white. He thought of the warm, bustling streets of his past life, the smell of street food, the sound of his mother's voice. He would not die in this frozen hell.
Suddenly, his trained ears picked up a sound.
It was faint. A wet, tearing noise, followed by a low, guttural crunch.
Lin Yuan's eyes snapped open, his exhaustion momentarily forgotten, overridden by a massive surge of adrenaline. He slowly rose, his hand instinctively gripping his bow. He crept forward, his breathing shallow, moving from the cover of one dead tree to the next.
Fifty yards away, in a small depression shielded by jagged gray rocks, he saw it.
It was not a deer or a wild boar. It was a wild dog. But it was nothing like the stray dogs he knew on Earth. This beast was the size of a small wolf, its gray fur patchy and matted with dried blood. Its ribs poked through its skin, showing that it was suffering from the famine just as much as he was.
But what made Lin Yuan's blood run cold was what the dog was eating. Half-buried in the frost beneath the dog's paws was a torn scrap of faded blue cloth, and beneath that, something that looked distinctly like a human femur.
This was a scavenger. A beast that had survived the famine by feeding on the corpses of the starved villagers dumped in the outer woods.
The dog suddenly stopped chewing. Its ears twitched, rotating slightly. It hadn't seen him, but the beast's survival instincts were honed to a razor's edge. It lifted its head, a low, rumbling growl vibrating in its throat, a mixture of spit and dark blood dripping from its yellowed fangs.
Fear, cold and paralyzing, gripped Lin Yuan's heart. He was a modern man. He had never killed anything larger than a mosquito in his previous life. And this beast, starved and crazed on human flesh, looked like a demon from hell. If it charged him, in his current weakened state, he would be torn to pieces.
Shoot it, his survival instinct screamed. It's meat. It's life. Shoot it now!
Lin Yuan forced his trembling hands to nock an arrow. He raised the ironwood bow. The dog's head snapped toward his direction, its pale yellow eyes locking onto his. The beast bared its teeth, letting out a terrifying snarl that echoed off the rocks. It didn't flee; it crouched low, its muscles bunching, preparing to leap. It viewed the emaciated human not as a threat, but as fresh prey.
Gods, give me strength, Lin Yuan prayed to whatever deity was listening.
He drew the string. His arms screamed in agony. The muscles in his shoulders felt like they were tearing. The heavy string bit into his fingers. He could only pull it halfway. It wouldn't be enough to pierce the beast's thick skull.
The dog lunged.
It covered the distance with terrifying speed, a gray blur of fur, teeth, and raw desperation.
Lin Yuan didn't aim for the head. Relying entirely on his predecessor's muscle memory, he dropped to one knee, shifting his aim downward, right toward the beast's exposed chest as it leaped.
Thwack!
He released the string. The iron-tipped arrow flew, not with overwhelming force, but with desperate precision.
The arrow struck the dog mid-air, sinking deep into its upper chest, burying itself just below the collarbone. The beast yelped in pain, its trajectory faltering. It crashed heavily into the dirt just three feet away from Lin Yuan, rolling in a tangle of limbs and snapping jaws.
But it wasn't dead.
Driven by madness and pain, the dog scrambled to its feet. The arrow was lodged deep, blood pouring from the wound, but the beast was running on pure adrenaline. It snapped its jaws, lunging blindly at Lin Yuan's legs.
Lin Yuan stumbled backward, his foot catching on an exposed root. He fell hard onto his back, the wind knocked out of him. The dog was on him in an instant, its foul, rotting breath washing over his face. Its jaws snapped inches from his throat, a shower of hot saliva hitting his cheek.
With a primal scream of absolute terror, Lin Yuan let go of the bow, drawing the rusted hunting knife from his waistband in a single, fluid motion. He threw his left arm up, shoving his thickly wrapped forearm into the dog's mouth to block the bite. The beast clamped down, its teeth tearing through the tattered cloth and sinking into Lin Yuan's flesh.
The pain was blinding, white-hot, and absolute.
"Die!" Lin Yuan roared, tears of agony streaming down his face. He drove the rusted hunting knife upward with all the pathetic strength he had left, plunging the blade into the soft underside of the dog's neck.
He pulled the knife out and stabbed again. And again. Warm, thick blood sprayed across his hands, his chest, his face. The dog thrashed violently, its claws tearing at Lin Yuan's clothes, trying to disembowel him, but Lin Yuan held on, pinning the beast's head back and driving the knife in until he hit bone.
Gradually, the thrashing weakened. The terrible pressure on his left arm loosened. The dog let out a final, wet rattle, its yellow eyes dimming as it collapsed dead across Lin Yuan's chest.
For a long minute, there was only the sound of Lin Yuan's ragged, sobbing breaths.
He lay there in the frost, covered in gore, the heavy weight of the dead beast pinning him down. He had done it. He had killed. The visceral horror of the act, the feeling of life leaving a body beneath his hands, made him want to vomit. He squeezed his eyes shut, trembling violently, not from the cold, but from the severe psychological shock of violence.
He lay there, trying to process the trauma, trying to gather the strength to push the carcass off him.
Then, something impossible happened.
It started as a faint tingling sensation at the tips of his bloody fingers, the ones still gripping the hilt of the knife embedded in the dog's throat. Within a second, the tingling exploded into a rush of pure, unadulterated heat.
Lin Yuan gasped, his eyes flying open.
From the cooling corpse of the wild dog, a strange, invisible current of energy surged upward, flowing directly through the knife, through Lin Yuan's hands, and rushing violently into his body. It was not a physical substance, but it felt more real than the blood on his skin.
He didn't hear a mechanical 'ding'. There was no glowing blue screen floating in front of his eyes. There was only an innate, profound realization, an instinctive understanding that blossomed in his soul as clearly as if it had been carved into his bones.
Plunder. Feedback.
The energy rushed through his veins like a torrential river. Instantly, the agonizing pain in his left arm vanished. The wound where the dog had bitten him rapidly stopped bleeding, the torn flesh knitting together at a visible, miraculous pace.
But that was just the beginning. The hollow, scraping agony of his starvation was swept away, replaced by a deep, resonant warmth in his stomach. The absolute fatigue that had plagued his muscles evaporated. He felt his heart beating stronger, pushing fresh, revitalized blood through his previously withered veins.
An invisible ledger in his mind presented its terrifying, miraculous accounting:
Target killed: Feral Scavenger Hound.
Feedback acquired: One-half of target's remaining lifespan (Six months).
Feedback acquired: One-half of target's vital Qi and Blood.
Feedback acquired: Instinctual Skill Fragment - Heightened Olfactory Senses.
Lin Yuan violently shoved the dead dog off his chest and scrambled backward, staring at his hands in absolute shock.
He took a deep breath. The air, which had previously smelled only of dust and cold, exploded into a kaleidoscope of scents. He could smell the sharp tang of the pine sap beneath the frost, the musky odor of a fox that had passed by hours ago, and the rich, copper scent of the blood soaking his clothes.
He clenched his fists. His arms, which had been too weak to draw a bow fully just an hour ago, now felt solid. The emaciated hollowness was gone, replaced by the wiry, dense strength of a wild beast. It wasn't the heaven-shaking power of a martial artist, not yet, but it was a surge of vitality that dragged him back from the very threshold of death.
He had stolen its life. He had absorbed its essence.
Lin Yuan sat on the frozen ground, staring at the dead dog. The psychological terror of the fight faded, replaced by a profound, trembling awe.
He understood what this power meant. In this brutal, merciless world of cultivation, where resources were hoarded by the elites, where martial artists required vast amounts of spirit meat and medicinal herbs just to temper their bodies, he possessed an ability that defied the very laws of heaven.
Whatever he killed, he could harvest. Half of its cultivation. Half of its remaining lifespan. Its skills. Its essence.
He didn't need a system to tell him his stats. He could feel it. He had gained roughly six months of lifespan from the young, feral beast. More importantly, he had absorbed a fraction of its wild vitality—a trace amount of raw, unrefined Qi and Blood. In the Great Wu Dynasty, martial arts began with the Body Tempering realm, which was all about accumulating Qi and Blood. The rich ate ginseng and tiger meat. Lin Yuan only needed to kill.
A hysterical, breathy laugh escaped his lips. The sheer absurdity, the terrifying potential of his golden finger, threatened to overwhelm him.
But then, the caution of a modern man accustomed to reading countless web novels kicked in.
I must stay low-key, he told himself, his expression hardening. Gou. I must be steadier than an old dog.
If anyone in this world, especially a powerful martial artist or an immortal cultivator, discovered that a starving village boy could steal lifespan and cultivation by killing, they would not revere him. They would capture him, dissect him, refine his soul, and turn him into a human pill. He was weak. In the grand scheme of the Great Wu Dynasty, he was an ant that had just grown a slightly sharper mandible.
He had to survive. He had to hide this. He could not suddenly emerge as a peerless genius. He had to act like a desperate, starving hunter.
Lin Yuan forced his erratic heartbeat to calm. He stood up, his movements fluid and balanced in a way they hadn't been before. He looked down at the dog. To anyone else, it was a feral monster. To him, it was a treasure trove.
He didn't have much time. The smell of blood would attract other predators, or worse, desperate humans.
Drawing his hunting knife, he set to work. Despite his modern sensibilities screaming in disgust, his predecessor's muscle memory guided his hands. He worked quickly, efficiently skinning the beast. He couldn't take the whole carcass; it was too heavy, and carrying a whole animal back to the village would make him a target for every starving eye and greedy gang member.
He cut away the best strips of meat from the hind legs and the back, wrapping them tightly in the dog's own ragged hide. It yielded perhaps ten pounds of meat. It wasn't much, but it was enough to keep him alive for a week if he rationed it. He dug a shallow hole in the frozen earth and buried the rest of the carcass, piling rocks and dead brush over it to hide the scent.
Using handfuls of dry snow, he scrubbed the worst of the blood from his face and hands. He rolled in the dirt, ensuring his clothes looked just as ragged and pathetic as before. He slumped his shoulders, deliberately adopting the shuffling, exhausted gait of a starving man. He practiced coughing, a dry, rattling sound.
Only when he was satisfied with his disguise did he hoist the heavy, blood-soaked bundle onto his back, hiding it beneath a layer of dead firewood he had gathered.
The walk back to the village felt different. The crippling fatigue was gone, replaced by a quiet, thrumming energy beneath his skin. His newly heightened sense of smell kept him acutely aware of his surroundings, allowing him to avoid a patch of woods where he smelled the sour, unwashed scent of human scavengers.
When he finally saw the dilapidated wooden gates of Black Mountain Village, the sun was beginning to set, casting the settlement in bloody, orange light.
As he approached the entrance, his heart sank.
Leaning against the gatepost were two men wearing thick, grey cotton coats embroidered with a black tiger motif on the chest. They had sabers strapped to their waists and radiated an aura of robust health that stood in stark, sickening contrast to the starving villagers. These were members of the Black Tiger Gang from Qingshui Town.
Lin Yuan recognized them from his memories. The taller one, a man with a scarred cheek named Zhao San, was a notorious thug. They were in the early stages of Body Tempering—Skin Refining. To an ordinary mortal, their skin was tough as uncured leather, and their punches could break ribs with ease.
Zhao San was currently chewing on a piece of dried meat, spitting a piece of gristle onto the dirt. He lazily turned his gaze as Lin Yuan approached.
"Well, well. Look what the wind blew in," Zhao San sneered, stepping into the path. He looked Lin Yuan up and down, his eyes lingering on the bundle of firewood on his back. "Little Lin Yuan. I thought you died in your hut three days ago. Turns out you were out playing in the dirt."
Lin Yuan immediately hunched over, executing a trembling, fearful bow. He let out a harsh, agonizing cough, his chest rattling.
"Lord Zhao," Lin Yuan wheezed, keeping his eyes fixed on the dirt, perfectly playing the role of a broken, dying boy. "I... I went to find some firewood. It is so cold..."
"Firewood?" The second gang member, a stout man, chuckled cruelly. He stepped forward and roughly kicked Lin Yuan's leg. Lin Yuan, despite his new strength, intentionally let his leg collapse, falling hard into the dirt and letting out a pathetic yelp.
"Don't play games, boy," Zhao San said, his hand resting on the pommel of his saber. "Did you find anything edible in the mountains? Some roots? A dead rat? You know the rules. The Black Tiger Gang takes half. Protection fee. If you're hiding food, I'll chop your hands off and boil them for soup."
Lin Yuan's heart hammered, but his face remained a mask of terrified despair. He knew that if they searched his bundle and found ten pounds of meat, they wouldn't just take half. They would take it all, and likely beat him half to death for the sheer entertainment of it.
"Lords... I swear," Lin Yuan cried out, letting real tears of fear well in his eyes—drawing upon his trauma from the transmigration to fuel his acting. "There is nothing. The mountain is dead. I only found wood. Please, I am starving... look at me!"
He pulled back his sleeve, revealing his skeletal forearm. Though the dog bite had healed, the arm itself was still horrifyingly thin, the skin stretched tight over the bones.
Zhao San looked at the pathetic display and spat in disgust. "Useless trash. The whole village is useless. Not even a copper coin to squeeze out of you ghosts." He kicked a clod of frozen dirt into Lin Yuan's face. "Get out of my sight before I decide to test my blade on your scrawny neck."
"Thank you, Lord Zhao! Thank you!" Lin Yuan scrambled to his feet, bowing repeatedly as he shuffled past them through the gates.
He didn't dare walk fast. He maintained his limp, coughing and shivering, feeling their mocking gazes on his back until he turned a corner into a narrow alleyway.
Once he was out of sight, Lin Yuan's posture changed instantly. The trembling stopped. His eyes, previously wide with feigned terror, narrowed into cold, calculating slits.
Black Tiger Gang, he etched the name into his mind. Zhao San. Today, he had to bow. He had to grovel in the dirt and accept their spit. Because he was weak. Because in a high martial arts world, dignity without power was a shortcut to the grave. But he possessed a power that defied the heavens. Every time he killed, he would grow stronger. He would steal the lifespan of his enemies. He would absorb their cultivation.
He would hide in the shadows, cautious and low-key, accumulating strength drop by drop, breath by breath. He would not be arrogant. He would not draw attention. He would be the unseen hunter in the dark.
Lin Yuan slipped back into his freezing hut, barring the heavy wooden door behind him. He stuffed old rags into the cracks around the windows to ensure no light or smell could escape.
In the pitch blackness of his home, he unrolled the bloody hide. He used his flint and steel to start a small, smokeless fire in the hearth, using the dry wood he had gathered.
As he placed the first strip of meat over the flame, listening to the sizzle of fat and smelling the rich, intoxicating aroma of roasting flesh, a single tear rolled down Lin Yuan's cheek. He wiped it away with the back of a soot-stained hand.
He had survived his first day in the Great Wu Dynasty.
He took a bite of the half-cooked, unseasoned meat. It was tough, gamey, and tasted vaguely of blood. To Lin Yuan, it was the greatest meal he had ever tasted. As he chewed, he felt the phantom warmth of the absorbed lifespan settling deep into his bones, a silent promise of the long, bloody, and glorious road that lay ahead.
The mortal world was suffering. The martial sects ruled with iron fists. The Immortals watched from above with cold indifference.
Lin Yuan swallowed the meat, his eyes reflecting the dancing flames.
Let them watch, he thought, taking another bite. I have all the time in the world.