Staring at the three semi-transparent option boxes floating before him, Gu Chengming felt not the slightest flicker of pleasant surprise — only a creeping sense of absurdity.
The applicable range of [Piercing Insight] was, frankly, a little too broad.
Facing a cultivation method was one thing. But facing Jiang Lu? With those three options hanging in the air between them, the whole situation felt faintly ridiculous no matter how he looked at it.
He steadied himself and examined the three choices carefully.
Option one: decline the goodwill, maintain distance.
Option two: accept the pill. That would almost certainly be the key node for deepening their bond and unlocking follow-up events. In fiction, at least. In reality, it meant incurring an enormous debt of gratitude — one that would inevitably drag him into more entanglements down the line.
As for option three — it could be summed up in three words.
— Cash it out.
Not too far off from his own earlier analysis. All three were responses to the same event, just from different angles.
But the options didn't seem to measure only the positivity of his relationship with whoever triggered them — they also seemed to measure what was "positive" for himself.
Option three, for instance, would clearly do nothing to improve his standing with Jiang Lu. If anything, it would leave the junior brother with a sour impression.
Option two was obviously the route to a deeper relationship — the one that would set future events in motion.
All right. Enough analysis.
Gu Chengming chose option one without hesitation.
He gestured toward the collection of bottles and vials Elder Ren had left on the table and said in an easy tone, "My injuries aren't that serious — and as you can see, I'm not exactly unprepared. Elder Ren sent over all these healing medicines, and I haven't even finished them yet. Those merits of yours weren't easy to earn. Keep them for your own cultivation. Try to place well in the evaluation too."
Jiang Lu followed Gu Chengming's pointing finger. The moment his eyes landed on the engravings on those pill bottles, he drew in a sharp breath.
Those were inner-supply medicines from the Returning Spring Hall. Ordinary disciples couldn't obtain them even if they had the merits to trade.
"Since these are Elder Ren's gift, then I won't be redundant about it," Jiang Lu said.
He was a bit straightforward, but he wasn't ignorant of social grace. Seeing that Gu Chengming genuinely wasn't lacking in medicines and was clearly resolved about it, he stopped pressing.
He rose, gave Gu Chengming a solemn bow, and said, "In that case, I won't disturb Senior Brother's rest any longer. I'll come visit again once Senior Brother has recovered."
"Good. Take care."
With Jiang Lu seen off, the small courtyard settled back into silence.
Gu Chengming watched the door close, just about to let out a sigh of relief — when a wave of dizziness surged up without warning.
He pressed a hand instinctively to his temple, brow furrowing.
— Was this the side effect of using [Piercing Insight]?
Gu Chengming slumped back onto the bed and sat with his eyes closed for quite some time before the vertigo began to fade.
He took stock of the newly acquired passive skill once more.
After that hands-on test run and all the analysis it had prompted, he finally understood how the thing actually worked.
[Piercing Insight] might be called a passive in name, but in practice it was more like a high-drain program running constantly in the background. Every moment, it was reading the microexpressions, vocal inflections, and subtext of everyone nearby, parsing out the optimal response — and it didn't wait for him to consciously activate it. The instant any "interactable target" entered its detection range, it switched on automatically and started burning through his spiritual focus, whether he wanted it to or not.
After a long investigation, Gu Chengming couldn't find any way to turn the state off.
Fantastic. Now he genuinely had to worry about accidentally romancing someone every time he opened his mouth.
The Qingxin Formula, for its part, found the whole situation thoroughly delightful.
[The Qingxin Formula is trying not to laugh at the sorry state you're in.]
[Piercing Insight operates on the level of the spirit-soul. At your current First Realm cultivation, your spirit-soul hasn't yet solidified — of course it feels like a strain.]
[It pivots: that said, this isn't entirely a bad thing. This kind of mental overextension is, in its own way, a form of cultivation.]
[Once you grow accustomed to running your spirit-soul at this intensity, you'll naturally be able to control it at will.]
Hearing this, the gloom in Gu Chengming's chest lifted somewhat. He made a mental note to minimize contact with people for the next couple of days.
Since he'd already decided not to go out, the natural course of action was to rest and recover at home.
Elder Ren's advice had been sound — attempting to cultivate in his current state was genuinely a stretch. Something like the Hundred Bones Resonance was completely out of the question for now.
The Hundred Bones Resonance, for its part, expressed its understanding.
Body cultivation was off the table, and even cycling his spiritual energy required extreme care.
With nothing to do and boredom setting in, Gu Chengming's gaze drifted to the wooden practice sword resting at the head of the bed.
It was the standard-issue wooden sword he'd received upon entering the sect — plain and unremarkable, its blade marked here and there with small scratches.
"Since I can't use spiritual energy, and I can't move around much..."
An idea stirred in his mind. He reached out and wrapped his hand around the hilt.
"Just running through the most basic sword forms shouldn't cause any problems, right?"
The Huiyuan Sword Art, as a beginner's sword technique, placed no emphasis on bursts of spiritual energy. It was always more about honing the forms themselves and developing a feel for "intent." Back when his constitution was a measly two points, he'd managed to enter through this very sword art. Now, it would be even less of an issue.
Gu Chengming propped himself up with some effort — not bothering to get out of bed — and sat cross-legged on the mattress, wooden sword in hand, slowly settling into the opening stance.
A sensation unlike anything he had felt before flowed through the hilt and flooded his entire body in an instant.
In the past when he practiced, the sword was the sword, and he was himself. No matter how fluent his technique became, there was always that dull resistance — the friction of controlling a dead object.
But now...
The moment his fingers made contact with the hilt, the wooden sword seemed to come alive, becoming an extension of his own body.
No deliberate angle adjustments. No conscious thought about where to direct his strength.
Where the mind went, the blade followed.
It felt as if... this sword was breathing. As if it was answering every pulse of his heartbeat.
[Huiyuan Sword Art affinity bonus: Bound in Life and Death]
Was this the boost from the Huiyuan Sword Art's status change?
The last time he'd felt a qualitative shift like this was when the Huiyuan Sword Art moved from "Stranger" to "Friendly."
But back then he himself had been so weak that even a several-fold improvement in the sword art only amounted to something relative to his own feeble baseline.
Now the scale was entirely different, and the resulting improvement was frankly terrifying in how obvious it was.
After all, going from one to three was an increase of only two points. Going from one hundred to three hundred was an increase of two hundred.
Gu Chengming sank deeper into that extraordinary feeling, unable to pull himself back out.
He swung again.
The wooden sword carved a subtle, difficult arc through the air. There was no spiritual energy behind it at all — and yet a faint, thin tearing sound drifted through the room.
He even had the illusion that, right now, armed with nothing but these few basic sword forms, he could hold his own in a fight against a Second Realm cultivator.
The sudden rush of power went slightly to his head. On instinct, he reached for something more complex — a flowing chain of linked forms.
He dropped his wrist, drove the force through the blade, and tried to release that sword intent in a burst.
But the very instant he exerted himself —
A soft sound rang out. Not from the wooden sword — from his lower abdomen.
Immediately after, a searing, tearing pain erupted from his dantian and ripped through his entire body.
Gu Chengming let out a muffled grunt. The wooden sword tumbled from his hand with a loud clatter.
Damn it... got too carried away...
It looked like Elder Ren had been completely right. He really did need to just rest.
The Huiyuan Sword Art reacted immediately, overcome with distress.
[The Huiyuan Sword Art says stop practicing — and if you really want to keep at it, leave it to the sword art.]
[It can't help you repair your body, but helping you practice the sword? That's very much within its abilities!]
"?"
A giant question mark appeared over Gu Chengming's head.
What did "practice by itself" even mean?
In the end he didn't ask, because the text that appeared before him answered the question on its own.
[Huiyuan Sword Art: Auto-cultivating on your behalf...]
[Current efficiency: 50% (reduced due to injury)]
Gu Chengming felt the cultivation cycle spinning on its own inside him, and his mind produced exactly three words:
Holy crap. A cheat.
So this was what a "Bound in Life and Death" bond looked like.
If the sword cultivators out there ever found out he could lie in bed sleeping and still rack up sword practice hours, they'd probably combust on the spot from sheer envy.
Gu Chengming let himself relax completely.
His body was done for the day, but his brain still worked.
Now that the sword practice issue had resolved itself, it was time to deal with the other outstanding "debt."
He'd promised the Qingxin Formula a DLC for the story serial — and he still owed Elder Yu payment for that intelligence report, which he'd agreed to cover the same way.
Gu Chengming began plotting out the DLC for part three of the story, a section designed mainly to fill in the gaps left open by the main storyline.
In under two hours, a sprawling piece of DLC content running several thousand words was complete.
He looked it over — a script that distilled all the best conventions of web novel plotting — and gave a satisfied nod.
[The Qingxin Formula says this installment is much better than the last one.]
[Still pretty slipshod, though.]
[Qingxin Formula affinity +2]
Ha. Trash-talking it while the affection points tick up. Readers really are masochists, every last one of them.
He set his inner commentary aside, tidied up the finished draft, and was just about to rest a little before sending it over to Elder Yu — when he glanced out the window and found the sky had gone completely dark. Then he looked at himself, entirely unable to move.
"Looks like I'll have to ask Junior Brother Jiang to make the trip tomorrow."
He was still mulling it over when a faint sound came from outside the door.
Not a knock. More like something being set down lightly on the ground.
Gu Chengming's attention sharpened at once. He instinctively moved to reach for the sword — and remembered it was still in the corner of the bed.
"Who's there?" he called, voice low and steady.
No answer from outside.
After a moment, a sliver of pale moonlight slid in through the gap beneath the door — and along with it, a sheet of paper, folded with neat precision, floated in on a gentle current of spiritual energy and glided silently across the floor toward him.
Gu Chengming blinked. He reached out with the last trace of his spiritual focus and drew the letter into his hand.
He unfolded it. Inside, a single line of slender, elegant script:
"I heard your injuries are severe. The healing medicines are at the door. Remember — don't push yourself like that again."
No signature.
But among everyone he knew, there was only one person it could have come from — Elder Yu Wenqiu.
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