The small piece of green jade sat on the floor right next to Chu Ning’er’s trembling hands. It didn’t look like much, but a soft, steady heat came off it, cutting through the damp chill near the fireplace.
Chu Ning’er stopped clicking her teeth. Her blue-tinted fingers twitched toward the stone, but she didn’t grab it. Instead, she looked up at me, her wide eyes full of deep mistrust.
"What... what is this?" her voice shook, but it wasn’t just from the cold anymore. It was sharp with fear. "Why are you giving this to me? What do you want from us?"
Behind her, Mo Ran let out a cold, biting laugh from her spot by the door. Her paralyzed legs were still stretched out straight, stiff as stone beneath her torn red skirt. She couldn’t move her hips, but her upper body leaned forward, her fingers clawing into the dirt floor.
"Don’t touch it, Ning’er!" Mo Ran hissed, her eyes locking onto me like a cornered beast. "You think a low-life trash disciple suddenly has a magical warm treasure out of nowhere? He’s trying to buy us. He wants us to let our guard down so he can do whatever he wants to us while we’re broken. Men like him are all the same. They see a crippled woman and think they can buy her body for the price of a hot rock."
Ye Xinyang, who was still holding the broken window splinter, stepped between me and the fireplace. Her breath was shallow. "She’s right. Lu Chen, just tell us what your price is. If you want to use us to get favors from the inner sect elders, just say it. Stop playing these pathetic mind games."
Gu Qinghan didn’t speak, but her head turned slightly, the blood-stained white cloth over her eyes moving as she tried to track my movements by the sound of my breath.
I looked at the four of them. They were completely bristling with thorns, ready to bite and tear at any hand that reached out to them. But I could see the sweat on their foreheads. I could see the way Mo Ran’s knuckles were bleeding from dragging herself across the floorboards.
They weren’t evil; they were just terrified because the world had already crushed them once.
I didn’t argue. I didn’t try to explain the system, and I didn’t try to defend my character. Words were cheap in a place like this.
My eyes fell back on Mo Ran. Her legs were completely dead , propped awkwardly against the rough wood of the door. The sight made something click in my head. In my past life, before I woke up in this garbage body, I wasn’t a fighter or a grand cultivator. I was a structural draftsman and carpenter. I spent ten years designing and building things with my hands—furniture, joints, frames. I knew wood, I knew balance, and I knew exactly how to build something that could give a paralyzed person their mobility back.
A clear plan started to form in my mind.
"Keep the stone or don’t. I don’t care," I said, my voice completely flat as I stood up and backed away from them. "But if you leave it there, you’ll freeze, and cleaning up a corpse is too much work for me."
I walked toward the back window, away from the door where Mo Ran was slumped.
"The bed is yours," I told them, pointing to the single straw mattress in the corner. "All four of you fit on it if you crowd together. Sleep. I’m going outside."
"You’re leaving?" Ye Xinyang raised her wooden spike, suspicious. "Why? What are you planning out there?"
"I’m planning to get some sleep without four broken girls screaming at me," I said bluntly.
I didn’t wait for her reply. I grabbed a tattered, thin grey sheet from a wooden stool, opened the small side window, and climbed out into the dirt yard, closing the shutter behind me. The night air hit me like a slap, but I just wrapped the thin cloth around my shoulders, found a dry patch of grass under the low roof overhang, and leaned against the outer wall.
Inside the shack, through the thin, cracked wooden planks, their voices carried clearly in the quiet night. They thought I was gone, so they finally spoke to each other.
"Is he really gone?" Ye Xinyang’s voice dropped to a low whisper. I heard the sharp click of her dropping the wooden splinter onto the floor. "He... he actually just left?"
"I can’t hear his footsteps anymore," Gu Qinghan murmured softly. Her voice sounded exhausted now that the immediate threat was gone. "He is just sitting against the outside wall. His heart rate is slow. He is actually trying to sleep out there in the dirt."
"It makes no sense," Mo Ran growled, though her voice sounded weaker now, the anger draining out of her. "Why give up the only warm room? Why give us the medicine and the jade? A trash disciple like him should be taking advantage of the elders’ joke. He should be gloating."
"Sister Mo... look at the jade," Chu Ning’er whispered. I heard the soft rustle of straw as she finally crept closer to the stone. "It... it doesn’t have any array lines on it. It’s just pure, natural warmth. My chest doesn’t hurt as much when I sit near it. The ice rot isn’t spreading into my body right now."
"Don’t trust him yet," Ye Xinyang said, her voice heavy with a deep, aching sadness. "People don’t do things for free. Not in this sect. Not anywhere. We keep watch in turns. I’ll take the first watch. You three get on the mattress. Mo Ran... let me help you lift your legs."
"I don’t need your pity, Xinyang," Mo Ran snapped, but I heard the drag of her useless legs against the floorboards as she let the other girl help her onto the straw.
Listening to them, I closed my eyes. They were broken, but they were still looking out for each other. That was enough for now.
When the sky turned a pale, bruised grey, I stood up. My limbs were stiff from sleeping on the dirt, but the system interface in my mind was completely quiet, waiting.
I didn’t go back inside the shack. Instead, I walked down to the woodpile near the outer disciple tool shed. The sect didn’t give me much, but as a servant worker, I had an old, notched iron axe.
I spent the next three hours working. I didn’t think about cultivation or the inner sect elders who hated me. I just focused on the wood. I chopped down three thick, sturdy pine logs from the edge of the forest and dragged them back to the yard.
My old life came back to me naturally. I didn’t have modern saws or measuring tapes, but my eyes knew the metrics. I used the blunt back of the axe to split the logs into clean, straight planks. I used a small hand knife to carve out smooth mortise and tenon joints—interlocking wooden tabs that didn’t need metal nails to stay together.
I was building a wheelchair. A solid, low-riding chair with two large, hand-smoothed wooden wheels on the sides and small rollers at the back. It needed to be sturdy enough to handle the rocky mountain dirt, but light enough that Mo Ran could push the wheels with her own hands. My fingers got covered in sticky pine sap and small splinters, but the repetitive work kept my mind calm.
By the time the sun was fully up, the frame was done. I just needed to smooth down the seat planks so they wouldn’t scratch her.
But before that, my stomach let out a loud roar. I hadn’t eaten since yesterday.
I walked over to the small clay stove outside the shack. In the storage box, there was nothing but a handful of coarse, grey millet grains and three withered wild green onions I had picked from the mountain path days ago. It was poverty food.
I started a small fire under the clay pot, washed the grains, and set them to boil into a simple conch porridge. While it simmered, I used a flat stone to crush the wild onions, releasing their sharp, sweet juices, and stirred them in with a pinch of coarse grey salt. In my past life, I lived alone for years; I knew how to make basic ingredients taste good just by managing the heat and the timing. The steam rose up, smelling rich, savory, and thick.
I scooped the hot porridge into five small, chipped wooden bowls I had washed in the stream.
Carrying four of the bowls on a flat piece of wood, I pushed the shack door open with my foot.
The room was instantly silent. All four girls were awake, huddled together on the mattress. When the door opened, Ye Xinyang’s hand immediately reached for her wooden spike again. Gu Qinghan sat up straight, her blindfolded face turning toward the smell.
I walked over, knelt by the small wooden stool in the center of the room, and set the four bowls down.
"Breakfast," I said simply. "It’s just millet and wild onion. Eat it while it’s hot."
None of them moved. They stared at the steaming bowls, then at me. Their faces were a mix of shock and intense hesitation.
"You... you cooked for us?" Chu Ning’er asked, her voice small. She swallowed, her stomach clearly making a quiet sound that she tried to hide.
"There’s no poison in it," I said, picking up one bowl and taking a large gulp of the hot porridge right in front of them to show them it was safe. "I’m working outside. Wash the bowls when you’re done."
I turned around and walked back out to my woodpile, leaving the door slightly open.
Inside, the silence lasted for another minute. Then, I heard the slow sound of feet shifting.
"It smells... really good," Chu Ning’er muttered.
"Ning’er, wait—" Ye Xinyang tried to stop her, but I heard the soft click of a wooden spoon against a bowl.
Chu Ning’er took her first bite. There was a sudden, sharp gasp. The girl stopped moving entirely.
"Sister Chu? What’s wrong? Is it bad?" Mo Ran asked quickly, her voice tense.
"No..." Chu Ning’er’s voice sounded thick, almost like she was about to cry. "It’s... it’s hot. The grains are completely soft, not crunchy like the ones the sect serves. And the wild onion makes it taste so sweet..."
Suddenly, the room became busy. I heard the shuffle of the other girls moving toward the stool. Even Mo Ran didn’t speak anymore. The only sound coming from the shack was the rapid, eager scraping of wooden spoons against the bottom of the chipped bowls. They were eating like starved wolves, completely shocked that a trash servant’s cooking could taste like a real, comforting meal.
Outside, I sat on a log, eating my own portion with a small smile.
[ding! investment verified.]
[you provided: handmade warm breakfast to four high-potential wifes.]
[triggering 10,000x multiplier...]
[reward received: spiritual grain essence x4 packages & carpenter’s divine iron chisel x1.]
[note: the essence can be mixed into their food to slowly strengthen their weak bodies from the inside out, without triggering their broken meridians.]
I looked down at my lap, where a gleaming iron chisel and four small paper packets had suddenly appeared.
Things were still bad. We were still trapped in a garbage shack, surrounded by enemies. But as I looked at the wooden wheels of the chair I was building, I knew one thing for sure.We weren’t going to stay broken for long.