Shen Tian adjusted his posture on the semi-dry mud. He crossed his legs, straightened his back, and let his hands fall onto his knees.
He closed his eyes.
The air of Dust Border City was laden with moisture, ash, and the persistent stench of the sewers.
In his previous life, absorbing this impure Qi had given him bouts of blood-streaked coughing and fevers that lasted for days.
Now, under the influence of the Mud Lotus Breathing Art deduced to one hundred percent, the process flowed with mechanical precision.
He inhaled.
He felt the ambient Qi as a thermal current, a thread of raw energy that entered through his nose and descended into his lungs.
The technique filtered out impurities automatically.
What reached his bloodstream was a fine, dense, revitalizing vapor.
The problem lay in the vessel.
His Fourth-Grade Spiritual Root acted like a rusted funnel. The pure Qi accumulated at the entrance of his first principal meridian, where the narrow channel slowed the flow to a crawl.
The pressure rose quickly. A stabbing burn spread from the center of his chest to the tip of his left fingers.
The teenager’s body tensed against the internal burn, curling inward by instinct. The mind of the one-hundred-and-thirty-five-year-old elder commanded it to relax.
Shen Tian eased his shoulders millimeter by millimeter. He guided the thread of energy with glacial patience.
When the pain throbbed at his temples, threatening to shatter his concentration, he exhaled an imperceptible thread of hot air, easing the pressure just before the breaking point, then pushed again with firmness.
It was a work of erosion. Drops of cold sweat slid down his forehead, tracing clean furrows over his dirt-stained cheeks.
A novice cultivator would have forced the passage, tearing the walls of the meridian, driven by ambition. Shen Tian knew the price of haste; the phantom scars in his memories pulsed like a warning. He held the rhythm steady. Push. Relax. Push. Relax.
Three hours later, the morning sun began to filter over the rooftops of the alley, dispelling the densest shadows.
Inside Shen Tian’s chest, a dull crack echoed, similar to that of a dry branch breaking under the weight of snow.
The dam gave way.
The thread of Qi crossed the final obstruction and flowed like a stream along his arm, completing the first circulation cycle.
A wave of comforting warmth swept away the numbness in his limbs.
His muscles absorbed the energy, gaining a subtle density, a firmness his malnourished bones absorbed with desperate hunger.
He opened his eyes. His pupils flashed with a faint whitish gleam before returning to normal.
He had opened the first meridian.
The crystalline blue panel flickered immediately in the center of his vision.
[Mission Completed: The First Step of the Divergence.]
[Objective achieved in 3 hours and 14 minutes. Performance evaluation: Optimal.]
[Reward granted: 50 Suppression Points.]
[Current balance: 150 Suppression Points.]
[Function unlocked: Environmental Perception (Level 1 Radar Mode) successfully integrated.]
Shen Tian read the notifications. He let out a breath of turbid air and stood up. The joints of his knees creaked, but the chronic lethargy of malnutrition had completely disappeared.
"System. Activate Radar Mode."
His sight flickered. A translucent grid overlaid the physical environment. The colors of the alley dimmed, sinking into a palette of grays and cold blues.
A hundred meters away, beyond the stone walls, small sparks of opaque light pulsed weakly, similar to sickly fireflies.
They were the life-energy signatures of the mortals in the morning market beginning their day.
The system stripped the world bare, translating biological and spiritual signatures into pure energy data.
He turned his head, scanning the piles of garbage, the rotting beams, and the puddles of stagnant water around him. The environment appeared in an inert gray, worthless and forgotten.
A second later, a subtle buzzing vibrated in his right cornea.
A new energy signature had just entered the radar’s range, about fifty meters away.
This signature differed drastically from the mortal sparks. A pulsing core of intense golden color cut through the gray mist of his vision, shining with violent clarity.
Beside the light, a text label floated in the air:
[Anomaly detected. Probability of Fortuitous Encounter: High.]
Shen Tian narrowed his eyes. The golden pulse moved erratically, approaching the entrance of Broken Dog Alley. The speed suggested panic. The abrupt stops denoted physical exhaustion or serious wounds.
His survival instinct, sharpened by decades of being the weakest link in the cultivators’ food chain, took control immediately.
He stepped away from the center of the alley in three silent steps. He crouched behind a pile of empty, rotting wine barrels, merging with the shadow cast by a wooden overhang. He slowed his breathing until it was reduced to a shallow thread, hiding his own weak, newly cultivated Qi signature.
The footsteps became audible in the physical world.
Worn boots splashed frantically in the mud. Hoarse breathing tore through the morning silence.
A figure rounded the corner of the alley.
The radar overlaid the data in real time: the golden aura enveloped an object that the newcomer was desperately clutching against his chest.
Shen Tian watched from the darkness. It was a slim teenager, dressed in gray robes torn at the shoulders; the characteristic uniform of the Zhao Family’s outer servants.
His lip was split, his face smeared with soot, and an expression of absolute terror etched into his eyes.
Zhao Ming.
Shen Tian recognized the face instantly.
In his past life, he had heard of that same beaten slave: a rumor that ran through the city’s markets and taverns.
Zhao Ming had discovered a relic in the sewers, a treasure that catapulted him directly into the inner sect in less than three years, leaving a trail of envious corpses in his wake.
Shen Tian knew his name from rumor and tavern gossip, yet the story remained etched into his memory as yet another proof that heaven favored only a few.
Zhao Ming looked back over his shoulder, terrified. His foot caught on a loose stone buried under the mud.
The impact against the ground was brutal. The servant’s knees slammed against the uneven pavement, and a dull groan escaped his throat.
The fall made him drop the object he had been guarding so jealously.
A small black leather sack, stained with fresh blood, rolled across the damp surface of the alley.
It spun on itself, tracing a red line in the stagnant water, and stopped a little over a meter from Shen Tian’s hiding place, clearly visible in the gray light.
Zhao Ming looked up, panting. His bulging eyes met the motionless silhouette of Shen Tian, half-buried in the shadows. For an instant, the terror on his face froze, replaced by absolute confusion.
Shen Tian held his position. His gaze, cold as the edge of an old knife, settled first on the sack and then on the fallen boy.