Qin Yuan remained kneeling for three breaths.
Then five.
Then ten.
Only after that did he sit down fully.
His sword lay across his knees.
Blood dripped from his sleeve.
His ribs hurt.
His legs trembled.
His dantian felt squeezed and bruised from the Dreadmyr Beast's roar.
Qin Yuan looked toward the forest where people were still dying.
He sighed.
"So this is the world."
No anger appeared on his face.
No grief forced itself out.
But something inside him became colder and harder.
On Earth, being average meant being ignored.
Here, being average meant being eaten.
Qin Yuan slowly closed his fingers around the sword hilt.
"I need to grow stronger."
He did not know what became of Luo Sheng and Lian Xiang.
He could only hope those two managed to survive.
In that moment, Qin Yuan looked back on his escape from that beast.
He had not noticed it while running, but now the question came to him.
Was it really luck that he escaped?
That beast had exuded a pressure similar to the third-layer Spirit Opening beast Zhou Kang had killed, if not slightly weaker. And yet, when Qin Yuan used all of his talents at the same time, it could not reach him.
Was the power of talents really that amazing?
Before he could think more about it, shouts sounded only a few meters away.
"Beasts are attacking?"
"What the hell is going on?"
Qin Yuan looked over and saw city officials stationed at this safe zone quickly running toward him.
Their uniforms were bright with formation markings. Their expressions were no longer relaxed.
One of them saw the blood on Qin Yuan's sleeve, then the trembling barrier behind him.
His face changed.
"Survivor! Medical team, move!"
Another official looked toward the forest as another distant roar rolled through the mist.
"Contact the bureau! Now!"
Qin Yuan remained seated, his fingers still closed around his sword.
The safe zone lights flickered above him.
Beyond the barrier, the forest continued screaming.
…
By the time more officials arrived, less than half the mission batch had reached safe zones.
The official explanation came quickly.
Unnatural beast displacement.
Possible border leak.
Emergency investigation underway.
Mission suspended.
Compensation pending.
None of those words brought back the dead.
Qin Yuan sat inside a white medical transport as a healing assistant pressed a glowing patch over his ribs. The assistant was a tired woman in a green uniform, likely from a low-level medical company contracted by the mission bureau.
"You're lucky," she said. "Two cracked ribs. Torn forearm. Qi disruption. Minor blood loss. Nothing permanent."
Qin Yuan looked at the forest through the transport window.
"Luck is not reliable."
The assistant paused, then gave him a strange glance.
"No," she said after a moment. "It isn't."
After basic treatment, the survivors were taken to a mission bureau outpost.
The building looked like a police station mixed with a cultivation hall. White walls. Blue formation lights. Spirit-tech monitors. Emergency maps floating in the air. Names of the dead and missing updated line by line on a public screen.
Qin Yuan turned in his beast cores.
The clerk counted them twice.
"Nine confirmed Low Common beast cores. Two damaged partial cores. One Mossjaw poison gland. Three Needleback spine clusters." The clerk looked up. "You extracted these yourself?"
"Yes."
"You're Qin Yuan? First layer Spirit Opening?"
"Yes."
The clerk looked up again.
There was doubt in his eyes.
Qin Yuan did not explain.
After a moment, the clerk stamped the report.
"Mission base pay, hazard increase, material reward, survivor emergency subsidy, and partial Dreadmyr incident compensation."
A number appeared on the screen.
For the old Qin Yuan, it was a lot.
For the path Qin Yuan intended to walk, it was almost nothing.
Still, almost nothing was better than nothing.
"Transfer it," Qin Yuan said.
The clerk nodded.
His bracelet vibrated.
Account Balance Updated.
Then came questioning.
Two officials sat across from him in a small room.
One was a martial inspector from the mission bureau. The other wore a pale gray badge marked with the Three Path Directorate's symbol.
"Your report says Zhou Kang killed a third-layer beast before the Dreadmyr appeared."
Qin Yuan obviously was not going to say more than he had to.
Even though this society was more advanced than his modern Earth, the existence of personal power changed everything. He had no doubt that drawing too much attention to himself without sufficient strength would lead only to a dead end.
So he only nodded indifferently and said, "Yes."
"Did you see the Dreadmyr kill him?"
Qin Yuan's expression did not change.
"No."
The official's eyes narrowed slightly.
Qin Yuan remained silent.
The questioning continued for another half hour.
There was little they could do to him.
He was weak. He had no suspicious background. His bracelet confirmed his route, kills, safe-zone entry, and injuries. He had not broken formation before the Dreadmyr appeared. He had not stolen from corpses. He had not attacked other workers.
In the end, they released him.
The official at the door said, "Do not discuss Dreadmyr details publicly. The bureau will issue a statement."
Qin Yuan did not give a damn about their politics.
He simply nodded and left.
…
Jadefall City looked different when Qin Yuan returned.
The towers were still beautiful.
The flying sword lanes still glowed in the evening sky.
Mana-screen advertisements still flashed above pill shops, academy exam centers, duel arenas, and luxury cultivation chambers.
Spirit-energy vehicles still hummed along elevated roads. Formation elevators still moved up the sides of glass towers. Students in clean uniforms still walked beneath floating lights, laughing about exams, rankings, families, and futures that had not yet been torn open by claws.
But now, Qin Yuan understood something more clearly.
All that modern order existed because terrifying force held it together.
Suppression towers.
Mission bureaus.
City laws.
Families.
Sects.
The Three Path Directorate.
And beyond them, forces even they feared.
Civilization here was not soft because the world was safe.
It was soft because danger had been pushed behind walls.
Qin Yuan walked through the lower pill market with his mission pay newly transferred into his bracelet.
He did not buy a better sword first.
He wanted one.
But wanting was not strategy.
His current problem was not only combat.
It was foundation.
His Spiritual Root was Ninth-Grade. His Magical Core was dormant, though it had reached Eighth-Rank. His Flesh Gates were only Iron Flesh Gates. Each of his foundations sat near the bottom of the bottom. He had the possibility of walking all three paths, but possibility without resources was a joke.
He needed a way to earn more.
Consistently.
Legally.
Quietly.
And the best way to earn, grow under protection, and remain quiet was to enter the Pill Dao.
Even in the modern age, pills were not obsolete.
Naturally, with Healing Dao, Healing Mana, Light Dao, Light Mana, and the Body Path experts' knowledge of the body, medicine had advanced by leaps and bounds compared to modern Earth. Hospitals could regrow damaged tissue. Healing formations could close wounds. Mana surgery could repair torn organs. Body experts could stimulate blood, bones, and marrow with terrifying precision.
But only true Pill Dao experts could completely heal someone standing at the brink of death, restore lost limbs perfectly, and even strengthen them beyond their previous state. Only Pill Dao could cure certain sicknesses, poisons, and strange diseases that no other path could fully comprehend.
More importantly, in this age of modern power, only Pill Dao could steadily enhance the foundations of Martial Cultivators, Wizards, and Warriors.
Even someone with the lowest foundation could rise toward supremacy, provided they had the right pills, the right resources, and enough time to survive.
Pill Dao was especially important to old experts who had been trapped at bottlenecks for thousands of years. It was important to average people struggling to break through. It was important to sects, academies, families, corporations, and militaries that wanted to strengthen their people without waiting decades.
No matter what, Pill Dao experts, or alchemists, were just as respected and protected as terrifying talents or powerful experts, provided they were valuable enough.
It was precisely because of this that Qin Yuan wanted to focus on advancing the Pill Dao.
He needed it to evolve his own foundations.
Qin Yuan stopped before a secondhand bookstore squeezed between a talisman battery shop and a cheap noodle stall.
The sign read:
OLD DAO TEXTS — COMMON ARTS — STUDENT COPIES — NO REFUNDS
Inside, the air smelled of dust, ink, old paper, and faint medicinal smoke.
An old man behind the counter looked up.
"Buying or browsing?"
"Buying if the price is fair."
The old man snorted. "Then browsing."
Qin Yuan walked through the shelves, using his Spirit Sense to detect what he needed.
He chose carefully and placed several books on the counter.
Basic Herb Recognition for Low Common Pill Refiners.
Furnace Control and Fire Balance: Student Edition.
Thirty-Six Low Common Pills and Their Failures.
Common Sword Art: Falling Leaf Thirteen Cuts.
Common Fire Art: Ember Thread Method.
Common Lightning Art: First Spark Palm.
The old man glanced at the pile.
"You trying to become a swordsman, a fire cultivator, a lightning cultivator, and a pill refiner at the same time?"
"Yes."
The old man stared at him.
Then he laughed.
"Young people are amazing. No money, no talent, no teacher, and still dreaming like emperors."
Qin Yuan looked at him calmly.
"How much?"
The old man's laughter faded a little.
He named a price, and Qin Yuan indifferently paid.
As he left, the old man called out, "Brat."
Qin Yuan stopped.
"If you're really learning Pill Dao, don't trust the furnace temperature chart in chapter four. It was printed wrong in that edition. Reduce the heat by ten percent for spirit grass under fifty years old."
Qin Yuan turned.
"Thank you."
The old man waved him away. "Don't thank me. Come back alive and buy more."
Qin Yuan nodded once.
"I will."
...
The Qin Family estate was not a single ancient mansion.
It was a walled district.
Modern villas stood between old courtyards. Spirit bamboo grew beside security pillars. Floating law seals drifted above the gates, scanning family bracelets, visitor permits, cultivation pressure, and weapon status. Guards in dark blue uniforms stood beneath carved wind-lion statues, their eyes sharp and their hands close to their formation batons.
Qin Yuan entered through the side gate.
Before he reached the residential wing, three young people blocked the path.
He recognized them from memory.
Qin Heshan.
Yu Min.
Chen Ruo.
They were not direct siblings. They were not important heirs. They were just followers attached to his older sister's circle, the kind of people who gained status by orbiting a genius.
Qin Heshan looked at the books under Qin Yuan's arm and laughed.
"Well, look at this. Our mission hero came back with trash manuals."
Yu Min covered her mouth. "I heard you signed up for the family gathering assessment. Is that true?"
Chen Ruo smiled coldly. "You should know your place. Sister Yuelan is about to enter Clearbell Eastern Origin Academy as a candidate disciple. The family gathering will have outsiders watching. Don't embarrass her."
Qin Yuan did not bother to stop.
He could barely remember these people's names, much less their faces.
With a focused mind, he took a step.
A breeze brushed past the three youths, rustling their hair.
"Eh?"
The three youths blinked.
When they turned around, Qin Yuan had already walked past them.
He left behind only a few parting words.
"Don't you all have anything better to do?"
Behind him, Qin Heshan cursed.
"Arrogant trash!"
Qin Yuan did not turn around.
The family suppression seals above the path glowed faintly. No one could casually attack here without leaving evidence.
Qin Yuan was grateful for that.
If this had been a ruthless cultivation world, or even a darker magic fantasy world, it would have been much easier for those in stronger positions to abuse power over those far weaker than them.
Of course, relying on external protection could not last forever.
Qin Yuan was determined to change that.