In the cultivation world, strength reigned supreme. Benefits and power alone determined whether one lived or died. As long as the rewards were sufficient, righteous sects would slaughter innocents, and demonic sects would save lives. Morality was a luxury afforded only to the strong.
Li Feng had learned this truth the hard way.
Thirty years ago, he had been the most talented disciple his sect had seen in generations. Born with peak-grade yang spiritual roots—a treasure rarer than phoenix feathers—he had been destined to reach the Nascent Soul stage within fifty years. On this continent, where Nascent Soul cultivators stood at the apex of power, Li Feng would have had no equal.
But the world would not allow a threat to grow unchallenged.
After thirty years of cultivation within the sect's protective arrays, Li Feng had reached the early Golden Core stage. His master summoned him to the peak pavilion one morning, concern etched in the old man's weathered face.
"Li Feng," Master Qian said, setting down his tea cup with deliberate care. "You have spent three decades within these walls. Your cultivation is formidable, but your experience is... lacking."
Li Feng bowed respectfully. "This disciple understands Master's concern, but—"
"No buts." The old man's voice was firm but not unkind. "A sword kept in its sheath grows dull. I'm assigning you a mission—lead several Foundation Establishment disciples to clear the spirit beast nest threatening Willow Creek Village. It should be routine, well within your capabilities."
"Master, with respect, the junior disciples would be safer with—"
"With you." Master Qian's eyes held something Li Feng couldn't quite read. Pride? Worry? "They need to see what true talent looks like. And you need to remember that cultivation isn't just about sitting in meditation. Go. Protect them. Return safely."
Li Feng bowed deeper. "This disciple obeys."
It should have been routine.
Instead, masked cultivators ambushed them in a narrow valley—three early-stage Golden Core cultivators and two at mid-stage. The trap had been carefully laid, the intelligence precise. Someone had sold them out.
"Senior Brother Li!" one of the Foundation Establishment disciples screamed as the first attack shattered their defensive formation.
Li Feng pushed them behind him, his sword already drawn. "Get back! All of you, stay behind me!"
The lead attacker laughed, his voice distorted by a voice-altering talisman. "The famous Li Feng. Peak-grade yang spiritual roots. Do you know how much your corpse is worth?"
"More than yours will be," Li Feng said coldly.
Another masked cultivator circled to the left. "Such confidence. Let's see if it's warranted."
They struck simultaneously. Li Feng met them head-on, his sword blazing with yang fire. But five against one, even with his superior roots, the math was brutal.
A junior disciple tried to run. A sword pierced his back before he made it ten steps.
"No!" Li Feng roared.
He made his choice in an instant. He burned his blood essence, overdrew his spiritual roots, and sacrificed everything. The power of peak-grade yang spiritual roots was terrifying when unleashed without restraint. His sword became a sun, his body a furnace of destructive qi.
"He's burning his foundation! Fall back!" one of the attackers shouted.
Too late. Li Feng killed all three early-stage attackers in a storm of yang fire and grievously wounded the remaining two before they fled, screaming.
But the price was absolute.
When the dust settled, Li Feng collapsed. One of the surviving disciples—a girl named Mei Lin—crawled to his side, tears streaming down her face.
"Senior Brother... you saved us. You saved us all."
Li Feng tried to speak, but blood filled his mouth. His spiritual roots felt like shattered glass inside his meridians. His cultivation was draining away like water through a broken dam.
"Get... back to the sect," he managed. "Tell them... ambush. Traitor."
"We won't leave you!"
"Go!" he gasped. "That's an order!"
They carried him back. The sect's healers worked for three days straight.
Master Qian stood over his bed on the fourth day, his face grave. "Your body will recover. Your spiritual roots... Li Feng, I'm sorry. They're destroyed. You'll never advance beyond peak Foundation Establishment."
Li Feng stared at the ceiling. "I understand, Master."
"You saved six disciples. The sect is grateful. You'll be honored—"
"Honored," Li Feng repeated flatly. "Will honor restore my cultivation?"
Master Qian said nothing.
Within a month, the truth became clear. His fellow disciples avoided him. His master grew distant. Though he wasn't expelled—the sect couldn't afford the political cost of casting out a hero—all resources and privileges were quietly withdrawn.
Li Feng finally understood. In this world, you could only rely on yourself.
As a peak Foundation Establishment cultivator, Li Feng retained roughly two hundred years of lifespan. Subtracting his current age of thirty, that left one hundred and seventy years. He refused to spend them as a cripple.
For fifty years, he threw himself into alchemy, studying every text on spiritual root restoration he could find. He experimented with thousands of pill formulas, combining rare herbs in increasingly desperate combinations. Nothing worked. The damage was too fundamental.
The next fifty years, he devoted to artifact forging. His idea bordered on madness: if he couldn't repair his spiritual roots, perhaps he could forge an artificial Golden Core to implant in his dantian. The concept drew on the weapon master's principle of unity—where a weapon became an extension of the body—but applied to cultivation itself. A portable Golden Core that would lend him its power.
The theory was sound. The execution proved impossible. The materials required—Celestial Jade Essence, Primordial Yang Crystals, Void-Tempered Spiritual Iron—existed only in legend. He tried using another cultivator's Golden Core instead, harvested from a dying rogue cultivator who sold it for medicine money.
"You sure about this?" the rogue had rasped, blood on his lips. "Spiritual rejection will kill you."
"I'm already dead," Li Feng had replied. "I'm just looking for a way back."
The rogue had laughed bitterly. "Aren't we all."
The spiritual rejection nearly killed him. Foreign cultivation bases couldn't integrate with a damaged foundation.
Another failure.
The following fifty years blurred together: formation arrays, talisman crafting, expeditions into forbidden ruins and uncharted danger zones. Li Feng became a fixture in the cultivation world's shadows, the crippled Golden Core who refused to accept his fate. He accumulated a small fortune in supreme cultivation techniques and heaven-grade spiritual herbs. None addressed his specific condition.
Until, in a crumbling tomb beneath the Wailing Ghost Mountains, he found the Skin Transformation Art.
The manual was ancient, its pages made from treated human leather. According to the text, it had been created by a figure known only as the Formless Immortal—a name that appeared in no historical records. The technique was classified as demonic cultivation, forbidden by every major sect.
Its function was simple and horrifying: the user could transform any unconscious living creature into a "skin" that could be worn. Once donned, the wearer's outer layers—muscles, fat, bones, skin—would fuse with the living skin, granting the wearer the target's appearance, cultivation level, and spiritual roots.
Li Feng's hands trembled as he read. "This is it," he whispered to the empty tomb. "Finally. A way forward."
He spent three months mastering the technique, practicing on spirit beasts until the transformation became second nature. Then he captured a rogue Golden Core cultivator—a murderer with a bounty on his head—and performed the ritual.
The skin slid over him like water, warm and disturbingly alive. His reflection changed: different face, different build, different aura. The spiritual energy signature read as Golden Core.
"It worked," he breathed, staring at his transformed hands. "It actually worked."
But when he tried to circulate qi, nothing happened.
"No. No, no, no." He pushed harder, forcing his qi through the new meridians. The energy flowed into the skin's spiritual roots, converted, reached his damaged foundation—and dissipated. "Damn it!"
The cultivation was illusory, a shell without substance. He could fool spiritual sense, pass through sect barriers keyed to cultivation level, even withstand a casual probe from a Nascent Soul elder. But in actual combat, his power remained at peak Foundation Establishment. The skin's Golden Core was decoration, nothing more.
Worse, the spiritual roots were equally useless. They could absorb spiritual energy from the environment—he felt it flowing in, rich and pure—but the moment it reached his damaged original roots, it dissipated back into the world. The skin's roots acted as a converter, but the broken foundation couldn't hold the converted energy.
"Useless," Li Feng said bitterly, tearing the skin off. "Just another dead end."
The Skin Transformation Art was merely an elaborate disguise.
Li Feng burned the rogue cultivator's skin and returned to his sect, hollow with defeat.
Twenty years passed in numb resignation. Li Feng had exhausted every avenue, pursued every rumor, gambled on every desperate hope. His lifespan was running out—one hundred and twenty years remaining, then one hundred, then fewer still. Eventually, he would die a cripple, his potential wasted, his sacrifice forgotten.
When the sect announced its annual disciple recruitment ceremony, Li Feng volunteered to oversee it. The task was menial, usually assigned to outer sect elders, but he needed the distraction. Watching mortal children discover their spiritual roots might remind him of what he'd lost. Or perhaps it would simply fill the time.
The ceremony took place in Clearwater City, a mortal settlement at the sect's border. Hundreds of children lined up, each placing their hand on the Testing Stone—a fist-sized crystal that glowed in response to spiritual root presence and quality.
"Next," Li Feng called out mechanically.
Most had no roots at all. They would live and die as mortals, never knowing the world of cultivation existed.
"Low-grade fire root. Accepted as outer disciple. Next."
Those with low-grade roots—single element, weak resonance—were accepted as outer disciples. They would spend decades reaching Foundation Establishment, if they reached it at all.
"Mid-grade water and earth roots. Inner disciple. Next."
Mid-grade roots drew more attention. These children would become inner disciples, the sect's backbone.
High-grade roots were rare, appearing perhaps once every five years. They became core disciples, groomed for leadership.
Peak-grade roots were legendary. Li Feng had been the only one in his generation.
Until today.
A boy stepped forward—sixteen years old, lean and nervous, with the calloused hands of a farmer's son. "Um, Elder, I'm Su Tian. From Willow Creek Village."
"Place your hand on the stone," Li Feng said without looking up.
Su Tian obeyed.
The crystal exploded with light.
Pure, blazing yang energy flooded the testing hall, so intense that several mortal attendants stumbled back, shielding their eyes. The light was white-gold, radiant, almost liquid in its intensity.
Li Feng's breath caught. "Impossible."
"Elder?" Su Tian pulled his hand back, frightened. "Did I... did I do something wrong?"
"No." Li Feng's voice was hoarse. He stared at the boy, seeing his own past reflected back at him. "You did nothing wrong. You have peak-grade yang spiritual roots. Superior even to..." He trailed off.
Around the hall, the other sect representatives were already moving, their expressions calculating. One of them—a woman in purple robes from the Violet Moon Sect—approached with a predatory smile.
"Elder Li Feng," she said smoothly. "Perhaps we should discuss sharing this remarkable discovery. The Violet Moon Sect would be happy to—"
"The ceremony is over," Li Feng announced loudly, cutting her off. "All accepted disciples, gather your belongings. We depart for the sect immediately."
"Elder Li, that's highly irregular—"
"I said immediately." Li Feng's hand moved to his sword hilt. "Unless you'd like to challenge my authority?"
The woman's smile didn't waver, but she stepped back. "Of course not, Elder. Safe travels."
Li Feng gathered the newly accepted disciples—including Su Tian—and hustled them out of the hall. News of this would spread within hours. Within days, every major power on the continent would know.
And they would do to Su Tian exactly what they'd done to Li Feng.
As they left the city, Su Tian hurried to walk beside him. "Elder Li Feng? Why did you shut down the ceremony? Did I cause trouble?"
"You caused no trouble," Li Feng said quietly. "But your spiritual roots will. Stay close to me. Don't speak to anyone we meet on the road. Don't tell anyone your name or where you're from. Understand?"
"I... yes, Elder. But why—"
"Because people will kill you for what you have," Li Feng said bluntly. "Just like they tried to kill me."
Su Tian paled. "You have peak-grade roots too?"
"Had." Li Feng's voice was flat. "Past tense. Learn from my mistake, boy. In this world, talent is both a blessing and a curse."
They traveled quickly and quietly, pushing the pace until the younger disciples were stumbling with exhaustion.
If they were lucky, they'd arrive before the vultures descended.
They weren't lucky.
The ambush came on the second day, in a forest valley three hundred li from the sect.
This time, there were five Golden Core cultivators, all masked, all mid-stage or higher. They didn't bother with words or warnings. The attack was immediate and brutal.
Li Feng threw up a defensive formation, but it shattered under the first combined assault. He pushed the disciples behind him, drawing his sword—a mid-grade spiritual weapon he'd forged himself during his artifact-crafting years.
"Run!" he shouted. "Scatter and run!"
"But Elder—" one disciple began.
"Run, damn you!"
They tried. The attackers cut them down methodically, efficiently. These weren't rogue cultivators or hired thugs. They moved with the coordination of sect elites, their techniques polished and deadly.
Within minutes, most of the disciples were dead. Only Su Tian remained, frozen in terror behind Li Feng's failing defense.
"Please!" a girl screamed. "We surrender! We—"
Her voice cut off with a wet sound.
"Stop running, little rabbits," one of the masked cultivators called out, his voice amused. "It only makes this more entertaining."
Another laughed. "The cripple can't protect you. He couldn't even protect himself."
Li Feng's jaw clenched. He recognized that voice—the same distortion talisman from thirty years ago. "You. You were there. At the first ambush."
"Oh? You remember? I'm flattered." The cultivator's spiritual pressure intensified. "We didn't finish the job last time. Let's remedy that."
"Elder Li Feng," Su Tian whispered, his voice breaking. "I'm sorry. This is my fault. They're here because of me."
"Shut up and stay behind me," Li Feng growled. His sword was chipped, his qi reserves nearly depleted, and five Golden Core cultivators were closing in for the kill.
"The boy with the peak-grade roots," the lead attacker said. "Hand him over and we'll let you live, cripple. You've suffered enough already, haven't you?"
"Go to hell," Li Feng spat.
"Wrong answer."
They moved in for the kill.
Li Feng's mind raced. He couldn't burn his blood essence again—there was nothing left to burn. He couldn't overdraw his spiritual roots—they were already destroyed. He was going to die here. And Su Tian would be captured, his spiritual roots harvested, his potential stolen.
Just like before. Just like always.
Then the ground beneath them began to glow.
"What—" Li Feng looked down. Intricate formation lines were emerging from the earth, silver-white and pulsing with ancient power. They spread in geometric patterns, covering the valley floor, responding to—
To his spiritual roots.
"Elder, what's happening?" Su Tian grabbed his arm.
The broken, damaged channels that had ruined his life were resonating with something buried beneath the valley. The formation lines grew brighter, more complex, and suddenly the air tore open.
A spatial rift, black-edged and howling with void winds, yawned before them.
"An ancient ruin!" one of the attackers shouted. "Stop them!"
Li Feng didn't hesitate. He grabbed Su Tian's wrist. "Hold your breath!"
"What—"
Li Feng dove through, dragging the boy with him.
The world inverted. Pressure crushed him from all sides, then released. They tumbled onto cold stone, and behind them, the rift sealed with a sound like breaking glass.
The masked cultivators' shouts cut off abruptly.
Li Feng pushed himself to his feet, breathing hard. "Su Tian. Are you hurt?"
"I... I don't think so." The boy stood shakily, looking around. "Where are we?"
They were in a corridor—ancient, carved from black stone, lit by formations that pulsed with dim red light. The air was thick, humid, and carried a strange sweet scent that made his head swim.
"An ancient ruin," Li Feng said. "The formation responded to my damaged spiritual roots. I don't know why."
Su Tian took a step forward and swayed. "Elder... I feel strange. The air..."
"Stay close," Li Feng said, but his own voice sounded distant. The sweet scent was growing stronger, cloying, and heat was building in his chest and groin.
Aphrodisiac.
"Elder?" Su Tian's eyes were unfocused. "I can't... I feel..."
The realization came too late. Su Tian collapsed, unconscious, his body unable to resist the drug saturating the air. Li Feng staggered, his vision blurring. His penis was hardening painfully, his skin flushed and hypersensitive.
But he wasn't losing consciousness.
"Damn it," he gasped. His broken spiritual roots were absorbing the aphrodisiac qi like they'd never absorbed anything before, drawing it in greedily, circulating it through his meridians. The drug was designed to affect cultivators through their spiritual roots—and his damaged channels were drinking it in without resistance.
The heat intensified. His erection strained against his robes, throbbing with each heartbeat. Rational thought was slipping away, replaced by raw, animal need.
He looked at Su Tian's unconscious form and felt desire spike through him.
"No," he said aloud, his voice strained. "No. I won't. I won't become that."
Li Feng turned and ran deeper into the ruin, away from the boy, away from temptation. His footsteps echoed in the corridor. The aphrodisiac burned through his veins, demanding release, but he forced himself forward.
"There has to be... another way," he panted. "There has to be..."
The corridor opened into a chamber.
At its center stood a coffin.
The coffin was carved from red jade, its surface covered in formation scripts that had long since gone dormant. Li Feng approached on trembling legs, his body screaming for relief, his mind barely holding on to coherence.
"A coffin," he muttered. "In a ruin. Responding to broken spiritual roots. What are you?"
He needed to find a way out. He needed to protect Su Tian. He needed—
He lifted the coffin lid.
Inside lay a woman.
No—not a woman. A goddess made flesh.
She was perhaps twenty-five in appearance, though in the cultivation world, age meant nothing. Her face was a perfect oval, her skin like white jade without a single blemish or pore. She wore no makeup save for lightly drawn eyebrows, yet her beauty was so profound it seemed to distort reality around her. Her lips were naturally pink, her teeth white and even behind slightly parted lips. Two faint blushes touched her cheeks, as if she were merely sleeping.
Her body was equally flawless. She wore a thin silk robe that had loosened in her long rest, revealing the curves beneath. Her breasts were full and high, her waist impossibly slender, her hips wide and perfectly proportioned. Her legs were long and shapely, her skin smooth and unblemished. Even her feet were delicate and beautiful.
She looked like she had been sculpted by a master artist and then granted life.
"Who..." Li Feng's voice was hoarse. "Who are you?"
The aphrodisiac roared through Li Feng's body. His erection was painful now, his breathing ragged. He tried to step back, to leave, to retain some shred of dignity.
"I should... I should go," he gasped. "This isn't... I can't..."
Instead, he leaned down and kissed her.
Her lips were soft, cool, and yielded under his. He forced his tongue into her mouth, tasting sweetness and something else—something ancient and powerful. His hands moved of their own accord, grabbing her collar and tearing it open.
The fabric parted. Her breasts spilled free, heavy and perfect, their pink nipples hardening in the cool air. Li Feng groaned and fell on her, his control shattered completely.
"Forgive me," he whispered against her skin. "Forgive me."
He grabbed her left breast roughly, kneading the soft flesh, his fingers sinking deep. His other hand slid down her body, over her flat stomach with its faint definition of muscle, to her hips. He lifted her, positioning her beneath him.
Her body responded instinctively, unconsciously. Her legs wrapped around his waist, her arms encircled his neck, her breasts pressed against his chest. She was warm now, growing warmer, as if his touch was waking something dormant.
Li Feng tore away the rest of her clothing and his own. His erection pressed against her entrance—she was already wet, her body preparing itself through some automatic function. He thrust forward, hard, burying himself to the hilt in one brutal stroke.
The sensation was overwhelming. She was tight, hot, and impossibly soft inside, her inner walls rippling around him as if trying to draw him deeper. He gripped her slender waist with both hands and began to move, thrusting with desperate, animalistic need.
Each stroke made her breasts bounce, made her body arch, made her inner muscles clench around him. She made no sound, but her body responded, her hips rising to meet his thrusts, her legs tightening around him.
Sweat dripped down his back. The pleasure was intense, almost painful, building toward release.
Then something changed.
A foreign sensation bloomed in his awareness—soft, deep, achingly intense. It was pleasure, but not his pleasure. Not the familiar tightness and friction and building pressure of male arousal.
This was different. This was being filled, being stretched, being penetrated. A deep, melting warmth that spread through his lower abdomen, making his legs weak. A strange, tingling ache as something thick and hard pressed against his deepest point, again and again.
"What—" Li Feng gasped. "What is this?"
His eyes widened in shock. He could feel both sensations simultaneously: his penis thrusting into tight, wet heat, and that same penis filling him, stretching him, pounding into him from inside.
His chest began to burn. The sensation of kneading her breast overlapped with the feeling of his own breast being roughly groped, fingers sinking into soft, sensitive flesh, sending sparks of pleasure-pain through his chest.
"No," he panted. "This isn't... this can't be..."
The dual sensations intensified. He was fucking her and being fucked. He was groping her and being groped. Every action he took, he felt from both sides.
His thrusts grew faster, more desperate. Her inner walls began to spasm around him, clenching rhythmically, and he felt that too—felt his own body tightening, felt the unbearable pleasure building in a place he'd never had before.
"Stop," he groaned. "I need to... I have to..."
He thrust deep one final time and came with a roar, his semen flooding into her in hot, thick pulses.
At that exact moment, he felt his consciousness tear.
The sensation was agonizing—like a bone being ripped from his body, like his soul was being pulled out through his chest. He gritted his teeth, his forehead pressed against hers, and felt something fundamental shift.
"No!" he tried to shout, but the word came out as a strangled gasp.
His consciousness sank into her body, into her chest, past skin and muscle and bone, and settled into her core.
The woman's body convulsed. Her back arched off the coffin, her breasts heaving, her hands clutching at empty air. Her long hair spread across the jade surface like spilled ink.
And then she—he—took a breath.
Air rushed into unfamiliar lungs, cold and stale, carrying the scent of ancient stone and sex.
Li Feng opened his eyes.
The first thing he noticed was the hair. Long, heavy, silky hair cascaded over his shoulders and down his back, some strands clinging to his lips and nose. He reached up to brush them away—
His hand was small, delicate, with slender fingers and pale pink nails. No calluses. No scars.
"What—"
The voice that emerged from his throat was soft, feminine, naturally melodious. Even that single syllable sounded like a woman's breathy moan.
"No. No, no, no." He snapped his mouth shut, his heart racing. Even those words came out in that same soft, feminine voice.
A heavy, unfamiliar weight pulled at his chest. He looked down.
Two large, soft breasts rose and fell with his breathing, their pink nipples still hard from arousal. They were his breasts now, attached to his body, moving when he moved, sensitive to every shift of air.
"This isn't real," he whispered, the feminine voice making the denial sound absurd. "This can't be real."
His waist was impossibly narrow. His hips were wide, his thighs thick and soft. Between his legs, there was nothing—no familiar weight, no comforting presence. Just smoothness, and a deep, throbbing ache from recent penetration.
Li Feng braced his hands against the coffin and tried to sit up. His breasts swayed heavily with the movement, their weight pulling at his chest. His hair fell forward, tickling his nipples and sending unwanted shivers through him.
"Damn it," he gasped. "Damn it, damn it, damn it."
The area beneath him was a mess. The torn silk robe was soaked with semen and other fluids. He could feel it leaking out of him—his own seed, dripping from between his legs, running down his inner thighs in warm, sticky trails.
His groin ached. The emptiness there was profound, disturbing. Something thick and hard had just been inside him, stretching him, filling him, and now it was gone, leaving only soreness and a strange, hollow sensation.
He forced himself to stand, gripping the edge of the coffin for support. His center of gravity was completely wrong. His chest pulled him forward, his wide hips threw off his balance, and his legs were longer and more slender than before.
His first step was a disaster. He nearly fell, his body swaying awkwardly.
"Come on," he muttered. "You've walked for two hundred years. You can figure this out."
The second step was better. His hips shifted automatically, his waist twisted to compensate for the weight distribution.
By the third step, his body had adjusted on its own, moving with a natural, feminine grace that felt both alien and disturbingly instinctive.
Li Feng stopped, breathing hard. His breasts rose and fell with each breath, his nipples rubbing against the torn fabric still clinging to his shoulders. The sensation was maddening—not quite pleasure, not quite discomfort, but impossible to ignore.
He reached down between his legs, pressing through the fabric.
The touch sent a jolt of intense sensation through him—sharp, electric, overwhelming. He jerked his hand back, his heart pounding.
"It's real," he said aloud, his voice shaking. "All of it. It's real."
The penis he'd had for nearly two hundred years was gone. In its place was a woman's body—soft, curvy, hypersensitive, and completely, undeniably his.
He stood there, trembling, his long hair sticking to his sweaty neck and shoulders, his thighs slick with semen.
"I'm not Li Feng anymore," he whispered. "I'm... what am I?"
He didn't even know her name.
Movement caught his eye. He turned, his hair swinging heavily.
His original body lay crumpled beside the coffin.
"Oh gods," he breathed.
Li Feng—the male Li Feng, the real Li Feng—was unconscious on the cold stone floor. His robes were disheveled, his face pale, his breathing shallow but steady.
The woman's body moved before his mind caught up. He knelt beside his former self, his breasts hanging heavily, his hair falling forward to brush against the unconscious man's face. He swept the hair back in frustration and pressed two fingers to his original body's neck.
The pulse was there. Weak, but present.
"You're alive," he said softly. "Still alive. That's... that's something."
He sat back on his heels, his new body folding gracefully despite his inexperience. His mind raced, trying to process what had just happened.
"The Skin Transformation Art failed because it only copied the surface," he murmured, thinking aloud. "But this... this went deeper. My consciousness transferred completely. Everything. Memories, cultivation, soul—all of it in her body now."
He looked down at himself—at the full breasts, the narrow waist, the wide hips, the long legs. At the sticky mess between his thighs and the lingering ache of penetration.
"And my original body is still alive," he continued, his voice steadier now. "Still breathing. Still... there. So what does that mean? Can I go back? Is this permanent?"
He reached out and touched his original body's face—his former face. The skin was cold, clammy.
"Who was she?" he asked the unconscious form. "Who am I now? Why was she in that coffin? What kind of ruin responds to broken spiritual roots?"
No answers came.
He stood slowly, his body moving with that same unsettling grace. "Su Tian. I left him in the corridor. I need to... I need to protect him. That's still my responsibility."
A chest in the corner caught his eye. He moved toward it, each step a reminder of his new body's weight distribution, its curves, its fundamental difference from what he'd known for two centuries.
"First, clothes," he said firmly. "Then find Su Tian. Then figure out what the hell just happened to me."
He looked around the chamber, searching for something to wear. The torn silk robe was ruined, soaked with fluids. There had to be something—
He paused, looking back at his unconscious original body one more time.