The first thing Xiang noticed when he woke up was the smell.
The second thing was that he was glued to his bed.
"...Ugh."
The black sludge had dried overnight into a hard crust that covered his skin, his sheets and half of his pillow. When he sat up, it cracked like old paint and fell off in flakes. The clock showed 09:03. Sunday.
Xiang stumbled into the tiny bathroom and turned on the shower.
The water that ran down the drain was black. Then dark grey. Then grey. He scrubbed until his skin turned red, and it still took him almost forty minutes until the water finally ran clear.
When he stepped out and wiped the fog from the mirror, he stopped.
The boy in the mirror was still him. Same messy black hair, same thin face, same scar on his left eyebrow from a fight he had lost two years ago. But the dark circles under his eyes were gone. His skin looked healthier, almost glowing. And the bruises from the beast attack two days ago had completely disappeared.
"Not bad," Xiang said to his reflection. "Not bad at all, Mu Xiang."
"GROOOOWL"
His stomach answered for him.
It wasn't a normal hunger. It felt like his stomach was trying to eat itself. His hands were even shaking a little.
Xiang threw on some clothes and went straight to the fridge. There was still a big piece of low-rank 1-star beast meat left from yesterday. He grabbed it, put it on the cutting board and picked up his knife.
Then he froze.
The meat was grey.
Not the dark red of fresh beast meat. Not the brown of meat that had gone bad. It was grey and dry, like a piece of wood that had been lying in the sun for years. When he touched it with the tip of his knife, the edge crumbled into dust.
Xiang slowly put the knife down.
He remembered last night. The feeling of Aether rushing towards him from everywhere. The air, the walls... and the leftover beast meat in his fridge.
"No way..."
He opened the bracelet's hologram with a shaking finger and clicked on the new ability.
[Absorb – Beginner]
[Everything that lives once came from the Origin. Absorb allows it to return.]
Xiang looked at the grey meat. Then at the text. Then at the meat again.
A cold shiver ran down his back.
Low-rank beast meat still contained a tiny bit of Aether. That was why cultivators ate it. Slowly, over hours, the body would digest it and take in a little bit of energy. But he hadn't eaten this meat. He had just... taken it. Everything in it. Until nothing was left but dust.
"What if I had been lying next to a person?" he whispered.
He didn't want to finish that thought.
"GROOOOOWL"
"Yeah, yeah, I get it!"
Xiang threw the grey meat into the trash and searched through his cabinets. Two packs of instant noodles. Four eggs. Half an onion. A bit of chili oil.
It wasn't much. But it was enough for a chef.
Ten minutes later, his apartment smelled like a street food stall in the inner city. He fried the onion until it was golden, cracked the eggs into the boiling broth and let them cook just until the yolks were still soft. Then a spoon of chili oil and a pinch of salt.
He ate both bowls in less than three minutes.
Then he licked the bowls.
"...Still hungry," he mumbled. "Damn it."
But there was something more important than food right now. Xiang pushed the bowls aside and sat down on the floor in the middle of his room.
If Absorb could take the Aether out of meat, what would it do to his cultivation?
He looked at the four remaining low-grade body refining elixirs on the shelf. Then he shook his head. No elixir. If he wanted to know what had changed, he had to test it the honest way.
Xiang took a deep breath and started the first form of the Cold-blooded Dragon Body technique.
Horse stance. Back straight. Breathe in through the nose, hold, and let the Aether follow the breath down into the lower belly.
Usually, this was the hardest part. Aether was everywhere, but it was thin and stubborn, like trying to catch smoke with your bare hands. He would have to concentrate for minutes just to feel a small thread of it.
This time, he didn't even have to try.
The moment he breathed in, the Aether came to him. Not as a thin thread. As a stream. It poured into his body as if it had been waiting for him all along.
Xiang almost lost his stance from the shock.
Focus. Focus!
He moved into the second form. His spine twisted, his arms stretched out like the claws of a dragon, and he pushed the Aether through his muscles and bones exactly as his Great-Grandfather had taught him. The raging fire that always burned in his body during this technique was still there, but it felt different now. Less like a fire that wanted to burn him. More like a fire that wanted to grow.
Third form. Fourth form. Fifth.
When he finished the last movement and let out a long breath, the room was completely silent.
Then the bracelet spoke.
"*DING* User gained 21 Aether."
Xiang didn't move.
"...Huh?"
He opened the status window and checked the log. He hadn't misheard.
21 Aether.
Without any elixir.
On a normal day, without an elixir, he got four. With an elixir, five. And even that was already more than most people in his class got, thanks to his Great-Grandfather's technique.
Twenty-one.
"Five times," Xiang whispered. "It's five times as much."
He started counting in his head. With five sets a day, that would be over a hundred Aether. Every single day. Something that would take other students a whole month...
Xiang jumped up, threw both fists into the air and yelled.
"YEEEEES!!!"
"BONK"
"OW! FUCK!"
He had hit the cheap lamp hanging from the ceiling with his fist. It swung back and forth wildly while Xiang held his hand and hopped around his room like an idiot. But even with the pain, he couldn't stop grinning.
Three months until the university admission exam. He needed at least the 7th stage of the body forging Realm to get into a decent university. Yesterday, that had been a dream. A goal he would have reached only with a lot of luck and even more elixirs he couldn't afford.
Today, it was just math.
"*DING*"
Xiang stopped hopping.
"*DING* Aether overflow detected. User's body has reached its limit in the 4th stage of the body forging Realm."
"*DING* Breakthrough to the 5th stage is possible. Proceed?"
[YES/NO]
The grin slowly disappeared from his face.
Breakthroughs were dangerous. At school, they were always done under the supervision of an instructor, usually with a breakthrough elixir that cost more than Xiang's monthly allowance. If something went wrong, the Aether could rampage through the body and damage the bones and muscles that were supposed to hold it. Some students had been crippled for life.
And he was alone. In a one-room apartment near the slums. Without an instructor, without an elixir, and with a weird bloodline that even his Great-Grandfather didn't understand.
The smart thing would be to wait. Go to school on Monday. Ask Instructor Kessler for a supervised breakthrough.
And explain how the last student in the elite class had suddenly reached the peak of the 4th stage overnight.
Xiang bit his lip.
He thought about the grey meat in the trash. About the Aether that had poured into him like it belonged to him. About the old man's voice saying, What you achieve with it will depend on you.
Then he sat back down on the floor, crossed his legs and took a deep breath.
"Alright, old man," he muttered. "If this kills me, I'm haunting you."
He reached out and pressed YES.