Two years later, the drought begins.
It starts with whispers among the higher servants—the spirit wells are weakening, the rain rituals failed. Then the water barrels stop refilling. The rice portions shrink. Some days, there's nothing at all.
The nobles keep their bounty sealed away.
The servants learn hunger.
For most, it is a slow starvation. For Keshav, it is agony.
His body isn't like theirs. It isn't just flesh—it's greedy. A pulsing, living engine that never rests, never stops consuming. When food runs out, it doesn't wait. It demands.
He learns to silence it.
He eats insects. Ants, beetles, centipedes hiding under loose bricks. When they vanish, he turns to moss, dry grass, bark. It disgusts him at first—but he swallows it anyway. Hunger is louder than pride.
And then, something changes.
A Memory Returns
One afternoon, he sits beneath the cracked bricks of a courtyard wall, gnawing bitterly on a sun-dried weed, when a memory drifts up—crisp, clear, and out of place.
Photosynthesis.Chlorophyll. Light becomes energy. Plants survive because they eat the sun.
The words come from his previous life, spoken once by a biology professor, half-lost to the fog of chemotherapy. But now, they ignite something deeper.
His heart slows.
He closes his eyes and lets the sunlight touch his skin.
Nothing happens at first. But after a while, his heartbeat steadies. The gnawing pain in his stomach dulls. His body feels... less desperate.
Keshav exhales slowly, eyes opening.
Did I just absorb sunlight?
Mutation: Triggered by Hunger
In the days that follow, he experiments. When he eats plants, his body reacts—slowly, but clearly. His skin changes, darkening slightly in sunlight. When he lies shirtless beneath the morning sun, he feels energy seep in—not just warmth, but sustenance. Fuel.
His body is adapting.
The cancer cells are no longer just devouring spiritual energy—they're absorbing genetic patterns from what he consumes. It's no longer about qi.
It's biology, he realizes. On a level this world doesn't understand.
His cells mimic what they eat. He remembers that's what cancer can do—it mutates. Adapts. Survives. And now, unshackled by Earth's medical limits, in a world rich with spiritual energy, his body is evolving without rules.
It steals traits from insects—hardier skin, night vision.
It steals from plants—photosynthesis, chlorophyll pigments, regenerative enzymes.
And it stores everything, cell by cell, silently rewriting what it means to be human.
A New Balance
Hunger no longer rules him. He still eats when food is available—especially meat, which causes an immediate spike in energy—but when food is scarce, he just finds sunlight.
Even his thoughts feel clearer in daylight. Calm. Rooted.
Some days, he lies still among the servant gardens, eyes closed, skin warm, feeling the sun feed him like a slow, gentle breath.
He keeps this secret to himself.
If anyone knew, they'd panic.
Because what he's becoming is no longer human in the way this world understands.
But Keshav doesn't fear it.
They fear what doesn't fit their system, he thinks. Good. Let them.
He's not following the cultivation paths of this world. He's creating his own.
One mutation at a time.
The drought has passed. The rains returned a year later. The noble houses rejoiced, the granaries reopened, and the children of servants no longer cry themselves to sleep from hunger.
But Keshav doesn't stop experimenting.
Where others see bugs, weeds, and waste, he sees possibilities. His former life's memories—patchy but stubborn—guide him like a scientist working in secret. He still remembers terms like genetic expression, enzyme replication, trait inheritance.
Words no one in this world knows.
His body is his laboratory. His food is his reagent.
And his cancer?It is no longer a disease.
It is a tool.
The First Trials
Keshav starts with familiar prey: ants. He eats them by the handful, then waits. At first, nothing. Then—heat resistance. Minor, but noticeable. He no longer flinches when his hands touch hot pans in the kitchen.
Formic acid adaptation, he thinks. Maybe minor armor.
He tests more:
Centipedes — his reflexes improve. He dodges a thrown plate a full second before it would've hit him.
Spiders — he gains sharper night vision.
Lizards — within a week, his skin begins shedding in thin, painless flakes. Dead cells replaced faster than ever.
But the real breakthrough comes with a dead crow.
He finds it behind the storage shed. Its neck is broken, but the body is fresh. He hesitates—then takes it, plucks it clean, and eats it raw, piece by piece, under moonlight.
His stomach protests. His skin itches. He vomits twice.
But by morning, he can leap twice his height in a single bound.
Predator Instinct
He notices something else too: his perception shifts. When a squirrel darts across a tree limb, he watches it not with curiosity, but focus. Like prey.His hands twitch.
I'm absorbing more than biology, he realizes. I'm absorbing behavior.
The cancer doesn't just copy cells—it mirrors the survival instincts embedded in them. Crow memory. Lizard stillness. Insect alertness.
It's not perfect. Some traits clash. Some make him sick. But every failure teaches him something. He learns to eat slower. Smaller samples. Controlled dosages.
Like a flesh alchemist, he is crafting himself piece by piece.
The Journal
He starts keeping records.
Not on paper—servants aren't allowed that. But in his mind.
He builds a mental grid with columns:
Consumed Entity
Symptoms
Observed Changes
Viability
Each test gets a score. If it weakens him, he purges it—fasting in sunlight to force cellular reset. If it strengthens him, he catalogs the gain and considers further exposure.
He experiments with combinations next.
Spider + moss = wall climbing ability? Maybe partial.Bird + centipede = unstable. Nausea. Low compatibility.
When he sleeps, he dreams of diagrams. When he wakes, he sees his body glowing in imagined layers—muscle, bone, blood, light. It's not qi. Not yet. But it's becoming something else.
Something dangerous.
Secrets Must Stay Hidden
He keeps his experiments quiet. The other servants think he's just weird. The nobles don't notice him.
Good.
Because if they ever found out what he was becoming...
They'd try to harvest him.
Or worse—dissect him.
Final Scene: The Cat Test
One night, he sees a servant beating a stray cat behind the laundry hut.
Something in him flares.
Not pity. Instinct.
He steals the half-dead creature, nurses it, then—when it dies naturally two days later—eats it.
The next morning, he walks silently across a stone wall, landing with a grace he's never had before. His eyes narrow. His footsteps are weightless. His balance is perfect.
Keshav smiles to himself.
I'm not cultivating like them. I'm evolving.Let them chase qi. I will become the predator at the end of their path.