The corpse at his feet was already cooling, but Zǔ Zhòu's examination of his new vessel had only just begun.
A knock at the door interrupted his self-assessment. "Young Master Wei? Young Master, Chen hasn't returned with your morning tea."
Perfect timing.
"Enter," Zǔ Zhòu called, his voice still strange in his ears. He didn't move from the mirror, didn't attempt to hide the body. Why would he?
The door opened to reveal a middle-aged woman in servant's livery, her face carved with the particular lines that came from decades of forced smiles. She took one step inside, saw Chen's corpse, and froze.
"Ah," Zǔ Zhòu said, turning from the mirror with theatrical slowness. "Chen proved... inadequate. You'll need to clean this up." He paused, studying her face as horror and trained obedience warred in her expression. "Actually, no. Come here first. I require assistance with something."
The woman—Hong, his new memories supplied, head of household staff—took a step backward. "Young Master, perhaps I should fetch—"
"Did I ask for your opinion on what you should fetch?" His voice remained conversational, which somehow made it worse. "I said come here. Or would you prefer to join Chen? I'm sure the floor has room for two."
Hong approached on legs that visibly trembled. Good. Fear was such a useful diagnostic tool.
"Tell me, Hong," Zǔ Zhòu said, rolling up his sleeve with careful precision, "do you have children?"
The question broke through her trained composure. "Y-yes, Young Master. A daughter. She works in the kitchens."
"Excellent. Fetch her."
"Young Master?"
"Are you hard of hearing? Your daughter. Bring her here. Now."
Hong's face went through a fascinating series of expressions—confusion, suspicion, and then terrible understanding. She knew Liu Wei's reputation. Knew what a demand like this might mean. But she also knew that refusal meant death.
"At once, Young Master," she whispered, and fled.
While waiting, Zǔ Zhòu examined the corpse more closely. The body's strength was pitiful, but he'd managed the strangulation well enough. The muscle memory was there, just... crude. Unrefined. Like everything else about this vessel.
He pulled a decorative knife from the wall—because of course Liu Wei had decorative weapons, the kind that looked impressive but couldn't cut butter—and tested its edge against his palm. A shallow cut, barely enough to draw blood. The pain was... interesting. This body had clearly never experienced real suffering. Every nerve seemed fresh, oversensitive, untested.
"How delightfully virginal," he murmured, making another cut, deeper this time. Blood welled up, and with it, pain that would have had the original Liu Wei crying for his mother. Zǔ Zhòu merely observed it, cataloguing the sensation like a scholar taking notes.
The door burst open. Hong had returned, dragging a girl of perhaps fourteen—small, underfed, with the same worried eyes as her mother. Good bones though. She'd be pretty if properly nourished. Not that it mattered.
"Young Master," Hong began, "please, she's innocent—"
"Of course she is," Zǔ Zhòu agreed. "That's what makes this educational. Now, both of you, watch carefully."
He held up his bleeding palm, letting them see the cuts clearly. Then, with his other hand, he grabbed the girl's wrist. She tried to pull away, but even this pathetic body had enough strength to hold a malnourished child.
"Lesson one," he said conversationally, drawing the decorative knife across the girl's palm. She screamed. Hong lunged forward, then stopped as Zǔ Zhòu raised an eyebrow. "Interrupt again and I'll remove her fingers instead of just borrowing some blood."
The cut on the girl's palm was precise—deep enough to bleed freely, shallow enough to avoid permanent damage. He pressed their palms together, blood mingling, and began to circulate his qi.
It was a basic technique, so fundamental that even Body Tempering cultivators could manage it. Draw in the life force from another's blood, use it to accelerate healing. Most righteous cultivators would be horrified at the thought. Blood cultivation was forbidden in polite society.
But Zǔ Zhòu had never been polite.
The girl's eyes widened as she felt her life force being drawn out. Not enough to harm her—he needed her conscious for this—but enough that she could feel the violation. Her mother made a sound like a wounded animal.
"Fascinating," Zǔ Zhòu observed, watching his palm slowly knit closed. "The efficiency is terrible. I'm pulling perhaps one percent of available life force. This body has no idea how to properly extract essence."
He released the girl, who stumbled back into her mother's arms. Both were crying now, clutching each other like they could ward off evil through proximity.
"You see?" he said, examining his nearly-healed palm. "Your blood barely managed to close these shallow cuts. In my previous body, I could have drained you dry with a touch and regenerated from near-death. This vessel is pathetically weak."
He made another series of cuts, testing different depths, different angles. Pain flared each time, and each time he catalogued it, filed it away. The body's pain tolerance was laughable. Liu Wei had probably never experienced anything worse than a training bruise.
"Now then," he said, turning back to the terrified pair. "Let's test something else. Hong, hold your daughter still."
"Young Master, please—"
"Hold. Her. Still."
The woman's hands shook as she gripped her daughter's shoulders. The girl was hyperventilating now, eyes wild with terror. Perfect.
Zǔ Zhòu didn't touch her. Didn't need to. Instead, he began to circulate his qi in a specific pattern, one that shouldn't have been possible at Body Tempering Third Stage. But knowledge was a wonderful thing, and he knew shortcuts that cultivation manuals would call impossible.
The fear in the room became almost tangible. The girl's terror, the mother's despair—emotions so thick they practically dripped from the air. And with the right technique, even this pathetic body could feed on them.
The wounds on his palm began to close faster. Not from the girl's blood this time, but from her fear itself. Emotional energy converted to life force through demonic cultivation methods that this world had probably forgotten existed.
"Oh, that's much better," Zǔ Zhòu sighed in satisfaction. "Your terror is far more nourishing than your blood. How efficient."
He let them see his palm—completely healed now, not even a scar remaining. Then he laughed, and both servants flinched as if struck.
"You can go," he said, waving dismissively. "Take Chen's body with you. Have it burned. No investigation, no questions. He slipped and broke his neck. Tragic accident."
Hong grabbed her daughter and Chen's corpse with desperate efficiency, dragging both toward the door. She paused at the threshold, looking back with eyes that held a new kind of fear. Not just terror of death, but the deeper horror of realizing that something fundamental had changed about their young master.
"Oh, and Hong?" Zǔ Zhòu added just as she was about to escape. "Your daughter has lovely blood. I may need to borrow some again later. Do make sure she eats well. Malnourished blood is like watered wine—functional, but hardly satisfying."
The door slammed behind them, and Zǔ Zhòu was alone again. He settled into a meditation position, turning his consciousness inward to properly examine the original Liu Wei's memories.
They were all there, seventeen years of petty cruelty and wasted potential. The boy had been the third son of the Liu family—not heir, not spare, just... extra. His father, Liu Tiansheng, was a Core Formation cultivator who ran the family with iron discipline. His mother, Wei Lianhua, was a Foundation Establishment cultivator from a minor noble family, brought in for her bloodline rather than her power.
Elder Brother Liu Feng—the genius, already at Qi Condensation Seventh Stage at nineteen. Being groomed as heir, prideful but genuinely talented.
Second Brother Liu Chen—named after some ancestor, not the dead servant—away at the Soaring Phoenix Academy. Competent but unremarkable.
Younger Sister Liu Mei—twelve years old, just beginning cultivation. Sweet, innocent, doted on by everyone. The family's little treasure.
"Pathetically weak," Zǔ Zhòu murmured, sorting through the memories like a librarian organizing books. "But delightfully positioned."
The Liu family controlled Azure Cloud City and its surrounding territories. Not a major power, but respectable. They had enemies, of course—the Zhang family to the north, the Chen family to the east. Trade disputes, cultivation resource conflicts, the usual petty squabbles that passed for intrigue in the mortal world.
Liu Wei had been a disappointment to everyone. Decent talent wasted on laziness and cruelty. His father had largely written him off, his mother made excuses, his brothers ignored him, and his sister...
Ah, his sister still loved him. Still brought him sweets and asked about his cultivation. Still believed her third brother could become someone worthwhile if he just tried harder.
"How precious," Zǔ Zhòu said, and his smile would have sent her running if she'd seen it. "She'll make an excellent long-term project."
The memories revealed more useful information. Secret passages in the manor—Liu Wei had used them to spy on servant girls bathing. Hidden caches of spirit stones—stolen from the family treasury to buy wine and prostitutes. The location of cultivation manuals, pill supplies, weapon storage.
And most interesting—the family had a secret. Something about bloodlines and ancient pacts. Liu Wei hadn't known the details, had barely paid attention during the subtle hints and careful conversations. But Zǔ Zhòu recognized the signs. The Liu family was hiding something significant.
"Well," he said, standing and stretching in his new body. "This should be entertaining."
He looked around the room one more time—the cooling tea, the blood on the carpet, the lingering fear that seemed to cling to the walls like incense smoke. It was a good start, but only a start.
This body was weak. The cultivation was pathetic. The resources were limited.
But he had knowledge spanning fifty thousand years of cultivation. He had comprehension of laws that this reality hadn't even discovered yet. He had patience measured in eons and creativity that had once made gods weep.
Most importantly, he had a universe full of victims just waiting to help him grow strong.
Zǔ Zhòu walked to the window, looking out over Azure Cloud City as the morning sun painted it gold. Somewhere out there were temporal scars containing fragments of his former power. Somewhere out there was a Heavenly Dao that thought it had caged him.
His reflection in the window showed a young man's face wearing an ancient monster's smile.
The game had indeed begun.