The first golden rays of dawn had just begun to paint the rooftops of Beihai City when the heavy wooden doors of the century-old Hundred Herbs Hall creaked open. This venerable establishment, with its dark mahogany counters polished to a mirror sheen by generations of patrons, stood as one of the last bastions of traditional Chinese medicine in a world increasingly dominated by Western pharmaceuticals and supernatural horrors.
Though the ancient art of herbal medicine had waned in popularity, the Hall's reputation for authentic, uncompromising quality still drew discerning clients - wealthy businessmen seeking longevity tonics, aging martial artists looking to soothe old injuries, and the occasional mysterious figure with... unconventional requirements.
Silas Veyne, the current proprietor whose family had run the apothecary for four generations, sat in his customary spot behind the main counter. The elderly master herbalist moved with the deliberate care of a man who had spent a lifetime handling precious, fragile things - both botanical and human. As steam curled from his delicate porcelain teacup, its aroma of aged pu'erh blending with the shop's earthy fragrance of dried herbs, Silas turned the yellowed pages of a leather-bound copy of the Compendium of Materia Medica with reverent fingers.
At this early hour, the shop stood silent save for the occasional creak of floorboards and the distant sounds of the city awakening. His junior apprentices wouldn't arrive for another hour and a half - the official opening time was 8:30 - but seventy-two years of predawn study sessions had made this quiet ritual as natural to him as breathing.
The sudden, nearly imperceptible scuff of boots on the shop's worn hardwood floors made Silas's head snap up with a speed that belied his age. His sharpened senses, honed by decades of identifying herbs by scent alone, had caught what most would have missed - the controlled footfalls of someone who moved like a stalking panther, their weight perfectly distributed, their presence deliberately muted.
Ethan Cross filled the doorway like a storm cloud, his broad shoulders nearly brushing the frame as he entered. The morning light streaming through the windows caught the sharp planes of his face, highlighting the recent changes - the sharper jawline, the more pronounced cheekbones, the subtle golden hue that seemed to linger just beneath his skin. Silas's practiced eye noted all of this even as his face broke into a warm smile, the deep wrinkles around his eyes crinkling like parchment.
"Ethan my boy!" Silas closed his ancient text with a soft thump, pushing his wire-rimmed glasses up his nose. "Back so soon? Don't tell me you've already worked through that last batch of mine?" His tone was light, but his sharp eyes missed nothing - the way Ethan's fingers twitched with restrained energy, the unnatural stillness of his posture, like a drawn bowstring.
In this terrifying new era where Entities stalked the night and humanity clung to survival by its fingernails, encountering a genuine practitioner of the old martial ways was rare enough to be noteworthy. But Ethan... Silas had seen enough in his long years to recognize when a man walked paths best left untrodden. There was something different about this one - something that went beyond the obvious physical transformations. The way he moved spoke of power held in perfect check, potential energy coiled and waiting.
Ethan's usual impassive expression had softened slightly, the ghost of what might almost be called cheer touching his features. "Morning, Silas." His voice was deeper than Silas remembered, resonating with a new timbre that seemed to vibrate in the chest. "Same formulation as last time. Just... multiply the quantities by ten." He paused, and when he continued, there was an edge of something almost like hunger in his tone. "And if you happen to have any of those special reserves you keep in the back... the ones that have been gathering age and potency... consider them sold."
Silas's bushy white eyebrows climbed toward his receding hairline. Ten times? The previous order - a carefully calibrated assortment of ginseng, angelica, and cordyceps - could have supplied a regiment of martial artists with medicinal baths for a month! Yet here this man stood, barely sixty hours later, not just replenishing but exponentially increasing his order. The implications were... concerning.
But seven decades in the herbal trade had taught Silas the value of discretion. When a tiger came to your door, you didn't ask why it needed meat - you simply provided what it sought and counted yourself fortunate to still be in one piece afterward. And this particular customer's... unusual consumption patterns only confirmed Silas's growing suspicion that Ethan Cross was no ordinary martial artist.
"Give me twenty minutes," the old herbalist said, already moving with surprising spryness toward the reinforced door that led to his most precious reserves. His mind raced through inventory lists - the two-hundred-year-old snow lotus roots from Tibet, the black ginseng from Korea that had been aging in the special sandalwood box since his grandfather's time, the vial of crystallized cordyceps extract that had cost him three years' profits. "I'll see what treasures I can dig up from the vaults."
The Price of Power
The digital display on the antique payment terminal blinked angrily as Ethan's remaining nine million credits evaporated in one merciless transaction. Silas had been as good as his word - two hundred pounds of the rarest, most potent botanicals in his collection now belonged to Ethan, including the showpiece: a single gnarled five-century-old mountain ginseng root whose twisted form vaguely resembled a dancing man. That one specimen alone was worth more than most people made in a decade, its value attested to by the certificate of authentication from the National Herbal Medicine Association framed beside it.
When Silas hesitantly offered to arrange discreet delivery - his eyes flicking nervously between the massive sacks of herbs and Ethan's suddenly much more muscular frame - Ethan had simply reached out with one hand and hefted the entire shipment as easily as another man might lift a bag of groceries. The sight of someone casually carrying what should have been a two-person load with such effortless grace made even the worldly old herbalist's jaw drop slightly.
The streets of the South District were mercifully empty at this transitional hour between night's terrors and day's routines. Those few early risers who did witness Ethan's passage saw only a blur - a dark figure moving with impossible speed despite being burdened with enough medicinal cargo to stock a small hospital. The weight, which would have crippled an ordinary man, barely registered to Ethan's enhanced physiology. His muscles, tendons and bones had been reforged into something far beyond human norms, each stride covering frightening distances with leopard-like efficiency.
"They weren't wrong about martial arts being a rich man's pursuit," Ethan mused as he checked his bank balance - now reduced to barely four figures. The speed at which he'd gone from millionaire to near-pauper was staggering, yet he felt no regret. In this world teeming with supernatural threats, conventional wealth meant nothing compared to personal power. The trade was more than fair: ephemeral paper currency for tangible, life-saving strength.
Gluttony's Grand Feast
Back in the relative safety of his apartment, Ethan unleashed Gluttony in full force for the first time since its enhancement. What followed wasn't so much eating as systematic demolition - his teeth, now operating with the crushing force of industrial machinery, reduced centuries-old botanical treasures to paste in seconds. His digestive system, supercharged by supernatural energies, extracted every last iota of nutrition before the fibrous mass even reached his stomach, leaving behind only inert dregs that his body expelled as fine gray ash through his pores.
[System Alert!]
[Mass Ingestion Detected - Critical Biomass Acquired]
Primary Active Components: Triterpenoids/Ginsenosides/Polysaccharides
Total Bioactive Value: 12,450% Recommended Daily Intake
[Warning: Adaptive Resistance Detected]
[Efficacy of Common Herbal Compounds Reduced by 67%]
The transformation happening within Ethan's body defied conventional biology. His bones, already denser than titanium alloy from previous enhancements, underwent further crystallization as mineral matrices rearranged themselves at the molecular level. Muscle fibers unspooled and reknit themselves into thicker, more efficient configurations, their contraction speed increasing exponentially. Even his nervous system wasn't spared - myelin sheaths thickened around screaming neurons, reducing synaptic delay to near-instantaneous levels.
The most visible external sign of this radical metamorphosis was the thick, tar-like substance weeping from every pore - a noxious amalgam of metabolic waste, environmental toxins, and the accumulated cellular detritus of a lifetime. This black ichor formed a crackling carapace that gradually flaked away to reveal skin with the tensile strength of bulletproof Kevlar yet the flexibility of spider silk.
Ethan Cross - Enhanced Metrics
Strength: 6.6 (Equivalent to 800kg deadlift)
Speed: 6.6 (Approaching 2.8 second 40-meter dash)
Constitution: 6.6 (Can withstand point-blank 9mm rounds without tissue damage)
Spirit: 5.1 (Basic psychic shielding against low-level mental intrusions)
Current Combat Rating: C-Class (Stable)
Ethan exhaled slowly, watching with detached fascination as his breath condensed in the air before him, the water vapor freezing into delicate fractal patterns on the windowpane. He flexed his hands, marveling at the play of corded muscle beneath skin that now had the dull sheen of well-oiled steel. "Now this... this is what proper armor feels like."
But the system's stark warning about diminishing returns gave him pause - the era of rapid gains from common herbs was ending. Future enhancements would require exponentially rarer, more expensive ingredients, the kind that couldn't be bought with mere money but demanded connections, favors, or less savory methods of acquisition.
As he contemplated the empty herb sacks and his nearly depleted bank account, the solution became obvious. Time to dust off the old family business. Cross & Cleansing Agency would need to reopen its doors - this time with a proprietor far more dangerous than its founder could have ever imagined.