"Let's see how long I can last."
A dull ache, now manageable for him. A kind of pain that still reminds you the body is useless, but gives you time to breathe. A huge evolution.
"Great. My golden finger isn't a flying sword, it's a fucking mental painkiller." He thought with the bitter sarcasm that was becoming his only companion in these lonely days. His body, though sore, was much better than before; at least he hadn't died. And even though he was being sarcastic, he became thoughtful. It really did seem like a cliché, an item given by his destroyed family that saved him... Was this luck? "Can I consider myself lucky to be alive here?" He wondered.
Forgetting every other detail completely, today he needed to get out of there. He didn't even remember that just hours before, there was a beast deeper in the cave where he had been.
Following the path he had previously tried when he was thinking of leaving, he didn't see much besides trees, rocks, and, of course, DANGER.
"It's impossible not to have beasts and monsters around here," he thought with absolute certainty. He might not be an expert in survival, but he had read enough of the genre to know.
The hillside outside was a hell. Loose rocks, treacherous roots, and a thick forest that seemed to want to swallow him. The smell of pine and wet earth was suffocating. Hunger, a blade from the inside out, was already in full swing. But he had to move. He had to find water.
He began to drag himself toward the exit, each step a reminder of how broken he was. But the path called to him, a trail that his instincts, or the memories of the original Qin Yami, guided him on. He followed the sound of a stream, a thread of hope amidst so much green garbage. But along the way, vertigo hit hard. Exhaustion washed over him completely.
"No. I'm not going to die like this." Once again, the symptom of exhaustion would kill him, but this time there was no necklace to help him!
With his few remaining strengths, he closed his eyes. He didn't try to pull in Qi, because he already knew that was a joke. He had nothing, he was a complete joke. Instead, he focused on the cold sensation on his arm. The silver moon. The blade.
The "Blade of Will" was forged again, with all his stubbornness and anger. But this time, the target was not the pain. It was the exhaustion. The feeling of every muscle screaming, every fiber about to give out. He cut it.
It wasn't a miracle. The fatigue was still there, somewhere, but he no longer felt the overwhelming oppression. It was as if the blade had separated the sensation from reality, giving him a brief, but crucial, moment to breathe. Enough to get up and keep going.
He dragged himself to the stream. He drank the cold water, which seemed clean, but he knew that was just a dream. Hunger, however, was still there. He searched the ground, the memories of Qin Yami warning him about the danger of unknown plants. It was then that he saw it. Not some eye-catching xianxia fruit, but a tuft of white, bitter roots. The memories confirmed: safe to eat, but completely tasteless.
He ate them, tasting dirt, the texture of sand. It was shit. But it was life. Even so, he ate with gusto.
While he was eating, a sound. Not a rustle of an animal, but something more. Footsteps. Slow. Heavy. And low voices.
Panic grabbed him. That real fear, the same that had paralyzed his legs in the cave. He hid behind a fallen log. They were coming from the same path he was following, down the river. Were they the bastards who beat him up? Or other servant disciples?
He remained still, his heart pounding in his chest. He had read enough stories to know that other humans could be salvation... or the worst threat. His attackers were probably out there. But maybe... maybe there was another chance. A new path. A savior!
"What a load of crap I'm thinking... A savior." He laughed at himself mentally.
The sound slowly faded. He waited, his whole body trembling. He was still weak, injured, and alone. But he had a spark. A power that was not about accumulating Qi, but about cutting. And a path that now had the mark of others. He got up, wiping the dirt from his hands. That path, leading to other humans, was the only one he had. And that, as much as he hated the irony, was the only thing he could hold on to. He didn't want to follow it. But he had no choice.
With a new sense of urgency, he began to follow the stream. To a place he didn't know would be his salvation or his end. He just knew that this time, he would go in with his head held high. Whatever happened, would happen. And he was ready. Or that's what he tried to believe.
The imaginary trail he followed was narrow, winding through the dense forest. "Qi helps trees get stronger" was an idea he now took as an obvious certainty.
It didn't seem like he was still below the sect; he had walked a long way, he knew that. With each step, the stream ran faster beside him, its waters singing a song of danger and destiny. The sun, now in the middle of the sky, barely penetrated the canopy, leaving the forest in a constant gloom, though not as deep as the cave where he had woken up. It was a place where shadows seemed to have a life of their own. And for Qin Yami, with each step, the feeling that he wasn't alone grew.
It wasn't the sound of human footsteps this time. It was the silence. A silence that seemed to have the weight of his life at stake. His situation had been a total mess since he woke up. The entire forest seemed to be holding its breath.
"What the hell is this?" He whispered to the "nothing" in front of him. The memories of Qin Yami warned him about the beasts of this world. The ones that hid in the shadows to slowly eat their prey, amidst the desperate screams of villagers. The ones that moved like ghosts.
The instinct of the modern man inside him—'Bah, he had never even faced this danger on Earth'—in turn, screamed for him to run. But where to? He was at the bottom of a steep forest, with the only path being the stream he was following.
His heart started beating faster. He tried to use the Blade of Will to cut the fear, but the feeling of being watched was so strong that the blade could barely slice the edge of the panic. He was at his limit. His body, his mind, everything seemed about to explode.
It was then that he saw it. His fear immediately exploded in his motionless body.
Not in front of him, not behind. In his periphery. A shadow that moved against the sun. It wasn't the shadow of a tree, it wasn't the shadow of a rock. It was a shadow in the shape of an animal, it wasn't a wolf, but a... huge dog, three times the size of a standard large dog, with eyes glowing with a dull red, almost the color of his blood... The beast moved between the trees, making no sound. Its prey seemed obvious in this scenario...
A real beast. It was the Shadow Hound. The memories of Qin Yami came to mind: a low-level creature for cultivators, but mortal for anyone who couldn't use Qi. 'I fit that situation,' he thought with fear and desperate sarcasm. Its main ability: illusions using the prey's fear. The creature could distort the perception of danger and move without sound.
"Holy shit," he thought, his throat dry. "I can't run. I can't fight. What a cliché, what a shitty cliché."
The Shadow Hound moved again, this time closer to the protagonist in a state of panic... The dull red of its eyes seemed to penetrate the darkness of the forest and pierce his mind. Suddenly, Qin Yami was no longer in the forest. He was back in his apartment, sitting in front of his computer, where he played a famous block game. The smell of coffee, the sound of the keyboard, the familiarity of his previous life. He smiled. It was just a dream that today he valued as something good. Soon he would wake up. But the smell of the forest and the pain in his shoulder were still there. And the hunger. And the vertigo. The illusion was good, but it wasn't perfect.
He remembered what he had done with the exhaustion. He had to cut the illusion to survive. "I'm going to live!" Without him noticing, his tattoo began to glow as the night deepened, perhaps helping his will to survive. Making him more manly than he normally was.
With an almost fatal mental effort, he closed his eyes. The Blade of Will was forged again, but this time, he guided it toward the "apartment," the "coffee," the "smell of his computer." He cut the smell, the sound, the sense of familiarity that that place provided his life. The world shattered into broken shards, and kept breaking until it disappeared completely.
When he opened his eyes, the apartment had disappeared, and he was once again in the now-dark forest. The Shadow Hound, confused, was closer, its red eyes blinking in disbelief. The illusion was its main hunting tool, and Qin Yami had cut it. But the irritated beast didn't give up entirely.
It lunged, not with an illusion, but with a physical attack aimed at the strange prey. Its speed was that of lightning, its claws, sharp as blades.
"Shit!" Qin Yami screamed, trying to get away without any reaction amidst his desperation!
He had no speed. No strength. The beast reached him in a second. A claw pierced his right leg, a deep cut that made him fall to the ground, blood gushing. The pain was excruciating, the panic absolute. He was finished. It was the end. He dragged himself away, the tears in his eyes not of sadness, but of anger and despair.
He was weak on Earth and here he could only see despair in his eyes. The trash who had never found his footing before, always with slave jobs, fake girlfriends and scammers, complete loneliness for an orphan from Earth. Yes, he never had a family, always alone. And he was going to die as trash, like the original Qin Yami. His story wouldn't be one of glory, but of total failure. There would be no immortal master, no system, no hero. MUCH LESS a face-slapping scene. Just a corpse in the forest.
But the image of the "Draft Man" came to his mind almost as a warning. A possibility. A hope that ever since he learned it, had saved his life countless times... The being that didn't add power, Qi, nothing, but subtracted what was there with seemingly easy effort.
"Subtract," he whispered, feeling the tattoo on his arm burn with a new energy. He didn't try to heal the wound, he didn't try to fight the beast. He wasn't strong enough for that. He looked into the red eyes of the beast, which was preparing for the final blow. He saw the desire for blood, the hunger, the intention to kill. It was there that he forged the Blade of Will one last time. With all his strength, with all his pain, with all his will to live.
He didn't cut the beast. He cut the intention.
The blade of will projected from his arm, not as an energy of qi, but as a pure concept. A silver thread that went straight into the creature's mind. It was a clean cut. Precise, even.
The Shadow Hound stopped. It stopped as if there were no longer a fatal attack to be made. It looked like an animal that had been stuffed for a museum exhibit. The blow that would have killed Qin Yami was immediately suspended. Its red eyes blinked, not in anger, but in complete confusion, even for a beast without logical reasoning. The creature was still a predator, but its intention to attack in that moment had been cut. It looked at him, but no longer saw him as prey. It saw him as... nothing. A void in its animal instinct. The Blade of Will had subtracted his presence from the beast's mind.
Temporarily, though functionally.
Qin Yami used this instant, not to kill the Hound, but to drag himself away. He dragged himself, with his leg bleeding more than before, away from the confused creature. He fled. It was not a victory of overcoming his challenges and reaching the heavens like some idiots do by challenging gods out there.
It was a victory of survival!
He ran to the point of exhaustion, until the blade of will in his mind could no longer cut the fatigue. He fell to the ground, exhausted, out of breath. The blood from his leg was a dark stain on the damp earth. But he was alive. He had defeated the beast, not as he wanted to, but it was a victory. Not with strength, but with his mind. He didn't have a "golden finger" to heal himself, but he had one to defend himself.
"I want to die..." Before he could complete that murmur between his gasping breaths, he remembered the dream where he saw himself, and simply did not finish his sentence. He kept fighting.
He dragged himself to the stream, washed the wound with the cold water, and with the last remaining piece of his tunic, he bandaged his leg. The pain was real, but he cut it again, making it a distant echo.
He looked at the tattoo on his arm. The moon and the blade. His true power. The Art of the Blade that Spins the Moonlight.
"I'm not a Protagonist who came here to overcome the heavens and get heroines," he whispered to the void with conviction. "I'm just a guy who doesn't want to die. I don't want to live like this forever, since I'm here, I want to survive." Amidst his thoughts and solitary words, his tattoo, without Qin noticing, seemed to glow in response to his declaration, before dimming again.
In the distance, beyond the gnarled trees, he saw a light. Not a resplendent city with jade towers, nor the ethereal light of an immortal sect at the top of the world.
It was a harsh, yellowish light, flickering in the darkness. Gray smoke rose in thin, irregular wisps into the dark sky, mixing with the mist of the forest around him that was already thinning out into open fields. It was a village. A poor village.
He dragged himself to a nearby rock, falling to his knees, and watched.
The "bonfires" were actually small fires of dry branches, lit outside huts made of mud and straw. The walls were of compacted earth, cracked and full of holes. The straw roofs seemed to have been patched so many times that they barely held together for a rain. The weak light of the fires revealed silhouettes of people, thin, hunched figures who moved slowly. The air did not vibrate with the Qi of powerful cultivators, but with a stagnant, almost dirty coolness. The place seemed like a piece of land forgotten by time and the very energy of the world.
"What the hell is this?" he whispered to the void, sarcasm returning to the surface. "Where are the cultivators? Is this the kind of place where a protagonist usually appears?" He thought as if he had already convinced himself that yes, it was. It was a very classic environment for a Long Chen, or a Han Li, that kind of protagonist who starts from scratch, in a shitty place, and becomes the greatest cultivator.
He laughed, a dry and humorless sound, "Arghh" though in pain. Where was the eccentric Master who would take him in and reveal his innate talent? Where was the secret treasure, hidden in a straw hut, waiting for him to find it?
"As if."
There, all he saw was misery. The bonfires weren't for warmth, but to ward off the darkness and, perhaps, predators. The people who moved between the huts didn't have the bearing of cultivators, but the suspicion and tiredness in the eyes of those who fought to survive every day. The Qi in the air was so rare that he doubted anyone there could even refine the first strand of energy.
How did he know this? It was evident even for a bottomless bucket like him, who had tried before without success.
That village was not worthy of a single chapter in a novel. It was a fucked-up settlement, forgotten at the end of a mountain, where people barely ate and, he would risk saying, the Qi was so scarce that cultivation was a joke. How far have I walked, he thought with strangeness. He didn't see a single cultivator, not a single sign of power. Just a cluster of misery. The people there were not potential immortals; they were survivors. And the light was a warning.
He was no longer at the foot of the Azure Mountain Sect, but on the edge of a human society. And, as he well knew, the danger that came from men was often worse than that from beasts. He got up, staggering, with his leg throbbing and hunger roaring. The Village was his only chance. And, at the same time, it could be his last.
"Okay, I'll come up with a plan," he murmured to himself, his breath coming out in panting clouds due to his exhaustion. "Enter limping, look as pathetic as possible - which won't be hard - and hope they have more pity than fear of seeing a bloody man around."
He hated the idea. But the alternative was to bleed to death. With a groan that was half pain, half resignation, he started to move...
The first to notice him was a small girl, with a dirty face and tangled hair. Her eyes, large and dark, widened with a raw curiosity. She ran inside a hut and, seconds later, an older woman came out, holding a stick with a clearly blunt blade. Although to him, if she attacked, it was his end.
"Who are you?" her voice was hoarse, suspicious.
Qin Yami raised his empty hands in a sign of surrender. "I'm hurt. I was attacked by a beast."
The woman, Grandma Zhen, examined his torn sect robes. "You're from the Azure Mountain Sect," she stated with contempt. "What is one of the immortals' dogs doing crawling around our village?"
"They left me for dead," Qin Yami said, his brutal honesty being his only currency. "They beat me and threw me off the mountain."
The woman studied him and, finally, relented, more out of pragmatism than kindness. "Come in. But don't expect anything for free."
The relief almost knocked him down. Inside the miserable hut, Grandma Zhen cleaned his wound with water that burned like fire and applied a smelly herbal paste. The pain was so intense that Qin Yami's vision went dark. Instinctively, he forged the Blade of Will. He didn't cut the entire pain, but trimmed the sharpest edges, transforming the sharp agony into a dull, throbbing ache. He managed not to scream, which seemed to impress the old woman who was used to the screams of her patients.
Grandma Zhen was a local healer and helped everyone in the village. No one knew how she ended up there; she herself had never told anyone even after so many years.
She gave him a bowl of thin broth and, as he drank, the sound of a fight came from outside.
"Trash! Do you still dare to walk around as if you were a person?" a young and arrogant voice shouted for all to hear.
Qin looked through a crack in the mud wall. Outside, a skinny boy, maybe fifteen, was on the ground. Three other young men, larger and healthier, surrounded him oppressively. The boy on the ground was protecting a girl even smaller with his body - the same one he had seen first when he arrived.
"Oh, it's not possible..." Qin Yami thought, a tired, ironic smile forming on his face. He knew this scene. He had read it hundreds of times on Earth in his dark room.
It was the beginning of a story! "Don't fuck with me," he thought as he watched and noted to himself, like a madman who heard himself.
"Cliché Number one," The young protagonist from a fallen family, called "trash" by everyone, but with a hidden potential and a steel-like determination...
"Leave my brother alone, Bao!" the girl shouted, her eyes shining with tears and anger.
"Cliché Number 2," The cute and loyal little sister, the only person in the world who believes in the protagonist.
"Shut up, Mei. Or maybe we'll take you instead of this useless thing," said the leader, Bao, with a malicious smile.
"How original," Qin Yami whispered to himself, feeling a strange mix of pity and contempt for them treating a child that way. But what could he do? He was no better than them, even worse.
He was watching the first chapter of a generic cultivation novel. The boy on the ground, probably named something like Xiao Yan or Lin Fan, would clench his fists, swear revenge, and soon find a magical ring or a ghost master to start his journey to the top.
Grandma Zhen sighed, ignoring the fight as if it were the chirping of birds. "Don't mind the boys. They're idiots. Young Xiao Fan used to be the hope of the village, since his father was the old local chief before he fell ill, but he couldn't awaken his Qi at last year's ceremony. Since then, he's become the punching bag for all these kids."
Xiao Fan. Qin Yami almost laughed. Of course the name was something like that.
The fight outside dispersed when an adult severely shouted at them. The girl, Lin Mei, helped her brother up. Instead of going home, she walked to Grandma Zhen's hut, bringing a small, ugly yellowish and mossy root.
"Grandma Zhen, I found this Sun Root. I heard it helps stop bleeding," she said with a shy voice, glancing at Qin Yami. She offered the root not to the grandmother, but in his direction.
Qin Yami remained silent. The protagonist's little sister was offering him, a fucked-up stranger, one of her few resources. This was not in the standard script.
Grandma Zhen took the root. "Silly child. That's for your soup. But I appreciate it." She looked at Qin Yami. "Your debt isn't just to me now."
In the following days, while his leg healed slowly, Qin Yami remained like a shadow in Grandma Zhen's hut, a silent observer of the drama of the fucked-up Village, or whatever that hole was called. He saw Xiao Fan training punches against a tree, his face full of impotent fury. He saw Lin Mei bringing him food, always with a worried look. It was a pathetic and predictable spectacle.
And in that time, he also noticed the 3rd Cliché, Lin Mei was Xiao Fan's adopted sister. What a generic story, he thought.
Then, the news arrived. The news that made Qin Yami's stomach churn, not out of fear, but from a sudden and predatory sense of opportunity. Until this moment he was not the same as when he woke up, he was already calmer than before, enough to know how to make good decisions in his head.
"The emissaries from the Purple Blue Sect will arrive in three days!" the current village chief announced. "It's the Annual Village Selection! Prepare your most promising children!"
An air of excitement and panic took over the village. The Purple Blue Sect was one of the great powers of the poor region he was in, almost equal to the Azure Mountain that had discarded him. For them, being chosen was like ascending to the heavens. Very rarely, they would hold tests in small villages, in search of "Talents."
Qin Yami, however, saw the plot gears turn with a terrifying clarity in his mind. A sect... a selection... a little sister who was too kind for her own good...
"Oh, shit," he thought, the realization hitting him like a bolt of lightning. "It's not him. It's her."
Cliché Number 6? 7, maybe? The cute little sister isn't just moral support for the vengeful protagonist. She possesses a "Pure Yin Spiritual Body" or "Celestial Roots of the Nine Mysteries" or some other poetic nonsense. The cultivators will come, ignore the "trash" brother, and try to take the girl by force, promising her glory while seeing her only as a cultivation cauldron or a rare ingredient.
The brother, Xiao Fan, would obviously object. There would be a confrontation. A massacre of pride. Humiliation. And in the middle of this chaos... an opportunity.
For him, of course. A smile finally broke on Qin's face, for the first time since he came to this world. An opportunity for the story's extra. For the injured guy recovering in the corner of the hut.
While the village buzzed in preparation, Qin Yami remained quiet. He felt no pity for Xiao Fan or Lin Mei. They were main characters in a generic story in his mind, pieces on a chessboard that he knew well. He felt sorry for himself for being there instead of his room. But if the script insisted on happening in front of him, the least he could do was take advantage of it.
His plan was simple. During the climax of the "Selection," when the cultivators evaluating were focused on the girl, and the villagers were in a panic or in awe, no one would be paying attention to a crippled and useless servant.
It would be the perfect distraction. The ideal cover for him to simply disappear in the direction of Xiao Fan, after the classic humiliation, the golden finger would come, maybe even "borrowing a misfortune from the protagonist," anything of value that could help him.
Help Xiao Fan! Maybe it would be good to gain the hero's favor... Many ideas flowed...
He wasn't the hero who would save the damsel. He wasn't the rival who would challenge the protagonist. He was the unlucky guy who was in the right place, at the right time, to take advantage of someone else's tragedy.
"Sorry," he thought, looking at the figure of Xiao Fan who was once again being pushed into the mud by Bao and his friends. "Your story of suffering will be my ticket to freedom from this hell."
And with this new, he would say cold, thought, he focused on one thing: recovering his strength. Without noticing, his way of acting became more pliable, cold. The Technique was cutting something he hadn't yet realized: his way of being, his emotions... even if subtly.
He had three days until the show began.