In the remote, jagged valleys of the Azure Mist Continent, nestled among peaks perpetually veiled in a thick, suffocating fog, lay the ancestral territory of the Huo Clan. This modest family held a fragile dominion over a cluster of wind-swept villages and a handful of dwindling spirit stone mines, their influence barely extending beyond the surrounding limestone hills.
With only three cultivators currently occupying the Foundation Establishment realm—Patriarch Huo Ling, and the two Elders, Huo Wei and Huo Mei—the clan teetered perpetually on the precipice of obscurity. They survived primarily through desperate alliances with larger, more predatory sects, purchasing protection against wandering demonic beasts and the territorial hunger of rival factions.
Resources remained scarce, and genuine talent remained scarcer still; most clan members possessed spirit roots of middling, mortal quality, condemning them to a life of agonizingly slow progress upon the arduous path of cultivation.
Huo Chen, at twenty-five years of age, functioned as the very embodiment of this mediocrity. Born to a distant branch family within the clan's hierarchy, his spirit roots underwent testing at the age of seven.
The ritual stones revealed a messy, triple mixed root: earth, fire, and water affinities, all of the lowly mortal grade. Such roots occurred frequently among the lesser clans, acting as a diluted vessel that struggled to absorb and refine Qi with any measure of efficiency.
In this world, purity dictated destiny. Single-element geniuses surged through the Qi Refining realm by their mid-teens, reaching the ninth layer or even attempting the transition to Foundation Establishment before their twentieth year. Dual roots, if of earth grade or higher, promised a respectable rise by the early twenties.
However, triple mixed roots, especially those of mortal grade, imposed a crushing burden. Qi circulation felt sluggish, resembling thick mud crawling through narrow pipes. Bottlenecks appeared at every minor stage, and the comprehension of even basic techniques required years of laborious repetition.
At best, an average cultivator cursed with such roots might achieve the fourth or fifth layer of Qi Refining by age twenty-five, provided they enjoyed a steady supply of basic pills and long periods of secluded meditation. Huo Chen had managed exactly that, lingering at the fourth layer of Qi Refining after a decade of relentless, soul-crushing effort.
His days blurred into a gray routine of mining spirit stones to fill the clan's coffers, practicing the rudimentary Huo Clan Flame Palm technique until his skin blistered, and enduring the sharp, subtle disdain of his more talented main-line cousins. Whispers followed him through the damp stone halls like a persistent shadow: "A pity for the branch line—average roots, average destiny." Average destiny, he thought bitterly, wiping sweat from his brow during yet another fruitless meditation session.
Is that all I'll ever be? Another nameless nobody who dies without ever seeing Foundation Establishment? Yet, beneath this unremarkable facade lay a secret Huo Chen guarded with a fierce, silent intensity. He belonged to a different reality entirely. His soul had transmigrated from a distant, metal-choked realm called Earth, a place where cultivation existed only in myth and technology reigned supreme. Memories of towering skyscrapers, roaring automobiles, and the cold logic of scientific laws clashed daily with the Qi-infused reality around him.
These alien memories fueled a quiet, burning ambition to transcend the limitations of his current flesh. "I refuse, he had sworn to himself countless times in the darkness of his chamber. I refuse to live an average life in this world ." On this fateful morning, as the first sharp rays of dawn pierced the mist-shrouded peaks, Huo Chen sat cross-legged in his modest courtyard chamber.
The air hummed with a faint, rhythmic spiritual energy bleeding from a nearby ley line. He circulated his thin Qi through his meridians, attempting to consolidate his shaky foundation for a potential breakthrough to the fifth layer. Sweat beaded on his brow and soaked into his coarse gray robes; progress remained agonizingly slow, each cycle of his breath yielding only minuscule, almost imperceptible gains. "Nothing, he thought with growing frustration.
Hours of meditation and not even a tremor of advancement. At this rate, I'll be stuck at the fourth layer until I'm thirty." As the sun crested the horizon, marking his twenty-fifth birthday—a day of zero fanfare within the clan—a peculiar resonance stirred within the center of his dantian.
It felt like a stone dropping into a perfectly still pond, the ripples vibrating through his very marrow. Ding! The sound echoed not through the air, but deep within the sanctuary of his consciousness—a sharp, mechanical chime entirely devoid of warmth or natural origin. Huo Chen's eyes snapped open, his Qi circulation halting with a jarring abruptness.
"What?!" The word escaped his lips in a strangled whisper. A surge of unfamiliar, crystalline energy coursed through his limbs, invisible to the eye yet profound in its weight, as if the very laws of heaven and earth had suddenly imprinted a new set of rules upon his soul. 'What is this?' His heart hammered against his ribs.
'This energy—it's nothing like Qi. It feels... mechanical? 'he thought Before him, in the dark recesses of his mind, a translucent interface materialized, stark and impersonal against the backdrop of his thoughts. [System Activation Complete.] [Initial Integration: Earth Element Clone Unlocked.] [Clone Attributes: Full mobility equivalence to host. Offensive and defensive capabilities at 50% of host baseline. Shared consciousness established. Clone transfer range: 20 li.]
Huo Chen stared at the words burning in his mind's eye, his breath caught in his throat. "A system? Like the ones in those web novels I used to read on Earth? His hands trembled as he pressed them against the cold stone floor. This can't be real, he thought in disbelief." The interface faded as swiftly as it had appeared, leaving Huo Chen in a state of stunned, deafening silence.
No further explanations emerged. He extended his inner senses, probing this new, pulsating anomaly within his core. There, tethered firmly to his dantian by a silver thread of energy, pulsed a secondary presence—a clone, dormant yet shivering with the readiness to manifest. "If this is real...
He swallowed hard, his mind racing between disbelief and desperate hope. If this is truly real, then everything changes." With a single, focused thought, he willed it into existence. A shimmer of warm, earthen light coalesced in the air beside him, forming a perfect, anatomical replica of himself.
The clone shared his lithe, wiry build, his dark hair tied in a simple topknot, and the same coarse gray robes of the Huo branch members. Huo Chen's jaw went slack. He stared at his own face staring back at him, at the exact replica of the scar on his left hand, at the way the clone's chest rose and fell with breath it didn't technically need.
"This is..." His voice came out hoarse, barely audible. "This is impossible." The clone blinked. He blinked. They were the same motion, felt from two different positions in space. For a moment, Huo Chen could only gape in absolute, flabbergasted silence. Then, as the sheer absurdity of it all crashed over him—the years of suffering, the hopelessness, the despair, all rendered meaningless by this single, inexplicable gift—laughter bubbled up from deep within his chest.
It started as a chuckle, then grew louder, more uncontrolled. "Ha... haha... HAHAHA!" He clutched his sides, tears streaming down his face as wild, cathartic laughter filled his small chamber. The clone, sharing his consciousness, wore the same manic grin. Twenty-five years! Twenty-five years of being called mediocre, of being looked down upon, of scraping by in life! His laughter bordered on hysteria. And now—NOW—heaven decides to drop this in my lap? He wiped his eyes, his laughter slowly subsiding into breathless chuckles.
"Alright. Alright, let me... let me test this properly." As the clone's eyes opened, mirroring Huo Chen's own startled gaze, a seamless link of awareness snapped into place. Information and sensory input flowed bidirectionally. 'Incredible. He marveled at the sensation. I'm here, but I'm also there. I can feel the cold stone beneath me and the draft from the window against... against my other shoulder.' He occupied two points in space simultaneously; he felt the cold stone of the floor beneath his own seat, while simultaneously feeling the slight draft from the window against the clone's shoulder.
He moved the clone's arm with the same intuitive ease as his own. It's like controlling a second body. No—it IS a second body. This isn't a puppet or a technique. This is ME, split into two. A quick test—channeling a burst of Qi into a basic punch toward a nearby training dummy—confirmed the system's constraints. The clone's strike cracked the wood with a solid thud rather than shattering it as his primary body might.
It possessed the speed, but lacked the raw, destructive mass of the original. "Fifty percent baseline, Huo Chen noted, his analytical mind from Earth kicking into gear. Half the offensive power, but the same speed and mobility. And if it shares my consciousness..." His mind raced, his modern Earth logic clashing with his cultivator's instincts. This "system" defied every manual and oral tradition he had ever encountered within the Azure Mist Continent.
It felt like a manifestation of deeper, primordial elemental laws, perhaps tied to the ancient cosmic rules whispered about in forbidden scrolls. "Why now? The question gnawed at him even through his excitement. Why on my twenty-fifth birthday? Is it tied to my age? My cultivation level? Or is it something else entirely?" But the revelation had arrived with a suddenness that left him reeling.
And what invisible price accompanies such a world-breaking gift? He'd read enough stories to know that power never came free. As he pondered the implications of his new power, a sharp, rhythmic knock echoed at his chamber door. Huo Chen's eyes widened. Someone's here— "Cousin Chen," came a voice, youthful and edged with a familiar, sharp impatience. It belonged to Huo Lian, his seventeen-year-old cousin from the main line. She already occupied the sixth layer of Qi Refining, a feat attributed to her superior dual fire-earth roots of the earth grade.
To her, Huo Chen was merely a slow-moving relic of the branch family. "Damn! " Without thinking, Huo Chen willed the clone back into his shadow the instant the knock sounded, his heart hammering against his ribs. The earthen light dissolved in a swirl of ochre Qi, flowing back into his dantian. "Elder Huo shun summons all branch members to the main hall immediately," Huo Lian continued, her voice muffled by the heavy wood.
"There's news of a spirit beast incursion near the southern mines. Your shift starts in an hour—don't dawdle and hurry up." A spirit beast incursion. Huo Chen's pulse quickened, not from fear but anticipation. The door creaked open slightly, revealing Huo Lian's sharp, aristocratic features. Her eyes scanned the room with a flicker of mild curiosity, lingering for a moment on the space where the clone had stood only a second before. Huo Chen kept his expression carefully neutral, even as his thoughts raced.
Did she sense anything? No... no, her cultivation isn't high enough to detect the residual Qi. He stood up, smoothing his robes and masking his face with the usual expression of tired, "average" compliance. "The game has changed, he thought, a small, secret smile threatening to break through his careful mask. The board has been reset entirely." He moved toward the door, his movements slow and unremarkable, just another branch disciple responding to yet another summons.
But inside, something had ignited. Something that had been dormant for twenty-five long years. Hope. For the first time in twenty-five years, Huo Chen realized as he prepared to follow Huo Lian to the main hall, I'm actually looking forward to this summons. He wasn't walking toward another day of mediocrity and obscurity. He was walking toward his first real opportunity. His first real test. And this time, he wouldn't be facing it alone.