Chương 12: Chapter 11

He can only imagine: bones reinforced beyond ordinary limits, muscles operating under constant Qi support, reaction speed enhanced, and healing accelerated. Fatigue reduced. Temperature regulated. Among other things. And that was before techniques. Before weapons. Before intentionally releasing Qi outward. Ling Tian's imagination supplied images he did not particularly enjoy. A fist striking stone and the stone losing. A person covering hundreds of meters before a mortal could react.

A blade moving faster than the eye could catch. A casual disagreement ending with structural damage to the surrounding district. He finally understood something he had observed in Hua City. Why everyone knelt. He had interpreted the behavior correctly before. Fear. But now he understood the numbers behind it. The relationship between cultivators and mortals was not equivalent to the relationship between aristocrats and peasants. It was closer to the relationship between humans and insects.

An aristocrat in his previous world still required institutions, money, security, police, employees, and weapons. A cultivator carried enforcement personally. If someone could kill ten ordinary people before any of them finished drawing a weapon, law became largely theoretical. Ling Tian stared through the trees. The world suddenly felt larger. And more dangerous. His current improvement had not made him powerful. It had simply given him enough perspective to understand how weak he still was.

That realization was useful. He welcomed it. Arrogance killed quickly in this world. The sooner he became afraid of the correct things, the better. Ling Tian resumed jogging. His destination was close now. The familiar rumble reached him first. Water. The sound thickened as he moved through the trees until the forest opened and the waterfall appeared ahead. The massive white curtain crashed down the black cliff face into the basin below, sending cold mist outward in rolling clouds.

Morning sunlight caught the spray and broke into pale fragments across the wet stone. Ling Tian slowed to a walk and stopped completely at the edge of the rocky bank. He checked himself. Breathing stable. Legs functional. No shaking. No cramping. No abnormal pain. The Dantian remained unchanged. The Earth Qi still rotated with the same patient rhythm. He had just covered a distance that would have left the previous version of this body incapacitated for the rest of the day.

The deposit did not appear noticeably diminished. Ling Tian frowned. Another question. If the Qi supported his body but was not being consumed, what exactly was happening? Was it acting as a catalyst? Was it circulating energy that later returned to the core? Was it somehow drawing additional ambient power indirectly? Did the body itself replenish what was being used? He lacked the information to answer any of those. Good. That meant the next stage of research had already volunteered itself.

Ling Tian walked toward one of the calmer pools near the edge of the waterfall. The surface reflected him. A thin boy stood there. Dark hair in need of cutting. Pale face. Hollow cheeks. Old bruises. Tattered clothes. Bare feet scarred from mountain paths. Nothing about the reflection looked dangerous. Ling Tian studied it. That too was useful. The power disparity in this world encouraged visible displays.

Cultivators wore expensive robes, carried ornate weapons, traveled with supernatural beasts, and radiated enough spiritual pressure to make entire streets bow. Ling Tian possessed none of those things. Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings. Good. A starving orphan attracted pity, contempt, or indifference. All three were safer than interest. He raised one hand and clenched it into a fist.

The fingers looked small, but the tendons beneath the skin felt considerably less fragile than they had yesterday. A faint smile touched his mouth. He had no intention of correcting anyone's assumptions. If the world looked at him and saw a weak mortal child, then the world was welcome to continue doing so. Information asymmetry was an asset. Especially when you owned very few other assets. The smile disappeared as quickly as it had appeared. He still needed food. He still needed money.

The shack still required repairs. His knowledge of cultivation remained dangerously incomplete. And somewhere in Hua City, a probable protagonist with cursed jewelry was likely beginning the kind of personal crisis that eventually caused regional property damage. Ling Tian had plenty to do. First, wash. Then gather Cloudmint. Then test whether the improved spiritual perception made harvesting faster. Then return before hunger reminded him that magical efficiency did not necessarily replace nutrition.

One experiment at a time. The rule remained unchanged. The only difference was that Ling Tian now possessed evidence the strategy could work. One microscopic investment had already paid its first dividend. He intended to see exactly how far the returns could go.

He stood near the edge of the waterfall for a moment, letting the cold spray settle across his face while he reviewed the results of the morning. Ten kilometers of aggressive movement across hostile terrain. No meaningful exhaustion. No joint pain. No obvious depletion of the Earth Qi inside his Dantian. Useful. Also deeply suspicious. Unfortunately, further investigation could wait. Ling Tian had another problem that cultivation had not solved. He smelled terrible.

Several days of mountain travel, sweat, dirt, cheap smoke, and inconsistent access to bathing had created conditions he considered unacceptable even by medieval standards. Ling Tian stripped off his tattered tunic and laid it across a relatively dry stone near the bank. Cold air immediately struck his exposed skin, raising goosebumps across his narrow shoulders and ribs. The body might now tolerate low temperatures considerably better, but tolerance did not magically make freezing water pleasant.

He stepped into the basin. The first touch of mountain runoff around his ankles was viciously cold. Ling Tian stopped. He reconsidered every decision that had brought him to this exact point. Then he kept walking. Water climbed past his knees, then his thighs. The basin near the outer edge was relatively shallow, but the current still tugged insistently at his legs. He crouched and splashed water over his chest. His lungs forgot how to function. Ling Tian jerked upright with a sharp gasp.

"Wonderful." Apparently Earth Qi could dramatically improve physical endurance but had not yet removed the nervous system's ability to complain. He gritted his teeth and submerged fully. Freezing water swallowed him. For several brutal seconds, every muscle in his body tightened at once. Then the Earth Qi inside his Dantian gave its slow, familiar pulse. A grounding sensation spread outward through his torso, and the worst of the cold shock retreated.

His body did not become warm, but the instinctive panic faded enough for him to move normally. Ling Tian surfaced, pushed wet hair out of his face, and began scrubbing. Basic hygiene had become significantly more important since his transmigration. Back on Earth, a dirty scratch was unpleasant. Here, where antibiotics did not exist and the local medical establishment appeared to involve herbs, spiritual energy, and confidence, an infected wound could become a legitimate threat to survival.

He had already accumulated enough cuts across his feet, calves, and hands from mountain travel. Allowing dirt and sweat to remain ground into them because bathing was uncomfortable would be exceptionally stupid. He scrubbed his skin using coarse sand and smooth river gravel, paying particular attention to the dried mud around his ankles and knees. Once reasonably clean, he retrieved his tunic and beat the fabric repeatedly against a broad flat stone at the edge of the basin.

Brown water streamed from it almost immediately. Yesterday, the task would have been tiring. Today, it barely registered. Ling Tian paused midway through wringing out the fabric. The difference was almost irritating. He twisted harder. Water poured from the tunic while the thin muscles in his forearms tightened beneath the skin. The cloth compressed far more easily than he remembered, and the effort required to repeatedly strike it against the rock was negligible. The Earth Qi turned patiently inside his core.

Another dividend. He spread the damp tunic across a broad stone exposed to the growing morning sunlight. It would not dry quickly in the mist, but wearing it immediately would defeat much of the purpose of washing it. Ling Tian remained beside the basin in his trousers and turned toward the vegetation surrounding the waterfall. Now for the actual work. The previous day, gathering Cloudmint had involved searching every suitable patch of damp soil manually.

He had crouched beneath shrubs, pushed through thick weeds, and inspected clusters of nearly identical plants one by one. It was slow, irritating labor, especially when half the greenery on Crimson Peak seemed determined to resemble something valuable until viewed from six inches away. Today, Ling Tian had another option. He loosened his spiritual perception. Carefully. The memory of nearly collapsing from sensory overload remained a highly effective training aid.

The world expanded around him, but only within the narrow parameters he allowed. He kept his radius restricted to roughly five meters and immediately filtered out the overwhelming Water Qi roaring from the waterfall. Even with his improved endurance, allowing that enormous torrent into his awareness would be the spiritual equivalent of placing his head beside an industrial turbine. Water: muted. Earth: background. Wind: irrelevant.

He tuned his attention toward the softer biological frequency he had identified earlier. Verdant Qi. The difference was immediate. The vegetation surrounding him stopped being an indistinguishable wall of green. Individual plants carried subtly different spiritual signatures depending on their health, age, and density of life energy. Most remained dull and unremarkable. Several did not. A cluster near a moss-covered boulder pulsed noticeably brighter than the surrounding weeds. Ling Tian walked toward it.

Cloudmint. Mature. Sap-rich. He crouched, pinched the appropriate stalks close to the base, and harvested them without touching the immature growth. The next patch announced itself before he physically saw it. Then another. Ling Tian's mouth slowly curved upward.

"This is useful." For once, the universe had provided a supernatural ability with an immediately practical application that did not involve violence, internal bleeding, or expensive clothing. He moved around the basin with ruthless efficiency. Instead of checking every dark patch beneath the trees, he followed the strongest Verdant signatures and ignored everything else. The process resembled running a targeted database query after previously searching an archive by opening every individual file.

Twenty minutes later, Ling Tian returned to the flat stone near the water with a sack noticeably heavier than anything he had gathered the day before. He looked inside. Cloudmint filled most of the bag. Nearly twice yesterday's haul. Ling Tian tied the opening securely. If Auntie Mei paid at roughly the same rate, his daily income had just increased dramatically without requiring additional labor. That mattered more to him than the ability to perform one hundred push-ups. Strength was useful. Revenue was survival.

He placed the sack beside his drying tunic and sat on the broad stone just beyond the waterfall's heaviest spray. For the first time since awakening in this world, his morning tasks had been completed absurdly early. Bathing was finished. Clothes were drying. Herb inventory had already exceeded yesterday's yield. He had acquired something almost as valuable as money. Free time.