Chương 4: Power That Kills

Even though he saw a gold mine, he didn't rush in immediately.

Fifty yards from the safety of his half-buried pagoda base, he crouched at the edge of the massacre, thighs burning as his legs trembled beneath him. The muscles in his calves twitched involuntarily, threatening to give out. Each shallow breath scraped against his throat, dry and raw.

The air here settled heavy against his face, thick and cloying, coating the back of his throat with something viscous and wrong—like breathing through rotting cloth left too long in stagnant water. It clung to his tongue, leaving a faint chemical bitterness that made him want to spit.

Five corpses lay scattered in the mud, encased in the heavy, black-iron lamellar armor of the Iron-Blood Prefecture. The metal plates overlapped in neat, brutal rows—functional, unadorned, designed to turn blades and crush bones. Dark arterial spray had dried across the steel in rust-brown streaks, mixing with the churned earth beneath the bodies.

According to the original body's memories, they were the ruthless, militarized guards faction of this world.

Guard, huh. Heavily armored, brutal, and currently dead. Fresh, high-value kills.

But a sickly, bioluminescent green fungus—Grave-Rot—bloomed across their torn throats and shattered breastplates, pulsing faintly in the dark like infected veins beneath diseased skin. The glow ebbed and flowed in slow, organic rhythms, casting shifting shadows across the corpses' slack faces. Where the fungus had taken root deepest, the armor itself had begun to corrode—metal edges eaten away into ragged, porous holes that wept thin trails of dark fluid.

It's just sitting there, tempting me to touch it.

He squinted, pupils narrowing as his eyes tracked the toxic spores drifting through the sluggish air. They moved lazy and inevitable, like ash from a distant fire—thousands of microscopic motes catching the faint green luminescence, spiraling upward in languid columns before dispersing into the oppressive darkness above. He stayed where he was, jaw set, watching the pattern of their drift. Testing the air currents.

His vessel was still violently leaking energy, the System timer continuously begging him to consume [Dao Embers], but touching that fungus with bare skin would melt the flesh right off his hand. The memories were vivid—original owner's recollection of a sect disciple who'd brushed against Grave-Rot during a tomb expedition. The man's palm had liquefied in seconds, skin sloughing off in gray-green sheets, exposing bone that crumbled like wet chalk.

He scanned his surroundings, jaw tight, the muscles along his temple flexing rhythmically as he ground his teeth, until he found what he needed.

Working methodically, he wrapped his palm and forearm in a thick layer of dry, uncontaminated silk stripped from a nearby ancient mummy. The corpse had been desiccated beyond recognition, its face collapsed inward, but the burial shroud remained intact—brittle and yellowed with age, yet still whole. He tore long strips free with sharp, controlled jerks, the fabric crackling softly as centuries-old fibers separated.

The fabric felt stiff between his functional right hand and his teeth as he pulled it taut, winding it around his forearm in overlapping layers. It smelled faintly of dust and something sour—old sweat baked into thread over decades, mixed with the dry-bitter scent of herbal preservatives used in ancient funerary rites. He tied it off with a brutal yank, testing the tension. The wrapping held firm, tight enough to restrict blood flow slightly. His fingertips tingled.

Next, he picked up two long, splintered human ribs. Cold. Smooth. Surprisingly rigid in his grip. The bones were ancient, bleached nearly white, but calcification had left them dense and unyielding. He tested them against each other—they clicked together sharply, producing a high, clean note that echoed faintly in the abyss. The marrow cavities had long since emptied, leaving them light but sturdy.

This will do, he thought, testing the weight of the bone splinters, adjusting his grip until the balance felt natural. His breath ghosted white in the freezing air, each exhalation hanging visible for a moment before dissolving into the surrounding murk.

Then he approached the first corpse.

First, the physical loot.

He wedged the bone-tongs under the edge of an iron vambrace, prying carefully to avoid the glowing green slime creeping along its edges like living moss. The fungus recoiled slightly from the pressure, tendrils withdrawing with a faint wet rustling sound. The piece came free with a wet sucking sound—air and trapped fluids releasing all at once, accompanied by the sharp mineral tang of oxidized blood and the sickly-sweet rot beneath.

He stripped it clean—flicking away strings of corrupted tissue that clung to the interior padding—then a solid leather belt, its brass fittings still gleaming dully beneath grime, then a chipped but fully usable steel jian—the straight double-edged blade still sharp despite a hairline fracture near the tip. He kicked each piece away from the lethal miasma zone with the flat of his boot.

They scraped dully across stone, metal ringing faint and hollow in the silence, skittering to rest in a rough pile several feet clear of the toxic bloom.

Next, the Embers.

He couldn't crush these fresh Dantians with a bare hand. The cores were too dense, still saturated with residual Qi from bodies that had died only hours—perhaps a day—ago.

Instead, he wedged the jagged tip of his old, broken steel blade into the seam of the dead soldier's abdominal armor, probing until he found the gap between overlapping plates. Using a heavy rock as a hammer—its surface rough and cold against his palm, edges biting into his wrapped hand—he drove the blade through the armor and into the core cavity with three sharp, echoing cracks.

Each strike reverberated up his forearm, vibrating bone-deep, the impact jolting through his wrist and elbow in waves that left his joints aching. The sound bounced off distant stone walls, multiplying into a chorus of brittle echoes that faded slowly into the oppressive quiet.

Corrupted flesh spilled out—slick, dark, and reeking of sulfur mixed with something sour and medicinal, like spoiled wine laced with bitter herbs. The stench hit him like a fist, immediate and overwhelming. He jerked his head back instinctively, eyes watering, vision blurring as tears tracked hot lines down his cold cheeks. He forced himself to lean in again, blinking hard, jaw clenched so tight his teeth ached.

He used the bone-tongs to pull out the dense, glowing core. It came free with a wet, obscene squelch, trailing strings of half-liquefied organ tissue that stretched and snapped. Even through the makeshift silk wrapping, he could feel its warmth—feverish and pulsing, like something still half-alive. The heat radiated through the layers of cloth, almost uncomfortable against his palm.

The core itself shimmered faintly, a crystallized sphere the size of a large marble, shot through with veins of dark crimson that pulsed in a slow, dying rhythm.

He dropped it to the ground and crushed it beneath his boot.

The core split with a wet crunch, shell fragmenting under pressure, then hissed as it dissolved into fine, shimmering dust that clung to the sole of his shoe. The powder glowed briefly—brilliant gold fading to amber—before the System absorbed it, the light winking out as if snuffed by an invisible hand.

[Residual Dao Ember extracted. Target: Tier-1 Cultivator (Fresh). +40 Embers.] His eyes flickered, pupils dilating wide in the dim light. A jolt of pure dopamine surged through his chest—sharp, electric, intoxicating. His heart rate spiked. Forty. Hell yes. The corners of his mouth twitched upward in a brief, savage grin.

He moved down the line, dismantling the dead squad one by one—wedging, hammering, crushing—until sweat beaded cold along his hairline despite the freezing air, trickling down his temples in thin, tickling streams. His shoulders ached, muscles burning with the repetitive strain. His wrapped hand throbbed, the makeshift bandaging growing damp with perspiration and the faint residue of corrupted fluids that had seeped through.

But the blue screen finally flashed a grand total, the notification blazing across his vision in triumphant azure light.

[Dao Embers Extracted: +200] With his Dao Embers secure, he checked the squad leader's belt—distinguishable by the slightly finer leather work and the small brass insignia stamped near the buckle, a stylized fortress gate wreathed in flames. Attached to the leather strap was an empty jade bottle, smudged with dirt and dried blood but otherwise intact, its pale green surface still smooth and cool to the touch.

He snapped it off with a sharp twist, the leather thong holding it giving way with a soft pop.

Using the edge of a rat bone as a scraper—its surface worn smooth and slightly yellowed—he meticulously gathered a thick glob of the glowing Grave-Rot fungus. It resisted at first, clinging to the corpse's armor with thread-like filaments, then yielded suddenly, sliding heavily into the vial like molten wax. The substance was dense, viscous, leaving faint trails of luminescence on the glass that pulsed softly in the darkness.

Up close, he could see tiny spores suspended in the gelatinous mass, writhing slowly like microscopic worms.

He corked it tight with a piece of dry leather, pressing hard with his thumb until the seal held, the material compressing with a faint squeak. He tested it, shaking gently—no leakage, no give. Secure.

A natural, flesh-eating neurotoxin with high concentration, he analyzed, tucking the vial carefully into his pouch, nestling it between strips of cloth to prevent breakage. Perfect for blade-coating or area-denial traps. I'm not leaving this behind.

With his extraction complete, he gathered his haul: the chipped steel jian, its leather-wrapped hilt still tacky with someone else's sweat; the iron vambrace, surprisingly well-fitted despite the grim circumstances of acquisition; the leather belt with its hidden compartment; and the vial of concentrated death.

He turned his back on the glowing corpses—their slack faces already blurring back into shadow—and made the slow, exhausting fifty-yard trek back through the dark abyss to his pagoda base camp.

Each step sent dull pain radiating up from his ankles, the newly reconnected nerves still raw and hypersensitive. His breath came shallow and ragged, misting white in the cold, each inhalation burning his throat, each exhalation leaving his lips dry and cracked. The weight of his scavenged gear dragged at his shoulders. His legs trembled with every footfall, muscles screaming in protest.

Each step sent tremors through his legs, the sensation traveling up through his knees and into his hips. His lungs burned, chest tight and aching. Sweat dripped cold down his spine despite the freezing air, soaking into the waistband of his tattered robes, the fabric clinging clammy and uncomfortable against his skin.

Once secure inside the hollowed-out stone structure—the pagoda's interior offering at least the psychological comfort of enclosed walls—he immediately opened his UI. His eyes narrowed, analyzing the blinking blue numbers that hovered inches from his face, casting pale light across his blood-smeared features.

Two hundred Embers. I need a combat baseline.

In the original host's memories, the average baseline stat for a normal, healthy mortal was 5. Surpassing a stat of 10 meant breaking the mortal shell and officially crossing into Early Tier-1—what they called the "Ash-Marrow" realm.

At that stage, a cultivator's muscles and bones underwent intense physical refinement—the marrow itself igniting with Qi, burning away impurities, reforging the skeleton from within. Flesh densified. Tendons hardened like cured leather. The body became a weapon in its own right, capable of shattering stone and withstanding blows that would pulverize ordinary men.

He needed to cross that threshold, but he couldn't just dump everything into Physique.

A tank without speed is just a punching bag. He wiped sweat from his brow with the back of his wrapped hand, fingers trembling slightly, the silk now damp and starting to unravel at the edges. And swinging a real steel sword requires muscle—not just endurance, but explosive power. Fast-twitch fibers. The ability to generate force in fractions of a second. Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

He formulated a balanced build, running calculations in his head, weighing trade-offs with the cold precision of someone who'd planned combat loadouts a thousand times before.

"System, push Physique, Might, and Agility to 12. Calculate the exponential cost."

[System Calculation:] [Physique: 9 -> 12 (Cost: 25 Embers)] [Might: 5 -> 12 (Cost: 45 Embers)] [Agility: 5 -> 12 (Cost: 45 Embers)] [Total Deduction: 115 Dao Embers. Remaining: 85] [Confirm Allocation?]

"Yes. Do it."

[ATTRIBUTES UPDATED] Physique: 12 Might: 12 Agility: 12 [ANALYSIS: Mortal threshold breached. Vessel entering Tier-1 structural limits.] He squeezed his eyes shut as an explosive, full-body fever hit him.

It wasn't magic. It felt like raw biological evolution played at triple speed—a forced metamorphosis compressed into seconds instead of weeks.

His muscle fibers violently densified, each strand thickening and multiplying, pulling taut like steel cables beneath his skin. The sensation spread from his core outward—chest, shoulders, thighs—each muscle group seizing and reforming in waves of searing heat and crushing pressure. He could feel them reshaping, fibers tearing and reknitting stronger, denser, laced through with something that burned hotter than blood.

The sickening grind of calcium building over bone echoed somewhere deep inside his skull—a dull, wet crunch that made his jaw clench hard enough to taste copper, teeth grinding together until his molars ached. His skeleton was reinforcing itself, mineral density increasing exponentially, periosteum thickening like armor plating over every surface.

Then came his left arm.

The fractured bones at the elbow snapped violently into perfect anatomical alignment with a sharp crack that reverberated through his entire body. He gasped, breath punching out of him in a strangled wheeze, vision whiting out for a split second.

Flesh knit together with the searing heat of a cauterizing iron pressed directly to raw nerve endings. Muscle fibers wove themselves back into place, reconnecting across the break with brutal efficiency. Nerves fired white-hot as they reconnected, sending electric jolts up to his shoulder and down to his fingertips—lightning racing through dead pathways, shocking them back to agonizing life.

He bit down hard on his lower lip, fresh blood welling metallic and warm against his tongue, mixing with the taste of dust and rot still coating his mouth. The copper tang spread across his palate.

He opened his eyes slowly, letting out a long, ragged exhale that misted in the freezing air, each breath shuddering and uneven as his body adjusted to its new configuration.

He flexed his left hand.

It moved flawlessly, fingers curling into a fist with crushing force, knuckles popping softly as joints settled into alignment. He could feel the sheer kinetic potential vibrating in his veins—muscle coiled tight, ready to explode, every fiber humming with restrained power. The difference was staggering. Every movement felt crisp, deliberate, powerful. When he extended his fingers, they moved with surgical precision. When he clenched, he could feel the air compress between his palm and fingers.

"Finally," he muttered, a rough, satisfied snort escaping his lips, the sound low and harsh in the enclosed space.

"Back to a functional human baseline."

Despite his outward calmness—the controlled tone, the measured breathing—for a brief moment, he stared at his arm. Really looked at it. Turned it over, examining the unbroken skin, the flex of muscle beneath, the perfect articulation of wrist and elbow.

Then down at his legs—legs that had dragged useless and insensate behind him just hours ago, dead weight he'd hauled across corpse-strewn stone using nothing but upper body strength and spite.

After the desperate, helpless reality of being a paralyzed victim—immobilized, vulnerable, reduced to crawling through rot like a wounded animal—regaining a fully capable, Tier-1 military body felt like nothing short of a miracle. The memory of paralysis still lingered, phantom sensation of numbness ghosting along his spine, making the restored function feel impossibly precious.

Total tactical victory. Heh.

Then he checked his UI warnings, forcing himself back to tactical assessment, shoving sentiment aside.

[Host Entity:] Foreign Soul Merged [Heavenly Alignment:] NULL (Daoless) [Vessel Status:] STABLE. Primary physical trauma resolved.

[Dao Embers:] 85 [ATTRIBUTES] Physique: 12 [Tier-1 Baseline achieved.] Might: 12 [Tier-1 Baseline achieved.] Agility: 12 [Tier-1 Baseline achieved.] Spirit: 5 [Mortal] Anomaly: 5 [Daoless trait awakened] [MARTIAL ARTS] None.

[SYSTEM DIRECTIVE] Vascular and muscular density increased, acting as partial containment. However, Daoless physiology cannot naturally retain energy over time. Continual kinetic action will still severely drain stamina. Maintain short combat windows to prevent vessel failure.

The paralyzing hemorrhage warnings were completely gone—vanished as if they'd never existed. No more alerts about spinal trauma. No more warnings about paralyzed motor functions. The Sieve leak remained—he still couldn't sit around and passively absorb ambient Qi like normal cultivators, couldn't meditate his way to power like every other practitioner in this world—but his new, hardened muscles acted like a denser cage, massively slowing the rate of his energy drain.

The leak was still there, but now it was through reinforced walls instead of torn flesh.

Time to gear up.

He shifted his weight, joints moving smoothly now with a fluid precision that felt almost alien after so long crippled, and sat on a flat stone slab jutting from the pagoda's inner wall. The surface was cold enough to leech heat through his robes immediately.

He strapped the black-iron vambrace to his left forearm—the metal cold, heavy, reassuring against his skin. It fit well, the interior padding still intact despite its previous owner's violent demise. The weight distribution was excellent, balanced to protect without restricting wrist mobility. He flexed his arm experimentally. The plates shifted smoothly, articulated segments clicking softly against each other.

Next, he buckled the heavy leather belt around his waist. The leather creaked stiffly as he cinched it tight, the material worn but still sturdy, softened by years of use into perfect pliability. The brass buckle clicked into place with a solid, satisfying clunk, the prong sliding home through a well-worn hole.

As he did, his fingers brushed against something unexpected—a stiff roll of parchment tucked into a hidden compartment on the belt's inner lining, concealed beneath a flap of leather that had been dyed to match the belt's exterior.

Hmm?

He pulled it free carefully, unrolling it with both hands. The parchment crackled softly, edges brittle with age but center still supple. The script was painted in faint, metallic ink—iron gall, probably, mixed with something that gave it a subtle bronze sheen—slightly smudged in places where moisture had gotten to it, but still legible under the blue glow of his UI:

"Black-Iron Body Art - Iron-Blood Prefecture Outer Guard Manual."

A military field manual, he recognized instantly, eyes scanning the opening diagrams and terse instructional text. Not some flowery sect cultivation method full of poetic metaphors about celestial rivers and earthly mountains. This was brutally practical. Direct. In combat, explosive force is everything. The diagrams showed pressure points, breathing patterns, methods for forcing Qi into muscle tissue to temporarily superharge physical output.

He held the scroll up.

[Item Recognized: Tier-1 Martial Art Manual. Consume to acquire?]

"Consume."

The scroll crumbled into fine, grey ash between his fingers. No heat. No light. No dramatic transformation. The powder slipped through his fingers like sand and vanished like smoke, dissipating into nothing before it hit the ground, absorbed directly into his body—or soul—through some mechanism he didn't fully understand.

In his peripheral vision, the UI updated with a soft chime.

[MARTIAL ARTS] Black-Iron Body Art (Lvl 1): Temporarily doubles physical force by heavily taxing stamina.

Temporarily doubles physical force...

That was a massive combat multiplier. A straight 2x damage modifier on everything—strikes, throws, grapples. Against an opponent of equal skill, it would be the difference between a glancing blow and a shattered ribcage.

But his eyes narrowed, a frown creasing his brow, lips pressing into a thin line. There was always a price, and stamina was his biggest flaw. Simply walking drained him heavily because he was Daoless—because his body leaked energy like a punctured fuel tank. Using a technique that heavily taxed stamina could put him flat on his back in seconds if he miscalculated.

But a weapon left unchecked is a liability. And an untested skill is a double-edged sword. He needed to know exactly what this would cost him. Needed to feel the recoil firsthand, calibrate his limits, understand the exact threshold where power became suicide.

He stood up, joints popping softly, and gripped his new steel jian. The blade felt good in his hand—well-balanced despite the chip, weight distributed perfectly for quick draws and tight cuts. He adjusted his stance, feet shoulder-width apart, knees slightly bent, weight centered.

He needed to run a field test.

He activated the Body Art.

Instantly, a surge of heavy, unnatural pressure flooded his chest—thick, suffocating, like someone had poured molten lead directly into his lungs.

Thick, black, iron-like veins bulged violently across his skin—pulsing, writhing beneath the surface like something alive trying to claw its way out, a network of dark corruption spreading from his core outward. He could feel them, hot and swollen, pressing against the inside of his forearms with agonizing pressure, throbbing along his neck hard enough to restrict his breathing, pounding at his temples in time with his racing heartbeat.

He swung the sword.

The blade carved through the air with a terrifying, heavy whoosh—infinitely faster and harder than he could manage a second ago, the speed so sudden it startled even him. The displacement was violent, air screaming past the edge, a shockwave rippling outward from the arc.

The stone wall behind him cracked from the displaced air alone—no contact, just pressure—a spiderweb of fractures spreading across the rock face. Chips of stone scattered across the floor, clattering and bouncing, dust puffing upward in small clouds.

"Ugh—" A harsh grunt slipped through his clenched teeth, involuntary, torn from his chest by the sheer strain.

The power was immense, overwhelming, intoxicating—but his veins throbbed as if pumping liquid lead instead of blood, each pulse sending waves of crushing pressure through his circulatory system. His heart hammered erratically, rhythm breaking, skipping beats, stuttering like an engine misfiring. Sweat broke out across his forehead in cold, heavy beads that dripped down his temples and stung his eyes, blurring his vision.

Immediately, his lungs burned—not the clean burn of exertion, but the searing agony of oxygen deprivation, like drowning in open air. The Sieve warning shattered his vision, red alert overlays exploding across the blue UI, flashing a violently pulsing dark crimson that painted his face in hellish light.

[CRITICAL WARNING: VASCULAR OVERLOAD] [Martial Art 'Black-Iron Body Art' is aggressively taxing Daoless physiology.] [Anomaly Detected: Sieve leak accelerated by 400%.] [Continuous activation will result in total muscular failure and cardiac arrest.]