Chương 4: Lost in the Green — Part 1

The jungle had not changed, but Wei Chen had changed enough that it felt different. Three hours after leaving the sanctuary, he crouched on a fallen log, listening to the Endless Jungle. Insects buzzed in frequencies he had never noticed. Birds called from canopies lost in mist. Water dripped somewhere to his left, suggesting an underground stream. Beneath it all was a hum—a resonance his newly awakened senses identified as ambient qi. The qi was thin here.

His inherited knowledge confirmed what his body already felt: the Endless Jungle existed in a qi-deficient zone, one of many scattered across the continent. Ancient cultivators would have found this environment barely sufficient for basic practice. For someone carrying the Primordial Sage legacy, it was like trying to fill a lake with a drinking cup. Wei Chen reached for the cultivation technique that felt most accessible.

The Primordial Breath Cycle activated, and he drew in a deep breath, pulling what little ambient qi existed into his lungs, down through his chest, and into the swirling pool of energy in his lower dantian. The result was underwhelming. A trickle where he had expected a stream. He tried again, cycling the breath more deliberately, and achieved a slightly better result. By the fifth cycle, he had established a rhythm: slow, patient, drawing in what was available rather than forcing what was not.

The legacy was designed for qi-rich environments, he reminded himself. In the ancient era, cultivation grounds were chosen for abundant spiritual energy. Practitioners in qi-poor regions must adapt—or accept slower progress. Slower progress was still progress. He let the breath cycle settle into a background rhythm he could maintain while moving, and hopped down from the log. His first priority was reaching the village. His second was understanding what he had become. The journey should have taken two days at most.

Veridian Village lay less than thirty li from where he had entered the jungle—a distance he had covered dozens of times on hunting trips. But those trips had been on established trails. Now the trails were behind him, and he was moving through old-growth forest where no human had walked in years. Or so he thought. Wei Chen heard the snap of underbrush a fraction of a second before the creature lunged—a spotted cat the size of a small horse, claws extended, jaws open to reveal curved teeth.

In his old body, he would have died. His reflexes had been adequate for farm work, not combat. In his new body, he moved before he thought. His hand came up, palm striking the creature's chest with a technique he had never practiced but somehow knew: the Thousandfold Palm, compressed to a fraction of its full power. The impact made no sound his ears could detect, but the cat's ribs shattered inward.

Its momentum carried it past him, and it crashed into a thorn bush twenty feet away, twitching once, then going still. You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story. Wei Chen stared at his hand. At the dead beast. At the space between them. He had not felt resistance. The cat's body, armored by muscle and bone, had offered no more opposition than a bundle of dry reeds. His palm was unmarked—no scratches, no bruising, not even redness. Ancient Body Refinement, the knowledge supplied.

The first stage transforms the flesh into something denser than ordinary tissue. Your bones are now closer to stone than marrow. Your muscles contain fibers that modern cultivators cannot replicate. He approached the corpse cautiously. It was a Jungle Stalker, he realized, recognizing it from the legacy's bestiary—a predator common to the outer fringes, dangerous to ordinary humans but considered prey by true cultivators. Its pelt would be valuable. Its claws could be sold to weapon smiths.

And in its skull, if he was careful, he would find a beast core. The extraction took twenty minutes, guided by knowledge he had never learned but now possessed. He found the core behind the left eye socket, a thumb-sized crystal the color of dried blood, still warm with residual energy. It was a low-grade core, barely worth mentioning by ancient standards, but in the local market it would fetch enough coin to feed a family for a month. He wrapped it carefully in a scrap of cloth and tucked it into his storage ring.

The ring's spatial pocket accepted it easily. The encounter taught him something important: he was no longer prey in this jungle. The creatures that had terrified him as a child were now, at best, minor threats. At worst, resources. He continued walking, paying attention differently. The legacy's bestiary scrolled through his mind as he moved, matching descriptions to the sounds and signs around him. That rustle in the undergrowth—a Scarlet Burrower, harmless unless cornered.

The sweet smell drifting from the west—a Dreamspore Flower, valuable for sleep-inducing potions but dangerous to inhale in large quantities. The tracks pressed into the mud near the stream—a River Drake, juvenile, probably hunting fish. By midday, he had gathered three more beast cores and a bundle of herbs the legacy identified with names that meant nothing to the local market. Azure Soulroot. Duskfire Moss. Ghost Orchid.

He knew their properties—healing, binding, spiritual enhancement—but he did not know what the villagers called them, or whether any of them still existed by those names. The translation problem, he thought, filing the concern away for later. Ancient terminology and modern reality do not align. He stopped at the stream to drink and eat. The water was clear, filtered through layers of jungle soil, and tasted faintly metallic—a sign of mineral deposits upstream.

He caught three fish with his bare hands, moving faster than the water's current, and ate them raw because he had no means to build a fire without drawing attention. As he ate, he reviewed what he knew. Six hours in the sanctuary. Six hours of transformation that had changed him from a village boy into... this. A cultivator at Foundation Establishment. A vessel carrying the last legacy of a destroyed civilization. A young man with parents who fought like warriors and a sister whose fate he did not know.

He needed to reach the village. He needed to understand what had happened during the attack. And he needed to do it without revealing what he had become, because the voice's warning still echoed: Trust no one with the truth of your inheritance until you are strong enough that no one can take it from you. The afternoon passed in movement and collection. More herbs. Another beast core from a Thornback Lizard that mistook him for easy prey.

The sun filtered through the canopy in shifting patterns his enhanced vision could read like a map. By evening, he had traveled perhaps fifteen li—slower than he would have liked, hampered by unfamiliar terrain. He made camp in the hollow of a massive tree and practiced the Primordial Breath Cycle until sleep claimed him.