Chapter Ninety-Seven: The Forgotten Bloodline
The young woman did not remain long enough for Yun Che to ask a single useful question.
Once the formation had fully locked the four young men in place, she snapped her luxurious fan shut, gave Yun Che one final look of unmistakable amusement, and walked away with the calm dignity of someone stepping around an inconvenient puddle. She offered no name, no explanation, and certainly no sign that trapping four cultivators in the middle of a busy street was worth remembering. Her long white hair swayed behind her, brilliant against her rich brown skin, while the pale blue, white and gold of her fashionable clothes caught the afternoon sunlight. Within moments, she had slipped between merchants, pedestrians and passing cultivators and disappeared into Goldriver's crowd.
Yun Che remained exactly where he was.
Beside him stood Amon.
Mirage remained perched comfortably upon Amon's head.
All three stared after her.
You stared, Mirage observed.
"I was studying the formation."
Her formation was not on her face.
Yun Che pretended he had not heard that.
Unfortunately, the rest of the street had begun discussing the matter with considerably less restraint. The four trapped young men were no longer the most interesting part of the scene; apparently, the identity of the woman who had trapped them was.
"Was that really her?"
"It had to be."
"I saw her portrait during the royal procession two years ago."
"Her hair is unmistakable."
"Idiot, half the northern noble clans have white hair."
"Not like that."
Then someone beside the food stall finally said the name clearly enough for Yun Che to hear.
"Sixth Princess Hua Xuelan."
Yun Che slowly turned.
"Princess?"
The stall owner stared at him as if he had just announced that he did not know what the sun was.
"You really aren't from Goldriver, are you?"
"Mistforge."
"That explains it."
The merchant lowered his voice despite the fact that the young woman was already long gone. "Princess Hua Xuelan. Sixth daughter of His Majesty. One of the royal family's finest young formation talents. Famous enough that poets have been making everyone's lives miserable about her beauty since she was thirteen."
A fruit seller nearby snorted.
"She'd probably trap the poets too if they tried reciting at her."
Yun Che looked toward the section of street where she had vanished and reconsidered the last several minutes of his life.
He had just inserted himself into what he had thought was an ordinary case of several arrogant young men harassing a beautiful girl, only to discover that the beautiful girl was a princess capable of imprisoning all of them with a flick of her wrist.
That seemed entirely consistent with how his journey had gone so far.
Her title, however, interested him less than the fan.
Yun Che replayed the movement in his mind. One casual sweep. No flags. No engraved plates placed beforehand. No visible formation core buried beneath the street. She had not crouched down and drawn hundreds of symbols, nor had she spent several minutes connecting energy pathways. The fan had moved, and the formation had appeared.
He narrowed his eyes.
No.
Not merely appeared.
It had unfolded.
The artifact itself must have contained the formation structure.
Yun Che's interest immediately sharpened.
Traditional formation masters created systems. They placed cores, formation plates, flags or engraved anchors, then linked hundreds—sometimes thousands—of individual runic functions into something far greater than any single inscription. Even powerful experts who could simplify the process generally needed preparation for anything complicated.
Princess Hua had carried that preparation in her hand.
"Portable formation deployment," Yun Che murmured.
Amon glanced at him.
You are doing the thing again.
"What thing?"
The face you make immediately before becoming poorer.
Yun Che frowned.
But the idea had already taken root.
Runes were instructions.
A Weight Rune commanded force in one direction. A Flame Rune manipulated heat. A Barrier Rune defined resistance. A Speed Rune changed movement. Each was a single command, limited by how well the rune master understood what he was telling Ki to do.
Formations were different.
Formations were systems.
Conditions. Energy pathways. Triggers. Responses. Inputs and outputs. Hundreds of runes interacting with one another in carefully defined arrangements. One rune might create a spark. A formation built from enough carefully arranged principles might alter the weather across an entire valley.
If runes were individual instructions, formations were entire programs.
Which explained why rune masters and formation masters overlapped so often without being the same profession. Rune masters built precise functions into equipment. Formation masters arranged those functions into vast interconnected structures.
And apparently, someone had discovered how to fold one of those structures into a fan and deploy it with a flick of the wrist.
Yun Che wanted one.
Desperately.
He then remembered the rather enormous quantity of money he already owed.
"Later," he muttered.
Mirage gave a pleased flutter of her restored wings.
Growth.
Jin Wei's reaction to the story proved considerably less scholarly.
"You met Princess Hua Xuelan?"
Yun Che had barely returned to the Azure Wolf Consortium before Jin Wei cornered him in one of the guest lounges. Lin Xia sat nearby surrounded by rune notes, while Amon had settled outside in the courtyard where there was enough room for him to stretch.
"Apparently."
Jin Wei's eyebrows climbed.
"Apparently?"
"I didn't know she was a princess."
"How do you accidentally meet a princess?"
"She was buying food."
"Princesses don't simply stand beside street stalls buying food."
"This one did."
Lin Xia looked up from her notes.
"What was she like?"
Yun Che considered that.
"Confident."
Jin Wei folded his arms.
"Beautiful?"
Yun Che hesitated.
It was not a long hesitation.
Perhaps half a second.
Unfortunately, Jin Wei had spent enough time around him to notice it.
His eyes narrowed.
"Oh."
Yun Che immediately disliked that sound.
"What?"
"Nothing."
"Why did you say it like that?"
"Like what?"
Lin Xia glanced slowly between them.
Yun Che decided that the conversation had reached dangerous territory.
"She used a portable formation artifact," he said. "The fan seemed to contain the formation structure. One motion activated the whole thing beneath four people."
Lin Xia's expression transformed instantly.
"Really?"
"Yes."
Jin Wei looked personally betrayed.
"We were discussing the princess."
"We are discussing the important part."
"The princess was the important part."
"To you."
"To civilization."
Yun Che ignored him.
Lin Xia had already opened a blank page in her notebook. "Did you see the formation core?"
"No."
"Did the lines emerge from the fan?"
"The formation manifested on the ground. But the trigger came from the fan. I'm almost certain the complete structure was already stored inside the artifact somehow."
Lin Xia began writing rapidly.
Jin Wei watched both of them for several seconds before sighing.
"Fine. Since the two of you would apparently rather discuss inscriptions than one of the most beautiful princesses in the kingdom, let's go to the library."
Yun Che stopped.
"What?"
"You wanted information about your bloodline."
That erased Princess Hua from his thoughts almost immediately.
They had discussed the matter the previous evening. Goldriver maintained one of the largest public archives in Cangyun, and Jin Wei had promised to use Consortium connections where necessary to help search for references to the ancient Yun Clan.
Yun Che stood.
"Let's go."
Jin Wei pointed after him.
"The princess story is not finished."
"It is for now."
"Unbelievable."
Goldriver Central Library occupied an island of its own.
It was nowhere near the impossible scale of the Heavenly Flame Sect's legendary archives, but within Cangyun it was considered one of the kingdom's greatest public repositories of knowledge. White stone buildings surrounded a tall central archive tower, while smaller halls extended outward around gardens, fountains and quiet reading courtyards. Bridges connected the island to three surrounding districts, and people constantly crossed carrying notebooks, document cases and stacks of copied research.
Unlike sect libraries, ordinary citizens could enter.
Ordinary citizens, Yun Che quickly discovered, were still expected to pay.
Jin Wei covered Yun Che's monthly subscription fee without even asking him, which merely added another invisible line to the increasingly terrifying list of things Yun Che owed the Azure Wolf Consortium.
Basic membership permitted reading.
Borrowing required residency records and good standing.
Rare books did not leave the library at all.
Higher-level archives required additional payment, academic credentials, institutional approval or sufficient social standing depending upon what one wanted to access.
There were no miraculous cultivation manuals sitting openly upon the shelves. No seventh-grade sword scriptures waiting for an enthusiastic twelve-year-old to discover them between two history books. Secret techniques remained secret.
What Goldriver Central Library possessed instead was something Yun Che valued almost as highly.
Information.
History. Geography. Bloodlines. Beast classifications. Clan genealogies. Political records. Economic reports. Martial history. Cultivation theory. Scientific research. Engineering studies. Medical texts. Accounts written by travelers from kingdoms Yun Che had never heard of.
He liked the place immediately.
The retrieval system nearly distracted him from the reason he had come.
An archive assistant placed one hand upon a crystalline formation terminal.
"What are you searching for?"
Yun Che chose his words carefully.
"The Yun Clan. An old cultivation clan whose bloodline allowed its members to transform into monsters."
The assistant paused.
"Region?"
"Cangyun eventually. I don't think they originated here."
"Approximate period?"
Yun Che hesitated.
"Thousands of years?"
The assistant looked at him.
"Helpful."
Jin Wei smiled.
"He gives excellent research requests."
Symbols began moving across the crystal display as the formation searched registered books, chronicles, genealogies and archived documents. The assistant narrowed the terms repeatedly.
Yun Clan.
Transformation bloodline.
Beast forms.
Migration into Cangyun.
Thousands of results became hundreds.
Hundreds became dozens.
Eventually, seventeen sources remained with enough matching information to justify retrieval.
Most of the senior library workers were Foundation Realm cultivators. Yun Che understood why once he looked around properly. Suppression formations covered the reading halls. Fire-prevention arrays protected every archive chamber. Theft detection formations marked valuable books. Spatial locks sealed restricted collections. Anyone foolish enough to start a serious fight inside the building would discover that the library itself had strong opinions about violence.
The first stack of books arrived through a small formation-powered delivery track less than ten minutes later.
Yun Che sat.
Lin Xia sat beside him.
Jin Wei lasted twelve minutes before ordering tea.
The research took hours.
And piece by piece, Yun Che's family emerged from history.
The Yun Clan was old.
Far older than he had imagined.
The earliest reliable records came from kingdoms that no longer existed. Before modern Cangyun had even formed, the clan had already migrated several times as borders changed, dynasties collapsed and wars drove entire populations across the continent.
They had arrived in the territory that would eventually become Cangyun roughly five hundred years ago.
By then, they were already dying.
Yun Che's fingers slowed upon a genealogy.
"Here."
Lin Xia leaned closer.
The final recognized inheritor who had led one surviving branch into Cangyun had possessed only two transformations.
Two.
Yun Che currently had more than that.
He turned the page.
Earlier generations were a different matter entirely.
The bloodline had a name.
The Myriad Beast Metamorphosis Bloodline.
Yun Che sat very still for several moments after reading it.
So that was what he carried.
The inheritance's defining ability was exactly what he had already discovered: transformations created through the absorption of suitable beasts. Spirit Transformation cultivators could eventually learn body-changing arts through advanced techniques, bloodlines or natural comprehension, but Yun Clan members gained access to genuine beast transformation far earlier.
Foundation Realm members had already been capable of using it.
That had made the old clan dangerous.
One cultivator could possess several bodies suited to completely different circumstances. A flying form for travel. An aquatic form for rivers or seas. A heavily armored creature for defense. Poisonous species. Speed-focused species. Elemental creatures. Huge beasts suited to breaking formations.
Yun Che continued reading.
His eyes widened.
Some recorded clan members had possessed dozens of transformations.
The most extreme historical accounts claimed hundreds.
"Hundreds?" Lin Xia whispered.
Yun Che checked the passage again, suspecting he had misunderstood it.
"Apparently."
Jin Wei looked over from his tea.
"How does anyone remember hundreds of bodies?"
"Probably by becoming extremely organized."
That, strangely enough, was almost exactly what the records suggested.
The strongest Yun cultivators had not treated every transformation equally. They divided them into categories and maintained preferred forms for particular tasks.
Scouting.
Travel.
Defense.
Assassination.
Elemental environments.
Large-scale combat.
Underwater operations.
Yun Che understood immediately.
The bloodline had never been meant to operate as he currently used it—collecting whatever useful monster happened to cross his path and occasionally remembering that he could become it.
It had once been an entire martial system.
At its height, the Yun Clan had never rivaled the Ancient Sects. Their records did not describe Immortal ancestors or world-shaking patriarchs.
But they had not been insignificant either.
They had once stood approximately alongside powerful mid-ranking regional clans, possessing several Spirit Transformation cultivators and enough military strength to influence the politics of multiple surrounding territories.
Then came the war.
Not a single catastrophe.
Years of conflict.
The Yun Clan had been dragged through repeated imperial battles involving bloodline armies, beast legions and eventually creatures touched by the Abyss.
And at some point, someone made a terrible decision.
They began absorbing Abyssal transformations.
Yun Che stopped reading.
Lin Xia noticed at once.
"What is it?"
He silently turned the book toward her.
The surviving records were fragmented, but the pattern was clear.
Abyss creatures were powerful.
Too powerful.
Yun warriors who successfully incorporated their forms gained tremendous physical strength, unnatural resilience and abilities that ordinary monsters simply did not possess.
So the Yun Clan used them again.
Then again.
Then longer.
The transformations changed them.
At first it manifested as increased aggression.
Then paranoia.
Violent impulses.
Predatory instincts.
Instability.
One battlefield report described a unit of Yun cultivators transforming during a retreat and failing to return to human form before attacking allied soldiers.
Another described an elder who remained within an Abyss form for three consecutive days.
When he finally became human again, he slaughtered his own household.
Yun Che closed the book slowly.
Far inside his soul space, the Abyss Seed pulsed.
For an instant, the library seemed colder.
"So they had the same problem."
Lin Xia understood immediately.
Not precisely the same problem.
The ancient Yun Clan had been taking foreign instincts directly into themselves through corrupted transformations. Yun Che's Abyss Seed did something different: it fed upon emotions already present and magnified them until fear became terror, caution became paranoia, regret became crushing guilt.
But the warning was similar.
Power did not merely change what someone could do.
Sometimes it changed the person using it.
Jin Wei's teasing expression disappeared.
"Maybe don't absorb Abyss creatures."
Yun Che looked at him.
"Brilliant."
"I contribute."
Their next discovery was considerably less horrifying.
Lin Xia found it in a technical commentary written centuries after the Yun Clan's decline.
"Yun Che."
He leaned toward her.
The section carried the rather dry title:
Transformation Saturation and Renewal.
Yun Che read the paragraph.
Then read it again.
His eyebrows rose.
The bloodline had a capacity.
Not a single fixed number shared by every inheritor. The number of transformations depended upon cultivation, bloodline purity, soul strength and individual compatibility.
But reaching that limit did not mean the collection became permanent forever.
Once complete saturation was achieved, a Yun cultivator gradually developed the ability to discard an existing transformation.
Remove it entirely.
The released imprint could then be replaced by another beast.
Yun Che leaned back.
"Oh."
Lin Xia smiled.
"You look very pleased."
"I am."
A concern he had never spoken much about immediately vanished.
Until now, every transformation carried the possibility of being permanent. Something useful at the Mortal or Foundation Realm might become useless centuries later, but he had not known whether it would still occupy part of his bloodline forever.
Apparently not.
Weak forms could eventually be removed.
Replaced.
Upgraded.
His collection could evolve along with him.
The Myriad Beast Metamorphosis Bloodline was not merely a warehouse.
It was an adaptive library.
"Good," Yun Che said.
Jin Wei looked up.
"That's your reaction?"
"What should my reaction be?"
"You've discovered that your extinct family bloodline once created warriors carrying hundreds of monster forms, produced Spirit Transformation experts, and nearly helped destroy its own clan through Abyss corruption."
He pointed at Yun Che.
"And your conclusion is 'good'?"
"I can delete bad transformations."
Jin Wei stared at him.
Lin Xia burst out laughing.
Yun Che returned to the books.
For the first time since awakening his transformation ability, it no longer felt like a strange accident attached only to him.
There had been rules.
History.
Successes.
Failures.
People had spent generations discovering what this bloodline could do.
And somewhere among these records might be enough information for Yun Che to avoid making every mistake they had made before him.
He glanced toward the remaining stack.
Fourteen books.
Jin Wei saw the look.
"No."
Yun Che frowned.
"What?"
"We have been here for four hours."
"So?"
"I'm hungry."
"You can leave."
"And allow you to sit here until sunrise?"
Yun Che considered the possibility.
Jin Wei pointed accusingly.
"That pause. That pause is why I'm staying."
Lin Xia quietly opened another book.
Jin Wei stared at them both.
"Unbelievable."
Yun Che had assumed the major discoveries were finished.
He was wrong.
"There is something else."
Lin Xia's voice had changed.
Yun Che immediately moved closer.
The book in front of her was comparatively recent, compiled by a scholar who had spent decades researching unusual bloodlines across several kingdoms. He had never belonged to the Yun Clan. Much of his information came secondhand—from military observations, old dueling accounts, enemy records and testimony from cultivators who had once fought beside Yun warriors.
One particular passage made Yun Che straighten abruptly.
The Myriad Beast Metamorphosis Bloodline did not require its wielder to choose completely between human and beast.
With sufficient mastery, practitioners had been capable of partial transformation.
"What?"
Lin Xia shifted the book so they could both read.
Experienced Yun Clan members could selectively manifest characteristics from stored forms while remaining mostly human. Scales might cover only the torso or arms. Claws could replace fingernails without transforming the entire hand. Eyes, fangs, tails, horns, wings and other physical traits could be summoned independently once the cultivator had developed sufficiently precise control over the relevant beast imprint.
The more advanced records went further.
Hybrid forms.
Deliberate combinations in which a cultivator retained a humanoid body while integrating the strongest features of a chosen beast.
Yun Che's thoughts accelerated.
Full transformations had obvious weaknesses.
Becoming an Iceback Glacier Drake gave him enormous durability, size and frost affinity—but also gave him the body of an Iceback Glacier Drake. His hands disappeared. His normal weapons became inconvenient or useless. Most of his human martial arts no longer applied. Buildings became a problem. Narrow roads became a problem. Nearly everything designed for humans became a problem.
But partial transformation?
Drake scales layered beneath or over his armor.
Claws while retaining fingers.
Enhanced senses.
Wings.
Reinforced muscle.
Perhaps the eyes of one creature combined with the defensive characteristics of another someday, if the bloodline's deeper levels allowed it.
A carefully designed combat form rather than simply becoming a monster.
Yun Che smiled slowly.
Jin Wei noticed immediately.
"I don't like that expression."
"Why?"
"That's your dangerous idea expression."
"This one doesn't even cost money."
"Yet."
Yun Che ignored him.
The book contained another revelation.
The ancient Yun Clan had not simply absorbed a beast and accepted its abilities exactly as nature had provided them.
They developed them.
A newly gained transformation was not considered a completed weapon.
It was raw material.
Clan cultivators studied how their transformed bodies circulated Ki, how instinctive abilities functioned and how those abilities could be deliberately refined into martial techniques.
A beast might naturally breathe fire.
A Yun cultivator could examine the channels responsible, increase compression, alter temperature, change range and eventually turn that natural breath into a formal cultivation art.
A frost creature's instinctive cold could become barriers.
Weapons.
Domains.
Suppression techniques.
Even physical features could apparently be cultivated beyond what the original creature possessed.
Yun Che immediately thought of his own Frost Aura and Fire Drake Breath.
He had already been doing fragments of this instinctively.
The old clan had done it systematically.
"That explains why the bloodline remained valuable at higher realms," Yun Che said.
Lin Xia glanced at him.
"Because Spirit Transformation cultivators can learn transformation anyway?"
"Exactly. If the clan's only advantage was becoming monsters earlier than everyone else, then eventually their enemies would catch up. But this wasn't just transformation."
He tapped the page.
"They built martial systems around the transformations."
Then the books became frustrating.
Very frustrating.
Because they were wonderfully detailed regarding what the Yun Clan had accomplished.
They were nearly useless regarding how.
One scholar described witnessing a Yun warrior manifest wings and enhanced eyes while remaining otherwise human.
No method.
Another battlefield account described a Yun elder whose inherited lightning ability had become vastly stronger than the natural species from which it originated.
No cultivation method.
Historical references mentioned techniques for strengthening the Myriad Beast Metamorphosis Bloodline itself.
No instructions survived.
Transformation refinement.
Mentioned.
Method absent.
Specialized soul arts for organizing large numbers of beast imprints.
Mentioned.
Instructions absent.
Hybrid forms.
Known to exist.
Method absent.
Ability evolution.
Known.
Method absent.
Yun Che slowly lowered his forehead onto one hand.
"So basically..."
Jin Wei looked up.
"You've found proof that your ancestors could do incredible things, but absolutely nothing explaining how they did any of them."
"Yes."
"That's unfortunate."
"It's infuriating."
Lin Xia smiled faintly.
"It is a public library. Did you expect the Yun Clan's secret inheritance to be sitting on an open shelf?"
"No. But I would have appreciated one irresponsible ancestor."
Apparently, his ancestors had been disappointingly competent at protecting clan secrets.
The library possessed history.
Battle records.
Migration accounts.
Genealogy.
Observations written by allies and enemies.
It knew the bloodline's proper name, several limitations, famous techniques and theories concerning the inheritance's decline.
What it did not possess was the actual internal inheritance.
No Myriad Beast Metamorphosis manual.
No bloodline cultivation scripture.
No proper explanation for hybridization.
No instructions for strengthening transformations.
No soul organization method.
Yun Che now knew what was possible.
He still had to discover how to accomplish it.
That realization produced another thought.
A rather embarrassing one.
"My father didn't know any of this."
Lin Xia looked over.
"What?"
"The name."
Yun Che tapped the page.
"Myriad Beast Metamorphosis Bloodline. Father never once called it that."
"Maybe he didn't think the name mattered."
"No."
Yun Che thought back through everything Yun Jian had ever told him.
"He didn't know."
The certainty grew as he considered it.
Yun Jian knew their family once possessed a bloodline capable of monster transformation. He knew fragments of family history. When Yun Che awakened it, his father had treated the event as though an ancient ancestral inheritance had finally returned.
But these unrelated historians in Goldriver knew more about the old Yun Clan than Yun Jian did.
His father had never mentioned saturation.
Never mentioned discarding forms.
Never mentioned partial transformations.
Never mentioned hybrids.
Never described systematic beast-ability cultivation.
He apparently had not even known the proper name of the inheritance.
Yun Che stared at the page.
Then remembered his father's grave expression when he had spoken about Yun Che inheriting the lost power of their ancestors.
His own expression slowly became peculiar.
"That old man."
Lin Xia blinked.
"What?"
"He was being dramatic."
Jin Wei immediately leaned forward.
"This sounds promising."
Yun Che rubbed his forehead.
"Father spoke about the family inheritance like he was passing down some ancient sacred secret."
"Wasn't he?"
"His knowledge appears to have been: our ancestors could transform into monsters, I can transform into monsters, therefore I inherited it."
Jin Wei began laughing.
Lin Xia tried to resist.
She lasted approximately three seconds.
Yun Che shook his head in profound disappointment.
"I cannot believe him."
"He probably told you everything he knew," Lin Xia said between laughs.
"That's not the problem. It's how confidently he said it."
That only made Jin Wei laugh harder.
Yun Che had discovered something unexpected about his father.
Yun Jian was apparently dramatic.
Who knew?
The humor faded, however, when Yun Che returned to the migration records.
Because if Yun Jian knew so little, then the Mistforge branch clearly had not retained the main inheritance.
Somewhere along the clan's decline, their ancestors had become separated from the deeper knowledge.
The records mentioned splintering families.
Branches disappearing during wars.
Others migrating.
Some changing surnames after marrying into local clans.
Some simply vanishing from historical documentation.
Which meant there was a possibility—perhaps a small one, but real—that another Yun branch still survived somewhere.
A branch that knew more.
Perhaps they had retained fragments of the original methods.
Perhaps they knew how to refine the bloodline.
Perhaps they understood partial transformations.
Perhaps they could explain how to develop a beast form properly instead of forcing Yun Che to rediscover everything through experimentation.
Or perhaps they knew even less than his father.
There was only one way to find out eventually.
For now, Yun Che looked at the books around him and considered what he had actually gained.
The Myriad Beast Metamorphosis Bloodline could eventually support far more transformations than he possessed now.
Obsolete forms could eventually be removed and replaced.
Partial transformation was possible.
Hybrid combat forms were possible.
The natural powers of absorbed creatures could be refined far beyond their original abilities.
The bloodline itself had once possessed dedicated strengthening methods.
Abyss forms were catastrophically dangerous.
And absolutely none of the important instructions had survived into his hands.
Yun Che closed the book.
In another kind of story, perhaps this would have been the moment when an ancient parchment slipped from between the pages, revealing the complete Myriad Beast Metamorphosis Scripture, conveniently written in perfect language and containing every technique his ancestors had developed over thousands of years.
Reality was less cooperative.
The inheritance was genuinely lost.
If Yun Che wanted partial transformation, he would have to experiment.
If he wanted to strengthen his transformations, he would have to understand how they worked.
If he wanted to refine the bloodline itself, he would have to research it from fragments and principles.
And if somewhere beyond Cangyun another surviving branch of the Yun Clan possessed the missing knowledge, then one day he intended to find them.
Until then, knowing what was possible was enough.
Yun Che rested one hand on the closed book and smiled faintly.
He had already built weapons nobody had taught him to build. Rediscovered principles through failure. Combined runes in ways local craftsmen considered strange. Turned memories from another world into bicycles, rifles, armor and machines.
Apparently his own bloodline intended to become another engineering problem.
He could live with that.
After all, Yun Che had spent most of his second life working without an instruction manual.
Why should being a Yun be any different?