Putting his clothes back on, he went to get the dark coloured sweet potato and wolfed it down.
The sweet potato was cold, half rotten, and tasted like dirt. But it was food. Yang Kai did not have the luxury of being picky. He had stolen it from the outer court's refuse pile two days ago.
The holes in the small roof, allowed some light to seep in, lighting up the hut. The hut was extremely sparse, there was no table or chairs. Only one small bed with a deerskin blanket and square shaped pillow. This was all of Yang Kai's possessions.
Poverty defined his existence here. Other disciples had proper furniture, cultivation cushions, incense burners, and shelves full of martial texts. Yang Kai had a bed, a blanket, and a pillow.
That was everything.
The deerskin, was from a deer Yang Kai hunted previously. Although it was not thick, it was still warm. While his pillow was from his time outside the school when he was hunting, he happened to pick up.
The original Yang Kai had not always been this poor. When he first arrived at High Heaven Pavilion, his family had scraped together enough money to provide basic necessities. But three years of failure had depleted those meager resources.
Now he survived on what he could scavenge, hunt, or steal.
Yang Kai began looking for something, someone.
His eyes scanned the tiny hut with newfound intensity. The memories of countless cultivation novels flooded his mind. The protagonist always had something. A hidden treasure. A mysterious artifact. A cheat item that would change everything.
He had died and been reincarnated. He had been given immortality by a cosmic being. Surely there must be something else. Some additional advantage that would help him climb from the bottom.
But why was there still no sign of change? No mysterious master appearing, no sudden enlightenment, no legendary inheritance falling into his lap?
The pattern was so common in cultivation stories it might as well be a law of nature. Trash protagonist obtains mysterious object. Object grants incredible power. Protagonist face slaps everyone who looked down on him.
Where was his mysterious object?
Every cultivation story had them. Some lucky fool would stumble upon a hidden cave, a dusty old ring, or a fragment of an ancient text, something that would change his fate forever.
Spatial rings that contained entire libraries. Ancient jade slips with supreme techniques. Talking swords with the souls of dead immortals. The list was endless.
But not him.
Yang Kai had nothing. Just a broom, a blanket, and a pillow. The most mundane items imaginable.
Yang Kai continued searching, he dug under his bed, hoping for a hidden scroll. Nothing.
His hands scraped against bare dirt floor. No hidden compartments. No secret passages. Just cold, hard earth that had not been disturbed in years.
He had secretly checked the well outside, thinking it might be a portal. Still nothing, he even scoured the back of his broomstick, just in case there were inscriptions. Absolutely nothing.
The well was just a well. The broom was just a broom. Everything was exactly what it appeared to be. Ordinary. Mundane. Disappointing.
Now, sitting in his miserable little hut, he clenched his fists.
Frustration bubbled up from deep within. He had been given a second chance at life. He had knowledge from two worlds. He had immortality. But without strength, without resources, without some advantage in this brutal cultivation world, what good was any of it?
"Fine," he muttered. "If a treasure will not come to me, I will force it out myself."
The new Yang Kai was not content to wait passively for opportunities. If the standard cultivation novel tropes would not activate on their own, he would trigger them manually.
Blood recognition was a common trope. Drip blood on a mysterious object and it bonds with you. Simple. Effective. Worth trying.
Ignoring the pain in his ribs, he grabbed the dull knife he used for cutting firewood. Holding out his left hand, he took a deep breath and sliced across his palm.
The blade bit into flesh. Pain flared, sharp and immediate. But Yang Kai did not flinch. He had endured far worse this morning.
Fresh, crimson blood welled up.
The cut was deeper than intended. Blood flowed freely, dripping onto the dirt floor. But that was fine. He needed blood for this experiment anyway.
Gritting his teeth, Yang Kai smeared the blood on everything in his hut that looked even remotely suspicious.
He moved methodically, testing each item. If blood recognition was going to work, it would work on something. The question was which item held the secret.
The broomstick? No reaction. Just a bloody broom.
He smeared blood across the handle, the bristles, even the wooden shaft where it connected. The broom remained stubbornly ordinary.
The wooden floorboards? No glowing runes. Just a bloody mess.
He tried the area under his bed, the corners of the room, even the doorframe. Nothing activated. Just blood staining old wood.
His tattered clothes? Of course not.
That would be too convenient. Clothes as cultivation artifacts only appeared in high level sects. Trial Disciples did not get magical robes.
His old pillow? He hesitated. It was just a stone, right? But what if?
The pillow was the one item he had not originally owned. He had found it during a hunting trip in the Black Wind Mountains. A random black stone that happened to be the right size and shape for a pillow.
What if it was not random at all?
This black stone pillow had already been with Yang Kai for a year already, yet he still did not know what it was. Nonetheless, it was a great pillow.
The original Yang Kai had never questioned it. Just accepted his good fortune at finding a comfortable pillow and moved on. But now, with knowledge from another world, the new Yang Kai saw possibilities.
A mysterious black stone found in dangerous mountains. An object with unknown origins. The perfect setup for a cultivation treasure.
Desperate, he smeared his own blood across the black stone.
His palm pressed against the smooth surface. Blood spread across the stone, dark red against black. He held his breath, waiting for something, anything, to happen.
Nothing.
Yang Kai sighed in frustration and collapsed onto his bed.
The blood just sat there on the stone's surface, not absorbed, not reacted to, just slowly drying. Another failed experiment.
"Maybe I really am just ordinary."
The thought was depressing. Perhaps he had read too many novels, built up too many expectations. Maybe this world did not work like the stories he remembered.
Maybe he was just a regular person in a cultivation world. Destined to remain weak forever.
He closed his eyes, exhaustion pulling him into rest.