The forest breathed. It was a rhythmic, humid sound—the rustle of a million leaves, the buzzing of insects, and the heavy, wet thud of things being hunted in the dark.
Wuxu lay on the jagged rocks of the forest floor, his body a broken mess. The escape from the sect had saved his life, but the landing had nearly cost him his humanity. His lungs rattled with fluid. His legs were numb, the nerves severed or crushed by the impact.
He was dying. Again.
A pair of yellow eyes materialized in the ferns.
A Shadow Leopard. It didn't stalk; it flowed, a silhouette of black ink against the dark green undergrowth. It smelled the copper tang of Wuxu's blood. To the beast, this wasn't a fight. It was a meal.
Wuxu watched it come. He couldn't lift his arms. He couldn't run. He could only think.
'Come,' he projected the thought, his eyes glassy and cold. 'Step into the zero.'
The leopard leaped.
It was majestic—a blur of wind-enhanced speed. It hit the invisible boundary of Wuxu's 3-Chi Domain like a bird hitting a window pane.
The magic in its blood vanished. The wind supporting its weight evaporated.
Gravity, sudden and unforgiving, slammed the beast into the dirt. It snarled, confused, trying to scramble to its feet to maul the broken boy.
Wuxu barely moved his finger.
"Friction: Zero."
The ground beneath the leopard's paws became smoother than ice, slicker than oil. The beast flailed, its legs splaying out helplessly, unable to find a single point of leverage. It was a predator turned into a panicked kitten on a frozen lake.
Wuxu dragged himself forward. It took every ounce of will to ignore the screaming pain in his ribs. He deactivated the friction law for his own hand, gripping the leopard's fur.
He placed his palm flat against the beast's heaving chest.
"Heartbeat: False."
He didn't use force. He simply reached into the electrical signals governing the leopard's biology and turned the switch to 'Off'.
The beast seized once, violently, and then went limp.
Wuxu collapsed on top of the warm carcass. He didn't have the strength to celebrate. He used a jagged rock to hack open the beast's chest, his hands shaking, until he found it—the Beast Core.
It was a sphere of pulsing green light, warm and humming with life. Order. Structure. The crystallized essence of the Heavens.
Wuxu held it up to his bloody face.
[System Alert: Host Critical.]
[Solution: Artificial Cultivation Protocol.]
The blue text in his mind shifted, presenting a new logic.
[Logic:] The Host lacks a Spiritual Root. The Host cannot process Qi naturally.
[Proposal:] The System can consume Entropy—the energy released by destroying Order—to rewrite the Host's biological code.
[Conversion Table:]
* Entropy 20: Artificial Qi Condensation (Layer 1)
* Entropy 40: Artificial Qi Condensation (Layer 2)
* Entropy 60: Artificial Qi Condensation (Layer 3)
* Entropy 100: DOMAIN UPGRADE (Level 1 \rightarrow Level 2)
Wuxu looked at the core. A cultivator would absorb this to gently nourish their soul.
"Deconstruct," Wuxu rasped.
The air warped around his hand. The green sphere didn't dissolve; it was unmade. The Domain tore the laws holding the energy together, stripping the "Nature" out of it until only raw, chaotic data remained.
[Entropy Gained: +20]
[Total Entropy: 20/100]
[Threshold Reached: Artificial Qi Layer 1.]
[Initiating Body Rewrite...]
It wasn't pleasant.
When a cultivator advances, they feel a warm river of energy cleansing their impurities. Wuxu felt invisible staples being driven into his muscles.
He arched his back, a silent scream dying in his throat.
The System wasn't healing him; it was patching him. It forcibly knit his broken bones together, calcifying them with unnatural density. It thickened his muscle fibers, weaving them tight like steel cables. It purged the fluid from his lungs not by draining it, but by evaporating it.
Snap. Pop.
His legs straightened. The numbness vanished, replaced by a cold, hard strength.
Wuxu sat up. He gasped, the air rushing into his reinforced lungs.
He looked at his hand. It looked like a normal hand. But when he squeezed the rock he had been holding, it crumbled into dust.
"It's not Qi," Wuxu whispered, flexing his fingers. "I'm hollow inside. But the shell... the shell is iron."
Day 4.
The clearing had become a graveyard.
Wuxu sat by a small, smokeless fire. Around him lay the husks of three Iron-Hide Boars and two Wind Wolves.
He was farming.
He picked up a Boar Core. It was heavy, brown, smelling of earth magic.
"Break."
The core shattered into grey dust.
[Entropy: +10]
[Total: 30/100]
"Not enough," Wuxu muttered. He picked up a Wolf Core.
"Break."
[Entropy: +10]
[Total: 40/100]
[Threshold Reached: Artificial Qi Layer 2.]
ZZZT.
A jolt of cold electricity ran up his spine. Wuxu rolled his neck. His skin tightened, taking on a faint, metallic sheen. His reaction time synced with the System's clock.
He stood up. He felt heavy, grounded. A Layer 2 cultivator could run faster than a horse. Wuxu felt like he could stop a horse with his shoulder.
A twig snapped.
From the tree line, a massive shadow emerged. A Steel-Back Bear, standing eight feet tall on its hind legs. It was a Peak Rank 1 beast—the equivalent of a 6th Layer cultivator.
It roared, a sound that shook the leaves off the trees.
Wuxu didn't retreat into his circle. He stepped out.
He wanted to know. Was this strength real? Or was it just numbers on a screen?
The bear charged, a freight train of muscle and fur. It swung a paw the size of a shovel, claws glistening like obsidian daggers.
Wuxu planted his feet. He didn't dodge. He raised his forearm.
BAM.
The impact sounded like a sledgehammer hitting an anvil.
Wuxu slid back two meters, his boots carving deep trenches in the dirt. His arm throbbed. The skin was bruised, but the bone... the bone was intact.
He looked up at the shocked bear.
"My turn."
Wuxu lunged. He didn't use a martial art. He used pure mechanics. Torque. Leverage. Density.
He punched the bear in the throat. Artificial Layer 2 Strength.
CRUNCH.
The bear's windpipe collapsed. It staggered back, gasping, pawing at its throat.
Wuxu stepped in, grabbed the bear by its ears, and dragged the massive beast across the invisible line into his Domain.
"Deconstruct."
He didn't just take the core. He took the bear.
The massive carcass dissolved into grey particles, feeding the hungry void.
[Entropy: +20 (High Density)]
[Total: 60/100]
[Threshold Reached: Artificial Qi Layer 3.]
The strength flooded him again, sharper this time. His vision cleared, zooming in on distant leaves, tracking the flight of a mosquito.
Wuxu stood alone in the dark forest, covered in blood that wasn't his. He looked at the progress bar.
[Total Entropy: 60/100]
[Next Milestone: Domain Level 2 (Radius Expansion + Inventory)]
"Forty points," Wuxu whispered to the darkness. "Four more lives."
He turned his gaze deeper into the Blackwood Forest. He wasn't the prey anymore. He was the glitch in the food chain.