Chapter Nine: The Baptism of Pain and the Engineering of the Soul
Zhou Fan awoke before dawn dared to fracture the darkness of Dusk Valley. Frost clung to the walls of the wooden shack, and icy wind slipped through the cracks, lashing his frail body like invisible whips. Unlike the other servants, who waited for Overseer Gao's shout, Zhou Fan rose in eerie silence—his eyes colder than winter itself.
He had one month.
Thirty days. Seven hundred and twenty hours. Or, calculated by the rhythm of his heart—over two million seconds.
For someone with Yang Lian's talent, a month was enough to gain a modest increase in strength.
For someone with a pierced body and a forbidden inheritance, a month was a war of attrition against time—and against logic itself.
Zhou Fan left the shack carrying his usual buckets, but he did not head toward the Spirit Spring. Instead, he walked toward an abandoned area behind the mountain known as Echo Cliff. The ground there was unforgiving, littered with jagged stones fallen from the peaks above, and the air was saturated with dense earth-aspected energy that made even simple movement laborious.
He set the buckets aside and took out the leather scroll—The Lost Celestial Calculations.
Opening the second volume, titled [Dark Structure Construction], he read in a low murmur, as if the characters themselves danced in the air:
"Ordinary cultivators build their bodies like fortresses.
You must build yours like a directed sieve.
To endure Chaos Derivation, your bones must be harder than steel, your skin more flexible than silk—and above all, your mind must learn to process thousands of variables under absolute pain."
The first training method began.
Shattering the Channels, Reforging the Flow.
There were no spirit pills to dull the agony. No master to supervise. Zhou Fan stood beneath a small waterfall of icy mountain water and guided the residual energy from the black stone still lingering in his meridians—forcing it to collide with itself inside his body.
It was like firing two bullets down a narrow pipe, head-on.
Boom.
Pain detonated inside his arm like lightning. Zhou Fan dropped to his knees, a strangled scream swallowed by the roar of the waterfall. Blood seeped from his pores—but he did not stop.
"Calculation One," he muttered through chattering teeth.
"Internal pressure must exceed external pressure by 1.5 times to prevent meridian collapse."
"Again."
While Zhou Fan descended into his private hell, life atop the peaks of Long Yuan Sect grew ever more vibrant.
On the Third Peak, where the geniuses trained, Yang Lian sat immersed in a pool of precious Spirit-Tempering Fluid. His skin glowed faintly violet, his energy circulating with a smoothness any cultivator would envy.
"You're still thinking about that servant?" asked another disciple beside the pool—Li Mo, son of a wealthy merchant clan and Yang Lian's peer.
Yang Lian snorted and slammed his fist into the liquid.
"That insect humiliated me in front of everyone. I haven't slept for three nights, replaying how he dispersed my lightning. Some say he's practicing demonic arts."
Li Mo laughed derisively.
"Demonic arts? In a servant brat? You were tired—that's all. Or maybe your technique had a flaw he exploited by chance. Remember, in a month's time, inside the Illusion Forest, there will be no rules. You can crush his skull underfoot and no one will ask questions. A servant is still a servant—even if he learns a few tricks."
Yang Lian closed his eyes, but the image of Zhou Fan's cold gaze refused to fade.
"I'll kill him. He won't even make it halfway through the forest. His death will be a warning to anyone who dares look at me that way."
Meanwhile, down in the Servants' Valley, Zhang struggled to cover both his own duties and Zhou Fan's, desperate to keep Overseer Gao from noticing his friend's absence. He carried four buckets at once, his back screaming in protest.
"Where is that damned Zhou Fan?!" Gao roared, cracking his leather whip.
"Four hours late! Does he think standing before Yang Lian makes him a master now?"
Zhang panicked.
"He—he's ill, Overseer! A high fever from the mine expedition! I'm covering his work!"
"Ill?" Gao sneered, lashing the ground. The earth split beneath Zhang's feet.
"If he doesn't show up tonight to carry his share of firewood, I'll whip him until he forgets his mother's name. Move, you useless thing!"
After Gao left, Zhang wiped the sweat from his brow and looked toward Echo Cliff. Fear gnawed at him. Since returning from the mine, Zhou Fan seemed haunted—no longer smiling, even during their rare moments of shared jokes.
Zhou Fan returned to the shack at midnight.
He walked like a corpse dragged from the grave—clothes torn, face ash-pale, the stench of blood clinging to him. And yet, there was something different.
Presence.
Not the presence of defeat—but of something reforged in fire.
He sat in his usual corner and drew out the black dagger. Slowly, he passed the blade along his arm—not to cut, but to use it as a magnet, drawing out the spiritual impurities forced into his pores by the brutal training.
"Phase One of Structure Construction is forty percent complete," he calculated calmly.
"My bones can now endure Void-pressure without shattering. Next comes… Flow Perception."
He opened the scroll again.
This time, complex diagrams appeared—energy networks resembling star maps.
Dark Derivation – Second Level: Variable Awareness
It is not enough to dismantle energy upon contact.
You must learn to see its fault lines before it reaches you.
Every technique—no matter how grand—has a fulcrum.
Find it… and the world collapses.
Zhou Fan closed his eyes.
He no longer saw the dark room. Instead, faint lines of light drifted through the air. The air itself was not empty—it teemed with scattered particles of qi.
He noticed a thin thread of qi moving steadily from beneath the door. Following it with his mind, he realized it came from the sleeping Zhang beside him. He saw the air enter Zhang's lungs, watched the energy convert slowly—inefficiently—within his body.
"Zhang has a blockage at the right Yang Node," Zhou Fan thought in astonishment.
"If he massages that point, his cultivation efficiency will increase by ten percent."
"I'm not seeing bodies anymore," he realized.
"I'm seeing equations."
The ability was both awe-inspiring and terrifying.
He began to see the weaknesses of things—the wooden wall had a resonance point that would cause collapse if pressed; the oil lamp had an angle at which it could be extinguished without sound.
The world had become a collection of dismantlable targets.
Another week passed. Zhou Fan vanished entirely from sight.
Overseer Gao, who had intended to flog him, found himself forgetting about Zhou Fan again and again. Each time Gao sought to berate him, Zhou Fan used Void Steps to remain in a blind angle—or murmured words timed precisely to disrupt Gao's focus. It was not magic.
It was psychological calculation.
On the fifteenth day of the month, something unexpected occurred.
While training at Echo Cliff, Zhou Fan felt a presence—unlike that of servants or disciples. It was heavy, as if the mountain itself were watching him.
He looked up.
The old man with the broom sat atop a high rock, smoking an ancient pipe.
"You've made decent progress in self-destruction, child," the old man said, exhaling blue smoke that spiraled through the air.
"But have you ever asked yourself… why you train?"
Zhou Fan stopped and met his gaze.
"So I won't be crushed like an ant. To protect those I choose. And to reach the end of the calculation."
The old man laughed, his voice echoing through the valley.
"A standard answer. Everyone wants power to avoid being crushed. But the holder of The Celestial Record does not train to be strong…"
"He trains to be fair—in his own world."
"Do you know the true test of the Illusion Forest?"
"Hunting beast souls and accumulating points," Zhou Fan replied.
"That's what they tell the fools," the old man said, leaping down to land lightly before him.
"The real test is the Sacrificial Altar. At the forest's end lies a place that opens only with blood. The sect wants strong seeds. They don't care how much blood flows."
"Yang Lian isn't your only enemy. Disciples from other sects will infiltrate. And beasts you've never dreamed of will roam."
The old man produced a small black pill—this one glowing faint violet.
"A Chaos-Purifying Pill. Swallow it, and Phase One of your structure will complete. But the pain will make you wish you were never born."
"Do you still wish to continue?"
Zhou Fan took the pill without hesitation.
"I already died the day my clan elder's head fell. What remains of me now is nothing but numbers seeking an answer."
The old man smiled enigmatically and vanished into the mist.
Zhou Fan swallowed the pill.
In the next instant, a volcano of black fire erupted in his abdomen. His meridians swelled, nearly tearing through his skin. He collapsed, driving his nails into the rock until they shattered.
Visions assaulted him—his ancestors, his sister crying, his clan burning.
"Calculate… calculate the pain… don't surrender to emotion…" he screamed inwardly.
"Pain is just a neural signal… frequency: fifty hertz… I can dismantle it… I can—"
The agony lasted six full hours.
When it ended, Zhou Fan lay in a pool of foul black liquid expelled from his body. He was leaner now—but his muscles were taut like drawn bowstrings.
He rose slowly.
A strange lightness filled him. When he waved his hand through the air, a faint tearing sound followed—not energy, but pure physical force enhanced by chaos resonance.
"Now," Zhou Fan whispered, gazing toward the peaks,
"I am ready for the trial."
The final days of the month passed swiftly. The sect entered a state of excitement. Outer disciples sharpened their blades, wagers were placed, and Yang Lian's name was on every tongue—everyone predicting his overwhelming victory.
In the Servants' Valley, Zhou Fan stood before Zhang on the final night.
"Zhang," he said, handing him a slip of paper.
"If I don't return in three days, go to the forest behind the cliff. You'll find a buried pouch with enough money for you to return home and live like a king."
Zhang burst into tears, clutching Zhou Fan's clothes.
"Don't talk like that! You'll come back! You'll crush their heads and return!"
Zhou Fan smiled faintly—the first time he had smiled in a long while.
"The probabilities are in my favor. I've calculated everything… even my death."
He left the shack, heading toward the Forest Gate.
The sky glittered with stars, the moon full and bright. He felt the black dagger in his sleeve, the Record against his chest, and the cold clarity of calculation in his heart.
He was no longer a child.
No longer a poet.
He had become the Dark Accountant.
And now… it was time to collect the debts.