A Life-bound Spirit Treasure was a rare and potent class of weapon, unique in its ability to grow and enhance its power long after its initial forging, evolving alongside its master through countless battles and breakthroughs. This was the very reason Su Min had selected it, pairing the sword with complementary skills to smooth her path through the game's arduous early stages, where a single misstep could mean a permanent game over. Without such a foundational advantage, a player burdened with her meager starting talents and abilities would have faced an existence of pure torment, a brutal grind from the very bottom. Now, cornered and desperate, the time had come to finally put her meticulous preparations to good use.
As Niu Ma lunged forward with a mocking leer, his grimy hands outstretched, a single, silvery flash of light sliced through the darkness, so fast it was little more than a thought given form. Even the lowest-grade spiritual weapon was, after all, still a spiritual weapon, a thing of wonder and sharpness far beyond the durability of ordinary materials like hemp and flesh. The coarse hemp net split apart like aged parchment, and Niu Ma's body followed, cleanly severed at the waist. The cut was so swift, so impossibly precise, that for a long and horrifying moment, the man did not even comprehend his own injury. He only registered a sudden, dizzying lack of support, a wrongness in his center, before his upper half crashed to the ground with a heavy, wet thud, his legs buckling and collapsing a few feet away.
"Aaaah!!!"
A miserable scream tore from his lips, a sound so raw and full of agony it seemed to rip the very fabric of the midnight sky. The gang of thugs who had accompanied him stood frozen, utterly stunned, their minds refusing to process the scene. Their leader had been alive and leering just a heartbeat ago. How had he been bisected in the blink of an eye, by a girl they had seen as helpless prey? They all knew, on some primal level, that a wound of that nature was not instantly fatal. A man still had enough time, and enough awful awareness, to drag himself through the dirt and use his own blood to scrawl a giant, final character of tragedy before the end finally claimed him.
"Well?"
Before their shock could even begin to settle, Su Min spun the slender sword in her hand with a graceful, practiced flourish, the blade humming faintly as it cut the air. She casually licked her lips, her delicate features, illuminated by the faint, cold moonlight, now appearing wickedly alluring and dangerously deadly, a stark contrast to the trembling girl they had hunted moments before. "Who wishes to be next?" Her voice was a low, chilling challenge.
"Witch!" someone shrieked, the word bursting forth in a blind, mindless panic. Then, as one, the entire mob scattered like rats abandoning a sinking ship, their courage shattered, leaving only Niu Ma's twitching, gruesome corpse and the thick, coppery stench of blood behind.
"Ugh."
Watching the last of them disappear into the night, the sounds of their frantic footsteps fading into the distance, Su Min let the sword in her hand dissolve into a stream of faint, fading light. She dropped to her knees, the adrenaline fading, and retched twice onto the cold soil, her body convulsing with the visceral shock of it all. The reality of the act, the metallic scent of blood and the sight of what she had done, was overwhelmingly nauseating, a far cry from the sanitized violence of a screen.
"I cannot stay here," she gasped to herself, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. "I have zero cultivation. Just manifesting that spirit weapon pushed me to my absolute limit." Forcing a spiritual weapon into being without a single drop of qi in her reserves had been a reckless, all-or-nothing gamble, draining her mentally and physically. If those thugs had possessed a shred of courage to call her bluff, if just one of them had lunged forward as she stood there trembling inside, she would have been doomed. Frightening them off was the best possible outcome she could have hoped for.
As the old saying wisely went, one must keep the green hills alive to never run out of firewood to burn. She had to survive this night to have any future at all.
Her first priority was to find a safe place to recover, and perhaps, to comprehend her first true cultivation technique. Before long, the only occupants of the desolate ravine were the two halves of Niu Ma's corpse, the dark, pooling scent of blood quickly drawing swarms of scavenging insects from the shadows, a grim feast beginning under the silent stars.
"Damn it... I can't... run anymore..."
Soon after, Su Min stumbled into a dilapidated temple deep within the mountains, her breath coming in ragged, painful pants, her hair and clothes in wild disarray. The expensive silk long dress she wore, a remnant of her character's noble past, was completely unsuited for a frantic flight through rugged terrain, its fine fabric snagged and torn by countless thorns and branches.
"Since there is a system panel, what about a backpack?" she wondered, leaning against a crumbling, dusty pillar for support. "I remember there should be some beginner items inside, and they are free. Also, once dawn breaks, that brothel will definitely start to react." They would not let their prime merchandise, and the killer of their enforcer, simply vanish.
Looking down at her own delicate, soft hands, hands that had never known a day of real labor, Su Min let out a bitter, exhausted chuckle. She recalled the label the fleeing thugs had screamed at her. "Witch." It seemed she was about to experience the fervor of a medieval witch hunt firsthand, with her life very literally on the line.
As she focused her thoughts on an inventory, a crisp, bell-like chime echoed in her ears, a welcome and familiar sound.
However, instead of a translucent screen materializing before her, a single object dropped from the empty air and landed by her feet with a soft clink: a pitch-black ring that gleamed with a subdued, dark luster.
"A spatial ring?"
Bending down curiously, she picked up the cool, metallic ring and slipped it onto her finger. It fit perfectly. The moment her consciousness brushed against it, a mental image of its contents unfolded before her mind's eye, neat and organized:
-Practical outfits (Goodbye, ruined noble robes)
-Bigu dan (No hunger for days)
-Alchemy & Artifice Manual (Crafting 101)
-Herb & Ore Compendium (Forage like a pro)
"Nice."
Without a moment's hesitation, Su Min willed one of the practical outfits into her hands. The fabric felt sturdy and coarse, a world away from silk. She stripped off the torn and dirtied robe, which had been shredded by unforgiving branches during her escape, and quickly changed into the sturdy, dark-hued clothing, the simple tunic and trousers a comfort in their anonymity.
"This feels much better," she murmured, the fabric comfortable and flexible against her skin. "This set even looks like something meant for the night, actually." The dark colors would help her blend into the shadows.
After stretching her limbs a few times, she found the new clothes allowed for far greater freedom of movement, no longer constricting her every step.
"And my skill... I remember that upon first entering the game, I was supposed to be able to comprehend one cultivation method."
Popping a Bigu Dan into her mouth, she felt a cool, soothing sensation spread through her core, and the gnawing emptiness in her stomach settled into a placid, artificial fullness. With that, she would not have to worry about food for at least a day or two. It was time to focus on her most critical task: breaking through to a higher state of being. Only with a foundation of cultivation could she truly hope to protect herself. Settling into a cross-legged position on the dusty temple floor, she opened her system panel and reviewed the available skills, steeling her resolve.
Closing her eyes, she let herself be guided by pure instinct. Her innate talent, "Heavenly Dao Insight," stirred to life within her. Darkness enveloped her senses, and in the void behind her eyelids, countless glowing fragments of scripture swirled in a slow, cosmic dance, each one a potential path to power, each pulsating with its own unique energy.
"So this is the manifestation of my innate skill. Those glowing characters must each represent a different cultivation method."
She glanced around at the pitch-black mental landscape and at her own now translucent hands. Somehow, she knew instinctively that each character contained vast, encyclopedic amounts of information, the accumulated knowledge of a forgotten lineage. She only needed to choose one, to find the one that resonated with her.
"Trust instinct. Do not force it."
Her ethereal hand reached out, brushing gently across a nearby cluster of characters that pulsed with a soft, greenish light, a color that spoke of growth and vitality.
BOOM.
A torrent of knowledge, profound and ancient, flooded her mind, the characters unpacking themselves into a coherent, flowing text:
[Everlasting Spring Art / Changchun Gong (Incomplete)]
The longer cultivated, the greater its effects.
"I finally have a cultivation method. I need to start immediately, right now!"
Without opening her eyes, Su Min began to slowly, carefully guide her nascent inner energy according to the esoteric, complex instructions of the Changchun Gong, tracing the pathways described in her mind. She desperately needed to take that first, crucial step, the first true step on the long and winding road to immortality. She focused on the feeling of the energy, willing it to move, to grow, to become something more.
Meanwhile, back in Yu City within the opulent, perfumed confines of the Chunhong Brothel...
"She is a witch! A true witch!" The thugs who had fled the hills were now on their knees in a lavishly decorated room, screaming their confession at a formidable middle-aged woman who loomed over them.
The woman was strikingly tall, standing nearly one point eight meters, and her frame was powerfully built with thick, ropy muscles that strained against the fine silk of her robes. A single, cold glance from her dark, calculating eyes was enough to make grown men instinctively tremble and look away, their bravado vanishing.
She was the madam of the Chunhong Brothel. Under her ruthless and meticulous management, the courtesans were so thoroughly disciplined, their spirits so completely broken, that they would obey and fulfill any request a customer made, no matter how depraved or humiliating, without a flicker of resistance.
"A bunch of useless trash. You let one little girl get the better of you, didn't you?"
The madam sneered coldly down at the trembling men, her voice dripping with contempt. She knew exactly how weak that Su girl was, a sheltered noble child with no strength or guile. Had she been there herself, she could have subdued the child with one hand, without even ruffling her own clothes. The girl had only arrived today, and the madam had not yet had the time to properly "train" her, to break her will with the brothel's specialized methods. Give her just a single week, and the girl would have been eating out of her palm, compliant and broken, her spirit crushed into dust.
"It is true! Every word! If you do not believe us, we can go and look! The body is still there! She cut Niu Ma in half!" one of the men babbled, his eyes wide with the memory of the horror.
The madam narrowed her eyes, studying the panicking thugs. These men were normally unruly and fearless, quick with their fists and their boasts, but the sheer, unadulterated terror etched on their faces did not seem feigned. Her expression darkened considerably, her jaw tightening with anger, and with a sharp, angry turn, she strode off to head deeper into the private courtyard.