Li Yao collapsed in a heap behind a stinking pile of fish guts in the city's sprawling slum district, the "Vermin's Nest." This was where the city's underbelly festered—the beggars, the failed mercenaries, the crippled miners. Here, he was just one more piece of human refuse.
His body was screaming. The desperate escape had undone most of his regeneration progress. His status screen flickered ominously, his estimated lifespan temporarily dipping due to the massive exertion.
He had nothing. No money, no food, no safe haven. The Hong Family would disown him for disappearing. The City Guard was now actively hunting him.
This is the protagonist's grand adventure? he thought, a bitter taste in his mouth. Hiding in filth, hunted for a crime I didn't commit.
"Correction: The crime was 'inconveniencing a superior.' In the hierarchical structure of this world, that is a capital offense. Analysis: Host's current survival probability has decreased to 11%. A paradigm shift is required."
"No kidding," Li Yao muttered. He looked at his hands, still caked in blood and grime. The System was his key, but it was a key that required immense strength to turn. He needed a foundation. A base of operations. The first, most fundamental resources.
He remembered the System's three vectors. Mercantile was out—he had no capital. Institutional was too risky right now. That left Exploratory.
"System, scan the surrounding area for ambient spiritual energy concentrations. The slightest trace."
"Scanning... Detection: Faint, residual wood-attribute Qi emanating from a refuse pile 15 meters to your left. Source identified: Discarded stems of 'Fading Moon Grass,' a low-grade medicinal herb. Its potency is at 3% of peak, but it is bio-available."
Hope, faint and desperate, flickered in Li Yao's chest. He crawled towards the pile, his sharpened senses from the Essence Gathering Realm now guiding him. He sifted through the rotting vegetables and broken pottery until his fingers closed around a handful of wilted, blue-tinged stems.
It was trash. Literal garbage. But to him, it was a lifeline.
"System, guide me. How do I extract this efficiently?"
"Technique Generated: [Withering Root Absorption]. A method to draw trace residual energy from deceased or decaying spiritual materials."
It was a slow, tedious process. He sat in the filth, holding the wilted stems, cycling the [Breath of the Primordial Awakening] in tandem with this new, crude technique. It was like trying to suck the last few drops of moisture from a dry leaf. But over the next hour, a trickle of warm, green-tinged energy seeped into his meridians. It was miniscule, but it was pure.
His regeneration rate ticked up from 4.7% to 5.1%. It was nothing. And it was everything.
He wasn't just consuming a resource; he was learning. He was understanding the texture of wood-attribute Qi, how it felt different from the wild ambient energy. This was true cultivation. Not just power-leveling, but comprehension.
As the moon rose over the squalid slum, Li Yao made a decision. He would not rush. He would not recklessly seek power. He would build his foundation, one painstakingly gathered wisp of Qi at a time. He would use the System's boundless knowledge to understand the why behind every step, to create his own techniques tailored perfectly to his unique body and circumstances.
The journey would be slow. It would be filled with countless such nights of desperate scraping in the dirt. He would have to outthink his enemies, because he could not yet overpower them. The lifespan clock was ticking, a relentless drumbeat in the back of his mind.
But as he felt another fragment of his injury knit together, Li Yao, the former office worker from Earth, smiled a grim, determined smile in the darkness. The Eternal Ascension Path was not a sprint. It was a marathon against time itself. And he had just taken his first, truly conscious step.