The spirit stone had turned into a handful of gray dust that the wind finally carried away through the cracks in the cabin. There was no epiphany, nor did my strength double. What I felt was, simply, a more solid foundation. The ring in my chest no longer felt like a silk thread, but like a copper wire: thin, yet resilient.
That morning, hunger finally caught up with me. It wasn't the desperate roar of my previous life, but a dull, constant pressure in my stomach—a reminder that my metabolism, however slow it might be, was still functioning.
I went to the market. With two of my copper coins, I bought a small sack of hardened grain and some dried meat that smelled more of salt than of animal. I didn't seek luxuries. In this new world, the first knowledge I needed was the price of survival.
"Are you the boy who went down for Kaelen's anchor?" the vendor asked while counting my coins. She had small eyes, weathered by the saltpeter.
"Yes," I replied curtly.
"You've got grit. That seabed is treacherous. Be careful; we don't want another corpse floating at pier four."
I didn't answer. I packed my provisions and headed to meet Kaelen.
The next six days were a routine of iron and cold water. Kaelen didn't find any more "treasures." What we recovered was scrap, pure and simple: rusted beams, broken chain links, and hull plates from merchant ships that the sea refused to let go.
Underwater, every dive was a lesson in elementary physics. I learned that if I tried to fight the current head-on, I exhausted my oxygen in seconds. Instead, if I used my density to anchor myself to the rocks and moved with the parsimony of a tortoise, the water simply flowed around me.
I never saw the glow of another spirit stone. The bottom offered only mud, old metal, and silence.
My progress in cultivation was just as gray. At night, I would sit on the cabin floor and try to accelerate the ring in my chest. The pain of the friction was constant, a reminder that my body was not built for speed. But I began to notice something: muscular fatigue disappeared faster than in a normal man. The "molasses" Qi, though slow for attacking or defending, was incredibly efficient at maintaining the cohesion of my fibers.
On the seventh day, while helping Kaelen stow a load of salvaged bronze pipes, I realized my hands no longer bled from the friction of the rope. They were covered in dark calluses, and the metallic hue of my skin under the sun was more evident.
"That's it for today, Aethel," Kaelen said, wiping sweat with a dirty rag. He looked at me sideways, with a mix of respect and curiosity. "You're a strange worker. You don't talk, you don't complain, and you never seem to tire. The other boys would already be begging for a break."
"I need the money," I said simply.
"Yeah, everyone needs money. But you seem to be made of different stuff."
He tossed me a single iron coin. The work had become less profitable as we cleared the accessible areas.
"Tomorrow the tide will rise too high and we won't be able to go down. Take the day off. Go to town, spend that on something hot. Or get out of here if you have better plans."
I pocketed the coin. In a week of grueling work, my capital was ridiculous and my cultivation level remained the same: the first stage of Blood Refinement.
That night, sitting in the darkness of the cabin, I didn't look for miracles. I limited myself to observing my hands. If my destiny was to cultivate ten times slower, then I figured my base would be ten times harder than everyone else's; I preferred to think that way rather than dwell on the idea that I would end up with a mediocre foundation despite my efforts.
Hunger was satisfied, I had a roof, and my muscles felt like taut cords. Time, my supposed chain, was beginning to feel like my greatest ally. If the world wanted me to be slow, I would be as slow as the movement of mountains: imperceptible, but inevitable.
Tomorrow, there would be no work at sea.
I woke up when the first ray of sunlight filtered through the worm-eaten boards of the roof. There was no alarm clock, no hum of an electric city; only the squawk of metal-winged gulls and the distant hammering of forges that never went out.
It was my first day of rest.
I stepped out of the cabin, stretching my arms. My muscles gave a dull crack, a sensation of solidity that reminded me of a well-seated gear. I walked toward the center of Ash Port, not with the urgency of a job seeker, but with the calm of an observer.
The town was a scar of stone and iron on the coast. The houses were built with basalt blocks and rusted sheet metal roofs that vibrated in the salt wind. The air always smelled of a mixture of rotting fish and burnt coal. It was a harsh place, designed to endure, not to be aesthetic.
I stopped at a street stall and used a couple of my copper coins to buy a bowl of thick broth. I sat on a stone bench in front of the main square, watching the flow of people.
Here, hierarchy was not measured by clothing, but by the density of Qi. Most were like Kaelen: workers with weathered skin and hands deformed by effort, mortals who barely touched the first level of refinement if they were lucky. But every now and then, someone different passed by.
I saw a young man dressed in dark silk robes that the wind could barely move. He walked with an offensive lightness, as if gravity were merely a suggestion to him. People stepped aside as he passed without him having to say a word.
He was the wind, acting like the wind.
I finished my broth and walked toward the forge district. There, the heat was so intense that the air distorted. Giant bellows, driven by seawater, fed furnaces that smelted the "black iron" for which the kingdom was named. It was a dance of fire and sweat. The blacksmiths struck the metal in unison, a rhythm that resonated in my chest, synchronizing for a moment with the slow beat of my core.
"Don't just stand there, boy, if you're not going to buy anything," a forge official grunted, covered in soot and wearing a scowl.
I moved away without a word. I wasn't looking for trouble. In this world, a wrong look at the wrong person could end in unnecessary conflict, and I had no interest in testing my resilience against a warhammer.
I spent the rest of the afternoon on the northern cliffs, away from the noise. I sat and watched the ocean. The sea of this kingdom was strange; the waves didn't break with white foam, but with a grayish tone, laden with mineral sediments.
I closed my eyes and let my Qi circulate. Without the pressure of physical work, the ring in my chest spun with a comforting stability. It was a moment of leisure, but for me, leisure was simply another form of practice. Every slow breath, every measured heartbeat, was one more brick in my foundation.
As the sun set, tinting the smoke from the chimneys a bloody orange, I understood that Ash Port was just a small piece of a much larger puzzle.
I returned to my cabin as the shadows lengthened. My week of work had given me the bare minimum to survive, but this day of observation had given me something more important: the certainty that I didn't fit into any part of this system.
I felt quite a lot of expectation about the future.
Tomorrow, I would return to the pier.
A month passed. A month of salt, iron, and silence.
Thirty days later, my body was no longer the same as the one that descended from Star-Lament Peak. The skin on my hands had grown so tough that the friction of rusted chains no longer left marks.
Kaelen and I had become a common sight at pier four. We didn't find another spirit stone; that initial stroke of luck revealed itself for what it was: an accidental residue. Instead, we recovered tons of common scrap. Beams, minor anchors, remnants of keels... nothing glorious, but enough to fill my pouch with a few iron coins and keep my stomach running.
My routine was mechanical. Wake up, walk to the pier, submerge into the darkness of the seabed, and push the limits of my lungs while the "molasses" Qi circulated through my veins.
I had discovered something fundamental during this month: extreme physical labor underwater acted as a catalyst for my stagnant cultivation. Under the pressure of the sea, my Qi had no room to disperse; it was forced to compact. Every time I forced the rotation of the ring in my chest to resist a strong current, the friction generated a heat that tempered my muscles from within. It wasn't a rapid advance in levels—I remained firmly anchored in the first stage of Blood Refinement—but the quality of that blood was different. I felt it could hold more oxygen, allowing me to stay underwater much longer than any mortal.
One afternoon, at the end of the day, Kaelen handed me my pay while observing my arms.
"You've been here a month, Aethel, and I'd swear you weigh ten kilos more than when you started, even though you look just as thin," he said, scratching his graying beard. "You've got a terrifying amount of endurance. I've seen guys with better breathing techniques collapse from the cold of this water, but you seem... comfortable down there."
"The water is predictable," I replied, stowing the coin. "It doesn't try to deceive you. It only pushes."
Kaelen nodded thoughtfully.
"Don't come early tomorrow. There's an inspection by the Iron Collectors at the docks. They're looking for 'unregistered talent' for the deep mines or the imperial forges. A guy with your strength would draw too much attention, and believe me, you don't want to end up in the mines. Stay in your cabin or go to the cliffs."
I accepted the advice. In this month, I had learned that in the Black Iron Kingdom, standing out without the backing of a sect or a clan was a sentence to servitude; if someone accidentally saw you had talent, well, you were in serious trouble.
That night in the cabin, I took out my savings. I had enough to buy something more than grain and dried meat, though not much more. Cultivation techniques were expensive; spirit stones were out of my reach.
Now I understood why many cultivators chose to seek their fortune in dangerous lands; for someone starting from literally nothing, things are complicated.
The "leisure" of my first day of rest had transformed into constant vigilance.
Sitting on the floor, I closed my eyes. The Qi ring spun with a majestic parsimony. I was no longer frustrated by the slowness. If it took me ten years to reach the next level, it would be ten years of building a foundation that no one could shake.
However, Kaelen's warning about the Collectors left an uneasiness in my chest. Ash Port was beginning to feel small. I needed a direction.