The Misty Vale emptied with the dawn, bearing its wounded and its twenty grimy, triumphant survivors. Lee Jin was not among them. He slipped back into the outer disciple compound as unnoticed as he had left, the lingering ache of spent meridians and the sharp, new knowledge of the Mist-Cutter Palm his only trophies.
The days that followed were a study in controlled hunger. The near-miss with Disciple Rho had shown him his limits in stark relief. He had the equations for power, but his spiritual battery was pathetically small. The Spirit-Grain pills the victors flaunted would have meant a week's worth of cultivation in a single swallow.
His solution was both simpler and more demeaning: the kitchen midden.
Behind the sect's main kitchens was a pit where discards were tossed—vegetable peelings, bone scraps, and, crucially, the dregs from the cauldrons where spirit-beast bones were boiled for the inner disciples' broth. These dregs held trace residues of spiritual energy, worthless to any real cultivator, but to Lee Jin's system-augmented body and his Master Herbalism knowledge, they were a resource.
Under cover of darkness, he would sift through the foul-smelling heap, collecting gelatinous scraps of tendon and fragments of porous bone. He'd boil them for hours into a thin, greasy, revolting stock. He drank it, forcing down the nausea. It was a step up from Bitter-Spike Nettles, but a step deep into squalor.
[Bodily Vessel Improvement: 17.3%]
[Spiritual Energy Capacity: 0.9 Moon Cycle Units]
[Note: Qi quality is impure. Minor spiritual contaminants detected.]
The system's clinical readout didn't judge, only reported. Impure qi was better than no qi. He was patching a sinking ship with tar and scrap wood, but it was floating.
His new focus became observation, not action. He returned to the training yards, now ostensibly to repair fencing or clean weapon racks, tasks even Senior Disciple Han couldn't deny him. But his true purpose was to watch the inner disciples who sometimes practiced at the far end.
Their movements were different. Cleaner, fiercer, laden with an intent his system struggled to fully parse. He saw a young woman execute a sword form that made the air hum. A man practiced a palm technique that left ghostly after-images of cold flame on a stone target.
[Target: Inner Disciple Lan]
- Skills Detected: Frostblade Art (Proficient), Iceshard Step (Advanced - Partial Data), Qi Concealment (Basic)
[Warning: Target's cultivation base prohibits full analysis. Copy function requires prolonged proximity and target's skill usage.]
He couldn't copy them. Not yet. Their skills were behind a firewall of their own dense spiritual energy. But he could study. The Frostblade Art's footwork shared principles with the Moonlight Step, but wasfar more efficient, using qi not just for propulsion but to momentarily freeze the air underfoot for explosive traction. Lee Jin's mind, now a repository of interconnected martial principles, began to cross-reference. He couldn't copy the Iceshard Step, but he could attempt to modify his own Moonlight Step based on the observed theory.
That night in the ravine, instead of simply ejecting qi from his soles, he tried to shape it, to compress and then crystallize it for a fraction of a second upon release. The result wasn't ice, but a sharper, more brittle thrust of energy.
His first attempt blew out the side of his worn shoe and sent a jagged pain up his calf. The second was slightly more controlled. The third resulted in a short, screeching dash that left two shallow, frost-rimmed grooves in the creek bank.
It was a flawed, dangerous imitation. But it was evolution. The system hadn't given him the skill, but by providing perfect recall and analytical depth, it allowed him to reverse-engineer concepts.
This silent, stolen scholarship was broken by a voice from the trees.
"Interesting."
Lee Jin froze, his heart seizing. He turned slowly.
Elder Wu stood at the edge of the clearing, his grey robes making him seem part of the twilight and rock. His hands were clasped behind his back, his expression unreadable. How long had he been watching?
"Elder," Lee Jin stammered, bowing deeply.
"You were not invited to the Trials," Elder Wu stated, not as an accusation, but a fact.
"I... understood the rules to allow it, Elder."
"A technicality you exploited. You did not win. You did not even truly fight. You observed. You ran. You hid." The Elder took a step forward, his eyes like polished stones in the gloom. "And yet, your Silent Moon Fist now carries a hint of cutting intent it should not possess. Your Moonlight Step has a jarring, inefficient sharpness to it. You are attempting to graft branches from trees you cannot possibly climb onto a sapling of your own."
Lee Jin's blood ran cold. He saw it all—the missteps, the hybrid techniques, the desperate scavenging—laid bare by that calm, omniscient gaze.
"Tell me, Lee Jin," Elder Wu's voice dropped, not louder, but somehow heavier. "How does a spiritual cripple, a boy who could not feel a wisp of qi for three years, suddenly not only cultivate, but display an... analytical understanding of advanced principles?"
The air grew still. The creek's babble seemed to fade. This was the moment. The system was his deepest secret, the core of his rebirth. To reveal it was to become a specimen, a tool to be dissected by the sect.
Lee Jin remained bowed, his mind racing. He could not tell the truth. But under the pressure of that gaze, a raw, unvarnished half-truth spilled out.
"I have nothing, Elder," he said, his voice tight. "No talent. No resources. No master. So I use the only things I have. My eyes. And my desperation. I watch. I try to see not just the what, but the why. Why does the foot turn here? Why does the qi pulse there? I have to understand because I cannot afford to waste a single movement, a single breath of energy. I am not grafting branches, Elder. I am carving splinters, and hoping to make a weapon."
The silence stretched. A night bird called.
Finally, Elder Wu let out a soft breath that was almost a sigh. "Desperation is a sharp whetstone. It can hone a blade, or it can shatter it." He turned to leave, then paused. "The kitchen refuse you have been consuming carries the lethargic residue of the Rock-Armored Badger spirit beast. It will make your qi sluggish and heavy over time. In the eastern herb garden, the Purple-Throated Moss that grows on the north side of the third terrace stone absorbs and purifies that specific residual energy. It is considered a pest."
And then he was gone, melting into the shadows as silently as he had arrived.
Lee Jin stood trembling, not from fear, but from the shock of the reprieve—and the gift. It was not approval. It was a test. A dangerous, cryptic test. Here is a poison, and here is its antidote, growing in the dirt. Will you be sharp enough to see it?
He looked at his hands, calloused and stained. He was no longer just a ghost. He was a ghost who had been seen. The rules of his game had just changed again. The path forward was no longer just about stealing from the oblivious. It was about learning under the gaze of the observant, and surviving the price of their attention