For the next three days, the girl — whose name he eventually learned was Qian — visited Lu Chen daily, tending to him in silence. Though his body remained too weak to move, his mind was anything but idle.
Through their fragmented conversations, Lu Chen began to piece together a world that felt utterly alien. He knew nothing — not the names of cities, the rise and fall of sects, nor even the basic tenets of cultivation. Each time he posed a question, Qian's brows would knit together in confusion, her eyes flickering with disbelief. The things she considered common knowledge — the structure of the world, the significance of spiritual roots, even the shape of reality — were revelations to him.
To her, it was as if she were speaking to someone who had slept through a hundred years of history.
She explained: though stories of cultivators were told far and wide, those who truly walked the path were rare. Cultivation was not for everyone — one needed spiritual roots to begin. Ideally, a single root, or at most two. And even those were rare. Most people lived and died as mortals, never touching the flow of qi.
And yet, despite his ignorance and the odds, this very boy had stood against a God.
Doctor Hui had said it once, perhaps in disbelief, perhaps in awe: "This boy is a mortal."
Can a mortal really slay a God?
Doctor Hui had said it again, as if trying to convince himself: "This boy is a mortal."
---
Each night, beneath the soft flicker of lantern light, Lu Chen lay motionless, eyes fixed on the fractured system logs. There, buried beneath corrupted data and scattered fragments, he discovered traces of Xiao Li's journey — a record spanning over a millennium. Though much had been lost, enough remained for Lu Chen to glimpse the outline of a world he barely understood.
And enough to reconstruct the first true step on the path of cultivation: Qi Condensation.
But before he could begin, one question loomed:
What kind of spiritual root did he possess?
Or more troubling still — did he possess one at all?Or was it… a fake root?
In the cultivation world, everything began with the spiritual root. It defined one's affinity with qi, the elements they could command, and the heights they might one day reach.
Most commoners were born with three or four roots — a fragmented configuration known as a fake root. With such a foundation, cultivation was not just difficult — it was nearly impossible.
For disciples of great sects, the process was effortless. A single glance from a master's divine sense or a scan from a crystal mirror would reveal everything: Fire, water, wood, metal, earth... or perhaps even the rare dual or heavenly roots.
Lu Chen had none of that.
No master.No divine sense.No mirror.
Only broken data. Incomplete theories. A body still clawing its way back from the brink of death.
And yet — he no longer cared.
That question had consumed too many lives, locked too many doors.
So what if he lacked the prerequisites?
He retrieved the orb from his pouch and read the system's description.Warm to the touch, heavier than it looked — its surface etched with the image of a coiled dragon in eternal motion.
A silent presence stirred beneath the metal, as if watching.
[Item Description: A living artifact. A devourer. A forge.]
Nothing more.As expected from this broken system.
Yet something pulsed within it.A hidden prompt.
[Function Available: Input]
Inventories unlocked.
A new system update?
Inside the inventory were shards of shadow, warped fragments of qi, and broken weapons that had once belonged to the Engager.
Even the cracked head of a statue.
The one that belonged to the Shadow Champion.Eerily serene — as if it had never known war.
He stared, frowning.
Did I pick all these up?
Lu Chen fed the shards of shadow into the orb, watching as they dissolved into motes of data through the input console. The default output path was set to: Eight Desolation Art.
Curious, he checked the orb's output options. Only three were listed — Spirit Stone, Skill EXP, and Qi.
The orb pulsed faintly in his hand, like a heartbeat.
[System Notification: Shadow Essence fully consumed][Energy output → Eight Desolation Art][Eight Desolation Art: Level 2 → Skill Enhancement Unlocked]
The pulse faded.
No surge of power. No flash of insight.
Just silence.
Lu Chen frowned. The Eight Desolation Art had stirred — he could feel it — but the breakthrough was incomplete. He was missing something vital.
The Eight Desolation Art required Foundation Stage — the first true step of cultivation.
He remembered the theory: skeletal structure, muscle, and internal organs could serve as vessels for qi — but only if first saturated with spiritual energy. Only then could qi be condensed and stabilised. This was the purpose of spiritual roots. Not just to sense qi, but to hold it.
Then, from the depth of Xiao Li's logs, an idea surfaced. A forgotten experiment:
Direct absorption of raw qi from unrefined spirit stones.
A reckless method, long abandoned — the energy within was wild, unrefined, often fatal. Only cultivators at the Golden Core stage dared attempt it.
He needed to function like the orb. To become the forge.
And so, a plan took shape — one part theory, one part madness:
He would extract qi from spirit stones manually. Input it into his body, just as the orb did. He would route excess energy into the orb, and then rechannel the orb's output to re-condense into the spirit stones.
A self-contained loop. Dangerous. Unstable. Brilliant.
Lu Chen sat up, trembling, but alive with clarity.
He opened the system console.
He began building.
For a mortal, without a spiritual root, to walk the path of Qi Condensation.
With theory. With modification. With routes.
A method to forge the forge.
---
The fourth night had fallen.
Outside the small wooden hut, the village lay cloaked in uneasy silence. Lanterns swayed gently in the night breeze, casting elongated shadows across the packed dirt paths. The air was still — too still. Crickets, once constant, had quieted. Even the restless barking of village dogs had faded. A quiet tension lingered in the gaps between every breath.
The guards still patrolled, but not with the same fervour. Their steps had grown heavier, slower — not from fatigue, but from anticipation that never bore fruit. For three nights, they had waited for another invasion. Another ripple in the sky. Another abomination from beyond the rift.
But nothing came.
No lights. No tremors. No monsters clawing their way from the cracks of heaven and earth.
Just silence.
Some whispered it was the calm before a greater storm. Others said whatever force had torn the heavens apart was gone — burned away by the boy's last stand. The boy who hadn't moved since.
Only Qian visited him, her presence a quiet ritual — water, medicine, silence. She never asked him who he was, or where he came from. She simply tended to him, as though trying to stitch together a riddle with nothing but thread and instinct.
Within the hut, lit only by a single flickering lantern, Lu Chen lay with eyes wide open.
It was time.
---
With a deep breath, he reached for one of the low-grade spirit stones Qian had left by his bedside. Holding it in his hand, the smooth surface hummed faintly with energy — dormant, yet potent. He aligned his breath with the pulse of his core, feeling the rhythm of energy, the flow, like an invisible thread connecting him to the stone.
Then, he focused.
The stone cracked.
A sharp sound, like breaking ice in the dead of winter. The energy inside flared — wild, unrefined, raw qi bursting forth in a chaotic surge. A storm. A torrent that threatened to overwhelm him.
But Lu Chen didn't flinch.
The orb stirred.
It pulsed — once, twice — then drew in the flood like a black hole, swallowing the chaos whole. The air around him trembled. His skin prickled with heat as the unrefined qi was devoured, filtered, compressed. The residue — no longer wild, no longer feral — flowed into him, smooth as silk and hot as iron.
It didn't destroy him.
It changed him.
His body responded — not with pain, but with acceptance. Muscles loosened. Bones tingled. Organs pulsed in resonance. The qi moved through him like molten glass, reshaping his insides, tempering them.
Every breath tasted sweeter. Every heartbeat felt stronger. His vision sharpened, colors deepened.
It was not a cultivation method. It was not a path blessed by nature or fate.
It was his.
A mortal body, drinking the power of heaven.
And surviving.
It works.
The orb adapted, synchronizing with his will. Qi was no longer a stranger — it was language. Breath. Pulse. Thought.
It was rebirth.
The beginning of something no one had dared to write into manuals or carve into jade slips. A path that began not with fortune or fate — but with fire and will.
The Mortal Forge had been lit.
[Absorption Succeeded]
[Qi Condensation: Initiated.]