### Chapter 3: The Pragmatism of Soil and Blood
The journey back to Muddy Water Alley was an exercise in extreme paranoia. Li Han shuffled through the labyrinthine slums, his heavy sack of spiritual rice carefully disguised beneath an outer wrapping of foul-smelling, discarded hemp sacks he had picked up near a butcher's refuse pile. The stench of rotting meat effectively masked the faint, sweet aroma of the low-grade spiritual rice. In the outer ring, a sack of rice was enough to get a man's throat slit in broad daylight.
He took indirect routes, pausing frequently to pretend to cough up a lung while secretly checking his periphery. Only when he was absolutely certain he had not been followed did he slip back into his decrepit wooden shack.
He quickly secured the flimsy door, sliding the heavy wooden crossbar into place. He then retrieved his only remaining low-grade warning talisman—a crinkled piece of yellow paper with fading red cinnabar ink—and slapped it against the doorframe. It wouldn't stop an attacker, but it would emit a faint mental ping if someone tried to break the physical barrier.
Breathing a sigh of relief, Li Han unslung the heavy sack from his frail shoulder. His body ached terribly. Despite breaking through to the fourth layer of Qi Condensation and having his internal organs repaired, he was still profoundly malnourished. His muscles were severely atrophied from months of starvation inside the temporal space.
"First, security. Second, agriculture. Third, sustenance," Li Han muttered his prioritized checklist, the structured thinking of an accountant keeping the creeping exhaustion at bay.
He grasped the grey stone pendant resting against his sternum and channeled a microscopic sliver of his Qi into it.
*Whoosh.*
The stifling smell of the slums vanished, instantly replaced by the pristine, heavily oxygenated, and Qi-rich air of his temporal realm.
Li Han stood at the edge of his newly expanded two-mu plot of jet-black soil. The pearlescent sky bathed the realm in a gentle, shadowless light. It was his sanctuary, his factory, and his impenetrable fortress.
He lugged his supplies to the center of the space. He unpacked the seeds he had purchased: fifty seeds of Blood Clotting Grass, thirty seeds of Spirit-Gathering Flowers, and ten Iron-Wood saplings.
"Time to map out the assets," Li Han said, pacing the perimeter of the two-mu field. One mu was exactly 666.67 square meters. Two mu gave him over 1,300 square meters of prime agricultural real estate.
He divided the land mentally. The northern half would be dedicated to high-yield, fast-growing medicinal herbs. The southern half would house the slow-growing Iron-Wood saplings, which required deep roots and drew heavily on the soil's nutrients.
He grabbed a rusted iron hoe from his pile of meager belongings and began to till the soil. Despite his physical weakness, the fourth-layer Qi flowing through his meridians granted him a baseline of strength far exceeding a mortal's. The black soil was incredibly soft and forgiving, turning over like dark butter beneath the blade of his hoe.
He worked methodically. He planted the Blood Clotting Grass seeds in neat, evenly spaced rows. This herb was the primary ingredient in standard healing pills. In the outside world, planted in standard spiritual soil, it took one full year to mature.
Next, he planted the Spirit-Gathering Flowers. These were more finicky, requiring denser Qi to bloom. When mature, they naturally drew in ambient spiritual energy, purifying it and releasing a fragrant aroma that aided in meditation. They also took two years to mature naturally.
Finally, he planted the ten Iron-Wood saplings along the outer boundary of the soil, right against the churning wall of grey mist. Iron-Wood was the foundation of low-level artifact crafting. It was as hard as steel and highly conductive to spiritual energy. A mature Iron-Wood tree took a staggering fifty years to grow. For a loose cultivator, planting Iron-Wood was something done for their grandchildren.
For Li Han, it was a mid-term investment.
Once the planting was complete, his back screamed in protest, and his hands were blistered. He ignored the pain. The real magic was about to begin.
He stood at the head of the medicinal field and raised his hands, his fingers perfectly executing the seals for the *Spirit Rain Technique*.
But he did not just cast the spell. He drew upon his Transcendent mastery.
At the Beginner and Proficient levels, the *Spirit Rain Technique* merely gathered ambient water Qi into a cloud. At the Master and Grandmaster levels, the caster could dictate the temperature, droplet size, and nutrient density of the rain.
At the Transcendent level, the spell ceased to be a mere manipulation of water; it became a manifestation of the *concept* of nourishment.
As Li Han willed it, a massive, luminescent blue cloud instantly materialized over the entire two-mu plot. There was no thunder, no violent downpour. Instead, a shimmering, ethereal mist began to descend. Every single microscopic droplet of this mist was saturated with Li Han's pure fourth-layer Qi, perfectly attuned to the specific needs of the seeds below.
The moment the Transcendent rain touched the soil, a miracle occurred.
The black earth drank the glowing mist greedily. Before Li Han's very eyes, tiny green shoots violently burst forth from the soil where the Blood Clotting Grass seeds lay. They didn't just sprout; they writhed and stretched upward, visibly growing millimeter by millimeter.
The Spirit-Gathering Flowers sprouted delicate, translucent stems, their tiny buds already beginning to form. Even the stubborn Iron-Wood saplings seemed to stand straighter, their bark taking on a deeper, more metallic sheen as their roots plunged frantically into the enriched earth.
Li Han maintained the spell until a quarter of his Dantian's reserves were depleted. The rain ceased, and the cloud dissipated.
"Incredible," he whispered, wiping a bead of sweat from his brow.
His Transcendent mastery not only accelerated the immediate growth through extreme nutrient saturation, but combined with the rich black soil of the space, he estimated the natural growth rate of the plants had been multiplied by at least a factor of ten.
And that was *before* factoring in the time dilation.
One day outside was one year inside. If a Blood Clotting Grass took one year to mature outside, then with his soil and Transcendent rain, it would mature inside this space in perhaps a month. Subjective time. Meaning, he could harvest a batch of one-year-old spiritual herbs in roughly two hours of real-world time.
The sheer economic implications of this math made the former accountant's heart race. He had a monopoly on the most fundamental resource in the cultivation world: Time.
But wealth meant nothing without the strength to protect it, and strength required energy.
He walked over to the sack of spiritual rice. It was time to address his failing physical vessel. He gathered some dried stalks from his previous harvest attempts and used a spark of fire-attribute Qi to ignite a small fire. He set his cracked clay pot over the flames, added a generous portion of the rice, and filled it with pure water from his teapot.
As the rice boiled, a thick, milky-white steam began to rise. The smell was intoxicating. It didn't smell like mortal food; it smelled like life itself.
When the rice was soft and glutinous, Li Han didn't bother with a bowl or chopsticks. He used a carved wooden spoon and began to eat directly from the pot.
The moment the hot, Qi-infused porridge hit his tongue, a violent shudder ran through his entire body. It was as if a dying desert wanderer had been plunged headfirst into an oasis. The low-grade spiritual rice lacked complex flavors, but the sheer density of the earth-attribute spiritual energy it contained was exactly what his starved, atrophied body craved.
He ate methodically, chewing thoroughly, allowing his body to absorb every single ounce of nutrition. As the warm food hit his stomach, his fourth-layer cultivation base automatically kicked in, refining the food with brutal efficiency.
The energy seeped into his bloodstream. He could literally feel his atrophied muscles plumping up, the fibers knitting together and reinforcing themselves. The lingering pallor of his skin began to fade, replaced by a healthy, albeit slightly tanned, hue.
He finished the entire pot—nearly two catties of rice—in one sitting. A normal mortal would have ruptured their stomach, but a cultivator's digestive system was a furnace.
Li Han sat back, patting his comfortably full belly. The hollow, agonizing ache that had haunted him for months was finally gone. He felt grounded. He felt alive.
"Now," Li Han said, his voice shedding its raspy weakness, sounding firm and resonant. "The foundation of survival is offense and defense. My 'Gou' path demands that I remain unseen, but if seen, I must be utterly lethal. No drawn-out fights. No dramatic speeches. Just swift, absolute eradication."
He pulled up his system panel.
**[Spells/Skills]:**
* *Spirit Rain Technique* - Mastery: Transcendent (MAX)
* *Earth Spike* - Mastery: Beginner (45/100)
The original host had purchased the *Earth Spike* manual thirty years ago from a drunken mercenary. It was a Yellow-Grade Low-Tier offensive spell, the absolute bottom of the barrel. It involved channeling earth-attribute Qi into the ground to summon a sharp stalagmite of rock to impale an enemy. It was slow, telegraphed, and easily dodged by anyone with decent reflexes. Most cultivators discarded it once they reached the third layer of Qi Condensation.
But Li Han saw its true potential.
He lived in a world made of earth. He stood on earth. His enemies walked on earth. If he could elevate this spell to the Transcendent level, it would not be a mere spike; it would be total dominion over the battlefield's terrain.
He walked to an empty patch of black soil away from his planted crops. He spread his legs shoulder-width apart, rooting his stance.
He visualized the pathways of the *Earth Spike* spell. He drew Qi from his Dantian, channeling it down his legs and into the soles of his feet, pushing it into the earth.
"Rise," he commanded.
A heavy, sluggish tremor shook the ground a few meters in front of him. A crude, blunt cone of black dirt slowly pushed its way out of the soil, rising to about knee height before crumbling under its own weight.
**[Alert: Spell 'Earth Spike' cast successfully.]**
**[Experience +1]**
**[Technique: *Earth Spike* (Beginner: 46/100)]**
It was pathetic. If he used that in a real fight, his opponent would laugh before decapitating him.
But Li Han didn't care. He had the panel. He had the time.
He cast it again. And again. And again.
As he repeated the process, the *Heaven Rewards Diligence* trait smoothed out the imperfections in his Qi flow. The agonizing bottlenecks of comprehension that plagued normal spellcasters simply did not exist for him. With every single cast, his connection to the earth grew a fraction of a percent stronger.
*Beginner to Proficient.* It took him three days inside the space. At the Proficient level, the spike was no longer a crumbling mound of dirt. It shot up with the speed of a drawn bowstring, forming a solid, jagged spear of compressed rock that reached chest height. It was lethal to a mortal, but a prepared cultivator could still deflect it.
*Proficient to Master.*
He spent a full month of subjective time grinding. He drained his Qi, cultivated the *Evergreen Breath Art* to refill it, and immediately returned to casting. His entire existence became a singular, focused rhythm of destruction and restoration.
When he broke through to the Master level, the fundamental nature of the spell shifted. He no longer needed to aggressively stomp or wave his arms to dictate the spike's location. A mere flick of his wrist and a sharp pulse of Qi were enough. Furthermore, he could now summon three spikes simultaneously within a ten-meter radius. They erupted silently and with enough force to pierce iron armor.
*Master to Grandmaster.*
This stage took him nearly six months inside the space. The psychological toll of casting the same spell tens of thousands of times would have broken a lesser man. But Li Han treated it like balancing a massive, complex ledger. Every cast was a line item; the Grandmaster status was the final, perfectly balanced sum.
At the Grandmaster level, Li Han realized the name *Earth Spike* was a severe understatement. He was no longer just making rocks pointy. He was altering the density and state of the earth itself.
He stood perfectly still. He didn't move a single muscle. He simply looked at a spot twenty meters away and *willed* it.
Instantly, the solid ground liquified into a swirling vortex of quicksand, before violently compressing inward and shooting upward as a dozen razor-thin, rotating drill-bits of hyper-compressed stone. They shredded the air with a high-pitched whine.
"Excellent," Li Han murmured, his eyes glowing with a terrifying, calculating light. "But not perfect. It still makes a sound. Sound is a liability. It allows the target's companions to react. It alerts bystanders. I need absolute silence."
He plunged back into the grind, pushing toward the final, mythical threshold.
*Grandmaster to Transcendent.*
A year and a half passed in the silent realm. Li Han's hair, which had fallen out during his previous breakthrough, had grown back. It was no longer the sparse, wiry white hair of a dying octogenarian. It was thick, luxurious, and completely, pitch black. His skin had tightened, losing its liver spots, taking on the smooth, resilient texture of a man in his late thirties.
The *Evergreen Breath Art*, constantly cycled to replenish his mana, combined with his high-end diet of spiritual rice, was causing him to physically de-age. He was returning to his prime.
On what he estimated to be his second full year of grinding the spell, the panel finally flashed with the golden light of ultimate mastery.
**[Technique: *Earth Spike* has reached MAX Level: Transcendent]**
Li Han stopped. He exhaled a long breath, letting his arms drop to his sides. He closed his eyes and extended his spiritual sense into the earth beneath his feet.
He didn't feel dirt. He felt a vast, interconnected web of potential energy. He could feel the exact density of every grain of soil, the subtle shifts in tectonic pressure, the minute vibrations of the growing roots of his medicinal herbs.
He opened his eyes. He targeted a space fifty meters away, the absolute limit of his spiritual sense.
He didn't move. He didn't breathe. He merely issued a mental command.
Fifty meters away, a blade of compressed earth, so impossibly thin it was almost invisible to the naked eye, erupted from the ground. It shot upward at supersonic speed, pierced the air, and retracted back into the soil so fast it left an afterimage.
There was no tremor. There was no sound. There was no displacement of dirt. It was as if the earth had simply opened its maw, severed whatever existed in that space, and swallowed the evidence in less than a fraction of a second.
"The ultimate assassination tool," Li Han evaluated with cold, professional satisfaction. "If an enemy is touching the ground within fifty meters of me, they are already dead. They just don't know it yet."
He checked his panel. He was fully armed. Now, it was time to upgrade his engine.
He walked over to his medicinal field. The two years of subjective time had worked wonders. The Blood Clotting Grass was fully mature, its leaves a deep, vibrant crimson, dripping with rich, blood-attribute Qi. The Spirit-Gathering Flowers were in full bloom, their wide, luminescent petals acting like funnels, drawing the ambient Qi of the realm into a dense, almost suffocatingly thick mist over the field.
Li Han walked to the center of the Spirit-Gathering Flowers and sat down in the lotus position. The Qi here was so thick it felt like breathing water.
He took out the nine remaining low-grade spirit stones he had earned from the Black Market. He placed them in a circle around him.
"The fourth layer of Qi Condensation is the beginning of the middle stages. The fifth layer requires a substantial accumulation of Qi to widen the main meridian pathways," he recalled from the host's memories.
He closed his eyes and initiated the *Evergreen Breath Art*.
With his Advanced mastery of the technique, and the absurdly dense environment created by the flowers and the spirit stones, the cultivation process was explosive.
The nine spirit stones shattered simultaneously, their crystalline structures breaking down as Li Han forcefully extracted their pure, compressed energy. The energy formed a miniature cyclone around him, funneling directly into his pores.
His Dantian, which had felt vast after his last breakthrough, filled rapidly. The emerald Qi grew darker, denser, transitioning from a gaseous state into a heavy, swirling liquid-like state.
Because of the *Heaven Rewards Diligence* trait, there was no resistance. The energy didn't pool or stagnate. It flowed perfectly along the designated pathways, effortlessly widening his meridians, scouring away the last remaining microscopic impurities in his bone marrow.
**[Cultivation base has reached the absolute peak of Qi Condensation Realm - Layer 4.]**
**[Requirement for Breakthrough met. Initiating breakthrough...]**
There was no agony this time. Only a profound, liberating sensation of expansion.
A silent shockwave rippled out from Li Han's body, flattening the mature Blood Clotting Grass around him.
**[Name]:** Li Han
**[Lifespan]:** 35 / 110 years
**[Cultivation Base]:** Qi Condensation Realm - Layer 5
He opened his eyes. They were sharp, clear, and profound. He noted with mild surprise that his listed physical age had reverted to 35—his age when he died on Earth. The temporal space and his continuous breakthroughs had literally rewritten his biological clock. He was no longer an old man in a young man's game. He was in his prime.
As expected, the spatial realm reacted to his breakthrough. The ground trembled, and the grey mist was violently pushed back once again. The two-mu plot expanded into a massive four-mu field (roughly 2,600 square meters). The ambient Qi density doubled yet again.
Li Han stood up, stretching his perfectly healthy, muscular limbs. The frail, pathetic octogenarian was dead and gone.
"I have spent nearly three years in here," Li Han calculated. "That means nearly three days have passed in the outside world. It's time to check my surroundings."
He harvested a small bundle of the mature Blood Clotting Grass, placing it carefully in his robes. He then summoned his Qi, altering his appearance. He stooped his shoulders, forcefully slowed his heartbeat, and used a subtle application of earth Qi to make his skin appear sallow and wrinkled. He couldn't fake being eighty anymore, but he could easily pass for a sickly, malnourished sixty-year-old.
He grasped the grey pendant and exited the space.
*Whoosh.*
He materialized in his dark, dingy shack. The contrast between the pristine, Qi-rich realm and the foul, damp reality of Muddy Water Alley was jarring.
He immediately checked his warning talisman on the door.
It was intact. No one had tried to break in.
He unbolted the door and stepped out into the alley. It was late afternoon. The permanent grey smog hung low over the shantytown.
As he stepped out, intending to visit the market to sell the Blood Clotting Grass, a heavy, calloused hand slammed into his shoulder, spinning him around.
"Well, well, well. Look who finally decided to crawl out of his hole," a cruel, grating voice sneered.
Li Han instantly suppressed his instinct to react with lethal force. He stumbled backward, acting terrified, and looked up.
Standing before him was a mountain of a man. He wore a filthy, sleeveless leather tunic that exposed heavily scarred, bulging arms. A massive, jagged butcher's cleaver was strapped to his back. This was Wang the Brute, a fifth-layer Qi Condensation cultivator who ran a small extortion ring in this section of Muddy Water Alley.
He was flanked by two lackeys, both at the third layer of Qi Condensation, grinning maliciously.
"B-Boss Wang," Li Han stammered, perfectly playing the role of a terrified, weak old man. He hunched his shoulders, making himself look smaller. "How... how can I help you?"
Wang stepped closer, his foul breath smelling of cheap alcohol and rotting teeth washing over Li Han's face.
"Don't play dumb with me, old ghost," Wang spat, poking Li Han hard in the chest with a thick finger. "My boys saw you three days ago. Hauling a massive sack of spiritual rice from the market. Fifty catties! And you bought spirit seeds!"
Li Han's mind raced. *Ah. The rice. A luxury purchase by a known beggar. It flagged me as a target. A miscalculation on my part. I should have bought it in smaller increments over several weeks.*
"I... I found a small windfall, Boss Wang," Li Han lied smoothly, his voice shaking. "A dead scavenger in the woods. I just wanted a good meal before... before my time is up. I'm dying, you see." He let out a wet, rattling cough for effect.
Wang laughed, a harsh, barking sound. "A windfall? Excellent. Then you won't mind paying your protection fee. You owe me three months of back pay. That'll be five low-grade spirit stones. Hand them over, or I'll chop you into pieces and feed you to the stray demon dogs."
The two lackeys drew rusted short swords, stepping up to flank Li Han, cutting off his escape routes.
Li Han looked at Wang. He looked at the two lackeys.
He was at the fifth layer of Qi Condensation. Wang was also at the fifth layer. But Wang's Qi was chaotic, bloated by cheap pills and lack of disciplined practice. Li Han's Qi was pure, refined perfectly by the *Evergreen Breath Art* and the dense environment of his spatial realm.
More importantly, Wang was standing on the dirt of the alleyway. Less than a meter away.
"Five spirit stones?" Li Han asked, his voice suddenly losing its raspy tremor. The facade of the terrified old man vanished entirely, replaced by the chilling, detached calm of an executioner calculating the cost of a strike. "That is an unreasonable tax. My ledger does not account for extortion."
Wang blinked, confused by the sudden shift in the old man's demeanor. "What the hell are you babbling about, you crazy old—"
Wang never finished his sentence.
Li Han didn't move his hands. He didn't chant a spell. He simply willed it.
*Transcendent Earth Spike.*
From the compacted dirt directly beneath Boss Wang, a blade of hyper-compressed, diamond-hard stone, barely the thickness of a human hair, erupted upward.
It was utterly silent.
The spike shot straight up, piercing through the sole of Wang's leather boot, tearing through his groin, traveling up his torso, severing his spine and heart simultaneously, and exiting flawlessly through the crown of his skull.
The spike immediately retracted back into the earth in a fraction of a second, leaving only a microscopic entry and exit wound.
Wang the Brute's eyes widened in absolute, uncomprehending shock. The light of life in his pupils was instantly extinguished. He stood frozen for a microscopic second, his brain dead before his nervous system could even register the pain.
Then, he collapsed forward, hitting the mud with a heavy, wet thud. Dead.
The two lackeys stared at their boss's fallen body. There was no blood immediately visible, no grand explosion of Qi. One moment he was threatening the old man, the next he was face down in the mud.
"Boss?" one of the lackeys asked, confused, prodding Wang with his boot. "Hey, Boss, quit playing around."
Li Han didn't give them time to realize what had happened. He couldn't afford witnesses.
His eyes shifted to the two lackeys.
*Thwip. Thwip.*
Two more silent, invisible needles of stone shot from the earth, piercing directly up through the base of the lackeys' skulls, instantly destroying their brain stems. They dropped like marionettes with their strings cut, slumping silently into the muck.
The entire encounter, from Wang demanding money to three men lying dead in the alley, had taken less than five seconds.
Li Han stood amidst the bodies, his expression entirely unchanged. His heart rate had not even elevated.
He quickly scanned the alleyway. It was a secluded corner, and the thick smog obscured visibility. No one had seen. No one had heard a thing.
"The Heavenly Dao is ruthless, and so is the market," Li Han muttered to himself. "You attempted a hostile takeover of my assets. I simply liquidated yours."
He worked swiftly. He crouched down and systematically stripped the three bodies of their spatial bags and any visible valuables. He didn't bother checking the contents yet; speed was essential.
He then grabbed Boss Wang by the collar. He channeled his Qi into his pendant, enveloping all three corpses in his spiritual sense.
*Whoosh.*
Li Han, along with the three dead extortionists, vanished from the alleyway, leaving behind only three faint scuff marks in the mud.
He reappeared inside his spatial realm. He dragged the bodies to the far edge of his four-mu plot, near the boundary of the grey mist.
He raised his hand. The soil beneath the corpses parted like the Red Sea, forming a deep, perfectly rectangular trench. He kicked the bodies into the pit.
He then willed the earth to close over them, compacting the dirt tightly. He cast a quick, localized *Spirit Rain Technique* over the fresh grave.
"In the outside world, you were parasites," Li Han said coldly, looking at the turned earth. "In here, your decaying Qi and flesh will serve as excellent, high-grade fertilizer for my Iron-Wood trees. A perfect return on investment."
He turned his back on the graves and walked back to the center of his realm to inspect his new loot. He had officially shed his first blood in this brutal world, and he felt absolutely no remorse. His 'Gou' path was clear: Hide in the shadows, farm the land, balance the books, and utterly obliterate anyone who dared to disturb his peace.