### Chapter 1: The Weight of Immortality and a Coward's Golden Finger
The pain was not a simple ache, nor was it the sharp, fleeting sting of a papercut or a stubbed toe. It was a torrential, boiling river of molten lead forcing its way through channels no wider than a capillary. It was an agonizing, tearing sensation that felt as though thousands of microscopic, barbed hooks were being dragged through his very flesh, from the center of his chest all the way out to his fingertips.
Li Mo tried to scream, but his throat was paralyzed. He tried to thrash, to curl into a fetal position, to seek the basic mammalian comfort of wrapping his arms around his knees, but his muscles were locked in a rigid, terrifying spasm. His eyes, though wide open, saw nothing but a blinding, strobing red light that pulsed in time with the erratic, thundering beat of his own heart.
*Am I dying?* The thought was surprisingly lucid, cutting through the haze of agony. *Is this a heart attack? I'm only twenty-six. I just finished compiling the quarterly reports. I just sat down on the subway...*
As the thought formed, the blinding red light shattered, replaced by a sudden, violent influx of images, sounds, and smells that did not belong to him. They crashed into his consciousness like a tidal wave, threatening to drown his fragile sense of self.
He saw a sky bruised with purple clouds. He saw a towering mountain peak that pierced the heavens, surrounded by floating islands held aloft by glowing runes. He saw a ragged, emaciated boy, no older than sixteen, kneeling in the mud, digging up a glowing blue root with bleeding, dirt-caked fingers. He felt the gnawing, hollow ache of prolonged starvation. He felt the desperate, pathetic hope of scraping together enough fractured spirit stones to buy a single, poorly refined pill.
Then, he felt the pill going down. A bitter, chalky lump of ash and faint spiritual energy. He felt the momentary rush of power, followed instantly by the violent, tearing explosion within his chest as the pill's impurities clashed with his meager, unrefined spiritual energy.
*Qi Deviation.* The two words echoed in his mind, spoken not in his native tongue, but in a language he suddenly, inexplicably understood. It was the language of the Azure Cloud Continent.
The two sets of memories—the mundane life of a corporate drone in a modern metropolis, and the brutal, desperate existence of a low-level loose cultivator in the Clear Water Market—violently smashed together, integrating with the force of a psychic sledgehammer.
He was Li Mo. He was an office worker from Earth. He was also Li Mo, a sixteen-year-old orphan and Qi Condensation Level One cultivator with a trash-tier four-element spiritual root. The modern Li Mo had likely died of a sudden aneurysm or cardiac arrest on the train. The cultivator Li Mo had died just moments ago, his meridians shredded by a defective, counterfeit Qi Gathering Pill bought from a black-hearted merchant in the slum market.
And now, their souls were one. But the realization offered no comfort, because the physical reality of the situation was rapidly asserting itself.
The cultivator Li Mo had died from the Qi deviation, but the violent, corrupted spiritual energy had not dissipated. It was still rampaging through his fragile meridians, tearing them apart millimeter by millimeter. The transmigration had rebooted the body, jump-starting the heart and fusing the soul, but it had not cured the fatal condition.
He was going to die again. He had been given a second chance at life, only to experience the agonizing process of death for a second time, barely a minute after waking up.
*No!* Li Mo's mind screamed. *I don't want to die! Not again! Someone help!*
He tried to force his meager, newly inherited knowledge of cultivation to guide the rampaging energy. He tried to remember the 'Clear Water Breathing Technique', a trash-tier cultivation method the predecessor had found on a corpse. He visualized the Qi, trying to force it back into his Dantian—the spiritual center located below his navel.
But it was like trying to hold back a tsunami with a piece of wet cardboard. The corrupted energy, stained black with pill impurities, scoffed at his mental commands. It surged upward, heading straight for his heart meridian. Once it breached that, his heart would explode like a crushed tomato.
Tears of absolute terror and helplessness leaked from his eyes, rolling down his grimy cheeks to soak the stiff, sweat-stained collar of his hemp robe. It was so unfair. He was just a normal guy. He hadn't asked for immortality. He hadn't asked to fly on swords or punch mountains in half. He just wanted to live. He wanted to feel the sun, eat a warm meal, and maybe, just maybe, not be in agonizing pain.
As the black energy touched the outer membrane of his heart meridian, sending a spike of pain so intense his vision tunneled into darkness, a strange, profound stillness suddenly enveloped his mind.
It was not a system prompt. There was no robotic voice, no glowing blue holographic screen with stats and attributes. It was a primal, instinctual awareness that bloomed from the deepest core of his fused soul. It felt like a dormant muscle he had never known he possessed had suddenly twitched into wakefulness.
An innate, undeniable truth materialized in his consciousness: **[Negative Status: Terminal Qi Deviation & Meridian Rupture detected.]**
Followed instantly by a compulsion, a silent command waiting for his authorization: **[Awaiting Target for Transfer.]**
Li Mo didn't question it. He didn't ponder the philosophical implications or the mechanics of this sudden power. A drowning man does not ask about the chemical composition of the life preserver thrown to him; he grabs it.
*Target! I need a target!* His eyes darted frantically around the dimly lit, squalid shack. It was a space no larger than a modern walk-in closet. The walls were made of rotting spirit-wood planks, the roof leaked, and the only illumination came from a single, nearly depleted low-grade luminous pearl sitting on a wobbly wooden crate.
There was no one else in the room. He was alone.
*Can I transfer it to the air? To the ground?* He tried, focusing his intent on the muddy floorboards beneath his crude straw bed.
The instinctual feeling pushed back, offering a silent, firm rejection. *[Invalid Target. A living vessel of equivalent or lesser complexity is required to anchor the metaphysical shift of causality.]*
The black energy pierced the first layer of his heart meridian. Li Mo coughed, and a spray of warm, blackish-red blood splattered across the wooden crate. He was out of time.
Then, his frantic gaze caught a subtle movement in the shadows near the door.
It was a Corpse-eating Rat. In the slums of the Clear Water Market, these vile creatures were everywhere. They fed on the discarded dregs of alchemical failures, rotting spirit beast meat, and sometimes, the corpses of unlucky cultivators left in the alleys. This one was the size of a small cat, its fur mangy and matted with filth, its red eyes gleaming with malevolent hunger as it stared at the coughing, bleeding boy on the bed. It was waiting for him to die.
Li Mo locked his bloodshot eyes onto the rat. He didn't point his finger; he couldn't move his arms. But he pointed with his mind, with the sheer, desperate force of a soul clawing for survival.
*TRANSFER!* He screamed in his mind. *TAKE IT! TAKE IT ALL!*
The reaction was instantaneous.
There was no flash of light, no mystical sound effect. Instead, there was a feeling of profound, sudden *emptiness* within his body. The boiling river of molten lead vanished. The thousands of barbed hooks evaporated. The black, corrupted energy that was a millimeter away from detonating his heart simply ceased to exist within his physical form.
Across the room, the Corpse-eating Rat let out a horrific, high-pitched squeal.
Li Mo watched, gasping for air, as the creature's body violently convulsed. Its red eyes bulged out of their sockets. The rat's bloated body began to expand rapidly, its mangy skin stretching to the point of transparency. Dark, corrupted veins pulsed violently beneath its skin. The rampaging Qi deviation, a force meant to destroy the robust meridians of a human cultivator, had been abruptly forced into the tiny, fragile body of a vermin.
*POP.*
With a sickening, wet sound, the rat exploded. It didn't just burst; it was obliterated, leaving behind nothing but a foul-smelling splatter of black blood, gore, and a faint wisp of foul smoke on the rotting wooden floorboards.
Silence descended upon the shack, broken only by the ragged, desperate panting of Li Mo.
He lay there for a long time, staring at the ceiling, his chest heaving. Slowly, tentatively, he began to flex his fingers. They moved. He wiggled his toes. They responded. He took a deep, shuddering breath, expecting the familiar stab of pain in his lungs or his heart.
There was nothing. Only the smooth, cool intake of air.
He pushed himself up into a sitting position. He felt weak, terribly weak, but it was the weakness of a body that had been exhausted, not a body that was actively dying. He closed his eyes and looked inward, using the basic spiritual sense of a Level One Qi Condensation cultivator.
His Dantian, previously a chaotic storm of violent energy, was now perfectly calm. In fact, it was cleaner than it had ever been in his predecessor's memory. The faint wisp of spiritual energy floating in his center was pure, a clear, translucent blue without a single speck of the grayish impurities that usually plagued low-level cultivators who relied on cheap pills and mortal food.
The meridian channels, which had been torn and shredded just moments ago, were completely whole. They were pristine, humming with a faint, healthy vitality.
It wasn't just a healing ability. It was a complete removal of the negative state. The injury, the corrupted energy, the impurities—they had all been forcibly relocated, shifted through some terrifying manipulation of causality, onto the rat.
"I'm alive," Li Mo whispered, his voice hoarse and trembling. He looked at his shaking hands. "I actually survived."
The modern Li Mo, the rational office worker, was screaming in shock at the violation of physics. The cultivator Li Mo was weeping tears of relief. The synthesis of the two resulted in a profound, heavy silence as he stared at the bloody smear where the rat had been.
He had a Golden Finger. A cheat. A divine providence.
In the countless web novels he had read back on Earth, this was the moment the protagonist would throw their head back and laugh arrogantly. This was the moment they would declare that their destiny was to trample the heavens, slaughter the arrogant young masters, collect jade-like beauties, and stand at the apex of the universe.
Li Mo felt no such urge.
Instead, a cold, creeping dread washed over him.
He was a normal guy. He knew human nature. He knew what happened to people who possessed something infinitely valuable but lacked the power to protect it. If the high-level cultivators of the Azure Cloud Sect—the overlords of this territory—ever found out that a trash-tier loose cultivator could instantly cure any injury, any poison, any cultivation deviation merely by looking at a target...
They wouldn't revere him. They would capture him. They would lock him in a dark, subterranean alchemical dungeon. They would dissect him to understand the mechanism. They would treat him as a human sponge, a living artifact to absorb the backlashes of their own dangerous cultivation breakthroughs, throwing him a rat or a mortal slave every time he needed to empty himself. He would become a battery for their immortality.
"Hide," Li Mo muttered, his eyes wide with a mix of awe and terror. "I have to hide this. Forever."
He swung his legs over the side of the bed. A wave of dizziness hit him, accompanied by a hollow, painful rumble from his stomach. The predecessor had spent all his money on that defective pill. He hadn't eaten a proper meal in three days.
*Can I transfer hunger?* Li Mo paused, considering the thought. Hunger was a negative state, wasn't it? He focused his mind, reaching for that innate sense. He felt the hollow ache in his stomach and tried to isolate it as a 'status'.
**[Negative Status: Caloric Deficit & Nutritional Starvation detected. Awaiting Target.]**
It worked. He could transfer it. But to what?
He stood up, his legs trembling slightly, and peered through the cracks in the wooden wall of his shack. Outside, the Clear Water Market was beginning to wake up. It was early morning. The sky was the color of bruised iron, heavily overcast, fitting for the squalor of the outer slums.
Through the crack, he saw a mangy, feral dog sniffing around a pile of refuse in the muddy alleyway.
Li Mo focused his intent on the dog. *Transfer.* Instantly, the gnawing, painful ache in his stomach vanished. The physical sensation of starvation—the lightheadedness, the cramping—was gone. However, he didn't feel *full*. He didn't feel the satisfying warmth of a heavy meal. He just felt a neutral baseline, as if his body had forgotten it needed food.
Outside, the feral dog suddenly stopped sniffing. It let out a pathetic, desperate whine, its stomach visibly contracting as it was hit with the accumulated three-day starvation of a human cultivator. The dog turned and sprinted away down the alley, driven half-mad by the sudden, intense need to find food.
Li Mo frowned, analyzing the result. *So, I can remove the negative physical effects of starvation, preventing myself from starving to death or feeling the pain. But it doesn't create energy out of nowhere. It doesn't put nutrients into my body. If I rely on this, I might eventually just drop dead from cellular degradation without ever feeling hungry. It's a band-aid, not a cure for lack of resources. I still need to eat.*
He stepped away from the wall and began to take stock of his belongings.
It was a depressingly short task.
* Three ragged sets of hemp clothes.
* A rusty iron hoe used for tending spirit fields.
* A small pouch containing exactly two broken fragments of low-grade spirit stones. (A whole low-grade stone was the standard currency; fragments were the pennies of the cultivation world).
* A worn, bamboo slip containing the 'Clear Water Breathing Technique'.
That was it. That was his entire net worth.
He was at the absolute bottom of the cultivation food chain. The Clear Water Market was a gathering place for those who had failed the entrance exams of the orthodox sects. It was populated by rogue cultivators, wanted criminals laying low, failed alchemists, and generations of spirit farmers who were practically indentured servants to the local overlords.
The rule of law here was simple: The strong take what they want, and the weak endure what they must. Murder in the alleys was common. Robbery was a daily occurrence. The only reason the predecessor had survived to sixteen was by being incredibly subservient, keeping his head down, and making himself look too poor to be worth robbing.
*And that,* Li Mo thought, his modern sensibilities hardening into a pragmatic shell, *is exactly what I am going to continue doing. Only now, I actually have the capital to survive.*
He needed a plan.
**Rule Number One:** Never reveal the Golden Finger. No matter the situation, no matter how much someone begs, no matter how much money is offered. The moment he becomes known as a miracle healer, he becomes a target.
**Rule Number Two:** Lie low. Do not act arrogant. Do not seek out fortuitous encounters in ancient tombs. Ancient tombs are filled with traps and thousand-year-old monsters. Let the "chosen ones" fight over that garbage. He just needed standard, safe resources.
**Rule Number Three:** Cultivate steadily. With his ability, he didn't need to fear the greatest enemy of cultivators: bottlenecks and internal demons. If he suffered a backlash from rushing his cultivation, he could just transfer it to a beast. If he took cheap, poison-laced pills to accelerate his growth, he could transfer the accumulated pill toxins to a weed. He had a perfectly safe, paved road to immortality, as long as he didn't get his head chopped off by a passing sociopath.
"I need to act normal," Li Mo told himself, splashing some stagnant water from a wooden bucket onto his face to wash away the grime and dried sweat. "I am Li Mo, a pathetic, cowardly Spirit Farmer. I am recovering from a failed breakthrough. I am weak."
He practiced his expression in the reflection of the water. He slumped his shoulders, bowed his head slightly, and allowed a look of deep, systemic exhaustion to settle onto his features. It wasn't hard; the emotional toll of dying and transmigrating provided plenty of authentic weariness.
Satisfied with his pathetic demeanor, Li Mo picked up his rusty iron hoe. It was time to go to work. The predecessor rented a half-acre of low-grade spirit rice fields on the edge of the market. If he didn't tend to the spiritual pests and water the crops, he wouldn't be able to pay the monthly rent. And failing to pay rent in the Clear Water Market usually meant having your limbs broken and being sold to the mortal fighting pits.
He pushed open the creaky wooden door and stepped out into the damp, cold morning air of the cultivation world.
The stench hit him immediately. It was a mix of rotting vegetation, unwashed bodies, the metallic tang of blood, and the ozone scent of volatile alchemical mixtures. The street was a river of churned mud. On either side, ramshackle stalls and shacks leaned against each other like drunken sailors.
Cultivators moved through the mud, their faces hidden beneath bamboo hats or ragged cowls. Most of them looked worse off than the homeless people back on Earth. Their eyes were hollow, filled with a desperate paranoia. Everyone was sizing everyone else up, calculating the cost-benefit of a sudden murder.
Li Mo kept his head down, clutching his hoe, and walked with a slight, shuffling limp. He channeled his inner invisible man.
As he navigated the winding alleys toward the agricultural outskirts, he meticulously analyzed his surroundings, integrating the predecessor's knowledge with his own modern observational skills.
He saw an old man coughing up blood in an alley, a clear sign of lung meridian damage. *I could heal him with a glance,* Li Mo thought. *And then he would probably murder me to search my corpse for the supreme pill he would assume I just fed him.* He walked past without breaking stride.
He saw two burly cultivators arguing over a handful of spirit stone fragments, their hands hovering near the hilts of crude iron swords. *If they start fighting and an errant sword wave hits me, I'm dead before I can transfer the wound.* He took a wide, muddy detour around them.
After thirty minutes of tense, hyper-vigilant walking, the dense squalor of the market gave way to the sprawling, terraced spirit fields. The air here was marginally better, carrying the faint, sweet scent of growing spirit rice.
Li Mo found his plot. It was a tiny, rectangular patch of muddy water, filled with stalks of pale blue rice that were barely knee-high.
He waded into the muck, the cold mud seeping through his worn straw sandals. For the next three hours, he worked. He used the 'Clear Water Breathing Technique' to slowly draw in the ambient, thin spiritual energy, directing it through his hands into the water to nourish the roots. He hunted down 'Iron-jawed Locusts'—insects the size of his thumb with mandibles that could cut through steel wire—crushing them methodically with the flat of his hoe.
It was exhausting, backbreaking labor. By noon, his muscles were screaming in protest, his lower back felt like it was on fire, and his hands were blistered.
He stood up, wiping sweat from his brow, and leaned against his hoe.
*Let's test it again.*
He isolated the feeling of intense muscle fatigue and lactic acid buildup in his body.
**[Negative Status: Severe Muscular Fatigue & Cellular Micro-tears detected. Awaiting Target.]**
He looked down at a patch of invasive, dark purple spirit-weeds growing on the edge of his field. He focused his intent. *Transfer.*
The relief was instantaneous and euphoric. The burning in his back vanished. The heaviness in his arms disappeared. He felt as fresh, light, and energetic as if he had just woken up from a ten-hour sleep in a luxury bed.
He looked at the purple weeds. They were visibly drooping. Their stems had lost their rigidity, sagging into the mud as if they had just run a marathon. The cellular micro-tears from his muscles had been applied to their plant fibers, structurally weakening them.
Li Mo couldn't help but smile. A genuine, small smile.
"This is..." he whispered, looking at his clean, energetic hands. "This is incredibly broken."
"What are you smiling at, you little trash?"
The harsh, grating voice shattered Li Mo's moment of peace like a hammer through glass.
Li Mo's heart spiked, his survival instincts screaming. He spun around, his posture instantly collapsing into a submissive hunch, the smile vanishing as if it had never existed.
Standing on the raised dirt path separating the rice paddies was a man who looked entirely out of place in the muddy fields. He was incredibly fat, wearing a silk robe of vibrant emerald green that stretched precariously over his massive belly. His face was a canvas of greasy, arrogant superiority, his small eyes piggish and cruel.
It was Steward Wang.
Wang was a Level Three Qi Condensation cultivator. He was the enforcer and rent collector for the 'Golden Cauldron Faction', a small gang of mid-level loose cultivators who controlled the agricultural sector of the Clear Water Market. To the modern Li Mo, he looked like a mob enforcer. To the cultivator Li Mo, he was a terrifying tyrant who could crush his skull with a single, Qi-enhanced slap.
"S-Steward Wang," Li Mo stuttered, his voice trembling authentically. He bowed low, his hands clasped tightly around the shaft of his hoe. "Greetings. I... I wasn't smiling. I was just... grimacing from the sun."
Steward Wang sneered, stepping down into the mud of Li Mo's field, completely indifferent to his expensive silk shoes getting dirty. He radiated a heavy, oppressive spiritual pressure. To Li Mo, it felt like a physical weight pressing down on his chest, a stark reminder of the massive gap between Level One and Level Three.
"Save the lies, boy," Wang spat. "I don't care if you smile, cry, or hang yourself from a spirit tree. I care about the rent. You're late."
"Late?" Li Mo's mind raced, frantically searching the predecessor's memories. "But Steward Wang, the rent isn't due until the end of the month. It's only the fifteenth."
Wang's eyes narrowed. He took a step forward, his aura flaring. "Are you questioning me, you little piece of shit? The Golden Cauldron Faction has decreed that due to... security concerns... rent is to be collected bi-monthly. Pay up. Two spirit stones."
*Two spirit stones?* Li Mo felt a cold sweat break out on his back. That was an entire month's rent, demanded two weeks early. The predecessor had blown his entire savings on that defective pill. He only had two fragments. He was entirely broke.
"Steward Wang, please," Li Mo begged, dropping to his knees in the mud. He hated doing it. His modern pride screamed in rebellion, but his survival instinct, honed by the brutal reality of this world, forced his knees down. "I don't have it. I spent my savings trying to break through. I failed. I have nothing but two fragments. Please, give me until the harvest..."
Wang laughed, a wet, ugly sound. "A trash four-element root trying to break through? What a waste of pills. If you don't have the stones, boy, you pay in flesh."
Before Li Mo could react, Wang's thick leg snapped out with shocking speed for a man of his size. The kick caught Li Mo square in the chest.
*CRACK.*
Li Mo flew backward, tumbling through the muddy water of the rice paddy, crushing several stalks of spirit rice beneath him. He came to a halt gasping for air, clutching his chest. The pain was blinding. At least two ribs were broken, and he could taste the metallic tang of blood welling up in his throat. His lungs burned, struggling to inflate against the punctured internal tissue.
"Consider that interest," Wang sneered, looking down at the coughing boy with utter contempt. "You have three days to find two spirit stones, Li Mo. If you don't, I'll take your legs. Then I'll sell your useless body to the Blood Refiners for materials."
Wang spat a glob of phlegm into the paddy, turned his back, and began to walk away, his hands clasped behind his back in a casual stroll.
Li Mo lay in the mud, staring at the fat, arrogant back of Steward Wang. The physical pain was excruciating. The humiliation was a burning fire in his soul. He was a normal guy. He didn't have a killer instinct. He didn't want to murder.
But as he tasted his own blood, as he listened to the wet, wheezing sound of his own punctured lung, a cold, hard realization settled over him.
*If I let him walk away, I will die in three days. He won't hesitate to kill me. He sees me as livestock.*
Li Mo's eyes locked onto the retreating figure of Steward Wang. The man was about twenty paces away now.
Li Mo reached into the depths of his consciousness, ignoring the pain, isolating the agonizing sensation in his chest.
**[Negative Status: Blunt Force Trauma, Two Fractured Ribs, Minor Lung Puncture, Internal Bleeding detected. Awaiting Target.]**
Li Mo didn't hesitate. He didn't debate the morality. He chose survival.
He stared a hole into the back of Steward Wang's emerald silk robe.
*Transfer.*
It was absolute. It was instantaneous.
Li Mo let out a long, clear breath. The agonizing pain in his chest vanished like a blown-out candle. He took a deep breath. His lungs expanded fully, perfectly healthy. He touched his chest. The bones were whole, the skin unbruised. The only evidence of the attack was the blood lingering in his mouth and the mud on his clothes.
Twenty paces away, Steward Wang stopped dead in his tracks.
The fat cultivator's body went rigid. He let out a choked, wet gasp. Slowly, his hands came up to clutch his chest. He staggered forward a single step, his expensive silk shoes slipping in the mud.
"Urk..." Wang grunted, his face contorting in sudden, inexplicable agony.
He fell to his knees on the raised dirt path. He coughed violently, and a spray of bright red arterial blood painted the dirt in front of him.
Li Mo remained perfectly still in the mud, his heart pounding a frantic rhythm against his newly healed ribs. He watched, holding his breath, playing the role of the terrified, beaten victim perfectly.
Wang stayed on his knees for a long minute, wheezing, one hand pressed firmly against his chest, the other planted in the dirt to support his massive weight. The cultivator was clearly terrified. From Wang's perspective, his own body had just spontaneously suffered a massive internal trauma.
"Old... old war injury," Wang gasped to himself, his voice tight with pain and fear. "The meridian backlash... from five years ago... it's flaring up."
He didn't even look back at Li Mo. The thought that a pathetic, Level One trash cultivator could have inflicted a targeted, invisible curse upon him was so absurd it never even crossed his mind. In the cultivation world, spontaneous meridian failure or the flaring of old, hidden injuries was a common, terrifying occurrence. Wang assumed his past had just caught up to him.
Trembling, Wang pulled a small, jade bottle from his robes. He fumbled with the cork, tipped a green pill into his mouth, and swallowed it dry. Slowly, painfully, he forced himself to his feet. He didn't walk with an arrogant swagger anymore. He limped, hunched over, clutching his chest, eager to return to the Golden Cauldron Faction's compound to meditate and stabilize his 'worsening condition'.
Li Mo watched him disappear down the muddy street.
Only when he was entirely out of sight did Li Mo slowly sit up. He wiped the mud from his face with a trembling hand.
He had just severely injured a Level Three cultivator without lifting a finger, without spending a drop of Qi, and without drawing a single shred of suspicion.
He looked down at his reflection in the muddy water of the rice paddy. A pale, dirty, ordinary-looking sixteen-year-old boy stared back at him.
"I am a coward," Li Mo whispered to his reflection, the words lacking any shame, replaced instead with a cold, pragmatic steel. "I will hide in the shadows. I will bow when I need to bow. I will smile when I am insulted. And if anyone pushes me to the brink..."
He looked at the spot where Wang had spat blood.
"...I will return the favor, with interest, and they will never even know it was me."
Li Mo stood up, picked up his rusty hoe, and went back to crushing iron-jawed locusts. He had spirit rice to tend. He had a quiet, cautious life to build. And most importantly, he had a very long, very secure road to immortality ahead of him.