**Chapter 4: The Mud and the Mirror**
The shallow cut along his ribs burned with a hot, rhythmic throbbing that synced perfectly with his hammering heart.
Inside the pitch-black confines of his shack, Lu Chen sat on the packed dirt floor, his back pressed against the cold mud-brick wall. He had stripped off his bloodied, torn rags. The air in the room was freezing, biting at his exposed, sweat-slicked skin, but he didn't dare light a fire. He didn't even dare to breathe too loudly.
He stared into the darkness, his mind a chaotic whirlwind of adrenaline and terror. The image of the serrated dagger slamming into the wall inches from his legs played on a continuous, agonizing loop in his mind.
*I almost died,* he thought, his hands shaking so violently he had to interlock his fingers to steady them. *Sixteen hours of being transmigrated, and I've almost died three separate times. The centipede. The swamp. The alley.*
He summoned his panel. The soft blue glow illuminated the squalor around him, casting long, monstrous shadows from the three-legged stool and the cracked water jug.
### **Causality Shift Panel**
* **Host:** Lu Chen
* **Cultivation:** Qi Condensation Level 2
* **Marked Targets:** 0 / 3
* *Target 1:* (Cooldown: 6 hours, 42 minutes remaining.)
* *Target 2:* (Cooldown: 21 hours, 15 minutes remaining.)
* *Target 3:* (Cooldown: 22 hours, 05 minutes remaining.)
He stared at the countdown timers, a profound sense of vulnerability washing over him. For the first time since he had awoken in this brutal world, the panel offered him absolutely no protection. If an enforcer kicked down his door right now, if a venomous insect bit him in the dark, he would have to face the consequences like any other mortal. There was no magic button to press. There was no invisible garbage bin to dump his suffering into.
He reached down and gingerly touched the cut on his ribs. It wasn't deep—the assassin's blade had only grazed him, slicing through the thin layer of fat and muscle just beneath the skin—but it was bleeding steadily.
In the cultivation novels Li Wei used to read on Earth, protagonists would simply consume a low-grade Blood-Clotting Pill or cycle their miraculous Qi to instantly heal such a minor wound. Lu Chen had no pills. And while his Level 2 Qi was pure and robust, he lacked any medical arts or techniques to direct that energy toward accelerated cellular regeneration. If he just pumped raw Qi into the wound, he risked aggravating it or causing a localized spiritual hemorrhage.
He had to do this the mortal way.
He dragged himself across the floor to the corner of the room, feeling blindly until his hands closed over a small, relatively clean piece of coarse linen he used as a blanket. He tore a long strip from it with his teeth. He then crawled to the cracked water jug, pouring a small splash of the stale, freezing water over the cut to wash away the dirt from the alley.
The cold water hitting the open nerve endings made him hiss violently through clenched teeth. Tears pricked his eyes, but he forced himself to endure it. He tightly bound the linen strip around his torso, tying a crude, painful knot over the wound to apply pressure.
He slumped back against the wall, utterly exhausted. The physical drain of the night's events—the extreme exertion in the swamp, the terrifying sprint from the assassin, the constant fear—was catching up to him.
But he couldn't sleep. He couldn't afford the luxury of unconsciousness. Not when he was carrying four low-grade Spirit Stones and two cultivation arts in a slum where people murdered each other over scraps of moldy bread.
Lu Chen reached into the pile of his discarded rags and retrieved the two jade slips. They felt cool and smooth against his calloused palm, pulsing with a very faint, latent spiritual energy.
He picked up the larger, yellowed slip first. The *Shadow-Breath Mud Technique*.
According to the fragmented memories of the original Lu Chen, reading a jade slip was relatively straightforward. One simply had to press the slip against their forehead, near the location of the upper Dantian—the spiritual center of the mind—and project a sliver of Qi into the jade to unlock the information matrix within.
Lu Chen took a deep breath, steeling himself. He pressed the yellowed jade slip flat against his forehead, right between his eyebrows. He focused on the pool of pure, vibrant Qi resting in his lower Dantian. With a thought, he coaxed a tiny, thread-like tendril of energy up through his central meridian, guiding it into his head, and gently pushed it into the jade.
*CRACK.*
It wasn't a physical sound, but a mental explosion. Lu Chen gasped, his eyes rolling back in his head as a massive influx of information was violently forcefully injected directly into his brain.
It was like trying to drink from a fire hose. Images, diagrams, complex routing paths, and the harsh, echoing voice of an ancient cultivator flooded his consciousness. The sheer volume of data caused a splitting headache, a sharp, stabbing pain behind his eyes that made him nauseous.
He gritted his teeth, refusing to pull the slip away. He endured the mental assault for what felt like an hour, though it was likely only a few minutes. Finally, the flow of information slowed to a trickle, and the jade slip in his hand grew warm, its faint glow dimming significantly. The spiritual imprint inside had been heavily depleted by the transfer.
Lu Chen dropped the slip into his lap, panting heavily. He massaged his temples, waiting for the vertigo to pass.
As his mind settled, the *Shadow-Breath Mud Technique* unfolded in his consciousness, clear and vivid.
It was an Earth-attribute stealth art. The core philosophy of the technique was not invisibility, but assimilation. Earth was heavy, dense, and ubiquitous. It absorbed sound, it hid the dead, and it swallowed energy. The technique required the user to draw upon the Earth-aligned Qi within their body, route it through a highly specific, complex series of minor meridians near the skin's surface, and create a dense, spiritual "shell" around their core.
This shell acted like a layer of thick, impenetrable mud. It didn't erase a cultivator's aura; rather, it suffocated it, suppressing the vibrant fluctuations of high-level Qi and projecting a dull, murky, weak signature to the outside world. To anyone scanning the user, they wouldn't see a void—which would be highly suspicious—they would just see a pathetic, low-level piece of trash.
"Perfect," Lu Chen whispered, his lips curling into a tired, grim smile. "It's exactly what I am."
The original Lu Chen possessed a Four-Element Root: Metal, Wood, Water, and Earth. In the eyes of the cultivation world, this was a crippling deformity. The elements clashed, making Qi absorption painfully slow and highly impure.
But for this specific technique, it was a hidden blessing. Lu Chen had an innate affinity for Earth Qi.
He didn't waste another second. He crossed his legs, ignoring the sharp tug of the cut on his ribs, and entered a state of deep meditation.
He looked inward, observing his Dantian. Thanks to his "human filter" method utilizing Overseer Zhao, his Dantian was currently a pristine, glowing pool of pure Qi, clearly denoting his Level 2 status.
Following the complex mental diagrams of the *Shadow-Breath Mud Technique*, Lu Chen began to separate his Qi. It was a delicate, agonizingly precise process. He had to identify the faint, grounding resonance of the Earth attribute within his pure energy and carefully draw it out.
Slowly, a heavy, brownish-yellow mist began to separate from the glowing pool. It felt sluggish, dense, and suffocatingly thick.
Lu Chen guided this Earth Qi out of his Dantian and into the intricate, previously unused minor meridians mapped out by the technique. These pathways were incredibly narrow and fragile. The heavy Earth Qi scraped against the meridian walls, causing a dull, widespread ache across his entire body, like severe muscle fatigue.
He pushed through the discomfort. He wove the Earth Qi around his Dantian, layering it, compacting it. He visualized packing thick, wet clay around a blazing lantern.
As the shell formed, he felt a strange, dual sensation. Internally, his pure, powerful Level 2 Qi was still there, buzzing with vitality. But externally, the feeling of pressure he naturally exerted on his surroundings completely vanished.
He opened his eyes. He couldn't visually see his own aura, but he could feel the profound dampening effect. He felt heavy, unremarkable, and perfectly blended with the squalor of his shack.
He spent the next three hours repeating the process. He formed the mud-shell, held it until his minor meridians burned with exhaustion, and then dissipated it. Over and over, until the complex routing path became muscle memory. He needed to be able to deploy this concealment instantly and maintain it indefinitely without conscious thought.
By the time he was satisfied, he was drenched in cold sweat, his energy reserves significantly depleted. But he had succeeded. When the *Shadow-Breath Mud Technique* was active, he radiated the exact, pathetic signature of a Qi Condensation Level 1 cultivator with a trash root. Even a Foundation Establishment Elder, unless they physically touched his meridians and forcefully injected their own Qi to inspect his core, would be fooled by the superficial scan.
He had his shield. Now, he needed a sword.
He picked up the second jade slip. The *Water Bullet*.
The process of absorbing this spell was much less painful, as the spell itself was fundamentally simple. It was the absolute lowest tier of offensive magic, usually taught to ten-year-old sect disciples as a foundational exercise in Qi projection.
It required Water-attribute Qi to be drawn into the palm, compressed into a highly dense sphere, and then violently expelled outward using a burst of kinetic energy from the arm meridians.
Lu Chen stood up, wincing as his ribs protested. He walked over to the cracked clay jug. There was a tiny amount of water left at the bottom.
He extended his right hand, palm facing the empty mud-brick wall. He isolated the fluid, adaptable resonance of his Water-attribute Qi. He channeled it down his arm, pooling it in his palm.
A soft, blue glow illuminated his hand. Condensation immediately began to form in the freezing air, drawing moisture from the room and the jug, coalescing into a sphere of rapidly swirling water hovering an inch above his palm.
It was beautiful. It was actual magic. For a brief second, Li Wei, the accountant from Earth, felt a surge of childlike wonder.
Then, he focused on the kill.
Following the spell's instructions, he ruthlessly compressed the sphere. The soft blue glow intensified, turning a harsh, blinding white. The water stopped looking like a liquid and took on the hard, glassy sheen of a solid ball bearing. It vibrated violently, humming with pent-up kinetic energy.
"Fire," Lu Chen commanded mentally, triggering the release in his arm meridians.
*THWACK.*
The water bullet shot forward with a sharp crack, crossing the five feet of space in a fraction of a second. It slammed into the mud-brick wall with the force of a heavy sledgehammer strike.
Mud and dried clay exploded outward in a shower of debris. When the dust settled, Lu Chen saw a crater the size of a fist embedded a full three inches deep into the solid brick.
He stared at the crater, his chest heaving.
It was fast. It was accurate. But as an analytical thinker, Lu Chen immediately saw the fatal flaw.
*It's blunt force,* he realized, analyzing the impact. *It didn't pierce the brick; it shattered it through concussive impact. Against a mortal, this would crush their sternum and stop their heart. But against a cultivator?*
He thought back to the assassin in the alley. The man had been Level 3. Cultivators naturally reinforced their skin and bones with ambient Qi, even passively. A concussive blow from a Level 2 Water Bullet might break a Level 3 cultivator's rib, maybe wind them, but it wouldn't kill them instantly. And in a fight between cultivators, if you didn't kill your opponent with the first strike, you usually died to their counterattack.
*I need it to pierce. I need it to act like a bullet from Earth, not a cannonball.*
He spent the next hour experimenting. He generated bullet after bullet, ignoring the rapidly depleting Qi in his Dantian. He tried making the sphere smaller, denser. He tried spinning it faster to create a drilling effect.
The results were marginally better, but still fundamentally flawed by the nature of the spell. Water, by definition, wanted to disperse upon impact. Unless he reached the Foundation Establishment realm and could compress water to the density of steel, the *Water Bullet* would remain a concussive tool.
*Wait,* Lu Chen thought, pausing, his arm trembling from Qi exhaustion. *I have a Four-Element Root. Water... and Metal.*
His eyes widened in the dark.
He didn't have a Metal-attribute spell. But he didn't need a complex spell just to manifest the element. He just needed to coat the water.
He extended his hand again. He formed the Water Bullet, compressing it until it hummed. Then, instead of firing, he carefully drew upon his Metal-attribute Qi—a sharp, rigid, unforgiving energy.
He forced the Metal Qi out of his palm, attempting to wrap it around the spinning water sphere.
It was incredibly difficult. The elements violently resisted each other. The water tried to wash away the metal, and the metal tried to sever the water. The sphere vibrated erratically, threatening to explode in his hand. Lu Chen gritted his teeth, his forehead veins bulging, using sheer willpower to force the two conflicting energies into a temporary, unnatural symbiosis.
He molded the Metal Qi into a microscopic, razor-sharp point at the very front of the water sphere, stabilizing the rest of the liquid behind it as the heavy driving mass.
He aimed at an untouched section of the wall.
*Fire.*
*TSS-THUNK.*
The sound was completely different. There was no explosion of mud. There was just a sharp hiss of displaced air and a quiet, definitive thud.
Lu Chen walked over to the wall, squinting in the dim blue light of his panel.
There was no crater. There was only a tiny, perfectly round hole, no wider than a coin. Lu Chen stuck his index finger into the hole. It went deep. Deeper than his finger. The armor-piercing water bullet had punched cleanly through the entire depth of the mud-brick and buried itself into the frozen dirt outside.
If that hit a cultivator's chest, passive Qi defense or not, it would punch a clean hole straight through their heart.
Lu Chen slumped to the floor, utterly drained, his Dantian aching with emptiness. But a terrifying, cold satisfaction settled in his chest.
He had a shield. He had a sword. He was no longer just a victim waiting for his panel to save him.
Morning arrived not with sunlight, but with the deafening, bone-rattling crash of a bronze gong echoing across the Green Bamboo Market.
Lu Chen jolted awake, instinctively dropping into a defensive crouch, his hand glowing with a nascent Water Bullet. His ribs screamed in protest, but he ignored the pain.
The gong sounded again, a harsh, urgent rhythm that signaled a severe emergency.
*They found the bodies,* Lu Chen thought, his mind instantly racing, switching from sleep to hyper-vigilant survival mode in a fraction of a second.
He quickly engaged the *Shadow-Breath Mud Technique*, ensuring his aura was perfectly suppressed to a weak Level 1. He checked his bandages, threw his ragged, dirt-stained gray robes on over them, and grabbed his rusted sickle. He unbarred his door and stepped out into the freezing morning fog.
The outer slums were in absolute chaos.
Hundreds of loose cultivators were pouring out of their shacks, their faces pale with terror. The muddy streets, usually filled with the dreary shuffle of the morning commute to the rice fields, were currently swarming with heavily armed personnel.
To the west, near the border of the inner market, lines of Wang Clan enforcers stood in rigid formation. They wore pristine blue armor, their spiritual swords drawn, their auras radiating aggressive, hostile intent.
To the east, the thoroughfares were clogged by the Black Tiger Gang. These were not the usual petty thugs; these were the core members, large men covered in tattoos, wielding massive axes and spiked maces, their eyes scanning the crowd with murderous fury.
The two factions, normally maintaining a tense, unspoken truce in the outer market, were glaring at each other, the tension thick enough to cut with a knife.
"What's happening?" Lu Chen whispered, adopting his pathetic, trembling persona, clutching the sleeve of an elderly cultivator standing nearby.
"Heavens preserve us," the old man stammered, his prayer beads clicking frantically in his hands. "It's a slaughter. Overseer Zhao of the Wang Clan died last night. His body... they say it was melted from the inside out by a demonic swamp miasma, right in the middle of the medical pavilion."
Lu Chen widened his eyes, expressing perfectly calibrated shock. "M-melted?"
"Yes! But that's not all," another cultivator chimed in, leaning closer, his voice a terrified hiss. "The Black Tiger Gang found Boss Wang Ba's body yesterday, remember? And last night, two more of their lieutenants were found dead in the alleys! One had his throat crushed, and the other... the other was found near Ghost Alley, his eyes gouged out and a water spell punched through his chest!"
Lu Chen's heart skipped a beat, but his face remained a mask of fearful confusion.
*The assassin,* Lu Chen realized. *The man who tried to rob me in the alley last night. I blinded him with dirt. Someone else must have found him stumbling around and finished him off, or perhaps he stumbled into a trap. No... wait.*
Lu Chen recalled the exact moment he threw the dirt. He had channeled Qi into his legs to run. The assassin had been momentarily blinded and enraged. This was Ghost Alley. The moment a Level 3 cultivator showed a moment of weakness, blinded and disoriented, the scavengers lurking in the shadows would have descended on him like piranhas to strip him of his wealth. The water spell to the chest was likely a rival gang member taking advantage of the opportunity.
"Silence!"
A voice, amplified by a powerful Qi technique, thundered over the market, instantly silencing the chaotic murmurs.
From the Wang Clan formation, a figure stepped forward. It was not the elderly Elder from yesterday, but a young man in his early twenties. He wore robes of pure, shimmering white silk, embroidered with silver clouds—the uniform of an Inner Sect Disciple of the Wang Clan. He stood on a flying sword that hovered three feet off the ground, looking down at the slum dwellers as if they were a colony of diseased insects.
"I am Wang Lin, Inner Sect Enforcer," the young man announced, his voice dripping with arrogance and barely contained fury. "The Green Bamboo Market is under complete lockdown. No one enters. No one leaves. A demonic cultivator practicing forbidden Yin arts has infiltrated our territory. They murdered Overseer Zhao and several members of the local syndicates. This is an affront to the Wang Clan's authority."
Next to the Wang Clan forces, a massive, heavily scarred man with an eyepatch stepped forward. This was Boss Hei, the leader of the Black Tiger Gang, a cultivator widely rumored to be at the peak of Level 5, bordering on Level 6.
"The Wang Clan handles their own," Boss Hei rumbled, his voice like grinding boulders. "But Wang Ba was my brother. Whoever this Yin Demon is, they are using the slums to hide. We will turn every shack, every sewer, and every rat out until we find them. If you know something, speak. If you hide the demon, you burn with them."
Wang Lin sneered at the gang leader but didn't contradict him. The Wang Clan tolerated the gangs to manage the filth of the slums, and right now, their goals aligned.
"Form lines!" Wang Lin commanded. "Every single resident of the outer ring will be subjected to the Soul-Measuring Mirror. If your Qi is tainted with Yin energy, swamp miasma, or the demonic arts, you will be executed immediately."
Panic erupted in the crowd. People pushed and shoved, terrified of the looming inspection. Wang Clan guards waded into the mob, ruthlessly beating people into orderly lines with the flats of their swords.
Lu Chen was shoved violently into a line, stumbling into the mud. He kept his head down, taking deep, slow breaths.
*The Soul-Measuring Mirror,* he thought, his pulse quickening. He had read about such artifacts. They didn't just measure cultivation level; they reflected the fundamental nature of a cultivator's Qi. If a person practiced demonic arts that required human sacrifice or toxic environments, their Qi would reflect black or sickening green in the mirror. Pure, orthodox cultivation reflected white or gold.
Lu Chen reviewed his internal state with brutal objectivity.
He had killed Overseer Zhao using swamp miasma. He had killed Wang Ba using the Frost-Tail Centipede venom. Both were highly toxic, Yin-attribute methods.
But... he hadn't actually *used* them.
His cheat, the Absolute Transfer, didn't channel the poison through his Qi. It literally deleted the negative status from his reality and pasted it onto his target's reality through a causality link that bypassed the physical world entirely. He didn't cast a miasma spell; he just absorbed the miasma and dumped it.
Furthermore, the Qi currently sitting in his Dantian was the result of him absorbing the chaotic, muddy ambient energy of the rice fields and the demonic weeds, and then *transferring all the impurities and Erysipelas to Zhao*.
The energy that remained in him was terrifyingly, immaculately pure.
*My Qi is cleaner than that arrogant Inner Disciple's,* Lu Chen realized, a strange sense of calm washing over him. *Combined with the Earth-attribute shell hiding my Level 2 power, I am technically the most innocent-looking person in this entire market.*
The line moved slowly. It took hours. The sun rose higher, baking the mud and filling the air with the stench of sweat and fear.
At the front of the line, Wang Lin stood behind a large, oval mirror mounted on a bronze stand. The mirror didn't reflect the physical world; its surface was a swirling vortex of gray mist.
Every time a cultivator stepped in front of it, Wang Lin channeled Qi into the frame. The mist would clear, glowing with a specific color. Mostly, it glowed a dull, murky brown or gray—the standard, impure Qi of loose cultivators.
Occasionally, the mirror would flash a sharp, ugly red or black.
"Demonic taint! He practices the Blood-Refining Art!" a guard would scream.
Before the accused could even beg for mercy, Wang Lin's flying sword would streak forward, severing their head in a spray of crimson. The body would be kicked aside, and the next person shoved forward. By the time Lu Chen was ten people away, there were already six headless corpses rotting in the mud.
Lu Chen's turn arrived.
He shuffled forward, keeping his shoulders hunched, his hands trembling perfectly. He stopped in front of the mirror, staring at the ground, not daring to look Wang Lin in the eye.
"Look up, trash," Wang Lin snapped, his patience long exhausted by the endless parade of poverty.
Lu Chen raised his head, his eyes wide with manufactured terror.
Wang Lin scoffed in disgust and placed his hand on the bronze frame. He pulsed his Qi.
The gray mist in the mirror swirled violently. It reached out, invisible tendrils of spiritual sense washing over Lu Chen's body. The mirror probed deep, hitting the thick, heavy layer of Earth-attribute Qi Lu Chen had meticulously constructed around his Dantian.
The mist settled. It glowed a faint, pathetic, incredibly dull shade of muddy yellow. There was absolutely no trace of Yin energy, no trace of miasma, no trace of blood arts. It was the purest visual representation of a talentless, weak, Level 1 Earth-root cultivator.
Wang Lin didn't even look twice. "Trash. Move on."
Lu Chen bowed deeply, muttering rapid thanks, and scurried away from the mirror, melting back into the crowd of cleared residents.
Once he was out of sight behind a row of collapsed shacks, he leaned against a mud wall, closing his eyes and exhaling a long, shuddering breath. The *Shadow-Breath Mud Technique* had worked flawlessly against a high-tier artifact. He was a ghost in the machine.
By mid-afternoon, the massive inspection concluded. They had executed twenty people for various minor demonic infractions, but they had not found the "Yin Demon" who killed Overseer Zhao or Wang Ba. The Wang Clan declared the lockdown over but doubled the patrols. The Black Tiger Gang retreated to their dens, furious and paranoid.
The bells tolled, ordering the tenant farmers back to the fields. The rice still needed tending, demon or no demon.
Lu Chen arrived at Section 4. The atmosphere was somber and terrified.
On the elevated wooden platform where Overseer Zhao used to stand, a new figure had taken command. It was a severe-looking, middle-aged woman named Overseer Ma. She didn't wield a whip, but her eyes were cold and calculating.
"Listen closely," Overseer Ma's voice rang out, crisp and authoritative. "The Wang Clan's patience is thin today. You will clear the paddies, you will harvest the mature stalks, and you will not speak a single word. Anyone lagging behind will be expelled from the fields permanently. Begin."
Lu Chen waded into the freezing water of the paddy, blending seamlessly with the hundreds of other gray-robed laborers. He gripped a sickle and began to harvest the Azure Spirit Rice stalks.
As he worked, his mind was entirely detached from the manual labor. His Level 2 physique made the work trivial, allowing him to operate on autopilot while his true focus remained inward.
He was safe for now, but he was stagnant.
He needed to cultivate. He needed to reach Level 3 as quickly as possible. Every step up the cultivation ladder geometrically increased his chances of survival. But to cultivate at the terrifying, reckless speed he had discovered, he needed a target to act as his human filter. He needed somewhere to dump the massive accumulation of Erysipelas and meridian damage caused by forceful, unfiltered Qi absorption.
He discreetly opened his panel.
### **Causality Shift Panel**
* **Host:** Lu Chen
* **Cultivation:** Qi Condensation Level 2
* **Marked Targets:** 0 / 3
* *Target 1:* (Cooldown: 12 minutes remaining.)
* *Target 2:* (Cooldown: 14 hours, 30 minutes remaining.)
* *Target 3:* (Cooldown: 15 hours, 20 minutes remaining.)
*Twelve minutes.*
The slot previously occupied by Wang Ba was about to open.
Lu Chen kept his head down, continuing to harvest the rice, but his eyes darted subtly from beneath the brim of his bamboo hat, scanning the perimeter of the fields.
He couldn't mark Overseer Ma. She hadn't done anything to him, and crippling a second Wang Clan overseer in two days would bring down the absolute wrath of the inner sect. They would burn the entire slum to the ground on principle.
He needed a target that was isolated, hated, and deeply deserving of a painful, wasting death. He needed someone whose demise would be chalked up to the ongoing gang war or the mysterious "Yin Demon," deflecting all suspicion.
His gaze landed on a group of figures lounging near the treeline bordering the fields.
It was a patrol of Black Tiger Gang members. Boss Hei had sent his men to monitor the fields, paranoid that the Yin Demon was hiding among the farmers.
The man leading the patrol was a notorious thug known as "Scarface Liu." He was a Level 3 cultivator, recognizable by the massive, jagged burn scar covering the left side of his face. Scarface Liu was currently holding a young, terrified female cultivator by the hair, dragging her out of the paddy.
"I saw you pocket a stalk of spirit rice, bitch," Liu hissed, his hand resting on the hilt of a rusted broadsword. "The Wang Clan might miss it, but the Black Tigers don't. The fine is two spirit fragments, payable right now, or I take a finger."
The woman was sobbing, bleeding from where the sharp rice leaves had cut her face, desperately begging for mercy, swearing she hadn't stolen anything. The other farmers near her kept their heads firmly down, ignoring her pleas, terrified of drawing Liu's wrath.
Lu Chen watched the scene unfold with a cold, detached absolute pragmatism.
Liu was an extortionist. He was a violent sadist who preyed on the weak. In Li Wei's modern mind, the man was a monster. In Lu Chen's cultivation mind, the man was a resource.
He checked the panel.
**[Target 1: Slot Available.]**
Lu Chen stopped harvesting. He stood up straight in the waist-deep water, just another anonymous face in the crowd. He turned his head, locking his eyes onto Scarface Liu, who was currently raising his broadsword to sever the weeping woman's finger.
The rage of the original host and the cold logic of the transmigrator fused into a single, lethal intent.
"System," Lu Chen commanded mentally, his inner voice completely devoid of mercy. "Mark target: Scarface Liu."
**[Target Locked. Entity identified as Human Cultivator (Qi Condensation Lv 3).]**
**[Does the Host wish to use 1 of 3 Marking Slots to mark this target? Y/N]**
*Yes.*
**[Target Marked. Target 1: Scarface Liu.]**
**[Connection established. Absolute causality link open.]**
The red reticle blinked and vanished over Liu's scarred face.
Lu Chen lowered his head, sinking his hands deep into the muddy water of the paddy. He opened all the pores on his body. He fully engaged the *Aura Drawing Scripture*, bypassing every single safety mechanism.
He inhaled the thick, chaotic, deeply impure Qi of the mud and the dying demonic weeds around him, sucking it into his pristine Level 2 Dantian like a starving beast.
Instantly, the familiar, agonizing burn of toxic sludge filling his meridians began. The micro-tears formed, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth beneath his bamboo hat. The panel screamed warnings of critical Erysipelas buildup and impending internal hemorrhaging.
Lu Chen smiled—a bloody, terrifying smile hidden in the shadows.
He highlighted the negative statuses on his panel. He looked at the oblivious, cruel gang member laughing on the shore.
The human filter was back online. And Lu Chen was about to take out the trash.