Years of Service Resumed
Three options, three paths.
Lu Ping glanced at C out of the corner of his eye and couldn't help sneering.
High pay, little work, close to home.
In his previous life, whenever he saw those words on a recruitment website, the job turned out to be either a pyramid scheme or a scam.
He'd come to a different world in this life, yet the tricks were exactly the same.
Option A: a mundane town.
Safe, but the ceiling was too low.
He could resume his years of service without a problem, but if he spent his whole life holed up in the mundane world, that copy of the Body Tempering Instruction might become a pile of waste paper he would never understand.
Option B: a cultivation sect.
Dangerous, and completely unknown.
A mortal like him going to a cultivation sect's territory would be no different from a mouse barging into a cat's den.
Lu Ping chose A.
He was now a man with three nothings: no cultivation, no resources, and no background.
What did he have to take to a sect?
Lu Ping still remembered how Sunset Glow Village had been wiped out.
This was a world of immortal cultivation where human lives were worth less than grass.
First, stay alive. First, resume his years of service. First, accumulate traits.
He, Lu Ping, was a man with a simulator. If this life didn't work out, there would be another. As long as he got a B-grade trait or higher next time...
[You chose A.]
[You searched the corpses for a long time and found six and a half pieces of dry rations.]
[With the blood-soaked Body Tempering Instruction and the dry rations you had taken from the corpses tucked against your chest, you set off.]
[You walked for three days, forcing down dry rations with water from streams.]
[You walked for ten days. Your dry rations ran out, and you dug up grass roots along the roadside.]
[Your straw sandals wore through. Blood blisters formed on your soles, burst underfoot, then formed and burst again.]
[You walked for thirteen days. You were nothing but skin and bones, with sunken cheeks and protruding cheekbones. A passing hunter took one look at you and went around you.]
[You glanced at the place he had left. Half a flatbread lay there.]
[The Salty Fish trait remained in effect.]
[Your Dao heart did not waver in the slightest.]
[You were so hungry that stars danced before your eyes, and the wounds on your soles tore open with every step, but one thought stood perfectly clear in your mind: there was a town ahead.]
[On the fifteenth day, you saw smoke rising from cooking fires.]
[You had reached Qingliu Town.]
[Qingliu Town was a small mundane town with over three hundred households, no cultivators stationed there, and no sect governing it.]
[There was a smithy in the east of town, a medicine shop in the west, and a gambling house in the center.]
[Prices were low and public order was average, making it suitable for eking out a living.]
[You were penniless and too hungry to stand steady. You needed work.]
[You asked at a restaurant. They didn't want you.]
[You asked at a cloth shop. They didn't want you.]
[You asked at the medicine shop. They didn't want you.]
[No one wanted a drifter of unknown origin, so emaciated he was barely recognizable and reeking of blood.]
[You stood outside Zhangji Smithy in the east of town. The clang of hammers rang out from within.]
[A shirtless old man with a scraggly beard was swinging a sledgehammer.]
[You went inside.]
["Boss, are you hiring?"]
[The old man looked you up and down and frowned.]
["Ever worked a forge?"]
["No. But I can endure hardship."]
[The old man looked at you again. This time, he looked at your hands.]
[Thick calluses left by eighteen years in the mines and back kitchens lay layer upon layer, your palms as rough as sandpaper.]
["Meals provided, no lodging, thirty copper coins a month. Will you do it?"]
["I will."]
A system notification popped up, its border gray and its lettering neat.
[Host employment detected: Zhangji Smithy (individually owned business). Position: apprentice.]
[Years of service successfully resumed. Automatic resignation countdown canceled.]
The red countdown disappeared.
Lu Ping let out a long breath.
The one-year deadline between life and death had been lifted by a shirtless old man's offer of thirty copper coins a month.
[You settled in at the smithy.]
[Old Zhang was a rough man with a bad temper and a loud voice, but he never hit anyone.]
[Every day, he cursed you until you were drenched in dog blood. When he was done, he shoved a bowl of food in front of you. "Eat."]
[You silently made a note of it in your heart.]
[In eighteen years, Old Zhang was the first person to curse you without hitting you.]
[You learned smithing: swinging a hammer, working the bellows, stoking the fire, and quenching metal in water.]
[You noticed something.]
[The rhythm of the hammer blows at the forge resembled the rhythm for drawing in Qi described in the Body Tempering Instruction.]
[One blow, one breath; one blow, one breath. Every time the hammer fell, the vibration traveled along your arms and through your entire body.]
[The way those vibrations worked with your breathing subtly matched the book's description: "Qi follows force, force springs from bone."]
[The essence of the Body Tempering Instruction was to forge and temper the flesh, and smithing was the form of mundane labor closest to body tempering.]
[Eighteen years in the mines and back kitchens had been wasted. You should have come to a smithy sooner.]
[You sighed inwardly, then couldn't help laughing at yourself.]
[You were a slave. What did you mean, "should have come sooner...?"]
[Age thirty-seven, nineteen years of service.]
[Generating trait...]
[Congratulations! You have obtained the trait: Artisan Spirit (Grade A)—you can perform any work to absolute perfection, with its grade far surpassing that of others.]
Lu Ping's breath stopped for half a beat.
Any work, absolute perfection, a grade far surpassing others.
Grade A, thoroughly deserved!
If the S-grade Salty Fish let a person hold the bottom line in harsh conditions,
then Artisan Spirit raised a person's upper limit, striving ever upward.
[Current trait equipment slots full: 3/3. Currently equipped: Flattery/Fall Guy/Salty Fish.]
[Replace a trait?]
[Trait available for replacement: Artisan Spirit.]
Lu Ping hesitated.
Both Flattery and Fall Guy had proven their worth.
The physical constitution boost from Fall Guy had helped Lu Ping survive the battle that wiped out the Black Tiger Gang.
Flattery had been his life-saving charm since his first day in the mines.
The triangular-eyed overseer, the fat supervisor, the Black Tiger Gang leader.
At every juncture that had nearly cost him his life, Flattery had pulled him back.
After pondering for a moment, Lu Ping decided to replace Flattery.
The temptation of Fall Guy's direct physical enhancement ultimately won out over Flattery.
Lu Ping remembered that cultivation could be carried over when the simulation ended.
Then could the physical constitution gained from Fall Guy also be carried over into the real world?
Sigh...
However many ways he put it, there were still too few trait slots.
[Flattery unequipped. Artisan Spirit equipped.]
[Currently equipped: Salty Fish (S-grade) Artisan Spirit (Grade A)/Fall Guy (C-grade).]
[Artisan Spirit has taken effect.]
[Old Zhang stared at the first cleaver you forged for a long time without saying a word.]
[The curve of the cutting edge, the thickness of the spine, and the angle of the bevel were all precise to a hair's breadth.]
[Old Zhang had been a smith for forty years and had never seen an apprentice forge a first blade like this.]
["You've really never worked a forge?"]
["Really, never."]
[Old Zhang looked at you again. In the end, he said nothing more and merely nodded.]
[You paid no attention to Old Zhang's attitude toward you.]
[Something else was on your mind.]
[You finished the day's work with some urgency, unable to wait to test it.]