Rescued

"I wonder what kind of story this body's father—the one who got screwed over half to death—had. He somehow made it to Ninth Grade and even possessed such a troublesome inheritance. But what use was a Ninth Grade Knight Attendant? He still ended up like this."

As he adjusted to his new body, Xuan Ye could not help but laugh at himself. As for the utterly useless special rune, Bright Eyes, now that he had awakened his Bloodline and understood the traits of his own Bloodline Power, he naturally knew it was something that came as part of it.

The data from his experiences drifting through the universe could not directly improve his strength, but when paired with this already powerful Bloodline Power, it filled his future with limitless possibilities!

Yet it was precisely because of this seemingly useless thing that he and his bargain-bin father had landed in this life-threatening mess.

"Damn, this kid really screwed his dad over. I got reincarnated into the body of such a chuuni brat right away. Isn't that just bad luck? Hmph, he was so easily bewitched by a pretty face. If it were me—uh, if it were me..."

After grumbling internally about the original owner of this body, Xuan Ye was about to use the other's behavior to make himself look superior. But when he recalled the appearance of that Potion Bitch who had seduced him, he could not help swallowing.

Fine, he had no idea what kind of feed the people on this planet ate, but the women all seemed pretty damn hot. Just look at that Potion Bitch's seductive face and those ridiculously obscene breasts. She was even more alluring than the heavily made-up, Photoshopped models he had seen online.

Honestly, even though he had lived a few more years than the original Xuan Ye, if he had not been prepared or on guard at all, then given his twenty-plus years of being single, he probably would have...

The more deeply he thought about it, the more Xuan Ye suddenly felt like a complete failure as a person. Why...

Why had no one ever tried to seduce me? What a regret.

"Women really are terrifying creatures. I'll have to be more careful from now on."

With this living negative example in his memories, Xuan Ye instantly became extremely wary of women, especially beautiful women. He knew himself well enough. He was not some iron-willed paragon, nor was he gay. Before this, he had merely been a pathetic shut-in with plenty of lust but no courage to act on it.

Wouldn't he go running over the second someone crooked a finger at him?

If he wanted to avoid falling into the same tragedy, the only option was to take precautions and stay vigilant in advance.

Mm, as long as he maintained this vigilance, he could eventually brainwash himself through persistence.

Although he greatly admired the original owner's father and was deeply moved by the man's desperate efforts for his son, that was still someone else's father. The scenes in his memories were only scenes. Without the influence of soul imprints or personality, he did not feel any familial attachment.

If he had the ability to help, he would not mind doing so, but what was happening now was clearly beyond his ability to handle.

His own parents...

On Earth...

Though he consoled himself that there might still be a chance, probably...

After sighing, Xuan Ye began moving his exhausted body and searching for food and water. Before entering this body, it seemed he had already been injured, hungry, and thirsty. If he did not work harder and find supplies before nightfall, the desert climate tomorrow would likely claim this hard-won life of his.

If there were only a few advantages to being a useless shut-in, strong psychological adaptability was one of them. After being lost for a while, he still managed to pull himself together.

The golden desert stretched endlessly. Beneath the scorching sun, the air itself appeared distorted by the heat as far as the eye could see. Yet beneath that mirage-like beauty lurked endless danger and the threat of death.

Heat, lack of water, getting lost, venomous insects, desert bandits;

And...

Magical beasts!

On the sandy ground, engulfed in warped air hot enough to cook an egg, a figure now lay on his back.

Aside from the occasional instinctive twitch caused by the scorching ground, he looked no different from a corpse—an unconventional roast egg. A deep wound on his shoulder had clearly begun to fester and become infected. Still, his physique was evidently far stronger than that of an ordinary person. Anyone else would likely have died long ago rather than twitching now and then.

"I never thought this hard-earned chance at rebirth, this lucky Bloodline Power, and this renewed cheat would all end before they had truly begun..."

Lying on the ground without a shred of strength left, Xuan Ye could not help feeling a trace of sorrow for himself.

Although he had gained a body far superior to his old shut-in physique, his core personality had not changed at all. He had once thought his willpower was decent, but only after being pushed into such a desperate situation and truly having to use it did he realize just how pathetic it was.

From fragments of the former owner's memories, he had extracted some related memories about desert survival. But those were ultimately just scenes ground down into data. Knowing was one thing; doing was another. After an entire night, he had not even caught a single Sand Rat and had instead wasted what little stamina he had left.

By the time the sun rose, he had become this pathetic salted fish.

"Someone save me. Whoever saves me, I'll just marry them..."

As he enjoyed what he thought were the final moments of his life, Xuan Ye had no strength left to escape the burning sand. With his consciousness fading, he could only mock himself one last time in his heart. No one has even tried to seduce me yet. I refuse to accept this!

He had actually ended up worse off than that chuuni brat.

"Oh? A little brat actually came this deep into the desert. He looks fairly capable. He might be worth something..."

Just as his consciousness began to blur, and he could no longer feel his thirst or the scorching ground, leaving him strangely lightheaded, a voice that seemed to come from the heavens reached his ears. Then he vaguely felt someone grab him by the back of his collar and lift him up.

He barely forced open his heavy eyelids and saw a rugged, bearded man before him. His final thought before passing out was to take back what he had said earlier...

Under the fiercest blaze of the midday sun, even an experienced scavenger team had no choice but to erect sunshades and hide from the poisonous afternoon heat.

Four towering tents could accommodate fifty or sixty people, while more than a dozen Camel Beasts tethered outside lay down in the tents' shade to rest.

"Cough, cough..."

Feeling the bitter water with its faint coolness, the half-conscious Xuan Ye greedily took two more gulps before choking himself awake.

He opened his eyes and saw the worn, faded leather roof above him. Hearing the noisy voices around him and feeling the blanket beneath him, he hazily recalled what had happened. Once he returned from the boundary between dream and reality and realized it was not a dream, Xuan Ye let out a sigh of relief. It seemed he had been rescued. His life appeared to be safe.

This might have been his second life, but his death on Earth had happened far too quickly. It had ended in an instant, leaving him without even the slightest impression of it. This was his first time truly facing death at close range. Between life and death lay great terror!

For a useless shut-in like his former self, this oppressive feeling was an experience he had never encountered before. It had frightened him senseless.

Once he slowly recovered and thought back on it, he felt a strange mixture of fear, confusion, and a faint thrill.

"You're awake, kid. You were lucky to run into a kindhearted fellow like me. Otherwise, there probably wouldn't even be a corpse left of you by now."

Xuan Ye turned toward the source of the voice. He saw a bearded man over two meters tall, his entire body packed with knotted muscles. A single piece of beast hide casually covered the right half of his body, as though he feared neither the heat nor the blazing sun. The man was looking at him with a teasing expression.

Xuan Ye vaguely recognized that face. It seemed to be the person he had seen just before passing out.

"Th-thank you..."

Xuan Ye's voice was hoarse and stammering as he thanked him in somewhat stiff language.

There was no helping it. Though he could extract fragments of the original owner's memories, speaking an entirely unfamiliar language was bound to be clumsy at first. He would probably need quite some time to adapt.

Luo Luoji clearly had no intention of looking into that awkward gratitude. Maybe the kid had cooked his brain in the sun, or maybe he had always stuttered. Either way, it had nothing to do with him.

"Kid, if you want something here, you have to give something in return. I already paid the price by saving you and giving you water just now. So now, you need to repay me."

The burly, bearded man, who looked rather forthright, casually waved his fan-sized hand. He bared his gleaming white teeth in a grin as he spoke.

Several people resting nearby also began laughing and egging him on, making the tent noisy. A sour smell lingered in the air.

It immediately reminded Xuan Ye of the thought that had flashed through his mind when he mocked himself before passing out. He involuntarily shuddered. Aside from himself, he truly had nothing at all to offer as payment!

"That's right. What I want is your body."

As if he had seen through Xuan Ye's thoughts, the burly man's smile grew even brighter...

With a pair of broad sandshoes strapped to his feet and a worn leather pack over a person's height on his back, weighing around one hundred and sixty pounds, Xuan Ye bared his teeth in pain. His shoulder wound had been treated and bandaged, but the pull of that weight still hurt.

Fine, at least he had not fallen into the worst possible scenario. That big guy merely wanted him to work as a laborer carrying things. In exchange, he had received bandages and medicine for his shoulder wound, as well as food and drink along the journey.

The compensation was certainly exploitative for making him work while carrying such a heavy load, but Xuan Ye had nothing to say about it. The other party had saved his life, and such repayment was only proper.

Besides, with the strength of this body, even while injured, carrying this load and keeping up with the team was not a problem.

Though he had only just woken from unconsciousness, he merely tried circulating the commonplace Basic Breathing Technique from his memories. With sufficient food replenishing him, the adjustments and fine-tuning of the Database within his body allowed him to recover more than half his strength in two hours, at a speed and with an effect far surpassing what he remembered!

According to the feedback from his Soul Database, this body could lift 633.4 pounds when uninjured. Even in its current wounded state, it could lift 521.2 pounds, far better than his previous salted-fish state.

Of course, lifting something and carrying it for a prolonged period were clearly different. This 156.1-pound pack happened to be the limit he could carry over a long period.

Feeling the data transmitted into his mind, numbers precise to multiple decimal places, Xuan Ye developed a headache. Would this stuff automatically pop up whenever he saw or touched something in the future? If so, the mental burden would be far too great.

But when he remembered how the Eyes of Lawbreaking had nearly blown his head apart after two seconds of observation when his Bloodline awakened, he suddenly felt that this was already incredibly fortunate. Moreover, the fine-tuning of the Basic Breathing Technique seemed to prove that the data had an assisting function.

The changes seemed minor, but those slight adjustments had transformed the rigid, mechanical Basic Breathing Technique into one tailored entirely to his current physical condition. As his stamina continued recovering, the technique also continued changing. It seemed that every moment, its rhythm differed according to the minute changes in his body.

This was something ordinary people absolutely could not possess. Well, it was probably still inferior to the advanced breathing techniques used by the wealthy nobles in his memories, but this had originally been nothing more than a common technique. If he obtained something better in the future, the effect would likely be even greater.

"Kid, you don't look like some pampered young noble, and you don't carry the air of a major family either. For an ordinary person like you to reach Sixth Grade Knight Attendant at this age is already quite impressive. You have a promising future, but your mental and willpower training are still far too lacking. You're baring your teeth over this little pain? Only someone with the mindset of the strong can possess the strength of the strong."

Just as Xuan Ye was feeling speechless over the changes in his body, the familiar voice of the bearded man beside him made him pause. But when he looked up, the man was already walking toward the front of the group, leaving only his burly back in view.

That guy... Though he had saved Xuan Ye with certain motives, he really was not a bad person. After adjusting the distance between the shoulder strap and his wound, Xuan Ye strode forward and caught up with the team, walking beside a Camel Beast hauling tents and food...