The wind and snow poured through the hole in the roof of the ruined temple like knives.
Li Xuan woke in the cold, but his first thought was, How the hell did the air conditioner break?
He tried to raise his hand and rub his eyes, but his arm felt as heavy as if it had been filled with lead.
With great difficulty, he opened his eyes. What he saw was not the moldy ceiling of his rented room, but a crooked, worm-eaten crossbeam draped in cobwebs.
Hiss--
Suddenly, pain stabbed into his mind like shattered glass.
It took him a long while to recover.
Two sets of memories.
One belonged to twenty-seven-year-old Li Xuan, a miserable programmer who had worked overtime at the company until three in the morning the night before, only to suffer a sudden crushing pain in his heart before everything went black.
The other belonged to seventeen-year-old Li Xuan, a refugee from the Northern Territory. His parents had died in last year's plague, and he had followed a group of refugees southward. Three days ago, he had been abandoned in this deserted Land God Temple to await death after developing a high fever.
The two streams of memories were tangled together, making it impossible to tell which was a dream.
But the pain in his body was real.
His left leg, broken when panicked refugees trampled him during the exodus, throbbed dully. His throat was as dry as sandpaper, and every breath carried a scorching heat.
He lay on a pile of straw in the corner. The rice straw beneath him was damp and moldy, giving off a mixed stench of urine and decay.
He looked around. By the faint bonfire in the center of the temple, he could vaguely make out a dozen or so curled-up figures.
Every one of them was wrapped in tattered rags, lying motionless like corpses waiting to be buried.
Three people sat around the temple entrance, roasting some kind of meat.
The aroma drifted over, and a chorus of swallowing sounds arose throughout the temple, but no one dared approach.
Li Xuan tried to move his fingers, his arm...
Gritting his teeth, he summoned all his strength and propped up his upper body against the cold earthen wall behind him.
This simple movement made his vision go black, and cold sweat soaked through his thin clothes.
"Awake?"
A hoarse voice suddenly came from beside him. An old man wrapped in pieces of burlap, with graying hair and wrinkles as deep as ravines, was looking at him with murky eyes.
"Water..." Li Xuan forced out.
The old man shook his head and pointed at a chipped clay jar in the center of the temple. "The water was all distributed this morning. We won't get more until evening."
Li Xuan followed his gesture and saw a small, skinny child crouched beside the jar, constantly licking its walls with his tongue.
Hunger and thirst clamped around his throat like two hands.
He began forcing himself to calm down, closing his eyes as he sorted through the fragments of memory.
The Great Yan Dynasty. A severe drought across the three prefectures of the Northern Territory, followed by plague, and then the barbarians' southward raids.
His original family had fled south with the tide of refugees. His parents had died of illness along the way, and he had continued alone with the group until they reached the outskirts of Black Stone City.
The city gates were shut tight. Refugees were forbidden to enter and could only eke out a living in the wilderness beyond the city.
This Land God Temple had been seized by a refugee leader called Zhang the Cripple. He had a dozen or so reasonably strong men under him and controlled more than fifty refugees nearby.
Zhang the Cripple's rule was simple—work for food. The seriously ill and the useless were all thrown out to fend for themselves.
Yesterday, the original owner of this body had still been digging wild greens with a high fever. Today...
Li Xuan opened his eyes and looked toward the three men roasting meat at the temple entrance.
Almost at the same time, one of the burly men stood up, hefted a wooden club as thick as a wrist, and walked over.
His footsteps rang especially clearly through the silent temple. Every refugee shrank back, trying to make himself look as small as possible.
The burly man stopped in front of Li Xuan and prodded his shoulder with the club.
"Can you still move?"
The burly man was in his thirties. A scar crossed his face, and his gaze was as indifferent as if he were looking at a corpse.
"Yes." Li Xuan's voice was hoarse.
"If you can move, you'll go dig ash roots on the northern slope tomorrow." The burly man tapped the ground with his club. "If you don't dig enough three pounds, you'll be thrown out all the same." With that, he turned and left.
Li Xuan watched his back recede until the burly man sat down beside the fire and resumed turning the chunks of meat.
The piece of meat was small and blackened, looking like a rat or some other little beast.
Stay calm. I have to stay calm.
High fever, an injured leg, hunger, cold, and tomorrow's labor quota.
Any one of them could be fatal.
He needed water, food, medicine, and...
His vision suddenly blurred.
Li Xuan thought the high fever was affecting his eyesight and blinked.
The blur did not vanish. Instead, it condensed into a gray-white, translucent halo suspended directly in the center of his vision.
The halo gradually stabilized and outlined a panel.
[Li Xuan] [Strength: 0.6] [Agility: 0.5] [Physique: 0.7] [Spirit: 1.4] [ cultivation method: None] [Potential Points: 0.00]
Li Xuan froze.
An illusion? Fever delirium?
He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and opened them again.
The panel was still there.
He turned his head to look elsewhere—the walls, the bonfire, the refugees.
The panel remained suspended directly before his eyes, moving with his gaze while always maintaining the same relative position.
Strength, agility, physique, spirit... attributes?
This body was weak to the extreme, yet its physique was still 0.7? Perhaps a normal person should have 1?
Spirit at 1.4... Was that mental strength? Could it be because the transmigration had fused two sets of memories?
Li Xuan leaned against the wall, his chest rising and falling slightly. The cold and high fever had slowed his thoughts, but he did not give up thinking.
This panel was the only abnormality he possessed.
Perhaps it was also his only hope.
How did he obtain Potential Points? How could he acquire a cultivation method? Could his attributes... be increased?
He stared at the panel, his gaze settling on [Physique: 0.7].
If he could increase his physique, would the fever subside? Would his leg injury improve?
But his Potential Points were at zero. How was he supposed to obtain them?
"Cough... cough, cough!"
A violent coughing fit sounded beside him. It was the white-haired old man.
He curled up into a ball, coughing as if his lungs were being torn apart. At the end, he vomited up a mouthful of bloody phlegm, splattering it across the straw.
The surrounding refugees silently moved farther away. Beside the bonfire, a burly man turned his head and cursed, "If you're going to die, old bastard, go die somewhere else!"
The old man wheezed as he slowly recovered, then lay back down on the straw and stared blankly at the roof.
The wind outside the temple grew harsher. Snow blew in through the broken windows and landed on Li Xuan's face, cold... bone-chilling!
Li Xuan knew he was standing at the edge of a cliff.
Tomorrow, if he failed to dig three pounds of ash roots, or dug enough but collapsed from exhaustion, or if the fever worsened and he fell unconscious...
He would be unable to escape the fate of being thrown out the temple doors and slowly freezing to death in the snow.
He had to... survive!
He needed Potential Points!!
The wind and snow howled, like countless ghosts wailing outside the temple.
Before you continue