First Attempt

Before dawn, Li Xuan was jolted awake by the cold.

He curled up in the pile of straw, feeling icy air seep through every bone.

His high fever had not gone down, and his mind was still hazy, but he was a little more lucid than the night before.

Before long, the temple stirred.

One of the three burly men stood up and kicked the nearest refugee.

"Get up! All of you, get up!"

The crowd writhed like startled insects.

Li Xuan barely managed to brace himself against the wall and stand. The stabbing pain from his injured left leg made him suck in a sharp breath.

He looked at the panel.

A whole night had passed, but his attributes had not changed at all. Especially his Potential Points—they were still at 0.

"You, you, and you five..." The scar-faced burly man counted off the people. "Today, you're going to the North Slope to dig ash roots. Each of you hands over three jin before sunset. Anyone short..." He chuckled. "You know the rules."

As he spoke, the scar-faced burly man glared viciously at them.

Those chosen included Li Xuan and the white-haired old man. Each received only a rusty short shovel before being driven out of the ruined temple.

The snowstorm had stopped, but the temperature was still bitterly low. Their exhalations instantly became white mist.

Li Xuan tightened his thin, tattered clothes around himself, though they could not block the wind in the slightest.

He followed at the very back of the group, taking every step carefully and trying to put as little weight as possible on his left leg.

The North Slope lay two li north of the ruined temple. It faced away from the sun, and the snow there was deeper than elsewhere.

The burly man leading them stopped at the foot of the slope and did not go any farther. He squatted behind a rock sheltered from the wind. "I'll come collect everything before sunset. One jin short, and you get no food tonight. Two jin short, and you know what happens."

After saying that, he wrapped his clothes tightly around himself and left. Clearly, he was not worried about them escaping.

"Spread out and dig," the white-haired old man said with a cough. "Ash roots are hard to find. If we bunch together, they'll be even harder to find."

The five of them spread out.

Li Xuan chose the spot at the very edge. He needed room to test a few of his ideas.

The ground was frozen rock-hard. Each stroke of the shovel could only scrape up a little frozen soil.

After digging a dozen times, Li Xuan was already panting with exhaustion.

"Cough, cough... young man."

Li Xuan looked up. The white-haired old man had somehow moved near him.

"Ash roots like growing beneath piles of broken stones." The old man spoke in a low voice, pointing with his short shovel toward a patch of rubble nearby. "The cracks between the stones are warmer, so the roots are more likely to survive."

Li Xuan paused. "Thank you."

The old man shook his head, then continued digging his own patch without another word.

Dragging his injured leg, Li Xuan moved to the edge of the rubble.

Sure enough, after he turned over several stones, the soil beneath was slightly softer, and gray-brown roots could be seen poking out.

He dug carefully, taking care not to sever them with the shovel.

By the time he unearthed his first intact ash root, nearly half an hour had passed.

The root was as thick as a thumb and half a chi long. Weighing it in his hand, he found it came to less than two liang.

Three jin would require at least twenty roots like this.

The efficiency was far too low.

He glanced at the panel. His Potential Points were still 0.

How could he obtain them?

He had thought about it all night and could only come up with a few possibilities: completing missions, killing, or some special encounter?

In this godforsaken place, the easiest one to verify was probably...

Li Xuan gritted his teeth and continued digging.

By noon, he had dug up only seven ash roots, which he estimated weighed less than one jin.

His stomach was churning with hunger, and his lips had cracked and bled.

The others had made about the same progress. The slowest had dug up only four roots.

Just as he pried up a large stone, several gray shadows suddenly shot out from beneath it!

"Squeak, squeak—"

They were rock rats, four of them in total. Their hibernation had been disturbed, and they now fled in panic in all directions.

These creatures were about the size of kittens, with thick fur. The cold had slowed their movements somewhat.

One of them ran blindly and crashed into Li Xuan's feet, rolling several times in a daze.

Li Xuan froze.

The rock rat froze too, its black-bean-like eyes fixed on him as its forepaws pawed at the snow, seemingly deciding which way to run.

Should he kill it?

Countless thoughts flashed through Li Xuan's mind: This is a living creature. If he killed it, would the panel change? But what if nothing happened? It would be a waste of effort. If the burly man saw him, would he snatch it away? Rock rat meat was sour and gamey, but it was still meat...

The rock rat moved and turned to run.

Li Xuan's hand moved faster than his mind.

He raised the rusty shovel and brought it down with all his strength!

The shovel struck the rock rat's hind leg. The sound of breaking bone rang out clearly.

The rock rat let out a sharp scream as it rolled and struggled in the snow, dragging out a trail of blood.

Li Xuan's heart pounded wildly, but he did not stop.

The second strike smashed into its spine.

The third struck its head.

The rock rat's screams cut off abruptly, leaving only the occasional twitch of its body.

Dark-red blood slowly spread across the white snow like an ugly flower.

Li Xuan panted heavily, staring at the tiny corpse.

Then he looked at the panel.

[Potential Points: 0.00]

No change?

No... wait.

That number had fluctuated ever so slightly.

Like a raindrop falling onto a still surface, sending out ripples almost too faint to see.

Li Xuan held his breath and stared fixedly.

[Potential Points: 0.00]

[Potential Points: 0.03]

Li Xuan felt his hands tremble.

He had succeeded.

Potential Points could really be obtained through killing. It was only 0.03, pitifully little, but it proved his guess!

He drew in several deep breaths of icy air, forcing himself to calm down.

This was not the time to get excited. Li Xuan quickly stuffed the rock rat's corpse into his clothes, then continued digging ash roots.

Now that he had Potential Points, how could he use them?

Li Xuan thought for a moment, gathered all his concentration, and silently recited in his mind, "Add 0.01 Potential Points to Constitution."

[Constitution: 0.7] flickered once.

The next second, [Potential Points] changed from 0.03 to 0.02.

An extremely faint current of heat surged from the region of his heart and flowed through his blood vessels into his limbs, like warm water passing over frozen fingers. It vanished in an instant, but the sensation was unmistakably clear.

The stabbing pain in his left leg eased by a sliver, the dizziness from his high fever lessened slightly, and his breathing became a little smoother.

It worked!

Li Xuan tightened his grip on the shovel until his knuckles turned white.

He put all his Potential Points into Constitution, and sure enough, the digging that followed became somewhat easier.

Before sunset, he dug up nineteen ash roots. He piled them together and estimated that they would barely make three jin.

The burly man appeared right on time, carrying a battered burlap sack.

"Put them in."

The five people handed over their harvests one after another.

The burly man weighed each person's haul in his hand. When he reached Li Xuan's pile, he gave him an extra look. "Oh? You're not short at all? Seems you're not as weak as you look."

Seeing that Li Xuan still looked sickly, he did not wait for a reply before turning and leaving.

Seeing this, Li Xuan breathed a sigh of relief. He had not expected to draw attention to himself.

His high fever must have muddled his brain. He had not even thought of that possibility.

On the way back to the ruined temple, darkness fell.

Li Xuan deliberately dropped behind. When the people ahead turned around a huge boulder, he quickly pulled the rock rat's corpse from his clothes, tore off a strip of meat, and stuffed it into his mouth.

It was fishy, gamey, and tasted of blood.

He nearly vomited, but still forced himself to swallow it.

With something in his stomach, even if it was only a little, he felt somewhat more settled.

When they returned to the ruined temple, those who had handed over their ash roots received a bowl of thin gruel.

No one knew what it was made from. It was gray-brown, with hardly a grain of rice to be seen.

In the past, he would not even have glanced at it. He might even have poured it out in disgust.

But now...

Li Xuan finished it in a few gulps, licking the bottom of the bowl clean.

That night, he curled up in a corner and looked toward the temple entrance, where the three burly men were warming themselves by a fire.

Firelight reflected off their faces. The scar-faced burly man was sharpening a short knife, its blade rasping against the stone.

Li Xuan closed his eyes again.

He still had to go to the North Slope tomorrow. Hopefully, he could find more rock rats—or something else.