Borrowing a Corpse to Return a Soul

The soul of Li Hai was submerged in a boundless void, drifting and bobbing up and down.

He could not remember at all how long he had been drifting in this endless, lightless realm.

He could only vaguely recall the last image he saw before falling into this place... it was a large truck crashing head-on into him.

"So..."

Li Hai whispered in a daze, "My life was ended by a car accident?"

At the thought of this, he, who had always been as fiery as a raging blaze, began to curse furiously regardless of his hazy consciousness:

"Which bastard drank too much dog piss and drove with his eyes closed? Don't let me become a ghost, or I'll surely finish you off..."

Just as Li Hai was becoming increasingly indignant and cursing, a voice filled with impatience suddenly drifted from the depths of the void:

"Steward Liu, do you think this brat can live?"

This voice sounded both extremely distant and incredibly close.

"Who is speaking?! Brat... who are they talking about?"

Li Hai's hazy consciousness was awakened slightly. "That sounded like Mandarin, but the accent... it has a bit of a Cantonese flavor."

Before he could continue his train of thought, another aged, trembling voice drifted from afar:

"Do not fret, Steward Liu. This little beggar must have been frightened out of his wits by something unclean in the mountains and fainted. Once he drinks this dose of my heart-calming soup and sleeps for a night, he will definitely wake up."

"Another voice. Beggar... could they be talking about me?"

Li Hai, drifting in the boundless void, felt for no reason... that this voice seemed to be talking about him.

Thus, he wondered in confusion, "What is going on? Didn't I already die? How did I become a beggar?"

Vaguely, Li Hai formed a guess.

Could he have... transmigrated?

Soul transmigration?

The voice from the depths of the void spoke again:

"As long as he can wake up, the Master still needs to see him."

With the end of this sentence, no more sounds came.

At the same time, Li Hai's consciousness began to blur rapidly, and in an instant, he fell into a death-like slumber.

After a long time, a warmth suddenly appeared and wrapped around Li Hai's consciousness.

Following that, after a vibration that went from weak to strong, his hazy consciousness suddenly became clear.

The misty void that had surrounded his field of vision vanished like a dream or a bubble.

Subsequently, a dim oil lamp, a bed, a door, a table, and a stool entered Li Hai's slowly opening, weak eyes.

The bed lay beneath him; the table and stool were placed by the bedside; the oil lamp was set on the table; the door stood three steps from the foot of the bed.

Surrounding all of this were four dirty, mottled, yellowish earthen walls.

"I..."

Lying on the bed, Li Hai struggled to raise his two scrawny, chicken-claw-like hands, staring blankly as he said, "How did I... become this skinny dog? Could it be... I really transmigrated? Or is this some kind of soul-possession?"

At this moment, he finally confirmed the fact that he had likely transmigrated.

The reason he was so certain was that Li Hai had never been this thin or weak from the time he was a child.

Ever since he could remember, he had been a natural-born powerhouse.

Even if he only ate white rice and drank cold water, his fat and muscle would grow rapidly.

Therefore, the burly and robust Li Hai had always been the one to bully others, and no one had ever been able to bully him.

Even after reaching adulthood, the trade Li Hai worked in was closely related to "meat."

That is... selling pork.

That's right, before he transmigrated, he was a genuine pork vendor at the wet market.

Just then, a mysterious, scorching current suddenly exploded deep within Li Hai's soul.

BOOM—

Accompanied by a violent tremor that spread throughout Li Hai's entire body, a crude, illusory interface suddenly appeared before his eyes.

At the very top of the interface, eight bold black characters were marked:

[Study hard, make progress every day]

And below these eight black characters were lines of extremely brief text information—

Master Name: Li Hai
Rank: None
Skills: None
Trait Entries: None

Expert Shards: None

"Got it!"

Lying listlessly on the bed, Li Hai grinned. "So this is the legendary [System]."

As an ordinary pork butcher, Li Hai's education was not particularly high.

However, he was still a man who had read hundreds of web novels, so he was well aware of the standard transmigrator equipment known as a System.

But... what exactly were the functions of this mysterious system called [Study Hard and Make Progress Every Day]?

Deep blue stat points? Transcending worlds? Or a grand roulette draw?

"I roughly understand what levels and skills mean, but what are these 'entries' and 'shards'?"

Just as Li Hai was pondering this question, a short, stout old man with white hair and a beard suddenly pushed open the door to the adobe hut and paced over to the bedside.

As soon as the old man approached, his aged eyes met Li Hai's curious gaze head-on.

"Oh? You're awake."

The old man grinned. "Not bad, not bad. To have your soul return and be full of spirit after lying there for only half the night, it seems my medicinal soup is still remarkably effective. Hmm... I must inform Steward Liu."

With that, he walked slowly toward the door.

Li Hai paid no attention to the old man's departure.

Because the moment this stout old man appeared within his field of vision, a phantom information interface instantly manifested in his consciousness—

Character Name: Unknown

Level/Rank: None

Skills Possessed: Five Animals Qigong

Entry Traits: None

Expert Shards: None

Quite miraculously, when Li Hai's eyes locked onto the qigong skill in the old man's personal interface, it immediately expanded into a long string of information:

"Five Animals Qigong consists of three levels in total. This character has mastered all three levels. Do you wish to learn this technique—Yes/No?"

Driven by curiosity, he blindly chose "Yes."

Hum—

Suddenly, a massive surge of textual information flooded into Li Hai's consciousness out of thin air.

And, miraculously, he understood the true meaning of these unfamiliar messages in an instant.

In other words, Li Hai had learned the technique the old man practiced just by glancing at him, without any obstruction.

It was not a rough, superficial learning process, but rather as if he had studied and contemplated it a thousand times, fully imprinting it into his very bones.

As for the content of this technique, it could be summarized as taking the tiger, deer, bear, ape, and crane as teachers, learning and imitating their movements.

Through years of diligent practice and constant cultivation of essence and qi, one could eventually achieve the effects of abundant breath, sharp hearing and vision, healthy internal organs, and longevity.

All in all, this Five Animals Qigong was a health-maintenance technique.

Coincidentally, it was exactly the technique that the severely weakened Li Hai needed most at this moment.

And after thoroughly mastering this qigong, Li Hai's previously empty personal interface suddenly underwent a minor change.