Breathing to Heal

North Nether, Qingxuan Continent, Taibai County!

In the dark underground sewer, a young man lay sprawled on the ground, gravely wounded.

A mechanical voice sounded in his ear.

[You have taken one deep breath on your own, obtaining a mouthful of polluted air.]

[Air quality: Extremely low]

[Notice: As the air quality is far below the extraction threshold, the system will extract life energy at the minimum rate.]

[You have obtained 0.01 life energy.]

[--Current Status--]

[Condition: Near death]

[Life Energy: 1.01/100]

[Notice: Life energy has exceeded 1%. Your consciousness is about to awaken.]

Li Sanshun gradually came to.

When he opened his eyes, unbearable pain awaited him!

"Ah..."

Li Sanshun's pupils shrank as a heart-rending cry tore from his throat.

It felt as if every tendon and vein in his body had snapped, and his bones had come apart. The pain was beyond endurance!

As he struggled helplessly, his head filled with questions.

Why was he here?

Why was he in so much pain?

Suddenly.

Two entirely different sets of memories flooded into his mind, one after the other.

The first.

They seemed to be memories from his previous life.

While driving home, he had gotten into a car accident, careened off a suspension bridge, and sunk to the bottom of the river.

The second.

They were memories from this life.

His name was Li Sanshun, and he was a villager from Linshui Township, Taibai County, on the Qingxuan Continent in the North Nether Domain.

Orphaned as a child, he'd been picked up from a garbage heap and raised by Old Rascal. He made his living by cleaning temples and picking up trash around the village.

Today, luck had smiled on him. He'd found a sack of broken jade in a garbage heap, and had planned to go home and treat Old Rascal, who had raised him all these years, to a good meal.

But several other beggars from his village had coveted his find. They'd stolen the broken jade and beaten him until he was gravely wounded and near death, then dumped him in the sewer to die...

Remembering what had happened, Li Sanshun clenched his fists and gritted his teeth!

Zhang Laosan, Chen Laowu, Wang Laoliu!

Those bastards!

He'd never provoked them, had he?

And yet they'd tried to kill him over a sack of broken jade?

"Just you wait! I swear I won't rest until I've had my revenge!"

Li Sanshun ground his teeth in fury, wishing he could go find the three of them and fight to the death right then and there.

But he was gravely wounded. Forget going after them—he couldn't even move a finger.

After struggling for a while and realizing he truly couldn't move, he could only lie there in despair.

Could it be...

Could he really do nothing but lie in this stinking ditch and wait to die?

After living two lives, was he really going to die in such a pathetic way?

As anguish and indignation surged inside him, a foul stench mingled with the smell of rot and wafted into his nose. He even inhaled some of it into his lungs!

"Ugh..."

[You have taken a deep breath, obtaining a mouthful of polluted air.]

[Air quality: Extremely low]

[Notice: As the air quality is far below the extraction threshold, the system will extract life energy at the minimum rate.]

[You have obtained 0.01 life energy.]

[--Current Status--]

[Condition: Critically injured]

[Life Energy: 1.02/100]

[Notice: Please take deep breaths as soon as possible to absorb life energy, or you will lose consciousness again.]

Li Sanshun stared blankly.

In an instant, he understood what that voice was!

So Heaven hadn't abandoned him after all!

As someone reborn into this world, how could he be without a cheat?

Take deep breaths to absorb life energy?

Did that mean he had to breathe deeply?

Breathing to heal?!

There was hope!

With that thought, Li Sanshun steadied himself and took a long, deep breath.

Inhale...

Every kind of rotting stench from the sewer rushed into his nose.

"Ugh! Cough, cough, cough!"

In an instant, Li Sanshun nearly passed out from the stench.

This smell... it was insanely strong!

Even worse than the canned herring he'd tried in his previous life!

The sewers in this cultivation world were ridiculous!

But awful as the smell was...

It worked.

[You have taken a breath, obtaining a mouthful of polluted air.]

[Life Energy: 1.03/100]

Li Sanshun looked at the extra 0.01 life energy in his field of vision and felt utterly wretched.

A deep breath only gave him 0.01. How many mouthfuls of this stench would it take to get healthy again?

But to save his life, he had no choice but to endure the smell and keep breathing deeply.

Deep breath...

"Ugh!"

Another deep breath...

"Ugh!!!"

In the murky darkness of the sewer, every breath was a new experience.

The smells of decay, rot, foulness, and sourness...

There was nothing it couldn't produce, only things you couldn't imagine.

Li Sanshun swore that once he recovered, he'd tie up those three thieves who'd tried to kill him and drag them here.

Then they'd get a taste of what it meant to wish they were dead!

After about an hour, Li Sanshun had taken more than four hundred deep breaths, finally raising his life energy to 5!

He checked his status again.

[--Current Status--]

[Condition: Critically injured]

[Life Energy: 5.01/100]

Li Sanshun felt utterly wretched.

He'd gone from being near death to being critically injured, but this recovery rate was simply abysmal!

Was there no way to speed up his recovery?

He moved his head and looked at the sewer entrance more than ten meters away.

He couldn't help thinking that perhaps his recovery was so slow because the air in the sewer was too polluted.

If he could get outside, maybe he would recover faster!

With that thought, he wriggled along the ground like a worm, struggling to move his body.

Five points of life energy were enough to let him move a little.

But his progress was painfully slow!

Each time, he could move at most one centimeter. If he exerted himself even a little, it tugged at his wounds and made him feel as if he were dying.

Still, he didn't give up.

Crawl!

Crawl outside!

He absolutely would not die in a godforsaken place like this!

As he crawled, he breathed in and out.

At last, night fell, and he reached the sewer entrance.

The moment he crawled out, the polluted air changed.

Li Sanshun leaned against the wall and drew in a deep breath of fresh air.

[You have taken a deep breath, obtaining a mouthful of fresh air.]

[Air quality: Low]

[You have obtained 0.1 life energy.]

[--Current Status--]

[Condition: Critically injured]

[Life Energy: 5.15/100]

Li Sanshun's eyes widened.

He had never realized that breathing a mouthful of fresh air could feel so wonderful!

He gasped for air as hard as he could. With every breath, his body recovered a little more.

After just over thirty deep breaths, he'd gone from critically injured to severely injured.

His recovery was many times faster than before.

But before he could celebrate for long, a figure suddenly appeared beside him.

The man was startled when he saw Li Sanshun, filthy from head to toe.

"Good heavens... a ghost!"

The one who cried out was Wang Laoliu, one of the people who had nearly beaten him to death!

Wang Laoliu was one of the dozen or so thugs in Wushui Township, and he loved to loaf around.

At noon today, he'd seen Li Sanshun, who lived in the ruined temple north of the village, find a sack of broken jade at the garbage dump. So he'd gone with a few close friends to ask him for a share of the "good fortune."

Who could have guessed that Li Sanshun would refuse to hand over half the jade, no matter what?

So Wang Laoliu and two others had joined forces to teach him a lesson.