Chen Xuan panted heavily, studying his hands, covered in blood and calluses, by the faint moonlight. In a hoarse voice, he sorted through his situation. "The original owner of this body was also called Chen Xuan. He just turned eighteen this year. His parents died in a famine when he was three, and Ye Tiancheng, a wealthy merchant in town, took him home as an adopted son. Life was fairly tolerable at first. Who could have known that three years ago, his adoptive father would die on a debt-collecting trip..."
Recalling that woman's face from his memories, Chen Xuan could not help sneering. "What a stepmother you were, Liu Qingyan! A little widow of only eighteen, you draped yourself over my adoptive father's coffin and mourned for three days for everyone to see. Then, first thing on the fourth morning, you turned around and sold off all the Ye family's grain shops and cloth stores for a pittance! By the fifth day, you didn't even bother pretending anymore. You simply took a lifetime bondage contract worth fifty taels of silver and sold me, your fifteen-year-old stepson acquired on the cheap, into the Marquis of Zhenbei's Residence, that place that devours people without spitting out their bones!"
A lifetime bondage contract!
In the Great Qian Dynasty, once someone signed such a contract, they became their master's legally owned livestock. Their master could beat them to death without consequence, and even the authorities would not ask a single question!
"Three whole years..." Chen Xuan touched the ribs in his chest that had been cracked by kicks, a trace of bitterness forming at the corner of his mouth. "Worked like an ox and a horse in the marquis's residence, feeding horses, sweeping the stables, hauling water, chopping firewood. Not only did the young masters and young ladies use me as a human punching bag, but Liu San and his gang of old servants also found every possible way to bully me and dock my rations. I lived worse than a watchdog. Then today, just because I took a couple of extra looks at Chu Miaoyin, the courtesan the heir had recently taken as a concubine, at the street corner, that beast Xiao Yuxuan actually whipped me to death with a barbed whip!"
Chen Xuan tilted his head back and stared at the moldy, rotting rafters overhead, remaining silent in the darkness for a long time.
An overwhelming hatred, steeped in mold and blood, was seeping little by little from the very cracks of this body's bones.
He could distinguish it clearly: this hatred had not initially been his. It was the lingering obsession of the body's original owner. But from the moment he opened his eyes and bore the pain of these whip wounds, all the original owner's humiliation, despair, and unwillingness had become his to shoulder!
"Liu Qingyan, you coveted the Ye family's wealth and sold me into the marquis's residence as a lifetime slave. I've marked down that debt. Xiao Yuxuan, you whipped me to death in the street just to flaunt your might. I've put that blood debt on the very first page of your ledger of life and death, too."
Chen Xuan licked his cracked, bleeding lips and quietly uttered the catchphrase he had used most often while working on projects in his previous life. "No rush. Mark it down for now. As long as I'm still breathing, sooner or later, we'll settle this account, principal and interest together!"
The instant his words fell-
Hum!
Without warning, a dazzling golden light exploded deep within his mind!
A line of bold, archaic characters hovered like a brand at the very center of his consciousness:
[Heaven rewards diligence; success is certain]
"Huh?! Is this... my golden finger?!"
Chen Xuan sharply sucked in a breath, instantly casting even the searing agony in his back beyond the ninth heaven.
Immediately afterward, a vast stream of information about this fate trait flooded his mind.
Chen Xuan closed his eyes and carefully absorbed it for a moment. When he opened them again, his breathing had become extremely rapid, and he could not help laughing under his breath. "Heaven rewards diligence; success is certain? Put plainly, it means just one thing-as long as I'm willing to train my guts out, there's no cultivation art in this world I can't master?!"
The more he thought about it, the more excited he became, his fingers clutching the rotten straw beneath him. "No talent requirements! No bloodline requirements! Not even any bullshit comprehension requirements! When other martial geniuses hit a bottleneck, they're running into a brick wall. When I hit one, as long as I endure like mad and grind like mad, I can smash straight through that wall?!"
"Hahaha... Heaven, you've finally opened your eyes!" Chen Xuan grinned, tugging at the wounds on his face and making him bare his teeth in pain, yet his eyes shone astonishingly bright. "In my previous life, I was an overtime maniac at an advertising company, working 996 and 007 schedules. Grinding for thirty-six hours straight without a wink of sleep was an everyday affair! I really am no good at picking the right birth, but when it comes to the sheer ruthlessness of staying up all night and grinding myself to the bone, out of the hundreds of people in this Marquis of Zhenbei's Residence, every last one of them included, who can outgrind me?!"
How was this some miserable starting hand? It was clearly a supreme blessing tailor-made for an ultimate king of the grind like him!
"I can't waste time. Steward Zhao and his people will come early tomorrow morning to carry the corpse to the mass grave. I have to regain my strength and heal these injuries before daybreak!"
Enduring the agonizing pain that felt as though his body were falling apart, Chen Xuan gritted his teeth and rolled over. He reached into a gap beneath the broken bedboards in the corner, fumbled around for a long while, and pulled out a thin booklet with yellowed pages and curled edges.
By the moonlight filtering through the window cracks, three crooked ink characters on its cover came into view-"Boulder Art."
"So this is the commonplace stuff the residence hands out to its servants." Panting, Chen Xuan opened the first page. "According to the residence's rules, any servant who cultivates the Boulder Art to Ming Jin Perfection can go straight to the authorities to have their slave registration canceled and become a free commoner. They might even manage to land a steward's position in the residence."
"Everyone understands the principle, but martial training depends most heavily on talent and nourishment for blood and Qi. Of the hundreds of menial slaves in the rear courtyard, eating steamed coarse-grain buns and pickled vegetables fit for pigs every day and training their whole lives, you couldn't count a handful who reached the threshold of Early-stage Bright Force before they died. When the original owner first entered the residence, he also dreamed of escaping slavery. But after three years of bitter training without the slightest change in his blood and Qi, he finally sank into utter despair, shoved the martial manual beneath the bedboards, and never opened it again."
Chen Xuan rubbed the rough pages, the corners of his mouth curling into a ruthless smile. "The original owner couldn't master it before because he didn't have a cheat. But starting tonight, things are completely different!"
The instant his rough fingers pressed fully against the Boulder Art's Qi-circulation diagram-
A scorching heat suddenly flared between his brows!
The booklet's words and Qi-circulation routes instantly dissolved into countless motes of light, and a vast amount of information branded itself directly into his mind. Immediately afterward, the golden light flashed again, revealing a clear line of numbers:
[Boulder Art: Beginner (1/500)]
"There really is a progress bar?! As long as I accumulate five hundred proficiency points, I can break straight through to Early-stage Bright Force?!"
Chen Xuan's heart pounded wildly. Not daring to waste even half a second, he immediately threw off the tattered straw mat covering him and barely managed to sit cross-legged. Strictly following the most perfect route, corrected by the golden light in his mind, he began trying to circulate the faint blood and Qi within his body.
Exhale-inhale-
After just the first full circuit-
A faint yet utterly real current of warmth abruptly rose from the depths of his dried-up dantian and flowed slowly along his meridians.
At the same time, the number in his mind ticked up with a crisp sound:
[Boulder Art: Beginner (2/500)]
"It went up! One full circuit raises my proficiency by one point! It really works!"