Chen Xia had transmigrated.
As an undying man.
And inside his mind was an attribute-point allocation system, with three options in total.
Strength, Law Power, and luck.
For every additional year he lived, he would receive one attribute point. The current timer read 0 years and 1 day.
He breathed out, thinking that with his endless lifespan, living a few hundred or a few thousand years would be more than easy enough. This system was practically handing him points for free.
At this point, he had yet to realize how serious the problem was.
He merely felt the wind suddenly grow clamorous, gusting violently as though a downpour was coming.
A tremendous rumble came from the sky, like a roar before the arrival of thunder.
The sky darkened over dozens of li, like an omen of an approaching storm.
Chen Xia paid it little mind, taking it for nothing more than a heavy rainstorm.
He was standing on a mountaintop beneath a large tree, which felt rather unsafe. He wanted to head down the mountain and find a small earthen slope to shelter beneath.
Boom!
The noise in the sky grew louder, as though a hole had been smashed through it, and thunder roared unchecked.
Chen Xia sensed something was wrong and abruptly turned to look.
First came the gale crashing straight into him!
He raised his head.
High in the heavens was an enormous hand that covered the sky. Lightning clung to it like little snakes, rolling and flowing between its fingers!
Beneath the hand lay a town shrouded in shadow. Panicked crowds were still streaming out through its gates, trying to escape.
"Ants."
An emotionless, cold snort rolled with boundless cruelty, like a sound blasting through heaven and earth.
The palm slammed down without the slightest trace of mercy.
It truly was like wiping out ants!
That was the last sight Chen Xia saw before the shock wave knocked him unconscious.
When he awoke, the town before him was gone. All that remained was a handprint dozens of li across, stamped deep into the earth, completely replacing the town that had stood there.
And the panicked, fleeing crowds had vanished along with it.
Within dozens, perhaps even a hundred li, Chen Xia was the only living person.
From that moment on, Chen Xia decided he would find somewhere to enter secluded cultivation. He had to outlive all these immortals.
Alone, he traveled far, preparing to find a good place for secluded cultivation.
He encountered his share of dangers and difficulties along the way. Roadside bandits, government men, and the like all put considerable obstacles in his path.
But who was Chen Xia? Upholding the philosophy of joining them if he could not beat them, he successfully added banditry to his résumé. Later, during a government investigation, his good conduct and meritorious reporting even earned him a position as a constable.
He settled into steady work for the authorities, planning to save some money before going into seclusion, hiding away for tens of millions of years and building up his attribute points before doing anything else.
He had no cultivation method at present, either, so he could only wait for the system to add points.
Stories of cultivators circulated in the mortal world, and there were even cultivators mingling among the populace.
Though they were cultivators of the lowest rank, they were still far stronger than mortals. Those from renowned, orthodox sects were one thing.
But for rogue cultivators and those of evil sects, slaughtering an entire town was a trivial matter.
Such incidents were not uncommon in the world today.
There had even been a case of a Golden Core Evil Cultivator killing the emperor and becoming emperor himself.
Fortunately, the town where Chen Xia lived was remote and poor in resources, with no ancient mighty cultivator's ruins or cave abode, so no cultivators had appeared there in a thousand years.
Chen Xia was also very cautious in his everyday conduct. As a government constable, he never collected excessive protection money, keeping it strictly within what the merchants could afford.
If a merchant complained, Chen Xia would even take the initiative to return some silver.
Thus, Chen Xia's reputation was the very best among the constables. The town's merchants all praised him this way...
Never had there been a bandit who acted so much like a constable.
That was right. In the merchants' eyes, the town's constables were really no different from bandits. Constables merely collected a little less under the banner of the authorities.
But Chen Xia was different.
He really did collect very little.
It was practically just going through the motions. The merchants decided how much to give, from a single copper coin to a tael of silver. It all came down to one principle.
Never take extra; taking less was fine.
Taking money was for his livelihood; taking less was for his conscience.
The town's merchants were all quite moved. Whenever Chen Xia came up, they would raise their thumbs and praise him.
"It's been ages since this town had such a conscientious bandit... constable!"
His good reputation even made Chen Xia one of Weixi Town's outstanding constables of the year, earning him a little merit.
But that was not what concerned Chen Xia. What concerned him more was that after today, the system would grant him his first attribute point.
That night, just after midnight.
Inside a cave outside town, Chen Xia blocked up the passage from the inside all the way to the entrance. Only after confirming he was safe did he begin allocating his point.
Strength, Law Power, and luck.
Had Chen Xia been twelve, he would have chosen luck. Back then, he had blindly believed in the protagonist halo and fantasized about being the protagonist himself.
Had he been eighteen, he would have chosen Law Power. Breathing fire, manipulating water, controlling objects-every one of them sounded so cool. No boy who had just reached adulthood could resist that temptation.
But he was twenty-six now. It was time to consider his future.
A mature man had to have strength.
So Chen Xia chose strength.
[Point allocated successfully. Strength: 1]
When that voice sounded in Chen Xia's mind, he felt tremendous strength surge from within his body. His temperature instantly shot up, his skin turned red, and he even began giving off steam.
His fists gradually grew hard as steel. Abundant strength circled within them, crashing about, impatient to be unleashed.
Chen Xia punched a small pebble beside him.
According to middle-school physics, the smaller a stone's surface area, the harder it actually was to break.
But after Chen Xia threw that punch and raised his fist again, the pebble had already become fine stone powder, stuck together with the dirt.
According to the books, martial strength capable of breaking stone had already reached the strength of three oxen, while the strength of nine oxen qualified one as a Qi Refining Stage body cultivator.
The little stone Chen Xia had struck was harder to break than an ordinary stone, and he had pulverized it outright, so this was not as simple as ordinary stone-breaking.
He should have been somewhat stronger than three oxen, but he had no idea exactly how much stronger. Surely he could not actually go fight an ox.
He tidied himself up, removing his sweat-soaked clothes and putting on only his outer official uniform. Even in the depths of winter, his body felt no cold, and was even a little warm.
Chen Xia could not be bothered to dig with a shovel. He punched the mound of earth in front of him, collapsing it outright, then slowly crawled out through the fallen dirt.
Outside, several men were drunkenly wandering about in the night. Suddenly seeing a hand reach out of the mound frightened them mostly sober, and one shouted to his companion.
"Niuzi, look! What's that?!"
"Ergou, what are you yelling for? Making a fuss over nothing!"
Niuzi first barked a rebuke, then looked where Ergou had indicated. His expression froze, his wine bottle fell, and he cried out.
"Holy shit, a corpse is turning!"
The drunks hurriedly ran down the mountain, not daring to delay for a moment, still shouting.
"Quick, get Daoist Mu Xieyang! This is his specialty!"
Chen Xia crawled out of the mound and shook the dirt off himself. Watching the fleeing figures, he rolled his eyes.
Forget Mu Xieyang. Even bringing Lam Ching-ying here would be no use.
He was not a zombie.
Humming a little tune and in a good mood, Chen Xia leisurely headed down the mountain.
"Little conch horn, blow any fucking way, the seagulls hear it and fly any fucking way~"
On the second day after the new year began.
Something happened in Weixi Town.
Master Fugui's youngest son had died. The corpse's eyes were vacant, its face pale, and its body withered and thin.
Every constable in Weixi Town was mobilized to investigate!