[You didn't leave the graveyard. Even in this field of the forgotten, you could feel it — your soul was slowly decaying. Faintly, subtly, like mist unraveling at the edges. You didn't know if you could last more than five years.]
[Six months passed. By then, the erosion of your soul had become undeniable. Desperation forced ingenuity. You created a crude art — The Art of Yin Longevity. It didn't restore what was lost, but it slowed the rot. Bought you time. Gave your flickering mind a few more years to think, to breathe.]
[By the end of the first year without a body, you could no longer hold your prime spiritual state. Your thoughts regressed. The sharp, calculating mind that once played the city's powers like chess pieces now functioned at the level of a child. An elementary schooler, if you remembered what that was.]
[But in the second year, something changed. A breakthrough — even in your reduced state. You began to understand your condition. Your soul had structure. Form. With practice, you learned to mold that form, shifting its density and design.]
[You made your core — the remaining white fragments of your human soul — into a protected nucleus, then coated it with the black, decaying ghost energy like armor. In this way, you achieved complete synergy with the Yin qi of the graveyard.]
[The technique evolved. Slowly, steadily, you added fragments of supernatural manipulation — little by little, as your intelligence flickered on and off.]
[Eventually, it became more than a method of survival. It became a path. A Sutra.]
[You named it: Yin Longevity Sutra.]
[And with it, you believed even the pampered emperors of this world — resting deep inside their jade palaces, surrounded by medicinal incense and spiritual treasures — couldn't compare to your stubborn will to live.]
[You had no body. No name. No clan. But with the Yin Longevity Sutra, you were confident you could survive for a hundred years.]
[But survival was not enough.]
[You wanted more.]
[Your first vessel — your body — had rejected you. But this time, you would be the one to choose. You would find a better body. A stronger one. A vessel worthy of your return.]
[In your fourth year, your mind matured — now comparable to an adolescent. No longer bound by childish thinking, your thoughts became sharper, your awareness keener.]
[Your soul had grown massive — not just in presence, but in weight. There was a density to you now, an oppressive aura that could crush lesser phantoms with a mere thought. In the rare moments when you brushed against other wandering shades, you felt it clearly: you could destroy them in a direct soul battle.]
[More than that, you began to shape your essence. A human form was still far beyond your current capacity — your soul wasn't vast enough to mimic that complexity — but simpler creatures were within reach. You taught yourself to shift between the form of a crow, a turtle, and a wisp of drifting smoke. Hands and legs no longer mattered; in this state, you were formless, fluid, and free.]
[In the fifth year, your confidence swelled. With the strength of your ever-growing soul, you attempted what all ghosts eventually crave — to touch the living world.]
[You tried to knock on doors. You tried to whisper. You tried to leave scratches on wood and dust. But no matter how much power you focused, nothing moved. Not a candle flickered. Not a leaf stirred.]
[You fell into a deep depression. Was this all your strength amounted to — a phantom with no weight in the world?]
[But ghosts that don't evolve, perish. And you — you were not like the rest.]
[In the sixth year, you created a new chapter of your Yin Longevity Sutra. You named it: Soul Devour.]
[Through trial and torment, you uncovered a hidden principle: the black portion of your soul could consume others. Mindless ghosts, unaware of themselves, were drawn in if you enveloped them. But this art came with a rule — one absolute requirement.]
[The white core of your soul — your essence, your self — must remain untouched.]
[If any foreign soul brushed your core, the backlash was unbearable. Fractures. Searing pain. Risk of soul collapse.]
[But when done right — when you trapped smaller ghosts within the black mantle and devoured them slowly — your black soul grew denser. Heavier. More refined. Like consuming marrow from ancient bones.]
[You began to hunt. You learned to ambush. The best prey were always weaker — at least three times smaller — to ensure minimal resistance.]
[And with each successful devouring, your path as a soul cultivator deepened.]
[By the seventh year, you reached a breakthrough. For the first time, you could affect the living — not their bodies, but their souls.]
[Old, fragile people were especially susceptible. You couldn't move them, couldn't touch their skin, but your presence pressed against their spirit like a damp fog. Their backs began to stoop, their minds grew dull, and illness clung to them like rot. You had become a true Yin being — the type whispered about in old ghost tales.]
[This development thrilled you. At last, your cultivation had meaning. You weren't just a drifting specter — you were a force.]
[And with every day, your power deepened. You were sure that within a few more years, you'd reach your peak. And when that day came — you would no longer search for your old body. No. You would seize a new one.]
[But the eighth year shattered your calm.]
[A great terror crept into the county. Even in your Yin form, which had grown bold and confident, you felt a chill that pierced your black soul.]
[You didn't wait to understand it.]
[You left.]
[No hesitation. No goodbyes. You fled the county like a beaten dog. Whatever that thing was — ghost, curse, or something beyond the cycle of Yin and Yang — you had no interest in facing it.]
[But now you had a problem.]
[With the graveyard left behind, your access to Yin energy collapsed. You wandered forests, surviving on scraps of ambient gloom.]
[The ninth year brought no relief. Fields died. Crops withered. Even animals fell sick and limp, and the humans fled in droves.]
[Whatever plagued your old county had become an infestation.]
[You drifted through the trees like a phantom on the run, until you crossed into Yulin County — a rural, underdeveloped land untouched by whatever madness cursed your home.]
["Better poor and peaceful than powerful and perishing," you told yourself.]
[Here, your cultivation resumed. Slowly, cautiously.]
[And then — it happened.]
[You reached your prime.]
[Your mind sharpened like a dagger, clean and clear.]
[Your soul pulsed with a cold, coiling strength. You could now influence thoughts. Not control them. Not possess them. But suggest. Whisper seeds of suspicion, spark fear, fan flames of jealousy.]
["If I told a man," you mused, "that his wife wears him a green hat..."]
[...he'd probably check.]
[Simulation Ends - 10 Year Period Finished]
{Please Select Reward]
[Refined Yin Soul – Ghost Sovereign Seed]
You are no longer a mere wandering soul.Your Yin Soul has crystallized into a Sovereign Seed
[Memory Imprint – Martial Ghost Codex]Ghost fights, Yin energy control, soul-devouring techniques, self-created cultivation manual, spiritual manipulation, and survival instincts — all carved into memory from ten years of spectral wandering.
[Unmarked Spirit Tombstone]The stone officials used to mark your death. You watched it being carved, nameless. You watched it placed over your burial mound, alone.
Shen Li chose Memory Imprint. In the very next moment, ten years of accumulated knowledge surged into his mind—ghost combat, Yin manipulation, soul-devouring, spiritual refinement, and more. It felt like the imprint had carved itself directly into his soul.
He looked at his motionless body lying below.
"I hope this works," he muttered.
Thanks to years of experience in the ghost path, he already had a theory. This wasn't possession—not in the traditional sense. From everything he had learned, true possession wasn't as simple as slipping into a vessel. Even if you gave Shen Li a hundred years, he still wouldn't be sure it could be done.
In the very first chapter of the Yin Longevity Sutra, the most basic technique was shaping the soul. Shen Li had practiced it for years—and now, he began to act.
He slowly manipulated his spiritual form. The white and black aspects of his soul separated, swirling to opposite sides. Then, with precision born from a decade of trial and error, he inverted their structure—compressing the dense black soulinto a core, and wrapping it tightly with the white soul as a protective shell.
He hovered over his body, visibly tense.
"This is the method I found in these ten years... the only one that might let me return," Shen Li whispered.
"My body rejected me because it sensed the ghost within. But if it can't perceive the ghost at all—if I seal it inside—then maybe... just maybe... it'll think I merely went on an astral journey and finally came back."
Shen Li slowly descended into his body.
This time, he didn't pass through. His soul didn't slip by like before.
He felt contact. Pressure. Breath.
And then—he opened his eyes.
His hands twitched. Chest rose. The world around him tilted as sensations returned.
"At last..." Shen Li whispered hoarsely. "That was too close... I was one step away from becoming something... no longer human."
He stumbled to the side and poured himself a glass of water. The cool liquid touched his lips—but just as he tilted it back for a drink, a strange sensation stirred within.
His body shuddered. A quiet resistance welled up from deep inside, like rejection from within.
Immediately, Shen Li forced his will to lock the black soul core firmly at the center—wrapped securely in the white soul layer. The conflict stilled. His body accepted him again.
"So this is how it'll be," he muttered, placing the glass down slowly. "I have to maintain control every second... If the core leaks even a bit, my body will expel me again."
He took a deep breath.
"Thankfully, I've had over ten years to prepare."
After the crisis passed, Shen Li slowly returned to his daily life.
Maintaining the soul form within his body had already become instinct—something he had honed endlessly in the simulator. Because of this, he didn't face many problems during the day. His body moved as it should, his breath was steady, and his mind sharp.
Only occasionally—especially while asleep—he would wake with a jolt, finding his soul drifting inches above his body. A moment of panic. A forced return.
After waking from the simulation and surviving his soul's near-destruction, Shen Li was no longer the same.
After Shen Li confirmed through the simulation that no immediate danger loomed over the county, he made his move with confidence. While others took the calm before winter as a time to rest, Shen Li saw it as the moment to prepare.
He began stockpiling wood and coal, knowing that the future forest fire would cripple logging and mining operations, pushing the price of heating materials through the roof.
This time, however, Shen Li wasn't just preparing goods. He was preparing people.
From the last simulation, he had learned a bitter truth: betrayal doesn't always come from enemies—it can come from desperation. Piang, the man who stabbed him, didn't act out of hatred. His wife and child had been taken. His loyalty never had a chance.
Shen Li now understood that loyalty rooted in fear or obligation was unreliable.
So, when hiring guards, assistants, and laborers, he followed a new rule: no attachments.
He chose orphans raised by temples, drifting sellswords with no homes, and servants who'd long severed ties with family. Each contract he offered was clear and binding. No one entered his circle without a thorough background check.
They didn't have to love him.
They just had to know where the boundaries were.
In a world where sentiment could be turned into a blade, Shen Li preferred men who had no one left to threaten.