[You have decided to pursue the path of a martial artist. However, there are no manuals in Qinghe County that allow one to break through to the Initiate Realm. To seek greater knowledge, you planned to travel to Wuhan. But before your departure, you resolved to make full use of Qinghe County while you still could—especially with the bandit invasion on the horizon.]
[Thanks to your future knowledge, you steadily increased your wealth, surpassing even mid-level powerhouses. With years of experience and caution, you understood: treasure without a sword only invites thieves. Thus, you established a martial agency and began recruiting wandering martial artists.]
[This year, foreseeing the county's downfall, you invested all your silver into manpower. You hired every available second-grade martial artist in the region—eleven in total—as well as over one hundred third-grade martial artists. With this, your faction was officially recognized as a mid-tier power within the county. Aside from occasional bullying from the top families, no one dared test your strength.]
[You evacuated the city before the bandit raid and took your forces with you. From a safe distance, you watched Qinghe burn. On the third day, the battle reached its climax—when the bandits overpowered the county forces, and the final clash between Hou Qi and Song Bu took place.]
[You personally observed the duel. Once both fell, no first-grade martial artists remained. You acted swiftly, commanding your men to detain Song Bu. Your purpose wasn't revenge—it was knowledge. You intended to imprison him and extract the Inner Breathing Method]
[However, you made a crucial miscalculation. Though the Song family had lost over half its strength and possessed no surviving first-grade martial artist, their deep roots still held firm. Hidden experts, loyal retainers, and righteous martial artists came to their aid. Within moments, your position was encircled.]
[In the face of overwhelming odds, many of your men betrayed you outright—selling you out in exchange for survival. The Song family showed no mercy. Your head was taken in front of the crowd.]
[But you were ready.]
[In the moment before death, you activated your soul technique—Cicada Shedding. Your consciousness escaped your body, leaving behind a clean white soul, untainted by death. Though you preserved your spirit, your cultivation path as a martial artist was severed completely. Without a physical body, that door was now closed.]
[As a wandering soul, you decided to follow the Song family.]
[After Song Bu's death, others took interest in the remnants of the Song clan. Chief among them: the Meng family. They attempted a power grab, but during the skirmish, their sole remaining first-grade martial artist was critically injured—rendered unable to move for the foreseeable future.]
[Under pressure from the Meng family and other forces, the weakened Song family decided to abandon Qinghe County. During this chaotic retreat, you discovered something invaluable—Song Bu's son, a second-grade martial artist in his thirties, already quite skilled.]
[You were fortunate enough to witness him cultivate the Inner Breathing Method on two separate occasions. More than that, you watched him consume several mysterious pills—by observing the fluctuations in his body and breath, you gained early insights into the nature of internal circulation. Unfortunately, as a disembodied soul, you could only watch. You had no vessel to experiment with, no meridians to test.]
[You were forced to let the Song family leave without you. They walked under the open sun—something your Yin-formed soul could not endure. Bound by shadow, you remained behind, resigned to seek new purpose in the hollow shell of Qinghe.]
[Two years passed.]
[Many of the surviving families and merchants migrated to neighboring counties, but you ignored them. You were no longer concerned with social order or human wealth. You focused solely on one thing—increasing your soul power.]
[Year 4.]
[The balance of Yin and Yang within your soul collapsed]
[You began tracking the movements of the Leather-Skinned Monster. You remembered what you once read: "Heaven may allow the birth of the strange, but it rarely allows them to thrive."]
[You couldn't understand how such a twisted creature continued to survive and evolve. It clearly defied the balance of life and death. You started to suspect it was not a true lifeform at all—but something created.]
[You watched it move through abandoned homes, dragging corpses, mimicking the breathing of the dead.]
[In the seventh year, an intense ripple passed through the Yin essence in the air.]
[You stopped everything.]
[Your fragmented soul shuddered—not in fear, but anticipation. You had felt this before, once… but never this clearly.]
A Yin-born was being born.
[Without hesitation, you followed the cold trail through the shadows, your spectral form gliding across the withered land until you arrived at the edge of the mass grave]
[This was the place where hundreds—no, thousands—had died in the bandit siege. The stench of death had long faded for the living, but for your soul, it was a thunderous choir of unquiet echoes.]
[For days, you watched. Waited.]
[Then, beneath the moonless sky, the earth cracked open with a dry groan.]
[From the loosened soil, a pale strip of leather slithered upward like a snake, curling and twitching. It was skin—but not from any one man. Its texture was wrong. Its growth unnatural. It crawl]
[Just as you had predicted, it moved without real thought. A newborn abomination. A puppet of instinct.]
[It began digging. Not randomly, looking for other corpses]
[You narrowed your focus.]
[Driven by a question you could not shake, you descended into the earth—deeper and deeper—until you found the source.]
[And there, buried at the root of the grave, you saw a corpse large enough to crush a horse.
Hou Qi.]
[The once peerless martial artist, whose strength had dwarfed all others in Qinghe County, now lay bloated and half-decayed.]
[But his flesh… his bones… even in death, they exuded pressure. His blood had long dried, yet his body had not returned to dust.]
[You came to two conclusions.]
First, Hou Qi's body was extraordinary. Perhaps he had cultivated a physique art far beyond what you knew. Something rooted not in human potential, but in… something else.
Second, the martial manual he used was either tainted or connected to the strange. This couldn't be coincidence.
[In just a week, the skin creature had dug open more than ten graves.]
[Each one—fresh or ancient—offered new layers of flesh, fat, and sinew. You watched as it forcibly merged the harvested skins into itself.]
[No longer did it slither.]
[It stood now. Or at least, it tried to.]
[Disfigured limbs—neither wholly human nor entirely beast—sprouted from the mass like roots from a corpse tree. Sometimes it walked on all fours. Other times it dragged itself using uneven arms that split at the elbows.]
[And then…]
[It chose a form.]
[Two weeks later, as its grotesque body reached the size you remembered from a past simulation, it reshaped itself.]
A woman.
[You do not know why it chose that shape. You do not know whether it could truly understand gender, or if this was just a mimicry—some crude copy drawn from fragmented memories of the dead.]
[But one thing was clear.]
This creature was no longer just animated flesh.
[You had your suspicions before—your first theory was that silver needle you once saw her use. Perhaps it was a magical item that bound everything together.]
[But now, under constant observation, you knew better.]
It wasn't the needle.
[The power came from within her. The needle was merely a conduit, a vessel—not the source.]
[You began sketching mental notes, organizing what you'd learned:]
[Exactly one month after birth, she found a silver needle buried beneath a broken tombstone.]
[You saw the change.]
[Once it was in her hand, she moved differently—with familiarity, as if she remembered how to wield it.]
"Inheritance," you thought, coldly."Or instinct born from blood… or soul."
[After a year of continuous observation, your understanding of the skin monster deepened.]
[Her powers were grotesque, yes—but not without cost.]
Like all Weird, she was under constant erosion.
[Where your own soul began to disintegrate from exposure to light and time, her body was rotting—literally.]
[You watched pieces of her peel off. Sections of flesh blackened like fruit left in the sun, then sloughed off like old bark.]
[She needed fresh skin constantly—not for growth, but simply to maintain existence.]
[Each new graft was a desperate fight against decay.]
[Simulation Year 9]
[She was changing.]
[You watched from the treetops, a silent phantom, as the Skin Monster—once a crawling heap of stitched hide—began to show signs of rapid cognitive development.]
[Her thought patterns were still far slower than a human's… but clearly faster than a ghost's. She began to display signs of memory, path preference, and even curiosity.]
[And… she noticed you.]
[At first, she stared blankly into the void where you lingered. But over time, she began to tolerate your presence. Even when you approached, she would only twitch—no longer erupting in hostility.]
[Perhaps she sensed you weren't prey.]
[One Cloudy Afternoon]
[A group of traveling thugs—three men in rags with rusted blades—spotted her wandering near the corpse pits.]
[Their expressions warped with cruelty.]
"Oi! Look at this freak!""Hey pig-face! Lost your skin in hell?""Bet she's full of meat underneath!"
[They lunged forward, blades drawn.]
[You did not interfere.]
[You watched.]
[The Skin Monster paused. She trembled.]
[Then… shifted.]
[Her shoulders widened. Her waist split. Her torso twisted open like a cloak—and in a blur, she engulfed them.]
[Like an anaconda, her flesh constricted.]
[The forest echoed with the sound of cracking bones and wet pulp.]
[A minute later, the ground was wet with blood. All that remained were three crushed skeletons, fused into the dirt like discarded branches.]
[She stood still after that. Her shape twitched—scar tissue reshaping over fresh additions.]
[And you knew: she had grown. Not just in mass… but in awareness.]
[Simulation Year 10]
[From your careful observations over the past year, you've reached a startling conclusion.]
[This creature—this stitched horror birthed from mass death and the corpse of Hou Qi—is already equivalent to a 1st or 2nd-grade martial artist in raw strength.]
[Its body is a fortress of sinew and fused skin. Its strikes are unpredictable, and its regeneration is near-limitless. Even Song Bu, at his peak, would have found it difficult to slay her.]
[Attempting to hijack or infiltrate such a being—especially one already bound to instinct and Yin essence—was far too dangerous. You lacked a body, and if you failed, it could consume what was left of your soul.]
[Instead, you began to study her. Record her habits. Predict her reactions.]
[This year, you whispered to the Skin Monster
[You knew from your previous simulation that she listened, even if by instinct alone.]
[And this time… she answered.]
[Without speaking, she brought the fresh corpse of a man, his face still frozen in the moment of death.]
[She crouched beside it. With surgical precision, her long, pale fingers peeled the skin from his body—clean, unbroken.]
[You watched as she folded the skin, compressing it like fabric until it was no larger than a square veil.]
[Then, she pressed it onto your soul.]
[Soul-Stitching Initiated]
[You screamed in silence.]
[Each thread was a tether to mortality. Your essence, once unbound and ethereal, began to coil itself around nerves and muscle.]
[You understood now—this was no ordinary possession. This was a pact of permanence.]
["Once this is done,""You are no longer a ghost. No longer a soul.""You are skin. Flesh. Seam and stitch.""If you die… you do not rise again."]
[You Returned.]
[You opened your new eyes—eyes not born, but shaped.]
[The world smelled different. Mud, rot, incense. Everything was louder. Every breath, a tear in the veil.]
[You mimicked her movements.]
[Your mind still sharp, but your instincts more… primal.]
[You crawled to the nearest grave and began your harvest. You sat atop a corpse and rolled against it, letting your body absorb fragments of the dead. One tomb. Two. Ten.]
[Each time, your body expanded and reshaped—more refined, more stable.]
[Simulation Ends - 10 Year Period Finished]
[Body and Condition at Age 20](Body of a seasoned merchant-leader hardened by daily responsibilities and strategic movements; well-fed, well-rested, with high stress tolerance, firm voice control, and light training in practical self-defense. Naturally commanding presence, callused hands from occasional labor, and steady breathing from moderate martial activity.)
[Memory Imprint: Soul-Binding and Fleshcraft](Retains comprehensive knowledge of soul-stitching rituals, corpse-based mimicry, Weird physiology, Yin erosion patterns, stealth movement, skin fusion, and long-term identity masking. Contains fragments of martial hierarchy manipulation, basic inner energy theory, and psychological profiling of monsters and bandits.)
[Refined Yin Soul](Condensed Yin Soul formed through persistent observation of Weird growth and death; immune to minor soul disintegration under moonlight, increased soul cohesion, passive detection of emotional traces, and temporary resistance to spiritual suppression.)
[Skincrawler at age 1](Fully integrated stitched-body form; no vital points, elastic body mass manipulation, seamless fusion with corpses, limited shape-shifting through muscle memory, partial immunity to conventional martial techniques. Pseudo-immortality unless soul is extinguished. Gains instinctual fear presence among mortals.)
[Silver Stitch Needle] (Item)(Ordinary iron needle that, after years of feeding on residual soul energy and flesh from the skin monster, transformed into a spiritual conduit. Can bind white soul to flesh, anchor Yin spirit to inanimate bodies, and temporarily disable soul defense barriers in cultivators.)