[Year 1: You have chosen to abandon the path of inner breathing. Instead, your focus shifts toward... stranger methods. Twisted rituals. Unsanctioned knowledge. You walk the edge of the occult.]
[Your real estate business flourishes. Silver flows like water. And with it comes attention. Trouble.]
[But you were prepared.]
[Thanks to your foresight, a band of hired thugs were repelled before they could burn your warehouse to the ground. The martial artists you secretly employed made quick work of them. Word spreads—your agency is untouchable.]
[Year 2: Your ventures expand. The merchant company you established as a front for laundering deeds now thrives. Together with your real estate network, your wealth snowballs.]
[Your profit margins rival that of Qinghe's top families. And that, of course, draws their eyes.]
[You anticipated this.]
[Every coin you earn is spent on protection. Dozens of martial artists, some even on the cusp of 1st-grade, are brought into your fold under secrecy.]
[You begin selling off land deeds in preparation for the coming bandit outbreak. Your plan: convert property into liquid funds, then disappear before the chaos.]
[But you miscalculated.]
[You underestimated the resentment you had cultivated. Too many enemies. Too many displaced. The people you stepped on began to speak, then shout—then riot.]
[A landslide of fury crashes down.]
[They loot your warehouses. They storm your house.]
[In their frenzy, they discover your hidden vault. Inside: land deeds of immense value, many of which should have never existed in your hands.]
[A bloody storm follows.]
[Noble families descend like vultures. In the chaos, honor and law mean nothing.]
[You are slain in your own courtyard—your throat crushed by a 1st-grade martial artist from the Meng family before you can even react.]
[Death Event: Body Collapsed][Post-Death Sequence Initiated]
[You hover above the ruins of your estate, a pale echo of who you were. Ghostly. Silent. Helpless.
You feel nothing for your body. Not truly. But watching others feast on what was yours—that leaves a deep, bitter sting.]
Still, as a specter, you can only watch.
[Bandit Outbreak Triggered—As Predicted.]
[But this time, things unfold... differently.]
[The chaos you caused lingers. The noble families, weakened from clashing over your deeds, suffer massive losses. Several 1st-grade martial artists fall. Houses collapse.]
[In this weakened state, they cannot repel Hou.]
[The bandit leader wins.]
[Hou occupies Qinghe County.]
[And with Hou's survival... the Skin Monster will not be born.]
[You did not lose all hope.][You already understand the process of soul-binding.][Your current method offers a 30–40% success rate.]
[After your failure, you didn't directly lose all hope. You already knew how to bind your soul—it just gave around a 30–40% chance to succeed. You decided to take the risk.]
[You decided to use your own corpse, which had only been dead for a few weeks. You started binding your soul not to the whole body, but only to the skin, which resembled the same structure as the Skin Monster. But since you didn't have supernatural powers like her, you had to make changes and tried to fill the gaps with ghost powers.]
[What usually takes 10 minutes took the entire day, but you accomplished it. You bound your soul to the skin. You dug yourself out of your own tomb and immediately started following the rhyme—going from tomb to tomb to collect their skins.]
[After one week of work, you finally gained the mass of a child.]
[You began having trouble holding the body together. There was constant movement under your skin, like something crawling inside you. This caused disgust from others and led to bullying.]
[You didn't care about the bullying. You were already immortal. At worst, you would change a few skins and renew your immortality.]
[However, you miscalculated human nature. Because of your childish body and lack of background, you were targeted by slave traders. You had to fight them, and during the fight your internal organs were exposed. You couldn't kill all the witnesses.]
[You decided to run away. After leaving the city and walking a long distance through the forest, you encountered a man who could be classified as a giant. You knew this person—it was the bandit leader Hou.]
[By now, you had reached 1.6 meters in height and were very close to adult size. With your immortal mindset, you believed you could survive. The fight began.]
[ fight took a long time, you were beaten all day without rest, and eventually you could no longer move a single piece of skin — all of it lost the ability to respond. you had never imagined that if you were smashed enough, you would lose control completely ]
[ after the fight, Hou Qi burned all of your body parts, keeping only a small patch of skin that had turned into mud from the brutal beating. he sealed it inside a steel case ]
[ a few hours later, you were given a new piece of skin, which you forcefully merged with just to regain minimal movement ]
[ after that, you were assigned a limited amount of skin — barely enough to keep you alive, but never enough to regain strength. the constant rot eats at you, day by day. eventually, you realized the truth: you are in a prison. you have been kidnapped by Hou Qi ]
[ 4th year, you don't have a sense of time anymore, but you know you've been here for a very long time. in past years, there were no movements other than pieces of thrown skin every week — just enough to let you survive ]
[ this year, suddenly, full corpses started being thrown in. you quickly began merging with them to save yourself from starvation ]
[ two weeks later, you had already reached more than 2 meters in size, but you didn't try to break the full iron prison — because you knew you still couldn't beat Hou Qi ]
[ one month later, you had reached your maximum body size: 2.5 meters tall, with a thick and heavy frame. you knew this was your limit. you couldn't grow any further. in fact, this size was already exhausting to maintain — but you didn't care. you decided to keep swallowing while you still could ]
[ you're not an idiot. if someone feeds a lion meat, it means they're preparing it for a fight. so you started to hone yourself and learn how to use this immortal body ]
[ one day, you felt the massive iron prison moving slowly. you could hear people speaking outside, but you couldn't understand the words — the iron walls were too thick to let any sound pass clearly ]
[ over time, the sounds outside began to increase — you could start to make out crying, shouting, and the clash of weapons. eventually, you felt the iron prison come to a full stop ]
[ suddenly, the door opened. you saw the scene — dozens of corpses on the ground. two sides were locked in battle. because you had been focusing on refining your combat body, your form was no longer in human shape — this drew attention. you were forced to join the fight ]
[ there were two sides — one marked by blue, the other by red. you recognized red-armored men as Hou Qi's bandits; they didn't attack you. but the blue-camped warriors assaulted you without pause. you've already killed more than ten 2nd-grade martial artists, but their overwhelming numbers began to take a toll. just like with Hou Qi, your skin was starting to lose cohesion, melting into mud under the constant pressure ]
[ at some point, the blue-uniformed soldiers began firing arrows at you, causing massive damage. your patchwork body couldn't resist the piercing attacks ]
[ eventually, a 1st-grade martial artist entered the battlefield. you fought with the last of your strength, but against absolute power, you stood no chance. your body was torn apart — turned into ground meat under his strikes ]
[ later, they even burned your remaining parts, leaving nothing behind ]
[Simulation Ended]
[Body and Condition at Age 19](Body of a cautious but hardened strategist who survived multiple years of underground dealings, life-threatening decisions, and continuous edge-of-war stress. Well-fed, lean-muscled, and biologically optimized for endurance.
[Memory Imprint: Skincrawler Cycle and SoulFusion](Comprehensive understanding of layered skin fusion, corpse mimicry, Yin pulse stabilization, soul-binding to flesh, and post-mortem structure preservation. Includes battlefield memory of form loss under pressure, correct timing for re-anchoring, and the emotional echoes tied to self-death.)
[YinSoul Fragment–Scarred](Residual Yin soul preserved through strong self-identity and short ghost duration. Slight increase in spiritual resistance. Carries emotional imprint of defeat, feeding into stronger aversion-based willpower.
[Skincrawler at Age 2](Completed two full years of unstable semi-immortal growth. Peak physical mass: 2.5 meters. Complete flesh-stitched lifeform constructed through layered corpse assimilation and soul binding. Possesses full control over external skin, subdermal muscle, and nervous system responses. Can manipulate muscle density, reflex timing, and surface elasticity at will. Body has no vital points and cannot be killed through conventional means. capable of surviving massive physical trauma, dismemberment, and rot. As long as the single piece of tissue survives, the entire skin, muscle, veins and nerves can regenerate back to its peak form
[Iron Prison of Hou Qi (Item)](A heavy, industrial-grade iron prison used by Hou Qi to contain your Skincrawler form for over two years. Though not spiritual in nature, its weight, structure, and isolation design made it extremely effective. Constructed from layered steel and reinforced with locking mechanisms to prevent vibration, tunneling, or corpse fusion escape. Its thick walls blocked all external sound and light, causing slow time perception and severe psychological strain.
After Shen Li saw the rewards, his breath caught in his throat.
"...Oh my god. At last."
His eyes locked onto the description of the Skincrawler's peak form.
"But wait—its prime form is over 2.5 meters tall… how does the system even plan to merge that with me?"
He frowned, thoughts racing.
"And… do I really have to merge with skins constantly?"
There was hesitation—but only for a moment.
"Whatever. That thing... that body... at bare minimum, it's peak 2nd-grade. No—no, it's even stronger. That's pseudo-1st grade
It was worth it.
After long thinking, Shen Li made his decision.
"Let's see what kind of shit I'll live through now," he muttered, and without waiting further, he pressed on the Skincrawler reward.
Almost instantly, he felt it.
His body began to swell.
Not power. Not strength. Just—pressure.
Like he had eaten ten meals in a row and couldn't take another bite.
It wasn't pain. It was overfilling.
Inside his flesh, he could feel everything expanding—veins, nerves, even meridians—but not the skeleton. Not the organs. Only the flesh. Layer by layer, mass accumulated beneath his skin like wet cloth piling on top of a frame too narrow to hold it.
For the next half hour, he sat there, sweating, suffocating in silence. Until—
Integration complete.
He was united with the Skincrawler.
But there was a problem.
His core structure—his skeleton—hadn't changed. The size of his bones defined his height, and now, with the new body layered over it, all that mass had nowhere to go but outward.
He wasn't taller.
He was wider.
A lot wider.
So wide, in fact, that his thighs couldn't even move freely anymore. When he tried to stand, his knees wobbled, crushed inward by the bulk pressing down from his stomach and sides.
He looked down at himself.
A giant layer of muscle, fat, and immortal tissue—trapped inside a human skeleton.
Like a goddamned walking dumpling.
Shen Li's voice cracked with dry sarcasm.
"I knew it. I knew this would happen. God. Dammit."
Flesh Without Frame
Shen Li stared at his massive stomach, struggling to even see his feet beneath the layered mass of fused skin and meat.
"I look like one of those documentaries... you know, the ones about hard lives documentary"
"Do I have to cut it off?"
His instincts, honed through his experience as a ghost, told him to ignore the panic and focus on what he could control.
So he forced a smile.
"At least I'm alive. That means all this added meat and skin won't rot. That's... good.""Still—damn it. Am I really going to have to carve myself down to size?"
He tried feeling out his limbs. There was still control — buried under the mass — but when he attempted to shift the tissues, even a little...
"AUGH!"
His entire body spasmed violently. Ripples moved across his skin like waves in a disturbed pond. Wrinkles and folds twisted unnaturally under his surface — visible even to the naked eye.
The pain was overwhelming.
He collapsed.
"Because I'm alive... my nerves are sending pain signals when I try to move muscle or skin."
He gritted his teeth, face twisted in agony.
"I didn't calculate this. I should've calculated this."
There was no anger in his voice — only resignation.
Lying on the cold floor, his face contorted into a mix of grief and disbelief, he muttered:
"I've been tricked by the system. Again."
And deep down, under that pain