"When talent fades, repetition remains."
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The sun rose slowly in Green Mulberry Town.
Soft golden light slipped over tiled rooftops and clay roads, chased shadows from the alleys, and warmed the dew from the stone eaves of the butcher stall. The smell of damp blood lingered faintly in the wooden beams. Chickens clucked somewhere down the street. A few early vendors were setting up their carts, preparing for another day of barter and hard living.
Inside the modest stall, Li Wei stood still, cleaver in hand.
The handle was worn smooth with years of use. The blade was thick, heavy, slightly chipped at the edge. It felt unfamiliar in his grip. Not because he didn't know how to hold it—his inherited memories remembered well enough—but because this life was still settling around him like a coat slightly too large.
The butcher stall was open-air: a roof overhead, but no walls. A wide wooden table took up most of the front space, with hooks hanging from an iron bar above. To the side, a narrow bench and water barrel for washing. A grindstone sat in the corner, cracked but usable.
Li Wei breathed in quietly. The scent of old blood, steel, and damp earth. Sharp, but not unpleasant.
He glanced at the cleaver again and raised it above the block of pork fat in front of him.
Thud.
A clean cut.
Then another. Then another.
His muscles moved from memory—not his, but the original Li Wei's. The Earth-born Li Wei simply followed the rhythm.
He worked in silence, chopping, separating fat from bone, trimming sinew with care. The motions were basic, repetitive, almost meditative.
> [Experience Panel]
Name: Li Wei
Age: 22
Cultivation: Martial Dao – Acquired Realm (Early Stage)
Skills:
• Longevity Technique – Proficiency: (2/100) – Beginner
• Butchering – Proficiency: (1/100) – Beginner
The panel had updated sometime during the third cut.
Li Wei didn't smile, but his eyes softened.
It worked.
Each repetition, each motion refined, added one point. Quiet progress. Honest progress.
---
He finished the slab and began preparing the bones for soup meat. Customers would start trickling in soon—townsfolk who knew Old Wen, the previous butcher, and accepted Li Wei's presence without question. He spoke little. They didn't mind.
He wasn't trying to draw attention.
He was just working.
> Butchering – Proficiency: (2/100)
Butchering – Proficiency: (3/100)
He could feel the rhythm settle. The cuts came smoother, the grip steadier. Not much. But enough.
---
By midmorning, a few neighbors had passed by. An old woman with missing teeth bought bones for stew. A pair of farmers traded a bag of dried vegetables for shoulder meat. One of them muttered about bandits on the northern road; Li Wei simply nodded, handed them the meat, and said nothing.
They left grateful.
He remained still.
---
Around noon, when the flow of customers died down, he washed the cleaver and stepped back into the stall's inner room. It wasn't much—a wooden cot, a low table, and a single oil lamp. He sat on the floor, crossed his legs, and exhaled.
The Longevity Technique came naturally now.
He focused inward. The breath moved not just through lungs, but through meridians—thin, invisible channels remembered only through instinct. The energy of the world was faint, barely perceptible, but it stirred in the room like dust caught in a slow wind.
Inhale.
Guide the qi.
Hold.
Exhale.
Repeat.
> Longevity Technique – Proficiency: (3/100)
Longevity Technique – Proficiency: (4/100)
Longevity Technique – Proficiency: (5/100)
The warmth in his chest grew slightly more noticeable. Not fire—more like embers resting in his core. The tightness in his lower back eased. A cut on his palm, made during the morning prep, no longer throbbed.
This was no miraculous healing. But it was real.
He opened his eyes slowly after twenty cycles.
Outside, the wind was picking up. The sun shifted slightly across the floorboards.
He had time to keep going. So he did.
---
By the time dusk settled and he closed the stall's wooden shutters, his arms were sore, his back ached, and a shallow fatigue clung to his legs like mist. But his hands were steady. His breath calm.
He lit the oil lamp.
Opened the scroll once more to reread the Longevity Technique's notes.
Practiced again.
> Longevity Technique – Proficiency: (6/100)
Butchering – Proficiency: (4/100)
No sudden breakthroughs. No lightning from the sky.
But each number was real.
Each step, his own.
---
That night, he sat by the door of the butcher stall, watching the moon rise above the rooftops of Green Mulberry Town. The town was quiet at night—no spiritual beasts, no sect disciples. Just farmers, traders, and aging martial artists too injured to continue their paths.
He didn't know what kind of future this world held.
But he knew this much:
He would not rush.
He would not beg.
He would not break.
If all he could do was wake, work, and breathe—then he would master waking, working, and breathing better than anyone else.
He closed his eyes.
The breath flowed again.
> Longevity Technique – Proficiency: (7/100)
Butchering – Proficiency: (5/100)
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