"Fuck!"
Boom.
"Fuck!"
Boom.
"Fuck!"
Boom. Boom.
In the gutted skeleton of the abandoned building, Zhang Yu forced himself through the Body-Forging 36 Forms with each curse serving as punctuation — the only soundtrack to his suffering.
Third repetition. His muscles screamed.
Fourth. The tearing sensation went deeper, into the connective tissue.
Fifth. Every joint felt packed with broken glass.
The ritual countdown came every time he slowed. Every time his body tried to quit on him, that toneless voice started its ten-second death march, and the pressure built behind his ribs, and he found one more repetition somewhere in the wreckage of his body.
Sixth. Seventh. Eighth.
By the ninth, his limbs had gone numb. He could no longer feel them — only a distant awareness that they were still moving because the concrete was still shaking under his feet. The pain had transcended into something beyond pain, a white-noise static that filled his entire nervous system.
Tenth.
His mana reserves, already depleted from the day, had been drained to their last drop and then squeezed further, forced to circulate through ruined muscle fibers like blood from a stone. He had wrung out every resource his body possessed. There was nothing left.
He collapsed.
The countdown did not return. The ritual, for the first time, was satisfied. It had deemed this — this wreck of a person lying on cold concrete at midnight — as genuine maximum effort.
He lay there, unable to move, and felt the skill crystallize.
---
**Body-Forging 36 Forms Lv. 2 (0/20)**
The upgrade hit like lightning through his nervous system. Every detail he had been getting wrong for three months — every subtle angle, every timing error, every breath he had mistimed — rewrote itself in his muscle memory. The understanding was immediate and complete, as if someone had swapped out a blurry photograph for a high-resolution scan.
*Twenty more reps to Level 3,* he thought, staring at the Feather Book floating above his palm. *At this pace, I could push it to Level 10. Past the cap. Past what the rich kids achieve with their injections and supplements and enhanced meals. I could take the top spot in physical strength in the entire grade.*
The thought warmed him more than any blanket could have. He smiled, there on the cold concrete, and fell asleep.
---
He woke at five in the morning, as he had woken at five in the morning every day since enrolling at Songyang High. The body had been conditioned like a machine.
But today, that machine was broken. Every muscle throbbed. His bones ached. His eyelids weighed fifty pounds.
*Five more minutes. Just five more minutes.*
Cold dread. The voice.
"Please observe the ritual contract. Work diligently to fulfill the wishes. Do not intentionally slack off or delay. 10."
He opened his eyes. Waited. The countdown continued.
"9."
Not a hallucination.
"8."
Then: *I can't sleep in anymore. Not ever. Not five minutes.*
He dragged himself upright, cursing under his breath, and stumbled toward home.
---
He showered. He paid 323.4 yuan for the water bill — the precise amount seared into his brain because every yuan mattered now. He threw on his uniform. He ran to the bus stop.
The display said the next bus would arrive in ten minutes. Ten minutes of standing. Ten minutes of doing nothing.
He leaned against a pole and closed his eyes.
*Ten minutes. Just rest.*
His own brain betrayed him. The thought surfaced without permission: *I could practice during this wait. Ten minutes of training.*
Cold dread. The voice.
"Please observe the ritual contract. Work diligently to fulfill the wishes. Do not intentionally slack off or delay. 10."
*It monitors my thoughts. It knows when I realize I should be working and I'm not.*
Surrounded by strangers at the bus stop — commuters in suits, students in uniforms, an old man reading a newspaper — Zhang Yu began performing the Body-Forging 36 Forms. People stared. Someone edged away. An elderly woman nodded approval, mistaking his desperation for diligence.
He finished half a repetition before the bus arrived.
---
He found a seat. A seat. On the morning bus. A miracle.
*I'll rest. Close my eyes. Just until my stop.*
His brain, again: *I could do breathing exercises. Sitting here doing nothing when I could be cultivating mana — that's slacking.*
Cold dread. The voice. The countdown.
He sat up straight, forced his breathing into the rhythm of Basic Breathing, and started pulling spiritual energy from the air around him. It was miserable. The bus was loud. He was exhausted. Every instinct screamed for sleep. Twice, his focus slipped and the countdown began again, snapping him back.
This was the true horror. Not the countdown itself. Not the threat of exploding flesh. It was the inescapable realization:
*So long as this ritual is bound to me, all slacking is gone. All rest. All entertainment. All joy. No weekends. No holidays. Every minute of my life dedicated to study, training, work — the endless grind toward the second wish.*
He pressed his palms against his temples, and for a moment, he let the despair wash over him in full.
*I will become a pure learning machine. A work animal. Zero leisure. Zero choice. A lifelong grind until this pressure crushes me into dust.*
*Even if I achieve immortality — what's the point? More years of life just means more years of suffering.*
"Please observe the ritual contract..."
The countdown pulled him back. He straightened his spine. He resumed the breathing exercise. The other passengers glanced at the strange boy who kept alternating between existential crisis and meditation, but he no longer cared.
---
And then, somewhere in the misery of that bus ride, something shifted.
Until this morning, Zhang Yu had been drifting. Go to school. Get good grades. Get into university. These were the original body's goals, not his — momentum from someone else's life, borrowed ambition from borrowed memories.
But now he had a goal of his own.
Not to fulfill the wishes. Not to get rich. Not to join a great sect.
To become strong enough to rip this ritual out of himself and destroy it.
*I want to be free.*
The words formed in his mind with absolute clarity. Not the inherited ambition of a dead teenager. His.
Zhang Yu wanted freedom.
And cultivators who knew exactly what they wanted — who burned for it with every fiber of their being — those were the ones whose resolve never broke.