Chapter 6: Reputation GrindThe morning after a cultivator bleeds is always the loudest kind of quiet. Lin Wu woke to the sound of silence—not the peaceful silence of a farm at dawn, but the heavy, watchful silence of a village holding its breath. The usual sounds of roosters crowing, dogs barking, and neighbors shouting greetings were absent. In their place was a low, constant murmur that seemed to seep through the mud-brick walls of the farmhouse like damp. He sat up in his cot. Every muscle in his body screamed in protest. His right shoulder, where Chen Gou's fist had connected, was a deep, ugly purple. Two fingers on his left hand were splinted with strips of cloth—his father's handiwork, done while Lin Wu had slept the sleep of the utterly spent.
Forty-eight hours, he thought, flexing his fingers experimentally. Pain lanced up his arm, but the bones held. In a game, I'd just pop a health potion. Here, I have to wait. Or die and reset. He glanced at the Null Crown fragment on his bedside table. It looked the same as always—a dull, black lump of metal. But he knew better now. It was a weapon. A key. A parasite's best friend.
He reviewed the skill description again, committing it to memory. It was a hungry skill. It needed Qi to function. Without an enemy cultivator nearby, it was useless. He was still, at his core, a talentless mortal with a cracked spiritual vessel. I need base stats. The buff is a multiplier, but if my base strength is zero, five percent of zero is still zero. I need to raise the floor. He stood up, ignoring the protests of his body, and walked into the main room. His father was sitting at the small wooden table, a bowl of untouched congee in front of him. Lin He's eyes were red-rimmed, his face haggard. He hadn't slept. "Son." The word was a fragile thing, barely holding together. "The village... they're saying things. Chen Gou's father, the butcher, he's demanding a public apology. He says you used... demonic arts." Lin Wu sat down across from his father and picked up the bowl of congee. He took a bite. It was cold and watery, as always. "And what do you think, Father?" Lin He was silent for a long moment. He looked at his son's bruised face, at the calm, distant eyes that had once been filled with nothing but despair. "I think... I think I don't know who you are anymore. But you are my son. And you made that arrogant boy run." Lin Wu felt a faint, unfamiliar warmth in his chest. It wasn't Qi. It was something else. He pushed it aside. Emotional buff detected. Ignore. Focus on objectives. "I'm still your son," he said, the words feeling strange and clumsy on his tongue. "I've just... learned some new tricks." He finished the congee in three quick bites. "I'm going to train. Don't worry about Chen Gou's father. I'll handle it." He walked outside before his father could respond. The morning air was crisp and clean, a welcome change from the oppressive humidity of the past week. The mud had begun to dry, leaving cracked, uneven patterns on the ground. He looked around the farm. The woodpile. The irrigation ditch. The small vegetable garden his mother had once tended. The open fields beyond. This is my training zone. My tutorial area. I need to map out every resource. He pulled up the glitched System interface. It was still a mess of corrupted text and flickering boxes, but certain elements were becoming clearer as his synchronization increased.
He focused on the first option. Grinding physical stats. In Combat Battle Royale, you didn't level up your character's base attributes by fighting. You did it by completing mundane, repetitive tasks in the training lobby. Running laps. Lifting weights. Hitting a punching bag for hours. This world was no different. The System just made the numbers visible. He started with running. He marked out a rough circuit around the farm's perimeter—approximately four hundred meters. Then he began to jog.
Zero point zero five percent per lap. That's two thousand laps for a single skill level. At four hundred meters per lap, that's eight hundred kilometers of running. He did the math in his head and smiled grimly. Sounds about right. Let's get started. He ran. The first lap was easy. The second, less so. By the fifth lap, his lungs were burning, and the bruises on his body were screaming in protest. The villagers who passed by on the road stared at him with open curiosity and fear. The crazy Lin boy, who had somehow made a cultivator bleed, was now running in circles around his farm like a headless chicken. Old Widow Guo watched from her weeding. "Madness," she muttered to her dog. "Utter madness. First the axe, now this. The boy's soul is broken." Lin Wu heard her. He didn't care. NPC flavor text. Irrelevant. By the twentieth lap, his legs felt like they were filled with wet sand. His vision was swimming. But he didn't stop. He couldn't stop. Every lap was a fraction of a percent closer to a permanent, passive increase in his base stats. Every drop of sweat was an investment in a future where he wouldn't need to die five times to beat a single low-level thug. At lap thirty, something changed.
Lin Wu collapsed onto the grass, gasping for air. His heart was pounding like a war drum. His legs were jelly. But beneath the exhaustion, he felt it again—that faint, warm hum of progress.
Another percent. Physical milestones increase sync. Good to know. He lay there for a long moment, staring up at the pale blue sky. A single cloud drifted overhead, shaped vaguely like a loading icon. He laughed, a rough, breathless sound. This world is a joke. A beautiful, brutal, badly-coded joke. And I'm going to exploit every single glitch. He pushed himself up to a sitting position. His eyes fell on the small vegetable garden. The soil was dry and cracked. The plants were wilting. His mother had always tended it. Now it was dying, like everything else she had touched. A notification flickered.
Lin Wu stared at the notification. A side quest. In the middle of nowhere. Tied to his dead mother's garden. He could ignore it. It was inefficient. It wouldn't make him stronger in a fight. It was a distraction from the grind. But something in his chest—that faint, unfamiliar warmth from earlier—made him stand up and walk toward the garden. He picked up the rusty watering can, filled it from the well, and began to water the wilting plants.
Another skill tree. Slower than running. Even more useless in combat. He kept watering anyway. As he worked, he heard the sound of heavy footsteps approaching. He looked up. A large, broad-shouldered man was walking up the farm path. He wore a blood-stained leather apron and carried a massive cleaver in one hand. His face was a thundercloud of barely contained rage.
"Lin Wu!" the butcher bellowed, his voice carrying across the fields. "You made my son bleed! You used demonic tricks! I demand satisfaction!" Lin Wu set down the watering can carefully. He wiped his hands on his tunic. His body was exhausted from the run. His sync was at sixteen percent. He had no stolen Qi for a Null Infusion buff. He was, by any objective measure, in no condition to fight a 2nd Stage cultivator. But he wasn't going to fight. He was going to talk. "Master Chen," Lin Wu said, his voice calm and even. He walked toward the butcher, stopping a few paces away. "Your son attacked me. On my family's land. In front of witnesses. I defended myself." "He says you used a demonic artifact!" Chen Tao spat, his grip tightening on the cleaver. "He says you stole his Qi!" Lin Wu tilted his head. "Is that what he told you? Interesting. And did he also tell you that he, a cultivator, ran from a talentless mortal? That he screamed like a child and fled into the mud?" Chen Tao's face reddened. "You—!" "I'm not a demon, Master Chen." Lin Wu's voice was quiet, reasonable. "I'm just a farmer's son who got lucky. But think about what happens next. If you attack me here, now, what will the village say? That the butcher had to avenge his cultivator son against a boy with no Qi. That a 2nd Stage cultivator had to cut down a mortal to restore his family's honor." He let the words hang in the air. Chen Tao's jaw worked silently. "Or," Lin Wu continued, "you can go home. Tell your son to stay away from my farm. And in a month, if he still wants satisfaction, we can have a proper duel. In front of the village. With rules. That way, when I beat him again, everyone will see it's skill, not 'demonic tricks.'" It was a bluff. A massive, audacious bluff. Lin Wu had no guarantee he could beat Chen Gou in a month. He had no plan. He was buying time. But Chen Tao didn't know that. All he saw was a calm, bruised farm boy who had made his son bleed and was now speaking to him as an equal. It was unnerving. It was wrong. "You have one month," the butcher growled finally, lowering his cleaver. "One month. Then my son will crush you in front of the entire village. And no one will call it demonic. They'll call it justice." He turned and stormed away, his heavy footsteps leaving deep impressions in the drying mud. Lin Wu watched him go. Then he let out a slow breath.
Lin Wu stared at the quest notification. Thirty days. One month to turn this broken, talentless shell into something that could reliably defeat a 1st Stage Qi Condensation cultivator without relying on luck, psychological warfare, or suicide loops. Thirty days. That's an eternity in gamer time. He turned back to the garden. He picked up the watering can. He resumed his work.
The cloud shaped like a loading icon drifted slowly across the sun, casting a brief, cool shadow over the farm. And Lin Wu, the Renegade Regressor, watered his dead mother's garden, already planning the next thirty days of hell. |
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Chapter 8: The Warm-Up Boss DAY 8 OF 30 The notification about the Ironhide Boar had changed his calculus. Grinding for base stats was still essential, but now he had a specific, imminent target. A boss fight. And any gamer worth their salt knew you didn't walk into a boss fight blind. You scouted. You prepared. And if necessary, you died a few times to learn the mechanics. Lin Wu woke before dawn, as had become his ritual. His body still ached, but the pain was becoming familiar—a background hum rather than a screaming alarm. The [Masochist] title was earning its keep. HP: 98/100 Stamina: 100/100 Soul Sync: 18% ...
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