Lao Chen woke with the sun, as always. The first sheep were beginning to wake, too, bleating to their comrades to begin their daily existence. For a moment, he assumed that all was as normal, and that nothing special happened the night before.

Until he saw the stack of books next to him, with a steel ring on top. He shot up and snatched the ring, wearing it with his thumb, the only finger thick enough to fill it.

He took the Yin Phoenix Manual first and opened it up to read it. It preached of cultivation. The ancient practice of absorbing Qi from the atmosphere to strengthen oneself. The manual was four hundred pages long, with flowery words and superfluous explanations. The bulk of the book was what seemed to be the author’s personal journey to their current strength, and the first few chapters were really the only things relevant to Lao Chen. After reading the first chapter, the primer on how to gather Qi for the umpteenth time, he finally grasped enough of it to attempt.

Adopting a lotus pose, he took a deep, lungful of air and held his breath for the allotted ten seconds, exhaling.

Inhale. Hold. Exhale. Rinse and repeat for the next two hours.

Suffice to say, his talent at cultivation was abysmal. The inhalation and storing of air was meant so that he would one day discover the Qi particles within and internalize that into his dantian after further refinement.

Daily necessities became secondary. His flock could find their own food and water, and he didn’t feel particularly hungry as he cultivated to his heart’s content.

After another hour of nothing, he gave up, concluding that the manual just wasn’t for him. Grumbling, he set to memorize the Yang Dragon Manual, reading it over and over again before attempting the same thing.

Nothing. Nothing at all. This time, instead of inhaling and exhaling, the cultivation method demanded he pay attention to his bodily functions such as heart beats and blood flow, but even after hours of that, nothing happened.

The heavens truly were playing with him, but then again, what did he expect? The young usually began cultivating. Growing old might have accumulated impure Qi into him, taking the place of purer Qi that would help him in his path, which would permanently impede him. He read as much in his cultivation manuals. After an individual had gone through puberty, the natural accumulation of Qi would clog up meridians and make Qi gathering harder and harder. For an elderly idiot like him, his meridians might even have shrivelled up through the years.

He stared at his steel ring in quiet surrender, wishing he was able to cultivate. He focused on the ring intently, wishing for something to happen.

But nothing did... Nothing at all, and- great, now the clouds are roiling overhead. Rain was about to fall. It seemed more like a storm, but for now, he had to return closer to the village stables to find his flock shelter.

The depression in his heart was only outdone by the sheer volume of the thunderstorm overhead, yet not a single drop of water had fallen as of yet.

Though, it did seem strange to him that a thunderstorm would develop so quickly, especially considering how there was only a light overcast ahead-

A half-meter wide pillar of lightning struck Lao Chen down, burning away all of his...

Nothing on him was burned away, actually. He was still standing up-right, but he felt... different. Then it hit him. He felt weak. His knees buckled under his weight as his years rushed towards him, now.

He was beginning to age rapidly, shrivelling up, and he knew it was only a matter of time before death came to him. In a final bid to repel it, he tried to cultivate immortality there and then.

Instead of following one cultivation manual at a time, he combined both through sheer happenstance. Filling his weak lungs as he focused on every bodily function that was occurring simultaneously, Lao Chen cultivated for dear life.

Inhale, heartbeat, heartbeat, exhale, heartbeat, heartbeat.

Then, he felt it. There was a tiny wisp, an orb no bigger than a fragment of a single dust particle, entering his lungs, getting picked up by the blood stream, then getting carried through the body inside a vein before being deposited two fingers below, and one finger beneath his navel, where his dantian is supposed to be.

The dantian was barely even there, just a tiny, blackened lump of a coal-like existence. The dantian swallowed up the tiny wisp in an instant, demanding more, and Lao Chen was happy to comply, busying himself with the otherwise tedious task. One wisp, after every twenty heartbeats, became two wisps. Two became four, which became eight.

By the 256th heartbeat, 64 wisps were being brought into his core sea inside his dantian at a time, relieving the pains of his old age gradually as he now no longer felt utterly weak.

Through evening, all the way through night, and until dawn did he finally collect enough Qi wisps to revitalize himself. He was no longer in pain- in fact, he felt better than he had for the last forty years, feeling like a spring chicken.

Eagerly feeling his face, he grimaced as he realized that yes, he was still old. He gained no longevity. In fact, now that he understood what happened, the lightning had actually burned away his Qi. All of it, in fact. Instead of just taking the impurities, the lightning took it all and left the poor old man to fend for himself as he cultivated as hard as he could.

Qi was lifeforce. Losing all of it at once was death waiting to happen. He could only thank his own ingenuity that he survived the tribulation.

Sitting down in a lotus pose, instead of in a foetal position, he began to cultivate properly, now, rotating his cultivation base as per the instructions.

In the Yin manual, rotation meant that he had to invert it, driving the edge of the core sea into the middle in a maelstrom of purification in a continuous cycle. In the Yang manual, rotation entailed spinning the entire dantian on both axes. It took a tremendous amount of concentration, but he hadn’t dreamed to the ripe old age of 75 without an overactive imagination. Visualization came as easily as breathing for this old geezer.

In sheer seconds, the Qi in his body was completely purified, the impurities leaving his body like a dark mist exiting his pores. That was it. Refining was supposed to take longer than that, but obviously, he had only collected a minuscule amount of Qi.

The old dreamer didn’t give up, however. He continued cultivating, sucking in Qi wisps from the air as though he was a vacuum, going at it for almost 24 hours before he felt his first hunger pang. Furrowing his eyebrows, he decided to begin the refining process, pleased to notice that it took about ten minutes now before his dantian was purified, leaving him with a crystal clear dantian, unblemished by filthy impurities.

He interred his objects inside of his sacks, stood up and guided his flock towards the village a few kilometres south. He was pleased to find out that the trek was barely even a noticeable issue, most likely a courtesy of his new cultivation prowess.

He arrived in the village not long after, the head hunter rejoicing upon his return.

“Old man Lao! We were sure that you had died out there! You scared your family half to death!” He said as he went to bow at his elder. Lao Chen never knew how to act sincerely whenever the younger generation showed veneration towards him, so he instead put on airs and acted like his favourite old man from a book he once read.

“There’s nothing out there that could even touch the hem of my clothing. This old bag of bones can handle himself,” He chucked ruefully as he continued into the village. He grabbed a few wen from inside his bag and went to the nearest food stall to get some meat into him.

The first spit of meat was devoured within seconds.

“More,” Lao Chen demanded as his stomach growled at the appetizer. The cook raised an eyebrow.

“You are much too old to be eating like a youth, Old man Lao. Are you sure?”

“Hah! You underestimate my prowess-“

“I’ll take that as a ‘yes’,” the cook rolled his eyes as he handed over another spit. The old man repeated his action, pulling the meat to the end of the stick, letting them fall into his mouth, devouring them without thought. His teeth were much too soft and uneven to properly chew, but the old man could still swallow his food whole like the best of them. After all, he was still in his best years!

Once satisfied, he gave the cook his due payment and returned outdoors to let his flock graze, and to cultivate.

This time, he stayed in a cultivation state for three days. He could feel his cultivation base climbing, but he had no way to benchmark his progress properly without another person as a reference point.

The manuals spoke of levels such as Qi condensation, Foundation Establishment, Core Formation, Nascent Soul, Dao Seeking, Immortal Ascension, the peak of the Spirit Realm. He would assume that he was in the Qi condensation stage as he had yet to form Dao Pillars.

After every session of gathering Qi, he would refine it further using his unique Yin Yang Dragon Phoenix Manual hybrid, combining both methods into one superefficient Dao that got the job done, twice the work with half the effort.

He would also commit more and more of the scriptures to memory, requiring them less and less as time passed.

With every week that passed, his body would go through new developments. He would grow an inch taller, his spine would straighten, adding more inches, his joints became much more fluid, his teeth would straighten and the missing ones would grow out, and his skin became softer, and incredibly enough, less wrinkly. Making him look at least a decade younger, but his posture would argue that he was at least four decades younger.

After the first month was up, he reached a bottle neck, and one he couldn’t break through no matter how much time he spent. He knew it was a matter of time, but he couldn’t stay in this poor village any longer when he existed.

As such, he decided to take off, but in a grand fashion.