Shawn woke up with a pounding headache. He had partied with Lin and Tian till the early hours of the morning, celebrating their daring escape with more alcohol than was strictly necessary. Their victory had caused Scorpion’s Den to come alive, members he had never seen before streamed into the tavern to join the celebration. As the night moved on and as his hallucinations grew more intense, his rational mind realized that he shouldn’t be mixing substances. He clearly remembered his high school health teacher saying that taking two different body altering substances at once was the most common way people died of overdoses.

However, it was too late the damage was already done. Even with actively trying to leave, it still took him hours to escape to his bedroom. Whenever he would try to leave, someone would pull him back and get him to drink more. A normal person would have died from the pure amount of alcohol he ingested last night. Luckily, he wasn’t a normal person anymore.

With his cultivation enhanced physique, he could already feel his headache clearing. Shawn walked downstairs to the tavern. The room was still a mess. No one had woken up to clean it yet.

At some point last night, the tables on the side of the room had been flipped over and pushed against the wall to make room for a dance floor. He cringed as he remembered the terrible dance moves he had shown last night, against common logic, he was somehow a worse dancer when drunk than when he was sober.

The large burn mark had remained on the wooden flooring, rendering a large part of the room unusable. Under a chair, Peng slept like a baby. He wasn’t the only one passed out on the floor, a few others laid around him, drooling on the floor. Last night the option of sleeping on the floor had seemed attractive, but his more rational mind won out. Chule would probably yell at them when he woke up. He wanted to avoid that fate if possible. Chule was scary.

He stifled a yawn and rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, he was up early. He had wanted to test out using [Devourer] before work. But, he was beginning to regret that decision, no one should ever wake up before the sun rises. It wasn’t natural. A man slapped him on his back and shot him a grin.

“Up early I see. Are you gonna blow up another building today?” Shawn nodded at the man and quietly walked out the door.

News of his exploits had spread like wildfire. He was now akin to a local celebrity, everyone wanted to hear the story of how he had helped destroy a large building. People constantly approached him and asked him about the attack on the Crimson Lotus. Embellished rumors had already begun to spread, he even heard someone claim that he ripped a tiger apart with his bare hands.

Shawn chuckled to himself. The stories were annoying, he didn’t like the attention, but on the bright side, people were starting to forget about his embarrassing start in the Scorpion's Den.

Cool air blasted into his face, waking him up as he stepped outside. He did a basic series of stretches before setting off at a light jog. Even though he was consciously holding back his speed, he was still moving faster than an Olympic sprinter. The ground blurred as he worked his way through the streets, weaving around the occasional pedestrian. He enjoyed the sense of freedom that moving at such an extreme speed gave him. He wanted to go even faster.

His mind emptied and he was once again a dandelion floating through the air. The wind picked up and subtly pushed him forward, slightly boosting his speed. Shawn stumbled to a stop, confused by the phenomenon. As his conscious thoughts came rushing back at full force, he lost his connection to the wind and it no longer aided him.

Even though the wind was no longer blowing, deep within his soul, he could feel a connection, a bridge of sorts, to something. He wasn’t sure where it led, or what it was connected to, all he knew was that it was powerful.

He moved a small drop of Qi to the bridge. The bridge accepted his offering and he immediately felt lighter. Gusts of wind whirled around him as he felt his mind expand, novel ways of utilizing the element occurred to him with almost no effort. Just standing here, he felt his understanding of the element skyrocket. He felt that he could reach out and control the wind with no effort.

Shawn stumbled forward as the effect ended, all the knowledge he had gained in that state leaving him. He felt deeply drained, he checked his [Status Screen] and saw that he had only lost a single point of Qi. Accessing that bridge within his soul didn’t cost Qi, but something equally important.

From a meta-knowledge standpoint, he had a vague idea about what had just occurred. In the books he had read, the characters had been able to use the Dao; the truths of the world, to strengthen their attacks. The Dao relied solely on the users' connection and understanding of it, meaning that an otherwise weak combatant could overcome stronger enemies with their use of the Dao.

The Dao had many aspects; a separate truth for each concept that existed. One could be highly proficient in the Dao of water, but be completely unable to use the Dao of fire. Of course, most people wouldn’t be able to start off with an advanced Dao, they would have to start with a weaker, lesser truth such as the Dao of ember.

All his knowledge could be wrong, this world may operate on a different set of rules than the ones he had read about. His mind ached as he examined every possibility.

His Qi may just have an extremely high affinity for the wind, though he doubted that hypothesis. His soul took the form of a ball of fire after all. He resolved to ask Lin about it later and resumed his jogging. There was no point in driving himself mad thinking of every possibility when he could just ask for help.

He ran for a few minutes before he reached his destination. He wiped a bead of sweat off his forehead as he stepped into an alley. He really needed to work on his endurance. Even though he was tired, he couldn’t help but be happy, it had taken him an hour to get this far the first time he walked this route with Lin. The feeling of progress was undeniable.

Shawn greedily eyed the swarm of rats that infested the alley, eager to improve himself further. Today he would absorb an advanced stat. Maybe his victory over the Crimson Lotus had made him overconfident, but he felt on top of the world right now, he felt invincible.

He briefly activated [Qi Enhancement] and surged forward. Before the rat could react, he stomped on it painlessly ending its life. Pride flowed through him as a blue screen popped up. He remembered how difficult it had been to catch a rat the first time he came to this alley. All his hard work had been worth it.

Activate Devourer Y/N? Charges 1/1

Shawn pressed yes and collapsed into a pile of trash. The world faded to black and he opened his eyes to a familiar void. Well, void wasn’t the correct word to describe it any more. With each wisp, he had absorbed his inner world had grown. Now, it looked much more like a picture with thousands of holes poked in it.

Black was still the predominant color, dominating the majority of the space in its dark nothingness. But, in between the dark holes, a weird landscape emerged. Half-formed sand dunes floated in the void, starting and stopping at seemingly random intervals. Deformed oak trees poked out of the sand, lacking branches and leaves. If he hadn’t seen the trees grow first hand, he would have thought they were just wooden spikes planted into the ground.

The sky was a weird checkerboard of blue and black. Like the sand dunes, the few clouds that hung in the sky were half-formed, disjointed by the black void. His flame body flickered brightly, the only source of light in this lonely world.

He wasn’t bright enough to reveal what was behind the dark void; if there even was anything behind it. With his new larger body, he felt safer, he no longer feared a random gust of wind blowing him out. If anything, he was now worried about setting the world on fire, his flames had grown that much in strength.

“Another rat? Would it kill you to spice things up every once in a while,” the childish voice whined. Shawn flinched, the voices sudden appearance startling him.

“It probably would, I don’t think I could beat a tiger in a fight.” It wasn't like there were all that many animals in the middle of Najian. It was a city, not a zoo. He had been doing his best, but the truth of the matter was that flies and rats were the only creatures he had been able to reliably find.

Shawn had conflicting feelings about the voice that talked to him in his inner world. It had always been helpful, never leading him astray, but for some reason, he felt on edge when around the voice. Some primal part of himself protested someone else entering his inner world.

Though he suspected someone else wasn’t the correct way to describe the voice. Based on the conversations he had with the childlike voice, he had concluded that it was a facet of his unconscious mind. It knew his desires and history too well to not be a part of him. Plus, having a sentient being trapped within his soul wasn’t a possibility he wanted to entertain.

“Well, keep it in mind for next time. What type of wisp do you want to absorb today?” Wisps floated through the patches of darkness, entering his inner world, painting it in an array of bright colors.

“Would you please show me the wisps containing skills I haven’t seen before,” Shawn said. Wordlessly, the voice brought a trio of wisps before him.

Next to his massive body of flames, they looked tiny, their own dull colors weren’t able to affect his inner world this close to him. He turned his attention to the first wisp. It was small brown and clumpy, all in all, not that visual appearing.

Burrow Lvl 1: Instantly, dig a 1ft tall and 1ft wide tunnel at the cost of 3 Qi per foot of forward progress. The material that is moved out of the way to build the wall is used to reinforce the tunnel walls. An essential skill for any aspiring rat cultivator!

The skill was interesting. He could see how it could be useful for a small animal such as a rat. But with his larger size, digging a 1-foot tall tunnel would be useless to him. The cost was also prohibitively high, he would only be able to make a tunnel capable of fitting him a couple feet long before he ran out of Qi.

However, if he managed to endure the weak early levels of the skill it could become quite powerful. For example, he could dig a hole under someone's foot while fighting to ruin their balance. Or, at a really high level of the skill, he could just dig a giant hole in the ground beneath his opponent's feet. Since the skill description said the skill’s effects were instant, it would be impossible to dodge the attack.

The next wisp was quite similar to his soul in color - the wisp was bone white. Before, absorbing any other wisps, he imagined his own soul looked like that, but now his flame body was a slightly different color.

Occasionally, a streak of flame in his soul would burn black and release golden sparks. The process was quite pretty to observe. However, its effects were diminishing by the day.

As his soul grew larger, the wisps that he absorbed affected it less. The first time he went back to his inner world after stealing a fly’s cultivation speed almost 15 percent of his flame body had turned gold. As the gold took up less of his soul, he was more easily able to differentiate himself from Green and separate their lives.

Bite Lvl 1: Enhance your bite with Qi. Increases jaw strength and teeth sharpness based on Qi spent.

Shawn quickly dismissed the screen, the skill was useless to him. For a rat, whose main weapon was their mouth, the skill would be useful, but it wasn’t a skill he saw himself ever using. He dismissed the wisp and opened the last blue screen.

Psychometry Lvl 1: Learn an object's history by touching it. Clarity of detail increases with skill level. Qi cost increases with how far you dig into the object's history. Great for aspiring detectives!

He wished he had open skill slots. [Psychometry] and [Burrow] sounded like cool skills, he wanted them both. The more he thought about the wisp, the more it transformed.

Before his eyes, the wisp condensed into a piece of paper covered in an ever-shifting maze of words. The wisps form solidified for a moment, then fell apart, fading to mist. Shawn pondered the potential uses of [Psychometry] before shooing away the warped wisp.

He enjoyed searching through the variety of skills the rat offered, even if he was unable to take any of them at the moment. However, he didn’t have any more time to lazily read over skills, he felt that the void was beginning to destabilize, he would have to make his decision soon.

Shawn had already made his decision on what advanced wisp he would absorb before he stepped into the void. “Can you please bring over the wisp representing the rat's cultivation speed?”

The power increase he got from increasing his cultivation level was unmatched by any single wisp he had absorbed so far. Not only did rising a single cultivation level gain him seven stat points, but it also drastically increased his Qi capacity. A larger Qi capacity would allow him to use [Qi Enhancement] for longer, greatly increasing his survivability.

A golden wisp humming with power approached Shawn. He gulped as it warped the space around it. In that warped space, the air became damp and a cacophony of hellish squeaking noises erupted. He may have bitten off more than he could chew.

Mortal Cultivation of the Rat. + 4 Cultivation Speed

The wisp offered twice the increase the wisp of the fly had offered. The void shook, the wisps coloring the sky rapidly blinked out of existence. He steeled his will; he was more than twice as strong as his past self. His soul could handle the strain. Everything would be fine.

He willed the wisp to move into his soul. It followed his command, sending sparks flying where it entered his body. His internal temperature rose and he immediately knew something was wrong. Large gouts of flame shot off of him. His body twisted and contorted in pain. The wisp was too powerful for his soul to immediately absorb.

His flame body glowed golden as he lost consciousness. Shit.