"System, you bastard! I'm not done with you!" Lordi Payne roared, his voice raw with anger. The glowing star-rating panel hovered mockingly before him, but he had no time for distractions. Instinct kicked in, and he threw his arms up, crossing them over his chest to shield his vitals.
A heartbeat later, a sickly green light erupted from Woods Tinshee's outstretched hand, streaking toward Lordi like a venomous comet.
The beam slammed into Lordi's left arm with the force of a runaway freight train. Agony exploded through his limb, a white-hot inferno that threatened to consume his senses. His body was hurled backward, weightless for a split second before—
BOOM!
He crashed into the cave's stone wall with bone-rattling impact, the rock cracking under the collision. Dust and debris rained down as a jagged dent marked where his body had struck.
Lordi slumped to the ground, a groan escaping his lips. Blood welled in his throat, its metallic tang sharp as he spat a crimson arc onto the cave floor. His vision swam, edges darkening, every nerve screaming as if his insides had been pulverized. Only years of grueling Bone Tempering Art training kept him conscious—its iron discipline anchoring him against the tide of pain threatening to drag him under.
"Cough… cough… How the fuck... The fuck could you still alive? Cough... cough…" Woods Tinshee's voice cut through the haze, laced with surprise and suspicion. He stood across the cavern, his own body wracked with violent coughs, blood flecking his lips. Yet his eyes gleamed with shock as he studied Lordi's crumpled form.
This brat bastard wasn't right.
Woods Tinshee, though gravely wounded, was no ordinary cultivator. A direct apostle of an Elder from the Abyss Pit Sect, he wielded the advanced high rank Layer of Qi Refinement Stage—a realm far beyond the common cultivator. Even his hastily conjured Five Poisons Finger should have torn through Lordi's defenses like paper, piercing his heart and ending him in an instant. After all, Lordi was just a thir -layer very Elementary Qi Refinement cultivator from backwater Deerspring Town. A nobody.
Yet here he was, battered but breathing.
Woods Tinshee narrowed his eyes, his gaze locking onto Lordi's left arm, where the attack had struck hardest. A grotesque, poison-seared hole gaped in the flesh, the skin blackened and peeling, revealing a glint of bone beneath. The wound was horrific, yet it hadn't killed him. The rest of Lordi's injuries—bruises, cuts, a battered frame—looked devastating but weren't fatal.
Realization sparked in Woods' mind. Ignoring the fresh blood trickling from his mouth, Woods Tinshee's pupils flared with a faint purple glow as he pushed his vision to its limits. The strain painted his pallid face a sickly pink, but his focus was unbreakable. He peered at the exposed bone in Lordi's arm, and his breath caught.
"Perfect-grade Iron-tier Bone?!" he gasped, disbelief cracking his composure.
The Bone Tempering Art originated from the Abyss Pit Sect, a foundational martial technique known to all its disciples—including Woods Tinshee, once the favored apostle pupil of an elder.
But what most outsiders, even the Payne Clan chief, didn't know was this:
Not all Iron Bones were equal.
The Iron-tier, Refined-tier, and Jade-tier bones forged through this martial art were graded—low, mid, high, and the mythic perfect-grade.
Low-grade Iron Bone was the mark of struggling rogue cultivators—rough, unrefined, barely better than mortal bone.
Mid-grade signaled real talent, earning a cultivator a place in the Abyss Pit Sect's outer sect—if they were young and untainted.
High-grade? That was the domain of true sect core disciples, those bathed in delicate elixirs and elder guidance since childhood.
But perfect-grade Iron-tier Bone?
That was legend.
As rare as phoenix feathers, as coveted as unicorn horns. Only two paths led to such purity:
A heaven-defying constitution—a body forged by the heaven and earth itself.
A serendipitous taste of a heavenly treasure—one miraculous encounter rewriting fate.
Either way, such a cultivator would shake the holy sect. They'd be swiftly inducted into the core circle, nurtured as a future pillar of the Abyss Pit Sect.
"Cough—cough—!"
Woods Tinshee doubled over, blood flecking his lips. When he raised his head, his eyes burned with something between hatred and bitter nostalgia.
If his shifu master still lived…
If they'd met Lordi Payne under different skies…
Woods Tinshee might've dragged this boy back to the sect himself, presented him as a junior brother. A genius like this would've claimed resources once belong to him, yes—but also strengthened his shifu faction's might for decades to come.
But now?
Nothing remained between them but decay and destruction. Today, only one would walk away—it's either Lordi Payne's death or his.
"How? Cough—" Woods snarled suddenly, voice ragged. "How did a backwater rat like you forge perfect-grade Iron-tier Bone?!"
Lordi Payne clawed himself from the wreckage of the cave wall, every muscle shrieking in agony. The instinct to flee surged through him—run, now—but reality crushed it like a boot on glass.
He tried to stand, only for the world to lurch violently. His legs buckled, vision swimming with dark spots, and he crumpled back to the dirt with a choked groan. Each breath drove spikes of fire through his cracked ribs. Running? He'd be lucky to crawl.
Then Woods Tinshee's voice sliced through the haze, sharp with astonishment:
"Perfect-grade Iron-tier Bone?"
Lordi's mind blanked. What the hell does that even mean?
But he shoved the confusion aside, survival instincts roaring to life. Whatever it was, Woods was hooked—and that was leverage. He had to stall, to keep this bastard from finishing him off. Talk fast. Lie faster.
"Fellow Dao," Lordi rasped, forcing the words through gritted teeth, "Look, I don't who you are. We're strangers, you and I. Yeah, I took your Blood Qi Pills—my mistake. But look at me." He gestured weakly at his mangled arm, the flesh scorched and bone glinting through the ruin. "You've taught me a lesson. We're square."
He dragged in a ragged breath, mustering a strained smirk. "Interested in this 'perfect-grade' bone? Let's part ways, and… maybe I'll trade you the trick to cultivating it."
His voice was calm, deliberate, but inside, his thoughts were a frantic storm. Keep him talking. Buy time. In his mind, he screamed at the AllFullOS system: "System! Can you modify the Bone Tempering Art? Make it look real enough to fool this guy, but if he tries practicing it, it'll drive him insane!"
The system chimed.
~ Ding! *System Notification Chime*
[AllFullOS: Version 1.0.0]
> All-Smart Full-Host Cultivation System is at your service!
> One-click-cultivation, worry-free-ascension!
+ [Features]
- Intelligent upgrades tailored to your cultivation needs!
...
Lordi Payne cursed inwardly: "Damn system. Useless trash! I knew I couldn't count on you…"
He was considering whether to recite some ancient poems from his previous life on earth to impersonate a cultivation tomes and buy time when Woods Tinshee let out a cold laugh.
"Enough lies," Woods Tinshee snapped, wiping blood from his lips with a sneer. "You're practicing the Bone Tempering Art—don't deny it. If you're not Abyss Pit Sect, you're some outer disciple's spawn offspring. The Sect's bounty notices have spread even to this backwater. You trailed me into these mountains, and now you claim you don't know who I am? Bullshit."
"Then what do you propose, FellowDao?" Lordi Payne frowned. Disciples from this sinister sect were indeed difficult to fool. Good thing is Lordi Payne was still young and he had just broken through the third layer of Qi Refinement Stage. After lying on the ground still for a while, he had regained a bit of strength and could probably stand up, albeit with difficulty. But running away was still impossible… So Lordi Payne needed to stall a little longer!
With this in mind, Lordi Payne had an idea and said, "Fellow Dao, you got me wrong. Sure, Kinson Wexford did instruct the Payne Clan disciples to scour these mountains and hunt you, but me? I'm the only one who not only doesn't want to reveal your whereabouts but also hopes you can escape safely."
Seeing Woods Tinshee sneer in disbelief, Lordi Payne quickly added, "Do you know about the byobu screen in Kinson Wexford's room? At first glance, it looks ordinary, but upon closer inspection, the embroidery comes alive—hundreds of beauties woven into the silk, each more alluring than the last. Their eyes seem to follow you as you move."
"The Bone Raksha Byobu?" Before Lordi Payne could finish, Woods Tinshee blurted out, his expression suspicious. "How do you know about this? Wait, you've seen the screen Byobu and you're still alive?!"
Lordi Payne's heart sank. It seemed the screen was even more dangerous than he had thought. But there was no time to dwell on that now. He hurriedly explained,
"I'm a branch disciple of the Payne Clan in Deerspring town. My birth mother passed away early, and despite having decent talent, I've been suppressed by my stepmother for years, leaving me with nothing to my name… Recently, Kinson Wexford was invited by the clan heir to stay in our guest courtyard. Rumors say he's incredibly wealthy, far beyond what the Payne Clan can imagine. I heard from the servants that he's often away, so I took the risk to sneak into his room…"
At this point, Woods Tinshee's face underwent a remarkable transformation—his sneer froze, his eyebrows shot up, and his bloodshot eyes widened like a startled owl's. For several heartbeats, he simply gaped at Lordi Payne, his mind struggling to reconcile this audacity with everything he knew about the world. "You, a third layer Qi Refinement Stage nobody from a nowhere backwater town, had the guts to rob Kinson Wexford?"
For a moment, Woods Tinshee was genuinely bewildered. "By the Black Abyss…" Had he been in the sect for so long that he didn't realize how bold these wild outside cultivators had become?!
The sheer absurdity of it all struck him like a physical blow. Here he was, agonizing over the loss of three Blood Qi Pills to this whelp, when apparently the bastard had already robbed someone far more dangerous. Compared to Kinson Wexford - that notoriously ruthless Inner Sect disciple who didn't even know his chambers had been violated—Woods Tinshee's own predicament suddenly seemed almost... trivial.
"Ahem, that's the point. Anyway, look, Kinson Wexford hasn't noticed his room's been touched—not yet. He's too caught up chasing Fellow Dao you," Lordi Payne coughed softly, steadying his voice despite the ache in his chest. He met Woods' gaze, eyes clear and unwavering. "That makes me the one person who needs you safe and free. As long as you're out there, Kinson Wexford's distracted, and I get a chance to slip away before he turns his wrath on me."
He leaned forward slightly, voice warm with sincerity. "Fellow Dao, I'm not your enemy—I'm here to help you!"
Woods Tinshee threw back his head and laughed, a harsh, barking sound. "Help me? How? By snatching my Blood Qi Pills the second we crossed path? By making me to crawl through dirt to reclaim what's mine?"
"FellowDao, that's just a minor issue," Lordi Payne said, voice urgent but earnestly warm. "At the time, I was being harmed by the Bone Raksha Byobu. Without those Blood Qi Pills, I might have died. Look, if I'd died, you'd be alone here, unfamiliar with the area, a stranger with no allies. And sooner or later, the Payne Clan disciples would've sniffed you out and dragged you to Kinson Wexford! How'd that end for you? Face it—we're bound by the same rope. Let's not bicker over a few pills when we could help each other!"
Good, my breathing had become smoother, and I felt like could stand up and walk a few steps. But how long could i last?
Lordi Payne hesitated, glancing at Woods Tinshee. Seeing that the man seemed to be deep in thought and showed no immediate intention to attack, Lordi Payne secretly breathed a sigh of relief and decided to stall a little longer to avoid any mishaps while trying to escape.
"You've got a silver tongue," Woods Tinshee said after a moment of contemplation, a cold smile spreading across his face. "But you are not wrong. When death is knocking, petty grudges mean nothing."
He paused, then suddenly leaned forward, voice low, "Do you know why Kinson Wexford so hellbent on finding me?"