Chương 5: Three Seconds to Die

The moment the agonizing pressure spiked in his chest—a crushing vice tightening around his sternum, ribs creaking inward as if some invisible hand sought to collapse his lungs—he severed his connection to the technique.

The black veins faded beneath his skin like drowning worms retreating into mud, the iron-dark tributaries dissolving back into pale flesh. He let out a harsh, ragged gasp—throat raw as stripped leather, lungs burning with the caustic sting of overexerted circulation—and checked the internal timer running in his head.

Sixty seconds.

That's my operational limit before my stamina bottoms out and total muscular failure kicks in.

He sheathed the chipped steel jian with a muted rasp of metal on leather, the familiar weight settling against his hip. He possessed a weapon.

He had iron-plated armor on his left arm. He carried a highly lethal biological toxin, sealed and cushioned in the pouch at his waist. His stats were firmly locked at a Tier-1 baseline. He was finally, truly ready to hunt.

Just then, the sharp clatter of a displaced pebble echoed down the gorge—a brittle, crystalline sound that cut through the oppressive silence like a blade through silk.

He froze.

His eyebrows rose a millimeter as his combat senses flared, every nerve suddenly taut as bowstring. He instantly leaned forward, crouching to minimize his silhouette, the dense coil of his thighs compressing without a sound. His breathing shallowed. His pupils dilated, adjusting to the gloom.

...

Out in the dark abyss, the hazy, crimson glow of handheld paper lanterns began to bleed through the freezing fog like distant embers drifting through smoke. The low, rhythmic murmur of human voices followed—casual, confident, edged with the careless ease of men who believed themselves predators in this forsaken place.

Relying on his newly acquired [12 Agility], he moved with absolute silence. He scaled the giant, moss-covered stone shoulder of a forgotten immortal statue that choked the narrow, dead-end ravine—fingers finding purchase in ancient cracks, boots pressing against slick stone without so much as a whisper of friction. Crouching perfectly still in the shadows, knees bent, breath shallow and controlled, he looked down at the newcomers. The cold stone bit into his palms. His heartbeat steadied.

A three-man patrol stepped into the ravine. They wore heavy, overlapping straw rain cloaks to repel the damp rot of the abyss, the rough fibers stained dark with moisture and mildew. Their faces were half-covered by thick cloth masks to filter the noxious air, leaving only narrow slits for their eyes—dull, watchful, scanning the skeletal landscape with practiced efficiency.

His gaze scanned their gear with surgical precision.

They weren't soldiers, and they definitely weren't lost nobles. They carried rusted dao at their hips—blades pitted with corrosion, edges chipped from use—but their belts were lined with specialized tools: heavy iron corpse-hooks that gleamed dully in the lantern light, bone chisels with worn wooden handles, and empty spatial pouches that hung slack and waiting.

They moved deliberately, boots crunching softly against shattered bone and gravel, using the hooks to efficiently overturn skeletons and check finger bones for jade rings. One man prodded a ribcage with the blunt end of his hook, tilting his head as if listening for the telltale clink of hidden treasure.

Grave robbers.

His jaw tightened, muscle bunching beneath stubbled skin.

Just as he assessed their gear, his vision flickered. A transparent blue screen popped up, locking onto the squad leader below—a stocky man with a crude iron amulet hanging from his neck: [Entity Recognized: Independent Tomb-Scavenger] [Cultivation Resonance: Tier-1 (Ash-Marrow Realm – 1st Stage: Cinder-Blood)] [Threat to Current Vessel: LETHAL (Group Formation)] [Estimated Yield: 50–75 Dao Embers per target] He blinked, relaxing his eyebrows, digesting the System's scan.

The UI hovered steadily, text crisp and cold.

Cinder-Blood, huh.

Based on the original host's memories, "Cinder-Blood" was the very first stage of Tier-1 body refinement. Above it sat Iron-Vein, Marrow-Rot, and finally, the peak: Obsidian-Frame.

Three men at the exact same physical baseline as me.

His right hand rested on the hilt of his sword, fingers curling loosely around the leather-wrapped grip. But his fingers didn't draw the blade. Not yet.

For a split second, a heavy knot of moral conflict stirred in his chest—a phantom weight pressing against his diaphragm, tightening his throat. Back on Earth, shooting a target who hadn't fired first, or who hadn't shown outright hostility, was a war crime.

He had no grievance with these men. They hadn't attacked him. They were just desperate scavengers trying to make a living in a hellish world, scraping survival from the bones of the dead.

Did I really have the right to ambush and slaughter them like animals?

He looked down at his own hand—calloused palm, dirt beneath the nails, faint tremor from lingering exertion. The UI pulsed softly in the corner of his vision, text flickering with quiet insistence.

[WARNING: Vessel Leaking. Hunt, or wither away.] He took a slow, silent breath through his nose, the freezing air stinging his cracked lips, throat tightening against the acrid taste of sulfur and rot. The hesitation evaporated, replaced instantly by the freezing calculus of survival.

This isn't Earth. There are no civilians down here.

If I drop down and say hello, they won't see a fellow survivor—they'll see a competitor.

Not to mention the identity of this original body. Who knew if some of them might recognize his face and report back to that sect elder, confirming he was still alive?

And if I don't harvest [Dao Embers], I die tomorrow.

His fingers curled tighter around the hilt, leather creaking softly beneath his grip.

They rob the dead. Geographically speaking, I am the dead. That makes them fuel. If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

The moral decision was made. The problem was the math.

He ran a rapid tactical simulation in his head, eyes tracking their movements with mechanical precision. They were moving in a standard wedge formation—overlapping fields of view, each man covering the other's blind spot with practiced ease.

If he dropped into the center, Target A would parry his initial strike, Target B would step into his blind spot, and Target C would sweep the legs.

Furthermore, the terrain was a nightmare; the uneven, shifting bone pile favored a static defensive line, not a solo aggressor. Even if he activated the Black-Iron Body Art, parrying three separate blades would create massive kinetic drag, burning his stamina twice as fast.

A fair fight is suicide. At sixty-one seconds, my muscles lock up, and they butcher me.

He had to engineer a slaughter. He needed to break the wedge formation.

So, he held his breath, chest still, remaining perfectly motionless in the shadows—just another stone gargoyle perched on the forgotten statue—waiting for human nature to make a mistake.

Ten seconds later, the opportunity presented itself.

Below him, the trailing man swept his lantern over a crushed ribcage half-buried in the mud. The faint, unmistakable glint of a tarnished jade ring caught the light—green-gold beneath layers of filth, still clinging to a skeletal finger.

The scavenger paused, boots scraping to a halt.

Instead of calling out to his squad, the man quickly glanced ahead—neck craning, pupils flicking left—to ensure his leader's back was turned. His shoulders hunched slightly, body language shifting from casual to furtive.

Greed was a universal language.

The straggler wanted to pocket the ring without splitting the profit. The trailing man dropped to one knee, abandoning his defensive posture as he pulled out a heavy chisel to pry the ring off the skeletal hand. The iron hook at his belt scraped softly against bone as he leaned forward, breath fogging the air in short, eager puffs. His free hand steadied the skeleton's wrist.

Because he stopped, the other two men naturally walked ten paces ahead, their boots crunching over debris, lanterns swaying gently.

A second later, the leader and the second man turned the corner of a massive stone pillar—its surface carved with weathered immortal script—their crimson lantern glow bleeding into the fog, diffusing into formless red haze.

Line of sight was severed. The wedge was broken.

His eyes locked onto the back of the straggler's neck—exposed skin above the cloth mask, pale and vulnerable in the dim crimson glow, tendons visible beneath thin flesh. Sweat glistened faintly at the hairline.

Three-second window before the leader turns around.

With [12 Agility], he didn't just fall; he slipped over the mossy stone edge like water off a leaf, body angling precisely, limbs compact. His dense Tier-1 muscles coiled and released with inhuman precision, every fiber synchronized.

Gripping his sword, he dropped from the shadows in absolute, calculated silence, angling his descent to land in the dead center of the isolated man's blind spot—directly behind, where peripheral vision failed.

He impacted the muddy ground with his knees bent, perfectly absorbing the kinetic force through his thighs and core. Soundless. The mud didn't even squelch.

Before the crouching scavenger could even register the shift in air pressure—the faint displacement of cold wind against his nape—the execution began.

His left arm shot forward with viper speed. The cold steel of his iron vambrace slammed against the straggler's jaw, metal striking bone with a muted thud, his hand brutally clamping the man's mouth shut—palm crushing lips against teeth—while jerking his head violently backward. Vertebrae crackled.

"Nn—!"

The movement perfectly exposed the pale skin at the base of the skull, cervical vertebrae suddenly prominent beneath stretched flesh.

Simultaneously, his right hand drove the chipped jian straight into the gap between the cervical vertebrae, angling upward into the brainstem with surgical precision. Steel parted muscle and cartilage. He gave the hilt a sharp, professional twist—bone grinding against metal—intending to instantly sever the brainstem and spinal meridians.

There was no cinematic thrashing. No muffled scream. The biological machine simply turned off, pupils dilating mid-blink, the man's body going instantly slack against his chest—warmth bleeding through his tunic, dead weight sagging forward, limbs going limp. The chisel clattered softly onto bone. Blood began to seep, hot and slick, pooling against his forearm.

With that, he hooked his pinky finger through the wire loop of the man's falling lantern, catching it mid-air so the glass wouldn't shatter against the rocks. He lowered the heavy corpse soundlessly into the mud, breath misting in the freezing air as he crouched low, thighs burning slightly from the controlled descent. Warm blood soaked into the earth beneath them.

[Target Slain. +75 Embers.] Perfect.

He ignored the glowing text entirely, blue letters hovering uselessly in his peripheral vision. His internal clock was strictly ticking down the three-second window.

Two... One...

He pressed his back flat against the cold stone of the massive pillar, melding perfectly into the shadows, the rough surface biting into his shoulder blades through his tunic. Moss dampened his clothing. He regulated his breathing—slow, shallow, silent—the mist of his exhalations minimal. His fingers tightened on the jian's hilt, blood dripping slowly from the chipped tip onto the mud.

Then, just as he predicted, a few paces ahead, the rhythmic swinging of the leader's lantern paused—the crimson glow steadying, no longer bobbing with footsteps.

"Old Chen?" the squad leader's muffled, annoyed voice echoed back, rough and impatient, the syllables distorted slightly by his cloth mask.

"What's the holdup back there? Leave the trash alone and keep moving."