Internal Time: Year 1, Month 2
The romance of the "isekai" life had died a long time ago. Now, there was only the mud.
Ji Han stood knee-deep in a pit of wet clay, stomping rhythmically. Squish. Squelch. Squish. Squelch.
He was mixing the clay with the dried stalks of the harvested Spirit Rice, which he had chopped into straw using the rusted iron sword. The mixture was heavy, clinging to his legs like shackles, but it was necessary. The nights were getting colder. The "Long Winter" of the domain wasn't just a metaphor; the ambient temperature dropped to near freezing when the internal sun went down.
He needed a house.
"Your legs are weak," a voice drifted from the dry bank above him.
Ji Han didn't stop stomping. He wiped sweat from his forehead with a muddy forearm. "I am building our shelter, Lin Qinghe. Unless you want to sleep in the dirt again tonight?"
The Sword Empress sat on the crate, her legs folded in a lotus position. She looked significantly better than she had a month ago. The Spirit Rice diet—monotonous as it was—had worked wonders. Her skin was no longer translucent, and the horrifying wheeze in her breath was gone.
"I am cultivating," she said calmly, her eyes closed. "I am repairing the vessel so that I might one day be useful. You are playing in the mud."
"It's adobe," Ji Han corrected. "Thermal mass. It absorbs heat during the day and releases it at night. It's simple thermodynamics."
"It is a waste of daylight," Lin Qinghe opened one eye. It was black and sharp, like a hawk's. "You asked me to teach you to kill. Yet you spend your days playing mason."
Ji Han stopped. His legs were burning. He climbed out of the pit, his movements stiff. He was leaner now, his muscles wiry and hard, stripped of all softness by months of starvation and labor.
"I can't train if I freeze to death," he said, grabbing a wooden mold he had cobbled together. He began packing the mud-straw mixture into it to form bricks.
"Come here," she ordered.
Ji Han paused. He looked at the half-finished wall of his small hut. It was barely waist-high.
"Now," she added, the air temperature dropping a few degrees around her.
Ji Han sighed, dropped the mold, and walked over.
"Stand there." She pointed to a patch of flat, hard-packed earth. "Feet shoulder-width apart. Knees bent. Back straight, as if a string is pulling your skull toward the heavens. Tuck your pelvis."
Ji Han sank into the stance. It was the Horse Stance—Ma Bu. He had read about it in wuxia novels. It looked easy.
It was not easy.
Within thirty seconds, his thighs began to tremble.
"Lower," Lin Qinghe commanded. She picked up a stalk of dried rice straw. It was thin, brittle, and harmless.
"I'm burning unnecessary calories," Ji Han gritted out through clenched teeth. "Static hold... isometric exercise... it's inefficient for cardio."
Thwack.
The straw whipped across his shin. It stung like a hornet.
"Focus!" Lin Qinghe snapped. "You treat your body like a machine. You think of inputs and outputs. This is why you fail to sense Qi."
"I am a machine," Ji Han argued, sweat dripping into his eyes. "Biology is just wet machinery."
"Wrong." She stood up and circled him. "The body is a furnace. The Qi is the fire. You are trying to build a fire by calculating the thermal efficiency of the wood, but you have no spark. You are cold, Ji Han. Your mind is too loud."
She poked him in the stomach with the straw. "Breathe. Not with your lungs. With your dantian. Pull the breath down to here."
Ji Han tried. He inhaled deep, pushing his stomach out.
"No," she said. Thwack. "You are just bloating yourself. Visualize the air as heavy. Like mercury. Swallow it. Let it sink."
One minute passed. Two.
Ji Han's legs were screaming. The pain was a high-pitched vibration running from his heels to his hips. He wanted to collapse. He wanted to go back to making bricks. Bricks were logical. Bricks didn't hurt like this.
"Hold it," she whispered, her voice right next to his ear. "The pain is the impurity leaving the muscle. Do not reject it. Accept it."
"It hurts," he gasped.
"Good. Life hurts. Death is painless. Which do you prefer?"
Ji Han gritted his teeth so hard he thought they might crack. He hated this. He hated the vague, mystical instructions. Sinking mercury. Fire in the furnace. It wasn't data. He couldn't put it in a spreadsheet.
But he trusted her. He had to. She was the SSS-Rank legend. He was just the guy who got lucky with a time dilation cheat.
He closed his eyes. He stopped thinking about the lactic acid in his quads. He tried to visualize the air.
Mercury. Heavy liquid.
He inhaled. He imagined the air bypassing his lungs, sliding down his esophagus, heavy and cold, pooling in the space three inches below his navel.
For a second, nothing happened.
Then, he felt it.
A flicker. A tiny, microscopic twitch of heat in his lower abdomen. It wasn't the heat of digestion or exertion. It was different. It felt... electric. Like he had swallowed a 9-volt battery.
His eyes snapped open. "I felt it."
"Do not speak!" Lin Qinghe barked. "Hold it! Circulate it! If you speak, the breath escapes!"
Ji Han clamped his mouth shut. He tried to grab that tiny wisp of heat with his mind. He tried to push it down his leg, toward the pain in his thighs.
The heat moved. Sluggishly, reluctantly, but it moved.
It hit his right thigh.
[System: Skill Unlock - Basic Qi Cultivation (Level 1)][System: You have sensed the Origin.]
The notification flashed in his vision, bright and jarring.
His concentration broke. The heat vanished. His legs gave out, and he collapsed into the dust, gasping for air as if he had been drowning.
"Pathetic," Lin Qinghe said, though she offered him a hand to help him sit up. "You held it for three cycles. A true genius would have completed a full meridian circuit."
Ji Han lay on his back, staring at the purple sky. He was exhausted, sore, and covered in dirt. But he was grinning.
"I felt it," he wheezed. "It's real. It's not just magic. It's... energy. Conductive energy."
"It is the Dao," Lin Qinghe said, sitting back down on her crate. "And you have barely scratched the surface of the mountain."
She looked at him, her expression softening slightly. "But you found the door. Most mortals die of old age staring at the wall."
Ji Han sat up, dusting off his hands. He looked at the half-built mud wall, then at the vast, empty fields of his domain.
One year had passed inside. Six days had passed outside.
He had food. He had a teacher. And now, he had the first spark of power.
"Tomorrow," Ji Han said, standing up on shaky legs. "We finish the hut. Then... we double the training time."
"Triple," Lin Qinghe corrected, a faint smirk playing on her lips. "If you want to survive the Sect Invasion in six years, you do not have time to sleep."
Ji Han looked at the setting sun. The shadows stretched long across the Eternal Domain.
"Fine," he said. "Triple."