Hun Jiang returned to his small hut as the morning sun grew warmer. The first thing he did was start a small fire in the hearth. He filled his pot with water from the bucket and set it to boil. In his last life, he had been a vegetarian, and he saw no reason to change that now.He chopped the wild mushrooms he had foraged and the hardy greens he grew in a small patch behind the hut, adding them to the pot with a pinch of salt.
He sat at his rough wooden table with a bowl of the simple, steaming soup. As he ate, the earthy taste filling his mouth, he began to sort through his thoughts, reviewing the plan he had made for himself.
He mentally ticked off the first task: Solve the meal problem. That was done. The arrangement with the woodcutter was stable. He had a small but reliable income. One worry was gone.
The next task was to practice archery. That was ongoing. Every morning on the hill. The wooden bow was a start, a way to train his body and mind for the Divine Bow within him. He still had two months before leaving for Nuoding City. He believed that with consistent daily practice, his skill would reach a solid level by then.
Then came the last task, the one he had been putting off: Explore the Divine Earrings.
He took another spoonful of soup, procrastinating even in his mind. The truth was, the first two tasks had consumed his time and focus. They were clear goals: earn money, shoot the bow. But testing the limits of his immortality felt unpleasant. He was a bit lazy about it. More than that, he didn't want to hurt himself. The idea of deliberately cutting or burning his own skin to see if it healed, even though he knew it should, went against every basic instinct. It was a frightening thing to contemplate.
He finished the last of the soup, placing the empty bowl down with a soft clunk. The silence of the hut pressed in on him.
But I have to do it, he finally admitted to himself.
The realization was clear. This was still the Douluo Continent. The rule here was simple: the strong ate the weak. If you were not strong, then someone else would make your decisions for you. His immortality was a fantastic shield, but a shield was not a weapon. If all he could do was not die, then he was just a very durable target. He could be captured, imprisoned, or studied. To a powerful soul master or a curious organization, an unkillable boy wouldn't be a threat; he'd be the ultimate lab rat, a testing piece they could never break. Immortality without strength was not freedom; it was a cage that could last forever.
The thought caused a cold shiver that had nothing to do with the morning chill. He could no longer allow himself to be lazy or scared of a little hardship. He didn't know what kind of problems he might face in the future, so he decided it was better to take action today rather than think about doing it tomorrow.
He stood up from the table, his mind made up. He left the small hut and walked out of the village, not toward his usual practice hill, but toward a different one. This was the hill older children whispered about, the one that bordered the deeper wilds where soul beasts were said to roam. Villagers generally stayed away, which made it the perfect, private place for what he needed to do.
He climbed the steep path, his new strength making the ascent easy. When he reached the top, he didn't go to the open area.Instead, he walked to the far side, where the ground dropped away sharply. He sat down on the very edge, his legs dangling over.
Below him was not a gentle slope, but a sheer drop onto a large, flat slab of gray rock that jutted out from the base of the cliff. It was about a fifty-foot drop. He looked down at it, folding his hands in his lap, then tapping his chin with one finger as he calculated. If a normal person jumped—or slipped—from where he was sitting, there was a 100% chance they would hit that rock. The impact would be instant and fatal. Bones would shatter. Nothing would survive.
Hun Jiang felt a tightness in his chest, a primal fear that screamed at him to scoot back from the edge. His heart beat faster. This was madness. What if the description was wrong? What if "no weapon can harm you" didn't include the ground itself?
He took a deep, shaky breath, pushing the fear down. He had to believe in the power. He had to know. If he couldn't trust it in this controlled moment, he would never trust it in a real crisis.
He abandoned the hesitation in one decisive motion. He didn't stand up to jump. He simply let his body tip forward from where he sat. He pulled his legs in, bent his knees toward his chest, and let gravity take him.
He fell.
His stomach lurched. The wind rushed past his ears with a loud, continuous whoosh, snatching his breath away. He closed his eyes against the sting of the air. He felt his hair, both black and the new golden streaks, whipping wildly above his head.
Then, a warmth blossomed on his chest. It wasn't an external heat, but a glow that came from within him, from the divine earrings fixed to his lobes. In the blink of an eye, a brilliant, solid light erupted across the front of his body. It formed into armor—a chest plate of shimmering, sun-bright gold that covered his entire torso from his collarbone to his waist. It was seamless, as if it had been poured onto him.
He didn't have time to process it before—
THUMP-CRUNCH.
He hit the rock. But he didn't feel a shattering impact. He felt a massive, deep vibration travel through his entire body, as if he were a bell that had been struck. There was no pain. No snap of bones. Instead, the sound that filled the air was a loud, gritty CRACK that came from beneath him.
The large, solid slab of rock he had landed on did not hold. Under the concentrated force of his falling body, protected and made unnaturally resilient by the golden armor, the rock itself gave way. It shattered like a giant cookie, exploding into a cloud of dust and gravel.
Hun Jiang landed in the middle of the destruction, half-buried in pulverized stone. He lay there for a second, stunned. He coughed, spitting out fine rock dust that had filled his mouth when he'd gasped on impact. The gritty powder coated his tongue and teeth. He brushed a hand across his face, wiping dust from his eyes.
Slowly, he pushed himself up, his hands sinking slightly into the crushed rock beneath him. He got to his feet, standing in the small crater he had made. He looked down at his body, then at the destruction around him.
"I'm still alive," he said out loud to the quiet hillside. His voice was hoarse from dust. A faint, disbelieving smile touched his lips. "After all, I was not wrong."
But then his eyes were drawn downward, to the brightness that was slowly fading from his chest. The golden armor was still there, glowing softly. The sight of it made his earlier smile freeze.
"Oh," he whispered. He reached up and touched his own hair, a gesture of sudden realization. "I am still wrong."
The armor had appeared. Just like Karna's kavach in the stories. It wasn't a passive, invisible field. It was a physical, divine manifestation that came to his defense. He had been right about the protection, but wrong about its nature.
He brought his dusty hands down and slowly, carefully, touched the golden surface on his chest. It was warm and smooth, like polished metal heated by the sun. As his fingers made contact, the glow intensified for a final moment, and then the armor simply… dissolved. It didn't break apart or fade; it just became light, and the light was reabsorbed into the air around him, leaving his ordinary, dusty clothes behind.Like it's work finished.
He stood in the settling cloud of dust, brushing grit from his face with rough hands. He ran his fingers through his hair, shaking loose the sand and tiny fragments of rock. Taking a deep breath of the clearer air, he turned to leave the shattered remains of the boulder behind.
Just as he took his first step, a sound froze him in place.
Hisssssssss…
It was a long, low, threatening sound that slithered through the quiet of the hillside. It came from his right.
Hun Jiang's head snapped toward the noise. There, emerging from a thicket of brambles and shadow, was a snake. It was enormous—about four meters long, and its body was as thick around as a young tree trunk. Its scales were a dull, mottled purple and grey, like a bruise. The sheer size of it told him what it was: a Datura Snake. A soul beast. From its presence and the pressure it gave off, it had to be around four hundred years in cultivation. It must have been drawn by the loud crash of the breaking rock.
His mind raced. He couldn't fight it. He didn't have a single spirit ring. His Divine Bow was just a formless potential inside him, and his wooden training bow was useless against such a creature.
He was immortal, yes. Nothing in this world could kill him. But that didn't mean he was invincible or stupid. Being bitten, constricted, and dragged off by a giant snake would be a nightmare of pain and helplessness. He wouldn't die, but he could be trapped, tortured, or simply stuck in a miserable situation for who knows how long.
The snake's head lifted, its forked tongue tasting the air, its dark, pupil-less eyes fixing on him.
Fight wasn't an option. The only smart move was flight.
Hun Jiang didn't wait another second. He spun on his heel and ran to the left, away from the snake and the cliff, pushing into the thicker woods on the hillside. He poured all his new strength into the sprint. His legs, powered by the changes in his body and the constant physical labor, pumped beneath him. He crashed through low bushes, his breath already coming in sharp gasps, the sound of his own heartbeat loud in his ears.
He could hear it behind him—a heavy, rapid slithering, the sound of a thick body moving fast through dry grass and dirt. It was following.
He didn't look back. He just ran, choosing the path of most resistance, hoping to lose it in the uneven terrain. He leaped over fallen logs, scrambled up small rocky inclines, and crashed down the other side. The slithering sound stuck with him, sometimes closer, sometimes fading, but always there. For what felt like an eternity, his world narrowed to the burn in his lungs, the pounding of his feet, and the terrifying sound of pursuit.
Finally, after what must have been nearly two kilometers, the sounds faded away completely. He risked a glance over his shoulder. The woods behind him were still and empty. He had outrun it, or it had given up.
He staggered to a stop, bending over with his hands on his knees, gasping for air. Sweat and dust streaked his face. His legs felt like water. Once he could breathe without his chest searing, he let himself collapse onto the soft moss of the forest floor, flat on his back.
He lay there, staring up through the canopy of leaves. The sky was visible in patches, and the light had changed. The sun was beginning its slow dip toward the horizon, painting the high clouds with hints of orange.
He watched the sky darken, his breathing slowly returning to normal. The adrenaline faded, leaving behind a deep, physical weariness and a crystal-clear thought.
There is still a long way to go.
Immortality was a fact. But it wasn't enough. Not even close. Without real power, without spirit rings and skills, he was just a very hard-to-kill rabbit, forever running from the snakes of the world. He closed his eyes for a moment, the lesson of the afternoon etched into his bones as deeply as the divine power in his soul. The real work was just beginning.
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