My Journey to Immortality Begins with Hunting

Another year flew by. Cloudpeak Province was blanketed under winter snow.

One calm morning, Li Yuan lifted his blade and loosed a move he had practiced a thousand times. The feel was perfect.

A 300 meter arc of superheated scarlet scythed out like a fire-dragon's breath, melting rock to slag and sending heat shimmers writhing upward, an instant hellscape of red flame.

"Got it!" Li Yuan exulted.

The celebration was short-lived.

The move had somehow mutated outside the permafrost.

First his right arm burned; then lumps ofmeattumbled up in ridges. The swelling raced across his body—arms and legs thickened, bones stretched.

In mere seconds, Li Yuan shot from ordinary height to nearly six meters tall. All of his clothes were torn to shreds, and his physique bulged. His muscle fibres were as dense as molten steel, hissing white vapor into the snow.

Startled, Li Yuan thundered toward a frozen lake; the ground shook as though a herd of elephants charged. At the shore he leaned over his reflection and genuinely recoiled.

Not for lack of courage; he wasn't frightened, just appalled.

A six meter tallcosmic fire giantholding Azure Serpent the size of a toothpick had nothing in common with the life he wanted. If the Dao and daily living ever forced him to choose, Li Yuan would always pick life.

Staring at the molten titan reflected in the ice, he couldn't help but snarl, "What kind of sick joke is this? Since when does practicing the blade turn you intothis?"

His breath steamed like a furnace as anger surged, then fell away. He folded his legs and sat at the lake's rim.

The ice under him vaporized in seconds. Water bubbled, fish—parboiled ghost-white—floated belly-up. He flicked them aside in disgust, shifted to a fresh patch of ice, and let his thoughts race.

"Yang governs flesh," Li Yuan reasoned. "When I fused the flame with my shadow blood, the extra Yang energy swelled into a field of meat. Just now the power spike must have rammed a flood of Yang energy through my veins, meaning instant mass gain and instant growth. Storing Yang energy is one thing; circulating a whole torrent through my flesh and muscles is another.

"The frozen tundra's deep chill suppresses Yang, so my body stayed normal there. Outside the cold, the limiter is gone and I balloon.

"So…if I pull the spilled Yang back inside me, my size should shrink. Maybe the weight will drop too." Chin in hand, Li Yuan tested the idea.

Sure enough, his frame slowly compressed until he looked human again, though he still weighed the same as a small boulder.

"If I can fold the flame tighter, will the weight fall as well? But how to compress it. Do I use Yin?"

A long silence, then his eyes lit up.

"No! If the flame shapes the flesh, flesh should be able to shape the flame. Every flare tweaks my muscles; why can't I ride that feedback and seize the change? First step, master my own body."

A brand-new project, and Li Yuan was positively giddy. A quick glance at the skill list showed a fresh new entry.

Unnamed Ultimate Skill - Rank ??? (1/1)

"That figures. Since it's derived from pure Yang, the System can't judge its rank. Punch-wise, though, the move feels on par with my Formless Blade Qi. That makes it fifth rank, or fourth rank maybe? Whatever, I need to give it a name…" Li Yuan mulled it over. "Since the blade erupts like a dragon exhaling flames, let's call it Dragon's Breath."

The entry in his skill list immediately updated.

Dragon's Breath - Rank ??? (1/1)

His combat power ticked up from 3,600~54,442 to 4,530~69,496.

Li Yuan lit up with joy. "Push far enough and even a baby step pays off in gold. Heaven rewards hard work!"

He almost instinctively tried allocating points to the skill, then sighed when the (1/1) refused all further progress. No matter; he dove back into the science of muscle control, so absorbed he forgot he was still stark naked.

Li Yuan's hair reached his knees, his skin snow-white, and his muscles like sculpted iron. An ignorant woodcutter might have taken him for a mountain god. However, nobody got close enough to test that theory; his senses would have caught them more than a kilometer out.

Three months blurred past before Li Yuan finally noticed his lack of clothing. One tug on the thousand-mile thread and he blinked into Xue Ning's study. He had rebound the thread to her the day she set up house here.

The little chamber was warm and dim. Xue Ning dozed by the brazier, cream-colored blanket over her knees, a brass hand-warmer tucked to her chest. The rejuvenation pills still lent her the face of her youth, but the fatigue of 51 winters showed beneath.

The sudden rustle in the study jerked Xue Ning half-awake.

"Who's there?"

"It's me," Li Yuan answered.

Xue Ning let out a long breath of relief, then heard him again.

"Don't turn around yet."

"All right."

A moment later, curiosity got the best out of her. She pivoted around for a look, then burst out laughing. Her man was wrapped in her travelling cloak like a brigand caught in the wardrobe. "What in the world happened to you?"

Still chuckling, she sent a maid for clothes. This manor kept plenty in Li Yuan's size, and soon he was dressed and hearing the latest news. The overall situation, he learned, was oddly calm. That could only mean the Emperor and Lotus Cult were still mass producing troops.

Li Yuan decided to linger a few days. He'd been stretched taut by training; a little softness might spark fresh insight.

During those days, Xue Ning cooked every meal herself—soups, stir-fries, delicate stews—and sat watching him eat with quiet devotion.

It reminded Li Yuan of a cat he'd raised in his previous life, a creature that would simply sit and gaze at him, wide-eyed, until the day it died. Xue Ning felt similar to that cat…gentle, wordless, and irreplaceable.

He pulled her close, whispering sweet nothings.

Xue Ning had heard all sorts of flattery from merchants, nobles, and cut-throats alike, but she still savored every word as if no one had ever spoken to her so tenderly.

"I could listen to your lovetalk for a dozen lifetimes," she murmured, drifting to sleep in his arms.

The sense of time slipping away stabbed him, but he held the thought down and promised, "Then I'll come back every short while and keep you company."

Playing with his hair, she laughed in that warm, matronly way of hers. "At least let me trim this mane. You keep tickling everyone."

He hauled over a boulder for a chair and faced the bronze mirror. Ordinary shears couldn't bite his hair, so he passed her White Serpent.

Silky black lengths drifted to the floor; Xue Ning gathered every strand into a little box. Not for any scheme, simply something to hold when she missed him.

The scene made him think of Yan Yu in their days back in the mountains of Gemhill County. She'd have seized a fistful of hair and scratched his ribs until he begged for mercy, laughing the whole time.

Rested and lighthearted, Li Yuan threw himself back into training. He spent his days carving the empty barren plains nights returning to Xue Ning's manor. As weeks became months he learned to choreograph flesh and flame, while Xue Ning's weariness melted under his steady presence.

˙·٠✧🐗➶➴🏹✧٠·˙

Two years later.

Autumn arrived on the barren plain.

A young man suddenly threw back his head and roared with laughter. When he'd been weaker he would have stayed quiet, broken through, and slipped away. Now, having mastered a brand new power, he could scarcely contain the joy.

Li Yuan vaulted lightly and landed. Hardly a sound reached the ground, as though he weighed no more than a sparrow. Sprinting, punching the air, laughing, he confirmed it again and again.

His weight was normal.

The raging fire inside had been compressed by the intricate weave of his flesh into a single, dense spark. The instant he chose to release it, that spark could swell into an inferno. But until then, he was as light as any ordinary man.

And there was another delight.

He stepped forward once, and his muscles slid, reshaping his face into someone entirely new. Another step, another face. Ten steps, ten different visages—eyes, jawlines, even the amount of hair all changing at will.

On the eleventh stride his whole build began to shift—taller, shorter, broader, leaner. At the same moment a line of glowing text surfaced in his mind.

Incomplete Six Paths - Mortal World Transformation (1/4)

"Incomplete…" Li Yuan noted. Only the first quarter of the art. But it was a start, and the possibilities felt limitless.