The Undying Immortal System

My seclusion lasted longer than I had planned.

Over the course of several lives, I earned a total of 48,000 credits and spent 25,350. A small number of credits was used to hide my affinities each go-round, but the bulk had been spent on permanently upgrading my affinities for all five basic elements to low eight-star, creating a Rank 2 mental bookshelf, and learning how to expand my storage space.

The last one was where a new problem arose.

To expand my storage space on my own, I would need to have the seed of a spatial spirit fire in my soul. However, a soul could only house a single fire seed. I looked into purchasing the ability to store two seeds in my soul but was only told 'The cost of such an ability is not possible to calculate at this time.'

I could discard the Cold Mountain Fire seed, but that wasn't going to happen unless absolutely necessary. The option I chose to pursue was to buy an expansion to my storage space. With it, I would be able to store my current seed when I absorbed the new one. Once I started expanding my storage space even further, I would be able to store countless fire seeds and switch them out as I desired.

First, though, I had to pay the price of this initial expansion. I needed 1,000 cubic centimeters of space to store the seed. The cost for that was another 29,760 credits.

So, I lived life after life in Rudy's workshop as I practiced my skills in solitude, and my alchemy skills advanced far beyond what I had initially expected.

I had practically unlimited access to the Rank 1 herbs that Rudy kept in stock. At first, I was careful about using anything other than peonies, but no one ever questioned me about their disappearance, so I became bolder.

There was a servant who ensured all the herbs remained fully stocked, and since the herbs had a natural shelf life, they routinely had to be thrown out for being too old. I just accelerated that process.

Additionally, while the building was typically empty, save for me, there were others who visited it occasionally. I strictly adhered to Rudy's 'stay out of sight' policy, so I never saw who was coming and going from the place, but I didn't particularly care who they were. All that mattered to me was that their presence helped to hide my use of the workshop's herbs.

During this time, I performed all kinds of experiments with the herbs available to me, and an odd pattern began to emerge. Nearly all the pills I was able to successfully concoct registered as poisons. Aside from Qi Gathering Pills, basic healing pills, and a couple of other simple ill varieties, everything I was able to concoct was some kind of poison.

I would make a pill and then use my pill analysis ability, which I had upgraded for 1,000 credits, to see what I had made. I wasn't paying attention to recipes. I was focused on understanding medicinal energy and how the combinations of different energies would affect the body. No matter how I tried to alter my concoction process, nearly every herb in the workshop resulted in something deadly.

Six lifetimes passed this way. Over 500 years.

Intellectually, I knew I spent several lifetimes secluded away, but I didn't completely feel the passage of time. With each reset, my memories were compartmentalized. Every day in seclusion was nearly the exact same, and after returning to the start, if I didn't focus on the details, it felt like a life of eighty years or so took only a few days.

Additionally, the longer I spent in the workshop, the more content I grew with that kind of life. It was where I was supposed to be. My skills were growing. I was becoming a better cultivator and a better alchemist. I was doing everything I needed to do.

As time passed, my soul grew and strengthened significantly. This resulted in dramatic improvements to my qi control, and my qi vision improved to the point that I could see all the toxins hidden within Rank 1 herbs with only a glance.

At the end of my seclusion, I could create a wide variety of Perfect Rank 1 pills with 100% efficacy. While the vast majority of these pills were different varieties of poisons, I could only chalk that up being a result of the peculiar selection of herbs that were available to me.

With regard to alchemy, there was only a single blemish that kept me from being completely satisfied. I could never figure out how to use the spirit fire seed correctly. Rudy's workshop contained Rank 2 herbs, but without a spirit fire, I had been unable to do anything with them. I had tried many times, but it always ended in complete failure. To progress any further, I would need to find a teacher to guide me.

I had purchased everything I wanted except the expanded storage space. I had 22,830 credits on hand, and this death should finally bring me enough.

After I died, I would have to end my seclusion and return to the world. If I wanted to make any further progress in cultivation or alchemy, I would have to leave this small workshop behind and venture out once more.

However, while I was excited to continue my progress, there was a mystery I wanted to solve before I died.

My first life after beginning my seclusion had come to an unexpected end. I went to sleep, and the next thing I knew, I woke up in my tiny house in the Su Clan. I was, needless to say, confused.

I had died, but how? It only took me a few moments to recall an important detail.

Like in my first life in the workshop, roughly eighty years into my seclusion, Rudy had returned with two companions. As a Martial Master, my body hadn't aged nearly so far, and I was able to hide myself before they saw me. I didn't know what happened, but I had a good guess that it was related to them.

At that point, I had a choice to make. Should I do anything different?

I didn't like the idea of dying, and I had no desire to seek out death, but that had been a long life. I had lived to be over ninety years old. After turning forty, improvements in my cultivation base had slowed, and after sixty, I had barely made any improvements at all.

While it came later in life than Cao had said, I had to believe that this was the calcification she had warned me about. Possibly, it was delayed because I had ascended to Martial Master.

I had cultivated slowly and tried to form my meridians as well as I could, but I knew I was making mistakes that limited my potential for further advancement. By the time I was sixty, I was only a Martial Master 3, and after that, I never advanced again.

Possibly, I should have found a quick and painless way to bring my life to a close at that point, but I didn't want to seek my death too soon. So, since my cultivation was stalled, I threw myself into practicing alchemy with everything I had.

My death solved my cultivation problem and allowed me to begin anew and work toward creating a more perfect, more solid foundation.

So, during my second life in seclusion, I had to decide. Should I do anything different to try and survive longer?

After considering my options, I decided to do nothing different. I would wait until Rudy hatched his plans, and then I would go to sleep and wake up in a new life. This wasn't suicide. It was a time limit. At least, that's what I told myself.

The second life passed, and I made it to Martial Master 5 before getting stuck once more. I should have gone to find a teacher. I could have tried finding help. It would have been a good idea to end my seclusion right then. But my alchemy had started advancing in unexpected ways.

I decided to stick it out and try to make progress on my own. In my third life, I finally reached Martial Master 10, but I was unable to create the final meridian needed to become a Peak Master. Even after several more lives, I was never able to form that final meridian. For four lifetimes, I reached Martial Master 10, but I couldn't take the final step.

In my seventh life of this secluded cultivation, I used every ounce of focus I could muster to complete each meridian as perfectly as I possibly could. I needed them to be pristine, but I also needed to complete them before I was too old and my cultivation base stagnated and calcified once more.

At thirty-nine I formed my eleventh meridian.

At forty, my cultivation stagnated, but I didn't let that stop me.

At forty-eight, I formed my twelfth and final meridian, advancing to Martial Master Peak for the very first time.

This advancement assured me that once I died, I would have all the credits I needed. I wouldn't need to spend any more time in seclusion.

That being the case, I wanted to use my death to finally understand why I had kept dying in my sleep. I had a pretty good idea of who was to blame, but I had never once woken up to see them in the act.

I knew which night I always died, so when it was time, I did not go to sleep.

I exited the workshop and huddled in a far corner of the courtyard. My death had always been sudden, so something dramatic must have happened to the building I was in. Maybe I should have gotten farther away, but I wanted to see what had killed me so many times. If I left the courtyard, that wouldn't have been possible.

Deep in the night, with near-absolute darkness around me, I began to hear screams. They were muffled, fuzzy things. Distance, walls, and possibly something else blocked the sounds, but they were still just barely discernible as screams.

Not long after the screaming started, the alchemy building where I had spent so many years suddenly exploded. It didn't catch fire and slowly burn. It didn't go up in a blaze of flames. It was as if the entire building was built on a bedrock of C4.

Shrapnel blasted in every direction. Huddled in a distant corner of the courtyard, I was safe from most of the blast, but some small bits of wood and debris still struck me.

As a Martial Master, I had found that my body generated a weak energy field that could deflect small projectiles. It wasn't overly impressive, but it meant that I didn't need to fear the occasional explosion while working with volatile herbs.

The debris from the workshop's explosion flew at speeds fast enough to bruise me, but this energy shield ensured that nothing was too dangerous to me.

Once I regained my composure, I looked around the courtyard. It was a hell of burning wood and plants, but I didn't see any people. No corpses. It wasn't too much of a surprise since I was usually left alone in the building, but I still felt like someone had simply forgotten to evacuate me.

Why did they destroy my home? I wanted… I needed to understand what was happening.

At this point, I could feel my cultivation technique influencing me. As my soul grew, I was able to feel my own impulses separate from those of the technique more clearly. The feelings of my soul were a mix of fear, anger, and aggression. My technique caused the thoughts of my body to be calm and deliberate. This left my mind in a position where I could still think with a clear head. I was still afraid, but the edge was taken off, and the strongest feeling that remained was curiosity.

I wanted to leave the courtyard to explore and see what was happening.

After walking over to the courtyard's large red wooden doors, I gripped one of the bronze handles and pulled with all my strength. The only result of this was the handle snapping in two. Either the door was sealed, or the explosion had damaged the doorframe and trapped me inside.

Fortunately, I was a cultivator. A mere wooden door shouldn't be able to stop me from going wherever I wanted to go.

Unfortunately, I had never learned to use my new strength in such a way.

Taking a fighting stance, I centered myself and punched one of the doors with all the strength of my body.

The door didn't budge, and the bones in my hand nearly shattered.

I wanted to scream. That wasn't the way. Cultivating qi didn't improve my body or make me physically stronger. It gave me access to a new type of energy. I needed to use qi to bust through this door, not brawn.

Resetting myself, I resumed my fighting stance and threw out another punch. This time, it was slow and methodical. It looked more like a practice punch than anything else. However, I channeled all the energy I could into my knuckles.

The doors burst open with so much energy they broke apart and splinters flew everywhere.

I took a deep breath and returned my focus to searching for clues about what was happening.

The atmosphere outside of the courtyard was eerie. Before, I had heard screaming, but all that was left was quiescence. I could only hear the remains of the fires crackling in the courtyard I had just left.

I started walking in the direction I believed the screams had come from.

Walking through the streets at night was unnerving. The building complex consisted of several courtyards all separated off by large imposing walls, and the only light available was that of fires reflected down by the clouds overhead.

As I walked, the air turned unnaturally chilly. It had been a long time since I noticed any real change in temperature. I had been locked away in the alchemy building for centuries, and even without any type of heating or cooling, the temperature had never shifted with the seasons. This was the first time in this world that I had ever felt cold.

The cobblestones under my feet began to crackle with each step I took. Looking down, I saw tiny ice shards embedded in the cracks between them.

After turning a corner, I saw several large bluish lumps. They had been bodies. Somehow, they had been flash-frozen and covered in a thick layer of ice. I couldn't do anything for them. I could only investigate to learn how it had happened.

Ahead, I heard the sounds of fighting. I knew that was where I would find what I was looking for, so I ran forward.

The red walls of the complex opened up into a large garden. Plants and trees had been torn from the ground and lay scattered about haphazardly. A thick layer of frost covered most of the ground.

In the middle of the garden, two people fought. One was wearing robes in the colors of the Su Clan while the other was wearing robes similar to those of members of the Twin Mountains Sect.

Each time a punch or kick connected, I felt a blast of energy push me backward. When I looked at the place in qi vision, I was met with a haze of chaotic lines of different energies spreading out in every direction. As they fought, the two men were releasing qi at an astounding rate.

I didn't know anything about fighting as a cultivator, but my street fighting knowledge was decent. I could tell that the man in sect robes was trying to disengage, but the clan member wasn't allowing it. Finally, the man from the Su Clan made a fatal mistake. He overextended and allowed the sect warrior time to back away.

After that, I witnessed what must have happened to the two people I had seen earlier. Ice quickly gathered around the feet of the man from the clan. After that, his movement was hampered. The more he slowed, the faster the ice gathered. When he could no longer move, the sect fighter relaxed and slumped in exhaustion.

I wanted to know who attacked the clan. I walked toward the invader. I was walking to my death, but at that moment, I didn't think about it. My curiosity drove me onward.

As I walked, I tried to understand the reasons for my actions. I could feel that the cultivation technique was not affecting my curiosity. I had come by that naturally.

Instead, it was reducing my aggression and fear while increasing my positive feelings for this person. I was being urged to be friendly with him. I had more than sufficient soul strength to resist these urges, but I didn't. I allowed it to happen.

The man had noticed me long ago, but he didn't seem to consider me any sort of threat. With the amount of qi he had been blasting out earlier, he had to be a Martial Grandmaster, so that was understandable.

He let me approach.

When I was close enough to see his face, I was shocked.

"TianLei?"

This was the man I had met when I was entering the sect. He was also the one I had seen with Rudy so long ago.

"Lei?" The man burst out with laughter. "Does this look like lightning to you? I will give you a gift. I will let you experience the power of TianBing."

'TianBing' didn't even have to approach me. Ice slowly formed around me, starting at my feet.

Ice coated my legs. I was trapped and couldn't move. Ice covered my chest. It was nearly impossible to pull in a breath. Ice encased my head. I couldn't breathe.

When suffocated, a normal human can remain conscious for maybe a minute or two. As it turns out, with the assistance of qi, cultivators can survive a bit longer. I remained in that state, completely conscious but unable to move or breathe, for over ten minutes before I succumbed.

When I finally perished, my only wish was to never see 'TianBing' again.

You have died. Calculating…

You died as a Martial Master Peak – 20,000 credits awarded.

Total Credits: 42,830