2025-12-11 19:53:01CHAPTER 003
The pain didn’t stop it only grew sharper.Suddenly, glowing words flashed across his vision:
[Emergency Salvage in progress.]
[Host body identified as primary ‘waste site.’ Initiating purification protocol.]
Kieran sucked in a shaking breath. “W-What now? What are you doing to me?”
A strange new feeling rose inside him, mixing with the agony. It wasn’t pain this time. It was… a low, powerful vibration, like something deep in his chest had finally woken up.
The voice echoed again, calm and cold:
[Processing foreign toxins. Converting waste into usable energy.]
Kieran’s eyes widened. “You’re not fighting the poison… you’re eating it?”
The glowing grid in his vision flickered wildly, numbers and symbols racing faster and faster.
“Hey slow down!” he shouted, gripping his head as the data streamed past. “I can’t even read that!”
But the system didn’t listen.
Isolating ‘Yin’ attribute energy…
Filtering ‘Beast Resentment’ emotional residue…
Converting lethal toxicity into base spiritual particulates…
Channeling particulates through fractured meridians for structural analysis…
The pain didn’t stop, but it changed. Instead of sharp agony, it turned into a heavy pressure, like something inside him was being crushed… then rebuilt.
The gray color on his skin slowly faded, replaced by burning heat. The dark smoke around him pulled back into his body, as if sucked through his pores.
After what felt like forever, the shaking ended.
Kieran lay on the ground, breathing hard, covered in sweat and grime. He felt emptied out but also strangely full. A slow, pulsing energy sat deep in his gut, warm and unfamiliar.
The overseer, Corbin, tapped him with the end of his hook.
“Hey. You dead or not?”
Kieran groaned and rolled onto his side. His body still hurt, but it was the kind of hurt that meant he would live.
A cold message flashed in his mind:
[Salvage successful. Nightmare Ember processed.]
[Yield: 7 units of Unaspected Primordial Essence. Essence compatible with all cultivation paths. Can bypass damaged channels for reinforcement.]
[New Function Unlocked: Internal Foundry. Host may refine consumed ‘waste’ into Essence.]
Kieran blinked. “I’m… alive.”
Corbin snorted. “Shame. You can’t even die properly.”
He waved the hook toward Kieran. “Well, you’re the sect’s mess now, not mine. Get up. I’m not keeping you in my trash pit.”
Kieran pushed himself to his knees, surprised at the strength returning to him. The 7 units of Essence pulsed warmly inside him, like hidden fuel.
“Where am I supposed to go?” he asked.
Corbin pointed at a small, broken-down group of wooden huts in the distance.
“Where do we dump anything that’s still barely useful?” he said. “The Custodial Quarter. You’ll sweep floors, scrub toilets, and wait to die. Now move. You’re making the air smell worse than usual.”
Kieran stood on shaky legs, wiped his face, and took a breath.
For the first time, the air didn’t burn his lungs.
And that tiny warmth inside him whispered:
Not useless. Not anymore.
With no other choice, Kieran walked in the direction Corbin had pointed. His steps were unsteady, but he kept moving.
He walked along the edge of the outer sect, where the real disciples lived. Their clean grey robes swished as they passed him, and every face twisted with disgust.
One disciple whispered loudly, “Look, the channel-cripple is still alive.”
Another snickered. “He survived the pit? Tougher than a cockroach.”
A third murmured, “Marcus won’t be happy he’s still breathing.”
Kieran lowered his head and kept going. Their words didn’t surprise him they never had. But the small, hot spark of Primordial Essence burning inside his stomach was new.
It felt like a coal of defiance refusing to go out.
The Custodial Quarter looked exactly as terrible as people described: broken buildings, peeling wood, and a sour smell of old work and older misery.
An elderly supervisor with a permanently sour face Garth didn’t even try to hide his annoyance when Kieran approached. He threw a ragged brown robe, a cracked bucket, and a stiff broom at Kieran’s feet.
“Your bunk is at the end of the hall,” Garth muttered. “Third pallet on the left. You start at dawn. You’ll be cleaning the Spirit Beast Pens.”
He finally glanced at Kieran just long enough to sneer.
“If you’re going to die, do it somewhere I don’t have to mop up.”
Garth walked away without waiting for a reply.
That night, Kieran lay on a thin, itchy pallet in a room that smelled like dust, sweat, and quiet despair. In the dark, he finally dared to let his mind touch the System.
“What is this Essence?” he asked silently.
A calm, cold answer appeared in his mind:
[Primordial Essence is the raw energy before it becomes Qi, Mana, or Divine Power. Your broken channels cannot hold refined energy, but they can be reinforced and rebuilt using this base material.]
“Rebuilt?”
The word hit him like a spark to dry wood.
Hope sharp, bright, and dangerous stabbed through his chest.
[Affirmative. Current Host status: Meridian Damage: 99%. Estimated Essence required for basic functionality (1st Stage of Qi Condensation): 1,000 units.]
A thousand units.
Kieran stared at the number on the System screen. The deadly Nightmare Ember had nearly killed him… and it had only given him seven units.
A thousand felt impossible.
He swallowed hard. “How do I get more?”
The System answered immediately:
[Directive: Find and absorb high-yield spiritual waste. Recommendation: Your assigned location the Spirit Beast Pens contains suitable materials.]
Kieran sighed. “Of course it does.”
The next morning, still sore and tired, he made his way to the Spirit Beast Pens.
The smell hit him like a punch.
“Ugh,” he gagged. “Smells like something died… twice.”
The pens were huge, noisy, and chaotic. Azure Falcons screeched from their perches. Stone-Tusk Boars snorted and slammed their bodies against wooden rails. Other creatures he didn’t even know the names of roared, chirped, or hissed.
His job?
Shovel dung.
Scrape filthy straw into a cart.
Mop the floors with buckets of foul water disciples threw at him with amused grins.
“Hey, cripple,” one handler shouted, laughing, “try not to fall into the boar pen. They don’t like bony snacks.”
Kieran clenched his jaw and kept working.
But the System never stopped scanning.
Pile of Stone-Tusk Boar dung.
Contains undigested fragments of Iron-Reflex Herb.
Potential Essence: 0.5 units.
(Requires Internal Foundry.)
Even poop had value.
Disgusting value, but still value.
Whenever no one was paying attention, Kieran quietly pocketed small things the System pointed out: a molting feather from a sick falcon, a chipped fang from a beast’s trough, a handful of glowing soil.
Garbage to everyone else.
Gold to him.
At the end of the day, Kieran crouched behind the manure cart, hidden from sight.“System,” he whispered, “process everything.”
[Initiating Internal Foundry.]
A grinding, burning sensation filled his core. It wasn’t painful just uncomfortable, like something inside him was chewing through metal.
After a few minutes, the result appeared:
[Salvage complete. Total yield: 3.2 units of Primordial Essence.]
[Cumulative Essence: 10.2 / 1000.]
Kieran stared at the number.
Ten point two.
A whole day of disgusting labor… for almost nothing.
“A thousand units,” he muttered, his voice cracking. “At this rate, I’ll die of old age before I even finish step one.”
For a moment, despair pushed at his chest like a heavy stone.
But then the small burn of Essence inside him flickered warm and stubborn.
And he clenched his fists.
“No,” Kieran whispered. “I’m not giving up. Not again.”
Before he could think further, loud shouting came from the main training pen.
Previous Chapter
Latest Chapter
The Roof and the Rain
The Chatterbox Community Hall was less a hall and more a large, stubborn shack. The walls weren't straight, the roof leaked in three places, and the floor was a patchwork of salvaged planks that creaked in a unique, conversational way. It was, everyone agreed, perfect.It became the heart of the district's new sound. Not because it was quiet, but because it was a dedicated space for their particular kind of noisy work. The sound-map meetings moved inside. The weekly noise-swaps became concerts where a five-year-old's rhythmic spoon-banging was given the same respectful silence as Kael's intricate woodwind melodies.The Reedhold trade goods were displayed on a makeshift shelf jars of honey glowing in the window, the foghorn-song pot a centerpiece.The Council's "Great Civic Symphony" contest was forgotten, a bland memory next to the vibrant, ongoing noise of the Hall. The Harmony broadcasts continued, but now they sounded like they were coming from very far away, like polite music from
The Work of the Street
The silence from below was a victory, but a quiet one. The Council’s Harmony music still played in the squares, but a seed of doubt had been planted. People who had heard the strange, glorious cacophony from Fen’s basement leaking into the street started to find the official music… boring.It was like eating only sugar. Sweet, but it left you hungry for something real.The “Acoustic Reconciliation Council” was not stupid. They stopped talking about unity and started talking about safety. Their new stage shows featured engineers explaining the “dangers of uncharted resonance” and doctors warning of “sonic fatigue” from too much discord.They offered free “sound-proofing” kits for apartments simple foam panels that also, incidentally, dampened the noise of your neighbor’s sound-map meetings.The battle was no longer over silence or song. It was over attention. And the street was losing.Elara, Corvus, and their ragged group saw the energy seeping away. Making a sound-map was hard work.
The Boy Who Listened
The boy's name was Leo. The rule he proposed "Sometimes, you just have to listen" didn't solve everything. But it stuck. It became the last, faint line on every sound-map in the Chatterbox, a humble reminder scribbled in the corner.Leo took the rule seriously. While adults argued over decibel allowances and swap-meet schedules, Leo listened. He listened to the wind whistling through a cracked spire. He listened to the secret, tapping language of the steam pipes.He listened to the old instrument-maker, Kael, who told him stories of sounds that were lost the hum of a particular kind of glass, the song of a brass bell that rang in a key no one could replicate anymore."Most people listen for what they want to hear," Kael told him, sanding a piece of aromatic wood. "Or for what bothers them. You listen like a hunter. For the things hiding in between."What Leo was hunting, he didn't know. But he found something strange. In the deepest basement of his building, behind the coal chute that
The Messy Harmony
The Cacophony of Dawn lasted a week. A glorious, exhausting, deafening week where the people of the City of Spires said everything they'd ever held back. Then, the headaches started. The fights over noise became constant. Someone's joyful drumming was another person's sleepless nightmare.The freedom to be loud was crashing headfirst into the need for rest, for thought, for peace.Elara and Corvus hadn't really gotten lost. They were found every day, by someone with a new problem. They were hiding in plain sight, in a small room above a reopened music shop in a district now called the Chatterbox.A young woman named Fen, with dark circles under her eyes, found them there. "You have to help," she said, her voice raw. "My neighbors, the Millers, they sing. All night. Revolutionary songs. They say it's their right. My baby can't sleep. My father is sick. I asked them to stop after midnight. They called me a 'Quietist,' a traitor to the new age. What do we do?"This was the new war. Not b
The Cacophony of Dawn
The collapse of the crystalline Quiet did not bring immediate victory. It brought shockwaves. The amplified heartbeat from the Spires cut off mid-thump, leaving a deafening silence that was more terrifying than any noise.The sanitized hum of Elara's stolen song dissolved into static, then into nothing. For a long, breathless minute, the entire city existed in a pure, un-governed acoustic vacuum.Then, the void filled.It was not with a single sound, or even a unified chorus. It was a cacophony a glorious, terrifying, unstoppable tidal wave of every possible noise at once.Without the central dampening fields, without the structured broadcasts to provide a rhythmic baseline, every repressed sound in the City of Spires erupted. A decade's worth of unsung songs, un-shouted arguments, unmourned grief, and un-laughed laughter exploded into the air.Machinery, freed from noise-suppression protocols, shrieked and clattered. People, liberated from sonic curfew, poured into the streets, and t
The Contradiction
The path to the Central Spire was a descent into a different kind of silence. Not the dead quiet of the old world, nor the vibrant hush of the ghost frequency network. This was the sterile, pressurized silence of a fortress preparing for war.The closer they got to the administrative heart of the city, the more the ambient noise of the adjusting metropolis faded, replaced by the sub-auditory thrum of powerful sonic dampeners and the occasional, clipped transmission of security patrols.Lin's route was a masterpiece of acoustic misdirection, taking them through the resonant "shadow" of a roaring wastewater cascade, through a tunnel that vibrated in sympathy with the distant, sanctioned hum from the Spires, masking their own signatures.The Weeping Coin was their compass, its temperature dropping to a warning chill whenever they neared an active suppressor field.They emerged at last into a cavernous, dimly lit space the foundation level of the Central Spire. It was a world of colossal,
You may also like
EasySync System: Amazing Wealth
Baby Bunny26.4K viewsThe Omnipotent God's Heir
WestReversed28.8K viewsSupreme Guardian of Earth
Ideabadar19.9K viewsSkythunder System
Scoco21.1K viewsI'd Like to Change My Reincarnation Subscription, Please
Gem13.1K viewsMy Trillionaire System(wealth activate)
Crystal Corner2.3K viewsReincarnation of the dragon king
Sami sami1.8K viewsLUCKY RANDAL
Mara1.1K views