Huo Chen let Huo Lian's words slide past him without a visible reaction. He'd learned years ago that responding to mockery only made things worse. Better to stay quiet and beside he had bigger things to think about now.
He turned away from his cousin and moved toward the eastern wing of the hall. There, under the shadow of a massive stone pillar carved with the likeness of a mountain, a simple wooden table had been set up.
A junior disciple sat behind it—no more than fourteen or fifteen, his face still soft with youth but his eyes already carrying the tired look of someone who spent too much time with ledgers and not enough cultivating.
The boy didn't look up as Huo Chen approached, his brush moving in a rhythmic scratch-scratch across a bamboo ledger. "Name and layer?" the boy asked, voice flat and monotonous. "Huo Chen. Fourth layer, Qi Refining." The brush paused for a fraction of a second—a flicker of recognition.
Fourth layer at twenty-five was perfectly average. Neither impressive nor pathetic. The boy made a quick notation. "Patrol auxiliary," the disciple stated.
"You'll be assigned to the rear guard. Your job isn't to kill—it's to survive and maintain order. You'll be marking retreat paths with chalk and collecting any scattered spirit stones the Iron-Fanged Wolves might have dislodged after the main team clears the area. Expected duration: two to three hours. Merit reward: eight points if completed without incident.
Ten if you recover at least five mid-grade stones from the debris." He slid a small jade token across the rough wood. As Huo Chen's fingers brushed it, he felt a sharp, cold sting that quickly warmed against his palm. The internal tracking array activating.
"So they can monitor our positions, Huo Chen noted, slipping it into his sleeve. Standard procedure for dangerous missions." "Eight points. The number echoed in his mind as he stepped away from the table. It wasn't much—would barely buy a single low-grade Qi Gathering Pill."
But for someone with his roots, even one pill made a difference. His meridians leaked energy like a cracked vessel. Without constant supplementation, his cultivation would stagnate or even regress. Better than nothing.
"And if I find mid-grade stones, that's ten points total." He noticed seven or eight other disciples gathered nearby, mostly fifth or sixth-layer cultivators. Young men and women with hungry eyes who saw this wolf incursion as an opportunity rather than just danger. The truly cautious ones had already declined, preferring the relative safety of mine work to facing spirit beasts.
Leaving the hall through a side exit, Huo Chen made his way back to his courtyard chamber. He needed privacy before the muster bell rang. His Earth Clone pulsed dormant in his dantian—a steady rhythm he could feel like a second heartbeat. The system's parameters were burned into his memory: Mobility: Full speed, identical to his own. Combat: Fifty percent baseline. Range: Twenty li—a massive radius that could cover the entire eastern mining district. "Twenty li.
That's enough to scout the entire area while I stay safely with the patrol." He reached his small chamber. The air inside was cool, smelling of old parchment and the faint metallic scent of the training dummy he'd been practicing on. He closed the door and slid the heavy iron bolt into place.
Sitting cross-legged on his thin, frayed mat, he exhaled slowly. Time to test this properly. "Manifest," he whispered. A faint shimmer of earthen qi coalesced beside him, emerging with the quiet weight of settling stone. The clone took form—an exact mirror image down to the smallest detail. The callouses on his palms from mining picks.
The slight fraying at the hem of his gray robes. The same steady gaze. There was no separate mind, no other consciousness. This was him, split into two forms. With a shared impulse, the clone moved. Three smooth strides carried it across the room to the narrow window slit. It slipped through and vanished into the afternoon haze outside.
Immediately, Huo Chen's world doubled. The sensation was overwhelming. His physical body felt the hard floor beneath him and the stillness of the enclosed room. Simultaneously, his second "body" felt wind against its face and the gritty texture of flagstones under its boots. His mind split into two distinct streams of awareness. Left eye: The dim interior of his chamber. Right eye:
The sprawling compound seen from a crouched position on a nearby roof. :This is insane, Huo Chen thought, struggling to process both perspectives simultaneously. I'm in two places at once." As the clone touched down on solid ground, something else became apparent. The earth affinity wasn't just a passive trait—it was active and responsive. The soil beneath the Huo Clan compound wasn't just dirt anymore.
Through the clone's senses, it became a map of information. He could feel the subtle vibrations running through the ground. The density variations in the bedrock. The hollow spaces where old mining tunnels had been sealed and forgotten. The whole mountain seemed to whisper its secrets through that connection. "So this is what real earth affinity feels like."
The clone tasted the air—dry, dusty, carrying the distant musky scent of the wolves from the east. Huo Chen guided it toward the low eastern wall, keeping to the shadows and avoiding sight lines from the training grounds.
Through this second set of eyes, the clan ground looked different. The herb gardens came into sharper focus—wilting stalks of Spirit-Heart Grass that were clearly starved for better qi. The training grounds where disciples practiced with techniques that looked sloppy to his experienced eye, even from a distance.
As the clone pressed a palm against the cracked stone of the outer wall, the earth responded. His enhanced affinity registered something important—a faint instability in the ground along the path the patrol would likely take.
The soil had a different resonance there, a hollow quality that suggested a shallow subsidence beneath the surface. "Old tunnel collapse, probably, Huo Chen analyzed. A century old, maybe more.
The ground looks solid but it's not." He filed the information away. If the wolves tried to drive the patrol back toward that area, the ground would give way under weight and pressure. Knowledge like that could be useful. Could save his life, or give him an advantage.
After about five minutes, a dull ache began building at the base of his skull. Maintaining two bodies at this distance required intense concentration—more than he'd anticipated.
The mental strain was real and growing. " I'll need more practice with this, he noted", willing the clone to return. It retraced its path with ghost-like silence, slipping back through the window and approaching his seated form. In a swirl of warm, dense energy, it merged back into his chest. The integration was instantaneous.
Every scent the clone had detected, every vibration it had felt, every detail it had observed—all of it was now in his memory as clearly as if he'd experienced it himself over hours of careful study. "Awesome" he marvelled DONG—DONG—DONG. The muster bell rang out across the compound. Sharp, clear, demanding. Huo Chen rose to his feet, his legs feeling strangely heavy after the shared consciousness experience.
The sensation of being in two places at once left a lingering disorientation that would take time to fade. He adjusted his robes, checked that the jade token was secure in his sleeve, and stepped out into the afternoon light.
The information he'd gathered was solid. He knew the terrain along the patrol route better than the patrol leader likely would. He knew where the ground was unstable and where the wolves' scent was strongest.
"Knowledge is an advantage, truly." He paused at the threshold of his chamber, hand resting on the doorframe. His Earth Clone sat ready in his dantian, a tool he could deploy whenever needed.
Whether he used it to scout ahead, to gather resources unseen, or to act from the shadows while his main body remained visible to the patrol—the possibilities were endless. The Iron-Fanged Wolves were dangerous. Fourth-layer disciples had died to spirit beasts before. This mission carried real risk.
But for the first time since awakening the system, Huo Chen didn't feel helpless. He had information. He had the clone. He had options beyond just hoping to survive through luck. "Eight merit points minimum.
Ten if I find mid-grade stones. And a chance to test the clone in a real situation without anyone knowing." He stepped out of his chamber and closed the door behind him, heading toward the eastern gate where the patrol would assemble.
Other disciples were already moving in the same direction—some looking nervous, others confident, all of them motivated by those promised merit points. Huo Chen walked with steady steps, his expression calm and unremarkable. Just another fourth-layer cultivator volunteering for dangerous work because he needed the resources.
Nobody looked at him twice. Nobody suspected what he was carrying inside his dantian. And that was exactly how he wanted it. The eastern gate loomed ahead, and beyond it, the mining district where Iron-Fanged Wolves had breached the perimeter.
Where spirit stones lay exposed and danger waited. Huo Chen's mind was already running calculations, already planning how to use every advantage the system had given him. First real test, he thought as he joined the gathering patrol members. Let's see what this clone can actually do.