Chapter 1 - awakening the system

A young man sits alone on the side of a cliff, he is sickly and pale, and his father has sent him out into the world with a caravan as is customary for a merchant family like his.

Of course, both he and his family knew he had neither the skill required nor any interest in running a caravan, they were just throwing him out politely.

Finally, he made up his mind, he pushed off and jumped, he wasn't exactly an expert in this kind of thing though and self-preservation kept him from diving down head first.

So instead of a quick death, he landed legs first and experienced immense pain for four minutes before he died.

This is how Chāng Haoyu would come to remember his first moments after coming to this word. "AAAAAAAAAARGH AaaAAAA-"

A whole lot of screaming and crying later, the pain started to become numb and he could think through the haze of adrenaline, and blood loss.

[System initialization process complete]

He looked at the box in front of him, and crazy as everything was currently, he understood what it meant.

[You have been found to be lacking potential and bodily integrity]

[A extraction and body reconstruction system has been created for you]

[accept? Y/N]

"YES!"

[would you like to begin body reconstruction?]

If any person had been nearby, they'd have been horrified by the sickly dying boy with broken legs, screaming yes repeatedly at the sky.

They'd have been more horrified after though, as his blood started floating back to his body and his bones moved back into place, even his torn skin reconnected.

Immense shock and disbelief played itself upon his face, but no trace of pain or worry could be seen.

Finally, all that was left was a pretty monk, as his hair had suddenly ceased to be.

...

3 months later

"I swear if you're wasting m-"

"I saw it! there was some bald guy running around covered in blood."

A young man and a gruff man seeming more experienced spent a few hours searching for this "monk", but eventually returned to camp unsuccessful.

The sight they saw after they returned chilled them to the bone.

The first sign something was wrong was the smoke and burned trees, the entire camp wall was simply gone, having collapsed after the supports failed from the fire, inside there were signs of fighting, and tens of people all lay dead on the ground, horror, and disbelief on their faces, most only having a single large hole going through their stomach and out their backs.

This wasn't what caught their attention though.

In the middle of the camp, a hairless beautiful boy with lean but toned muscles and glossy pale skin, clear intelligent eyes, and an unnatural lack of scars, injuries, or even blood on his naked body after the fight that had occurred, was standing over the corpse of their leader, Gleefully mumbling and smiling while seeming to look at something that wasn't there.

...

As I stood over the corpse of the strongest of the bandits, having just reconstructed my body to remove the blood and fatigue, not injuries mind you, after I obtained poor-grade skin from that spirit tortoise I haven't gotten seriously hurt since, but my attention was taken by what I saw before me.

[poor grade spiritual root extracted]

A simple message, but one with life-changing implications, it was at this point that I noticed two humans approaching from outside the camp, but I decided to continue reading first.

[spiritual root]

[quality: poor]

[condition: 100%]

A root that connects the body and spiritual sea and allows one to draw in and utilize chi.

After reading this, I went over to finish the two remaining bandits, they tried to run, but with my new physique, extracted and reconstructed onto my own body from spirit beasts, back on earth, while a cheetah possibly could have outrun me in the short term, with my gazelle-like stamina on top there would really be no escape.

My hand burst through the back of the first one and out the stomach, as it had done to many creatures, and I was already throwing him to the side and hurling my body skillfully to the side right on top of the last one, before a scream even rang out, my hand went through his mouth and out the back of his neck straight into the ground, preventing him from even screaming as I waited, looking him in the eyes indifferently.

A minute later I had used extract on both but obtained nothing new, finally, I activated the reconstruction process, and felt the spiritual root grow around my abdomen, it didn't feel so much like a root but rather like an anchor connecting me to another dimension I never knew existed alongside the physical.

My new body had long stopped being sickly but retained its pale skin, especially after it became poor-grade skin, glossy and totally unaffected by a little sunlight.

My body now combined countless aspects from weak spiritual beasts, all with only poor grade qualities, the only thing my system showed as low grade was my ability to hide my presence.

Inside the camp, I obtained some clean clothes, not that it really did anything for me aside from changing my appearance, collected these slightly glowing stones I assumed contained chi, and were likely the local currency, and finally found a map in one of the rooms.

...

Lu Shuya, a merchant from a small human kingdom, was heading to a notoriously dangerous area in search of valuable flowers, said to be able to absorb the blood of spirit beasts and cultivators, and purify the blood-qi and life force to heal itself and speed up growth, it is naturally also great for cultivation and nurturing the body.

"miss Shuya"

One of the caravan guards that had been with her since she left the family and became a full-fledged merchant, came to her at this moment.

"What is it Fan?" slight worry and annoyance showed on her face, already anticipating whatever problem they had encountered.

"It's not a problem miss, it's just... There's some monk who seems to have come from the forest, but he's not responding to anything we say like he doesn't know the language or something"