It wasn't every day that Loufis had a reason to celebrate, but today was one of those special days. After a grueling year of attempts, he finally opened his fourth meridian, making him a middle-stage Body Tempering cultivator.
Across the world, people would have no choice but to bow in awe and worship Loufis for accomplishing what they achieved when they were still pre-pubescent children.
The world would tremble at the terrifyingly talented young man who was currently... picking up freshly produced excrement by the shovelful in glee.
As an outer disciple of Meteor-Blade Sect, his "duties" involved raising and caring for the demonic beasts that the sect possessed. Whether it was feeding phoenix-tailed chickens in the morning, or cleaning the stables of the tri-horned oxen, it was his job all the same.
It was laborious work, but Loufis considered it a godsend; far better to pick up ox shit than to wash the sweaty, dirty clothes of inner disciples and pick up after them like some indentured house servant.
He understood why so many outer disciples wanted to be a martial retainer for an inner disciple, as it allowed them to reside within the inner shell of the sect where the ambient Spiritual Qi was more concentrated. That, and inner disciples often threw "bones" to their martial retainers in the form of Spirit stones, Spirit tools, and whatnot for their service...
But Loufis couldn't stand the snobbery of inner disciples. Granted, it wasn't all of them, but a fair amount of them had condescending attitudes toward outer disciples, treating them as if they were little more than dogs that could be pacified with their table scraps.
As the son of a minor noble clan, Loufis had his dignity to consider. Not that this reason made any sense, given his circumstances.
"Morning, Narin. How are things today on this side of the pigsty? You're looking awfully cheerful for someone who looks like he's about to die any day now, haha!" said a crass-looking young man with sun-kissed skin and rippling muscles.
Pash Jadebloom slung his arm over Loufis's shoulder and said, "Did you finally muster the courage to head over to Peach Blossom Manor last night? I told you the girls there wouldn't disappoint. Experts like 'em are worth every Spirit stone, hehehe...."
Loufis let out a long sigh in response. If only his brain was in control of his body more often than his dick. He might've become a cultivator worth a damn in the last six years. He would have at least been an inner disciple by now with his talent...
He shrugged his shoulders and said, "With a feeble body like mine, I'd probably die in bed if I tried to do something as physically demanding as that. No, I'm just thinking about home, Brother Pash."
Pash furrowed his brows in contemplation. "Home, huh? You know, you've never spoken about your folks or even your hometown since we've known each other. Always assumed it was a... touchy subject for ya."
Loufis awkwardly shrugged his shoulders and said, "It's cause I didn't part with my folks on good terms before I came here. We had some heated words, my family and I, and maybe... both sides said things we didn't seriously mean. Sour parting aside, I still look back fondly on my childhood."
He wasn't lying about that. A very heated exchange did occur, and words that should not have been spoken were uttered by both parties.
And in the dead of the night after that fateful spat, Loufis Dawnflower abandoned his birthright as a son of the Dawnflower clan. He forsook the wealth, status, and abundant resources available to him in a prodigious act of determination.
He even went as far as to erase his name from his family's official registry before he ran away from home as a final message to his family.
He would become a cultivator or die trying. Consequences be damned, he would make his own fate.
Henceforth, Narin Bloodfist was born overnight -- a disheveled, penniless stranger from who-knows-where who ended up crawling to Meteor Blade sect and was accepted into it as a charity case by Elder Moonblade after hearing his touching sob story...
...Is what Loufis wanted to say. The truth is that he was rejected at the front gate when he arrived. Hell, he was even beaten up by some outer disciples on proxy orders of a certain Elder when he heard of a bum who wouldn't stop hanging around the front gate of the sect.
It took Loufis a month and a half of begging outside the front gate before Elder Moonblade intervened for the sake of maintaining the reputation of the sect and made him an outer disciple on the grounds of his "exceptional perseverance" being a key quality they looked for in potential disciples...
Sure, Loufis endured a great deal of teasing and was assigned the worst duties to perform, but after a couple of years, people grew bored of his polite personality and passive attitude towards their bullying.
Eventually, he was left to his own devices and he gradually faded from sight, which Loufis was greatly thankful for.
Nowadays, only a few people bothered speaking with him; Pash was one of those oddballs.
Pash picked up a shovel and said, "That sounds rough. My family paid a small fortune to get me in here, so I owe them a great deal for that. But if I had to be honest, I'm pretty sure it was a plot by my father's third wife to get me out of the house. She wants her kid to inherit the family business, even if it means paying for my tuition with her father's gold..."
Third wife? Not a mistress or a concubine, but a third wife outright? Who is Pash's father, an emperor of one of the Four Kingdoms? Or perhaps a scion of one of the three Great Clans?
It was clear to Loufis that Pash had an equally interesting story to tell before he became an outer disciple of Meteor Blade sect. And from the looks of it, he wanted to swap stories with him. Or at least, morsels of his story, if Loufis was willing to share.
"You know what, one of these days we should go fishing, Brother Pash. I get the feeling you're probably good at it. And it's been a while since I've had the opportunity to unwind myself," said Loufis as he stretched his body.
Pash smiled. "This is the first time you've ever invited me out since we've known each other if I'm not mistaken. Something really good did happen, huh? Now I genuinely have to know what happened to you last night. Come on, out with it!"
For better or worse, Pash bugged Loufis for the remainder of the morning trying his best to squeeze what happened last night, to no avail. The only thing that stopped Pash from continuing his relentless onslaught was the arrival of his appointed sponsor, or the inner disciple that had accepted his services as a martial retainer.
Even Pash, who Loufis knew was in the middle stage of the Spirit Threading stage, was still little more than an outer disciple and a glorified errand boy for an inner disciple.
As someone who had barely stepped into the middle stage of the Body Tempering stage, Loufis was tragically behind every other outer disciple in the sect.
If anyone knew about the truth; what his real cultivation base was at the present, Loufis did not doubt in his mind that he'd be tossed out of the sect by the end of the day.
Were it not for the deception produced by the tattered talisman hidden in his pocket or rather the sealed individual within it, he would have been found out years ago.
Someone with his unique body constitution, more commonly known as the infamous total yin corpse physique in the cultivation world, was doomed to die early.
Even now, with four meridians opened, Loufis's fate was still sealed. He was destined to die.
While the majority of cultivators gained increased lifespans with each major step in their cultivation, those with the total yin corpse physique do not gain any longevity benefits associated with cultivation progression.
The physique Loufis was born with circulated Spiritual Qi around a tangled system of blood vessels that increased the strain on the individual's heart. The truth of the matter was grim; the more Spiritual Qi flowed through Loufis's body, the heavier the burden his beating heart would have to endure.
If anything, cultivation was actually a form of suicide for Loufis. The further he progressed, the more Spiritual Qi would accumulate in his body, further deteriorating his condition. Past a certain point, it was all but guaranteed that one day his heart would give out...
And yet... not all was lost. Not yet. A single thread out of Hell had presented itself to Loufis in a stroke of karma that neither he nor his benefactor could have expected.
A deal was struck years ago in a ruined Buddhist temple by Loufis and someone with the knowledge to save his life.
Loufis clutched his chest, or rather the tattered talisman that was in a hidden chest pocket, and said, "Master, shall we go hunting tonight? I'm eager to try out my new strength. And I don't want to rest on my laurels for a single night. I still have nine more meridians to go."
A formless voice responded, "Eager to keep moving forward, eh? That's good, but you know better. You need to map out where the opened meridian flows before you even think about doing anything with it first. Unchecked recklessness will only lead you to an early grave."
Loufis clicked his tongue, but he knew that his master was right. He pulled out two beautification pills from his robe and wolfed them down.
They didn't help fix the dark circles under his eyes, but they kept him looking like a youthful lad in his late teens rather than a man who was about to approach his thirties.
Without the lifespan-extending effects that came with cultivation, Loufis had no choice but to rely on cosmetic pills to achieve a similar effect. Not that it helped him maintain the flexibility or energy of a teenager.
That he had to bullshit his way through with sheer willpower and a stoic facade alone...