Dàjìng Dynasty, Taixi City, Jínhóng Martial Hall.
"Eat up, eat up, eat as much as you can..."
Inside an old dilapidated courtyard, Shen Xiu focused his gaze intently on a clay jar resting on the table.
Half a bowl of medicinal dregs filled the jar, and amidst the dregs crawled a nearly transparent, peanut-sized golden cicada, which was currently crawling around while devouring the pitch-black, toxin-laced dregs.
The cicada was eating with great relish. With every single bite it took, faint golden specks flickered across its body, making it look extraordinarily mystical.
A satisfied smile spread across Shen Xiu's face as he watched the scene.
Because thanks to these past few days of feeding, the satiety meter of the golden cicada on the glowing panel before his eyes had risen by another one percent.
[Host: Shen Xiu]
[Cultivation: Uninitiated]
[Talent: None]
[Techniques: None]
[Avatar: Nine-Transformation Golden Cicada (Unmetamorphosed, Satiety: 99.7%)]
This utterly bare panel gave off a palpable sense of poverty. Fortunately, he possessed a golden cicada that could alter his physique and talent through metamorphosis.
This cicada was known as the Nine-Transformation Golden Cicada—an undying and indestructible entity destined to undergo a total of nine transformations. Each transformation would bestow upon him, the host, a unique talent.
As for what kind of talent it would be, he had no idea whatsoever.
Now, that final satiety value was approaching maximum, and it was just a hair away from metamorphosis. All his painstaking efforts over nearly a year of feeding since crossing over had not been in vain.
That was right—he had transmigrated a year ago.
The moment he arrived, he found himself possessing a youth who shared his exact name.
The crossing had been terribly rushed. He hadn't even had time to clear his computer's web browsing history or the study materials stored on his hard drive.
Just like that, he became a miscellaneous chore disciple at the Jínhóng Martial Hall.
As a rising power in Taixi City boasting hundreds of disciples and commanding respect from both the underworld and the righteous factions, the Jínhóng Martial Hall was not a place one could easily enter, even as a chore disciple.
After all, anyone who worked within its walls for a full year would be granted the opportunity to learn martial arts.
In an era ravaged by ferocious beasts and plagued by evil spirits where human life was as cheap as grass, the chance to learn martial arts meant an extra shot at survival, and commoner youths from the outside world fought tooth and nail for it.
His previous self had been just an ordinary kid whose parents had both passed away. Being physically frail, he originally stood no chance.
Yet, driven by a gritty daring rare among ordinary people, he had sold his dilapidated little shack outside the city walls, scraped together a few taels of silver, and shoved them straight into the hands of a hall instructor just to secure his spot in the martial hall.
Realizing how cruel this world was, Shen Xiu naturally cherished the opportunity. After discovering the golden cicada as his golden finger, he had experimented with various foods before settling on medicinal dregs as the current optimal choice.
Meat could be eaten, but he had no money.
He could only make do for now by letting the cicada feed on medicinal dregs to get by. Fortunately, the cicada was immune to residual toxins and could occasionally feed back a wisp of almost imperceptible medicinal energy into him.
Little by little, it all added up and eventually made a difference.
Though not exactly robust now, he was in much better shape than when he first arrived.
As time passed, the medicinal dregs in the clay jar diminished bit by bit until the cicada devoured them clean.
Feeling the cicada's contented emotions, a single thought from Shen Xiu caused the crystal-clear cicada to flap its wings, transforming into a streak of light that plunged straight into his lower abdomen, the Dantian.
"Shen Xiu, time to haul water."
Just then, a crisp shout from a youth echoed from outside the door.
Shen Xiu opened the door to see a square-faced, robust youth standing at the entrance of the courtyard, carrying two wooden buckets as he walked toward him.
"Coming right now."
Shen Xiu stood up, rubbed his legs, and briskly trotted over to the corner of the courtyard to pick up a pair of crude wooden buckets, heading straight outside.
This was Wang Si, a roommate who had entered the martial hall in the same batch as him. Their duty as chore disciples was to perform all sorts of odd jobs: sweeping the floors, washing clothes, fetching water, and leveling the ground.
In short, everything except practicing martial arts.
Their routine task every morning was to fill up the twenty-odd giant water vats in the back kitchen courtyard so they could be used to prepare medicinal soups and meals for the full disciples.
"Shen Xiu, are you still eating those medicinal dregs? I'm telling you to stop eating that stuff. Have you forgotten how you passed out nearly a year ago?"
Walking along the path, Wang Si hesitated for a moment while carrying the two wooden buckets and advised him.
"Don't worry, I know what I'm doing." Shen Xiu smiled and replied.
Wang Si had entered the martial hall at the same time as him, and the two had a good relationship.
Judging by his words, Wang Si assumed he had been secretly eating the medicinal dregs in his room this morning. But since he couldn't explain the cicada's true purpose, he could only answer this way, and Wang Si, unable to persuade him otherwise, simply let the matter drop.
When they finally arrived at the entrance of the back kitchen courtyard, they saw a plump, round-bellied man glaring at them with a look of utter disgust, his booming voice spraying spit and dust all over the place.
"Why aren't you moving faster! If you don't finish the work, don't even think about eating!"
This fat man was a steward of the Jínhóng Martial Hall, in charge of the food, clothing, and daily provisions for the chore disciples, and he frequently docked their monthly wages.
He beat and cursed the chore disciples without ever showing them a pleasant face. No matter how early they arrived or how fast they worked, this Steward Yú would always hurl a few vicious curses at them.
As if doing so would bring him some kind of satisfaction.
If spit could drown a man, the rage of those chore disciples probably would have drowned Steward Yú's ancestral graves.
Yet, despite this, very few disciples dared to rebel or talk back, seeing as Steward Yú was rumored to be some distant relative of their vice hall master.
And that vice hall master, Xiang Shou, was a powerhouse at the Third Realm: Bone Cleansing. Such a figure commanded immense prestige and deterrence, even in a sprawling place like Taixi City.
Chore disciples like them, who weren't even full disciples yet, dared not harbor any thoughts of resistance. At most, they could only curse him behind his back and spit on the ground.
After all, the last chore disciple who had dared to talk back and oppose Steward Yú was still shoveling nightsoil in the hall's latrines to this very day.
Both of them ignored Steward Yú's verbal abuse and set straight to work.
The work was heavy and physically draining. By the time Shen Xiu and Wang Si finished filling the twenty-odd vats in the courtyard, they were panting heavily and soaked in sweat.
Even so, Steward Yú still ambled over to hurl a few more scoldings upon seeing this.
Once the chore of fetching water was done, the two didn't get any rest. After gulping down a few sips of water and devouring a bowl of vegetable-and-rice mash at the mess hall that lacked even a trace of meat flavor, they had to head to the front training grounds to haul training equipment.
As they moved the gear, they could watch several full disciples clad in cyan athletic robes sparring in the arena, exchanging nameless punches and kicks in a fierce, momentum-driven clash.
Every time he witnessed this, Shen Xiu felt a tinge of envy, though it was an envy he couldn't act upon.
Those martial arts techniques were reserved exclusively for full disciples to freely practice and master.
Still, Shen Xiu only indulged in that envy for a brief moment before focusing steadily on his tasks. Calculating the time, a full year was almost up, and the opportunity to learn a cultivation technique should arrive any day now.
In the next couple of days, he needed to make sure the golden cicada in his Dantian was well-fed. He had a feeling that its first transformation upon shedding its shell would bring about changes beyond his imagination.
The busy day continued on. It wasn't until the night watchman's drum sounded at the Hour of *Xū* outside the hall that the Jínhóng Martial Hall finally quieted down, leaving only a few chore disciples to clean up the mess.
At that moment, Shen Xiu hurried over to the back kitchen to take over the shift of another chore disciple, dumping basins of black medicinal dregs into the wooden barrels resting on a cart outside the back door.
Once finished, he set aside a clay jar of dregs to serve as the cicada's rations for the next two days.
If not for Steward Yú's watchful eyes and the tiny portion the cicada consumed each day, he probably would have tried to get his hands on more.
It was a pity that these medicinal dregs had already been boiled down to extract their essence, leaving only refuse behind. The residual medicinal potency was practically non-existent, while the residual toxicity was even higher, making them unfit for humans to consume randomly.
Otherwise, he would have loved to swallow a bit himself—though his previous self had more experience with that kind of thing.