Chapter 12

How many more dangers and horrors are still lurking in this city... A dead person walked among the crowd unnoticed—I only recognized Liu Yan because I knew her, but I don’t know most people. How many of them might be problematic?

Liu Yan doesn’t seem to be targeting me. That was too close—I’m done for if one of those eerie things notices me now.

With this chilling thought, Li Yi hurried toward home, planning to hide there for a while and use the strange artifact in his possession to accelerate his cultivation and gain some means of self-defense.

As for whether cultivating too fast might bring trouble—he didn’t care.

He shut the door and locked it from the inside.

After replacing the nutrient fluid in his parents’ medical pods, Li Yi turned off his phone to avoid disturbances, then sat in the living room, closed his eyes, adjusted his breathing, and quickly entered a meditative state.

As soon as he entered meditation.

Li Yi sensed the energy field emanating from the coin, and began guiding the pure cosmic energy within it into his body, absorbing it.

At first he was clumsy, but as time passed, his speed in guiding the energy increased, and his absorption success rate kept rising.

Just as Lin Yue had estimated, Li Yi still had untapped potential.

In just half a day, his cultivation metric reached sixty percent.

This meant that for every ten units of cosmic energy, he successfully absorbed six, wasting only four.

This rapid progress was due to the half-coin—he no longer needed to spend time and energy capturing cosmic energy leaking from wormholes.

Focusing on one task without distraction naturally made him better at it.

“Gurgle!”

Li Yi woke again from hunger, sighing helplessly: “Hunger really disrupts cultivation—I’ve been woken up three times in half a day. If I cultivated all day, I’d be woken up six times? And I’d have to waste time cooking and eating... Too inefficient.”

“By the way, let’s try the No. 2 nutrient solution this time.”

Li Yi took out the No. 2 nutrient solution, checked the instructions, and found it was forbidden for ordinary people to consume—even cultivators shouldn’t drink too much at once, or it would overload their organs and cause side effects similar to food poisoning.

Carefully, he poured one cup with a measuring cup and drank it down in one gulp as instructed.

“Sweet—apple flavor,” Li Yi licked the cup. This stuff wasn’t cheap—he couldn’t waste a drop.

Though he’d drunk only a small cup, his hunger vanished rapidly.

It was incredible.

Li Yi normally needed several packs of instant noodles, plus sugar water, milk, eggs, fruit, and more to feel full.

“Indeed, expensive things have their reasons. This nutrient solution is so convenient—I don’t even want to cook or eat regular food anymore. Too wasteful of time and energy.”

Li Yi thought to himself, then resumed cultivation.

In subsequent sessions, he found nutrient solution suppressed hunger better than food—he used to eat every four hours, now he only felt hungry after eight hours of cultivation.

That meant he only needed three cups a day.

But one vial of No. 2 nutrient solution contained only ten cups—he’d finish it in three days. This made Li Yi realize cultivation truly burned money.

But right now, he didn’t care.

The day’s cultivation ended quickly.

After resting a while, Li Yi took a shower, cleaned the filth excreted through his pores after bodily evolution, and began another round of cultivation.

He could now clearly feel a leap in his physical condition.

Only his ears began to buzz, as if he were hearing hallucinations.

Li Yi understood—it wasn’t hallucination. His senses were evolving, his hearing was strengthening, and his body simply needed time to adapt.

Soon.

Cultivation reached the third day.

During this time, Li Yi’s cultivation metric rose again—from sixty percent to seventy-five percent—and it continued to climb slowly, though less noticeably, indicating his potential was nearly exhausted.

“My cultivation metric will max out around eighty-five percent at best—only because I don’t need to distract myself. Without this broken artifact, my metric would probably drop to sixty-five percent. Lin Yue’s assessment was precise.”

Li Yi thought: “But even eighty percent is more than enough. At least that’s excellent among cultivators—I won’t be a liability.”

Slowly closing his eyes, he entered meditation again.

“What’s going on? The energy field of the broken coin feels off today.”

Suddenly.

While cultivating, Li Yi sensed something strange—the once calm cosmic energy now rippled, then grew increasingly turbulent, as if a massive storm had erupted.

This anomaly even prevented him from smoothly guiding cosmic energy into his body.

He tried to wake from meditation.

But to his shock, his consciousness felt pulled by the broken coin, trapped, unable to break free or awaken.

He’d never encountered such a phenomenon before—and now, inexplicably, he felt panic.

“This broken coin is dangerous.” At last, Li Yi remembered Lin Yue’s warning.

An artifact that’s broken must have flaws and problems.

His consciousness was now trapped within the coin’s energy field, powerless to resist, forced to watch helplessly as changes unfolded around him.

Soon.

As the energy fluctuations intensified, in Li Yi’s perception, something emerged from deep within the pure cosmic energy field. Energy surged wildly toward a single point, and soon formed a fragmented humanoid shape.

The humanoid gradually solidified within the energy field, gaining blurred limbs and facial features—but its lower half remained missing, like the coin itself, severed in two.

“What the hell is that?” Li Yi felt sudden, inexplicable terror.

Merely sensing it caused him searing pain.

As if his soul were being torn apart.

The fragmented figure seemed conscious—it immediately detected Li Yi’s consciousness, opened its mouth, and roared as it lunged forward, as if trying to devour his awareness.

“Born evil, Earth Prisoner—though I am but a remnant soul, I will kill you...”

Li Yi had no power to resist. Then came violent dizziness—his consciousness was severely wounded, swiftly swallowed by darkness.

“Pain. Too much pain.”

He passed out cold.

Yet as Li Yi fainted, his parents’ bedroom door creaked open slowly.

A shadow, illuminated by the light, projected from the room—and stretched unnaturally, finally enveloping Li Yi’s body.

The broken coin beside him twisted strangely, as if influenced by some immense unknown force, then let out a faint, terrified scream before being flung away, embedding itself deep into the nearby wall, utterly still.

Then, the black shadow projected from the bedroom quickly retracted.

“Bang!”

The door shut. The living room lights flickered erratically, then went out completely.

The old house sank into deathly silence.

As time passed, Li Yi’s breathing gradually steadied—but blood slowly dripped from his ears, eyes, nose, and mouth.

As seconds and minutes passed.

Night outside the window turned to daylight, then back to deep night.

Li Yi remained unconscious for two full days.

At noon on the third day, he slowly awoke.

“Pain... Oww...” Li Yi clutched his head, the intense pain forcing him to gasp.

What happened? He’d been cultivating fine—why had he passed out?

Right—he remembered.

The broken coin...

He snapped awake, looked around, and finally spotted the half-coin embedded in the wall.

Li Yi didn’t immediately reach for it—he was still shaken. He clearly remembered his consciousness being trapped in the coin’s energy field, then a powerful, terrifying awareness emerging from within, trying to kill him.

“Born evil, Earth Prisoner? I’m just a hardworking young man supporting my family—how am I born evil?”

He’d suffered this unjust blow—and now he was furious and enraged.

But after this incident, Li Yi understood: the broken coin contained the resentment of some dead person—a remnant soul, as the voice had called it.

“Indeed, burial artifacts are never good things,” Li Yi stood up, staggered, and felt dizzy.

“But why didn’t anything happen when I used the coin before? Why did the remnant soul target me now? Was it because I cultivated too long?”

His expression shifted uncertainly as he stared at the coin embedded in the wall—he didn’t know how to respond.

If this happened again during cultivation, Li Yi had no confidence he’d survive. He never wanted to feel that again.

But this broken artifact was key to his cultivation—without it, progress would be nearly impossible.

“This must be the trade-off of broken artifacts: they accelerate cultivation but hide great danger. To use it, I must find a relatively safe method.” Li Yi pondered briefly—he refused to abandon it. He resolved to walk the edge of danger and discover how to wield this broken artifact.

Cultivating by himself was too slow.

In these past few days with the artifact, he’d felt astonishing progress every single day.

Having tasted the flavor of genius, he refused to return to mediocrity.