Heaven's Gifted Genius 天赐奇才

Chapter 2 - Inspecting one's strength

Thi En Tran looked up at the man slightly confused and then down to his body. Earlier, he had been the sect master of the Heavenly Demon Palace, where cultivators couldn't help but shiver at the sound of his name. Now, while he inspected the condition of his body with his powerful senses, he was in shock. He found a weak and frail boy who was clearly treated by trash chained to a large boulder in a mine, and a man staring at him with such disdain Thi En Tran would have thought he owed him millions of spirit stones.

"Are you listening, boy?! I told you to get back to work!" The man once again began to swing at Thi En Tran with his whip.

"You're being too noisy, trash." Thi En Tran raised his hand and caught the whip with immense precision. "This king will surely teach you a lesson."

All of a sudden Thi En Tran felt a heavy blow to the side of his head, and his world began to turn.

"What nonsense are you spouting, boy! Don't tell me you've degenerated into a fool after only 3 months of work." The man said mockingly. "Just because I'm not allowed to kill you doesn't mean I can't cripple you here!"

Just then Thi En Tran realised that he wasn't as cool nor as strong as he thought he was, and earned himself a beating.

...

After a long day of slaving away in the mines in pain, he was finally allowed to return to his cell.

"At least I'm alone now," Thi En Tran muttered.

Thi En Tran was shoved into a damp and musty cell reminiscent of a cave. There was a dug hole for toiletries, and a straw mattress that lay flat on the floor which looked like it was devoid of any comfort and would give him chronic back pain.

After picking himself off the floor Thi En Tran dusted himself off and sat cross legged on the straw mattress before finally gaining the chance to inspect the new body he had, in a sense, been reincarnated into. A sense of shock quickly filled his face.

"This body, it's weak!"

He suddenly learned that his body had no dantian or traces of qi, and had a physical strength that was weaker than a first grade monster beast. In simple terms, his body was much weaker than even a large rat.

Thanks to his martial ancestor's transmigration technique, his soul had been released from his old body and frozen in time until a suitable vessel came along. Otherwise, if his spirit had not escaped, elder Khuu most definitely would have trapped it there with some sinister means and used him to enhance his own strength. However, his martial ancestor's technique was definitely flawed. How on earth would he have been granted such a weak body? To make matters worse, Thi En Tran's soul was much stronger than the container that was allowing it to remain there, and he had yet to fully integrate into his new body. If he did not rapidly increase his strength, his soul would eventually leak and dissipate into the world, with there being no third chance.

Thi En Tran wanted to give up immediately and purposefully erase his consciousness. However, he suddenly remembered the faces of Supreme Elder Khuu and the others that wronged him.

"Damn you, this King will waste your cultivation if it's the last thing I do!" Thi En Tran said resolutely.

To begin with, he had to find a way to draw in and store internal energy from the world. With his profound Secret Art that he developed himself, drawing in energy from the world was no problem, but storing it was another issue since he had no dantian. Normally, developing a dantian would be easy enough that even a child at the age of 9 could do it with enough guidance and practice. It involved absorbing small amounts of qi and using the temporary energy to refine the impurities inside one's body. Once a person reached a certain level, they would experience their first breakthrough, forming a core that could store internal energy. However, such a method would take ages to complete, often taking at least 3 years. Thi En Tran had no time for such things, especially given his current circumstances, he needed to escape as soon as possible.

Luckily, with Thi En Tran's level of knowledge, he knew a method that could cut the process down to only a few hours! The only issue was that it was quite inconvenient to pull off.

"Is there really no other way?" Thi En Tran spoke to himself.

He obviously wanted to increase his strength as quickly as possible without damaging his foundation. After all, it wasn't like Elder Khuu was just waiting for him to catch up, he was also cultivating diligently to become a True Grandmaster. Thus, he needed to cultivate even faster in order to annihilate him and the rest of the traitors.

For now though, Thi En Tran decided to focus on body refinement in order to ensure that he wouldn't be crippled by the guards anytime soon. It would also allow him to circulate qi faster through his meridians when the time came, and allow him to take any damage the heavens would throw at him.

Noting this down, Thi En Tran lay on the straw mattress and quickly fell asleep.