The first sensation that filtered through Lin Xiao’s mind was not cold stone or choking darkness, but the warm, golden caress of morning sunlight and the total, blissful absence of a backache.
In his last life, twelve hours a day spent coordinating intermodal freight logistics and hunching over warehouse manifest spreadsheets had turned his lower-back spine into a painful column of tightly packed calcium. But right now, there was no lower-back spine. There were no strained shoulder blades, no throbbing knees, and no lungs gasping for stale office air. His entire physical being had condensed into a remarkably floating, elastic sphere roughly the size of a plump honeydew melon, resting peacefully in an ancient, moss-draped stone water basin.
Above him, towering stalks of emerald iron-bamboo swayed in a gentle mountain breeze, their feathery leaves rustling like soft silk. Sunlight filtered through the green canopy in dappled beams of amber light, warming the clean pool of rainwater and mountain dew in which he floated.
Wait a moment, Lin Xiao thought, attempting to blink. I don’t have eyelids. How am I looking at the sky?
His sense awareness was entirely panoramic. He possessed a seamless, three-hundred-and-sixty-degree senses of his immediate surroundings. He could see the weathered granite basin carved with faded lotus petals, the collapsed timber frame of an ancient roadside tea pavilion reclaimed by wild jasmine, the distant violet silhouettes of misty mountain peaks, and his own body.
He was semi-clear sapphire blue. When he focused his will, delicate threads of golden sky light rippled through his jelly-like water’s skin, orbiting a dense, warm core at the exact center of his mass.
Am I... A blue blob? Lin Xiao wondered, testing his mobility. A pleasant, fluid pulse radiated outward, propelling him across the surface of the basin with a soft shhk. A literal slime? What happened to the runaway delivery truck on Fifth Street?
A crisp, sweet-sounding chime rang directly within the quiet depths of his spiritual mind. It carried the pure, lingering deep ring of a bronze bell struck at dawn across a secluded mountain valley:
Lin Xiao observed the glowing characters suspended within his mental sea. Omniscient Dao Spirit? Training tier? Did I actually transmigrate into a Xianxia training realm?
“Affirmative, Host,” a calm, cool female voice echoed within his mind, measured and flawlessly clear. “Your mortal vessel perished in the vehicular crash. During the crossing of the Great Void, your spiritual origin fused with an unformed node of the Primordial Chaos Dao. He condensed into your current sky fluid form. You currently live on the outer eastern ridge of the Grand Desolate Spirit Forest within the Azure Cloud Realm.”
“A slime in an immortal training world,” Lin Xiao murmured inwardly, flexing his outer edge into a cheerful oval. “From everything I recall about classic training lore, rogue practitioners murder each other over copper coins, arrogant young masters destroy clans for minor insults, and ancient beasts swallow mountain ranges for snacks. Can a round ball of blue jelly survive here?”
“Host’s check of regional sociopolitical volatility is accurate,” the Dao Spirit responded in a dry, deadpan rhythm. “However, Host possesses the Primordial Chaos Dantian. Any living matter, stone ore, spiritual weapon, poison, or heavenly sky-trial swallowed by Host will be stopped at the sub-atom-deep level, converting hostile essence into pure origin qi with zero fire toxicity.”
“Zero toxicity? Even demonic curses or poisonous herbs?”
“Affirmative. Host’s fluid matrix is immune to living rot and spiritual curses. Consumption of toxic substances yields permanent elemental resistances and refined qi reserves.”
Lin Xiao let out a contented mental sigh. Well, that certainly beats being a mortal peasant conscripted into a royal army. And honestly, not having joints feels fantastic.
Before he could enjoy the morning breeze further, a series of desperate. He splashed thumps and a dry, raspy wheeze drifted up from the bamboo ravine below the tea pavilion.
“Alert,” the Dao Spirit chimed softly. “Vital distress signed names detected seventy paces south-southeast. High-order moisture depletion and acid-burning spiritual foul fog detected in the stream bed.”
Lin Xiao nudged his mass against the edge of the granite basin. He extended an azure slime arm over the rim. He poured his fluid body downward, landing on the mossy loam with a soft, rubbery gloop. Discovering that rolling was three times faster than crawling, he tucked himself into a tight sapphire sphere and tumbled down the gentle slope, navigating between bamboo shoots with easy driving force.
At the bottom of the ravine lay the bed of the Clear Stream River. But the river was not singing.
A sudden rockslide of heavy granite boulders, triggered by recent tremors upstream, had formed a jagged choke-point across the narrow channel. The main current was fully diverted into a dark underground sinkhole. That left the downstream channel dry. Trapped in a shallow, sun-baked mud depression were dozens of stranded river creatures, their gills flaring weakly in the scorching heat.
Directly in the center of the muddy depression, a cruel, rusted iron trap—a multi-pronged spirit-snare placed by unscrupulous mountain poachers—lay half-buried in the silt. Its serrated black jaws were clamped tightly around a tangle of driftwood. But its rusted iron barbs were actively weeping dark, oily drops of corpse-rot poison into the stale water.
Wedged upside-down between two dry boulders at the edge of the puddle was a huge, moss-backed river tortoise. Its thick, ancient shell was crusted with dried mud, its four stubby webbed legs flailing helplessly in the dry air.
“Curse this withered shell... Curse the unfeeling heavens!” the tortoise wheezed in a raspy, gravelly deep, its leathery neck straining to reach the drying mud. “Four hundred years of calm contemplation. I’m to be baked alive like an overturned river crab because two pebbles rolled down a hill!”
A few feet away in the foul, shrinking puddle, a tiny creature was fighting with all its might. It was a young golden-scaled river carp, barely four inches long, its scales shimmering with faint, rainbow-bright dragon-vein amber light. The little fish was thrashing desperately against the poisoned rust-water, trying to push cool droplets toward the gasping turtle while its own gills flared in painful suffocation.
Lin Xiao bounced to a halt on a mossy boulder overlooking the depression.
His heart—or rather, the warm, conscious origin core at his center—twitched with immediate empathy. In his past life, seeing someone stranded or trapped on a highway shoulder without assistance was something he could never ignore. And in this life, seeing a noble little golden fish and an indignant old turtle dying in toxic mud offended his deepest nature as a creature of water.
“Dao Spirit, analysis!” Lin Xiao commanded.
“Let’s get to work,” Lin Xiao said.
He launched himself off the boulder, landing squarely in the muddy hollow beside the trapped tortoise with an elastic thwip.
Old Ba froze mid-flail, his wrinkled, leathery head twisting around to stare in utter confusion at the quivering blue dome that had dropped from the sky. “What in the name of the River God is this? Has the sun baked my wits so thoroughly that clouds are falling into the mud?”
“Hold still, Grandpa,” Lin Xiao said, his voice emerging through fluid surface shakes as a clear, pleasant deep.
Lin Xiao flattened his body into a wide, rubbery wedge. It slid smoothly beneath the turtle’s heavy, five-hundred-pound shell. Activating his non-Newtonian dilatant thickness, he stiffened his core and swelled with huge high-pressure leverage.
Hup!
With a satisfying squelch, the massive stone tortoise was gently hoisted into the air and rolled right side up onto the flat river sand. Old Ba’s four clawed feet struck the ground with a solid thud. The old turtle blinked his milky amber eyes, shaking his mossy head in stunned disbelief.
“My footing... My shell is on top again!” Old Ba gasped, extending his neck. “Young blue immortal, you—!”
“Hold your thanks, we have an emergency!” Lin Xiao called out.
The little golden carp was floating sideways in the puddle, its gills barely fluttering as the black, oily poison from the rusted poacher trap seeped toward its mouth.
Lin Xiao surged across the mud. He opened a swirling vortex of deep indigo chaos at his front edge. He engulfed the serrated iron snare entirely. The rusted iron prongs, jagged steel chains, and foul corpse-rot venom slid into his boundless internal dantian void.
Within the timeless empty pocket of his core, the chaotic origin qi engaged instantly. The poison was stripped of its rotting intent and decomposed into inert elemental trace minerals. The forged steel was broken down into pure iron marrow. And the poacher’s lingering spiritual curse was ground into sterile dust.
A pleasant wave of dense, cooling stone qi surged through Lin Xiao’s jelly, reinforcing his outer membrane with invisible, diamond-hard pulling resilience.
Without pausing for a breath he didn’t need, Lin Xiao scooped up the gasping little golden carp. He didn’t swallow the creature into his void stomach chamber. Instead, he gently wrapped around the tiny fish within his clean, non-stomach outer fluid body.
The water inside Lin Xiao was soaked with ancient life-force and cooling dew. The little carp entered the azure sphere. Then, the toxic residue on its scales dissolved away. Its gold-trimmed gills fluttered wide, drinking in the nutrient-dense sky fluid. Revived in an instant, the little fish wriggled its tail in pure ecstasy, swimming joyous loops right inside Lin Xiao’s see-through belly like an excited goldfish in a sapphire bowl.
Blub-blub!
The carp pressed its round golden nose against the inner wall of Lin Xiao’s membrane, emitting ripples of deep, innocent thanks that warmed Lin Xiao’s core.
“Status: Golden-Vein Carp steadied and fully rejuvenated,” the Dao Spirit reported. “Host, the natural riverbed remains blocked by seventeen tons of fractured granite.”
Lin Xiao turned toward the rockslide damming the gorge. Behind the heavy boulders, thousands of gallons of trapped mountain springwater were rising rapidly, backing up into the underground fissure.
“Stand back, Old Ba!” Lin Xiao called out.
The old tortoise tucked his head halfway into his shell. He watched with wide, respectful eyes as the semi-clear blue slime bobbed up to the rock wall.
Lin Xiao drew upon his newly got [Iron-Bone Viscoelasticity] and his innate fluid power. Compressing twenty gallons of pure mountain water within his internal void chamber, he channeled the liquid toward a needle-thin nozzle on his front surface. Dao Spirit calculated the optimal stress fractures in the granite dam within a heartbeat:
Pssssshhhht!
A razor-thin jet of blinding blue water erupted from Lin Xiao’s body. Running at more than twice the speed of sound with zero surface rough churning, the smooth-flowing stream sliced through three feet of solid granite as cleanly as a hot wire through soft beeswax.
The central keystone snapped in half. Lin Xiao right away widened his water jet into a blunt, bone-shaking high-pressure ram. It slammed the cut boulders forward into the dry gravel bed.
CRACK! RUUUUMBLE!
The blocked path shattered. The pent-up mountain spring burst through the breach with a joyous, foaming roar. Crystal-clear, ice-cold mountain water cascaded down the gorge, sweeping away the stale mud, filling the dry stone hollows, and restoring the Clear Stream River to vibrant, singing life.
Scores of stranded river minnows, crabs, and river snails fluttered their fins in celebration, diving into the fresh, swirling currents.
Old Ba stepped into the knee-deep flowing water. That let the cool current wash hundreds of years of dried silt from his leathery legs. He stared at the little azure slime floating peacefully on the river’s surface, the tiny golden carp happily darting within its semi-clear blue body.
The old tortoise slowly, deeply lowered his moss-covered head until his snout touched the surface of the water in a gesture of total, ancient respect.
“The highest good is like water,” Old Ba whispered in trembling awe. “It benefits all ten thousand things and doesn’t contend. Four hundred years have I lived in this forest, yet never did I imagine I’d witness the living spirit of the Boundless River Dao walking—or rolling—among us mortals.”
Lin Xiao gently opened an opening in his front membrane. That let the golden carp glide out into the sparkling river. The little fish leaped into the air, doing three backflips in the sunlight before swimming back to nuzzle affectionately against Lin Xiao’s squishy blue cheek.
Lin Xiao smiled inwardly, wobbling his jelly in pure, quiet satisfaction as the warm morning sun bathed the restored mountain brook in shimmering gold.
No office desks. No spreadsheet deadlines. Just cool water, good friends, and a sunny day.
Life as a blue blob, Lin Xiao decided, was going to be amazing.