Chapter 132: Sword-Sleeper’s Breathing
[ Patience. (¬‿¬) ] Mira took her time, because rushing would have robbed her of the show. [ Claiming it now. ]
The wheel unfurled into the center of his vision, that gold-rimmed disc cut into slots, half carnival roulette and half the sort of contraption a phone game back on Earth would have begged him to spin for real money. It began to turn, slow and smug, ticking through its first lazy rotation, and Xuan felt his face do the thing it always did the instant the wheel showed up.
[ And there it is. ] Mira sounded thrilled. [ The gambler’s grin. A hundred miserable pulls deep and your brain lights up like a casino floor at midnight. ]
’It isn’t a problem as long as I never admit it’s a problem.’ He hunched in toward the spin, elbows dropping to his knees, every scrap of the strategic dignity he’d worn ten minutes ago evaporating on contact. ’Come on. Anything but a pill. I have been bathing in recovery pills since the dawn of recorded time. Hand me one more and I swear I start a collection. I name them. I introduce them to guests.’
[ You already named three. ]
’That was affection. This would be spite.’
The wheel hauled itself through its last rotations, slot by slot, slowing the way it always slowed when it wanted to torture him. It scraped past a notch he knew on sight, the eternal pill, his lifelong nemesis in capsule form, and his gut lurched on pure reflex. One slot more. Half a slot. It caught.
The thing it stopped on wasn’t a pill.
A panel unrolled over the frozen wheel, gold at the edges, calm as anything.
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[ ROULETTE REWARD (Daily Check-In) ]
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[ ▸ Passive acquired: Sword-Sleeper’s Breathing ]
[ ▸ Effect: refines and replenishes Qi while idle. No upkeep. ]
[ ▸ This effect is permanent. ]
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He read it once. Read it again, slower, making sure his eyes weren’t doing him a favor he hadn’t earned. The grin shifted under him, less hunger now, more plain disbelief.
’Okay. Translate. Normal words, not the flowery cultivator stuff.’
[ Happily. ] She was loving this as much as he was. [ As things stand, the second you stop cultivating, you stop refilling. You burn your Qi down training, you bottom out, and you plug the hole with a pill or a long night’s sleep. This one runs in the background the whole time. You’re asleep, it’s topping you up. Eating, pacing the yard, perched on a Foundation elder inventing smug little schemes, it’s topping you up. You never run dry again. ]
’So it’s passive regen.’ The Earth word slid onto the cultivator thing a little uncomfortably well. ’I idle, the bar refills. No cost. Forever.’
[ That’s the whole pitch. ]
The breath he let out came halfway to a laugh and gave up before it finished. For months he’d run himself like a furnace that ate its own firewood, train and collapse and choke down a pill and repeat, Mira riding him about the pace the entire way while his stolen body filed formal complaints. And the wheel, after weeks of mocking him with capsules, had finally coughed up the one prize he’d quit letting himself want.
’Mira. This is the best pull since the sword.’
The weight of it sat there a breath, absurdly large for something the system had simply handed him for free.
[ I told you I had a feeling. (◠‿◠) ]
’You always say you have a feeling.’
[ And today the feeling was correct. We do not review the failures. ]
’You realize what this actually changes, though.’ He tipped his head back against the wall, working the math the way he used to work it over energy drinks at three in the morning before an exam. ’The thing capping me this whole time was never the talent or the technique. It’s that I can only burn so hard before the tank hits empty and I’m face-down on the floorboards waiting to refill. Take that ceiling off and I can grind through the night, dump my reserves on purpose, wake up full, and dump them again. The whole game just stopped fighting me.’
[ It also means you’ll stop scaring me half to death every breakthrough. ] Mira, dry as old paper. [ I remain cautiously in favor of you not dying. ]
’Noted and appreciated.’ He turned the rest of it over a breath longer, and the plan arrived the way his good ones always did, fast and a little cold-blooded and fully built before he’d consciously asked for it.
’Right. And here’s the part I like. With this thing humming, I don’t need the daily pills anymore. Not one. And I’ve got a whole hoard of them by now, a sad little drawer I kept meaning to use and never needed badly enough.’ His mouth curled. ’So the entire stash goes to Wei. All of it. I figure I’m allowed to abuse the kid a little now.’
[ You’re going to train him? ]
’He’s got talent. The real kind, not the sort you say to make someone feel included.’ He cracked a knuckle, warming up to it. ’Back home you’d pour every spare resource into one unit, feed it materials, push it past the curve until it solos content it has no business touching. Wei’s my unit. Funnel him the pills, the drills, the techniques actually worth knowing, like he’s a gacha character I’m whaling on, and I can crank him into something genuinely broken. Don’t you think?’
[ I love the way you think. ] A fond little pause. [ I went digging through your memories for that one, video games, and I’ll own it. They’re entertaining. ]
’They’re a public health hazard. Finest thing humanity ever built.’ He pushed up to his feet and rolled the knots out of his shoulders, facing the rest of the day with something dangerously close to cheer. ’Fine. Wei gets spoiled soon. But before any of that —’ he lifted one finger ’— I want to spend the Origin Points myself. Hand-pick every last one. My call this round, top to bottom. Just me, the shop, and one gloriously stupid purchase I get to make fully on purpose.’
[ Of course. ദ്ദി ( ᵔ ᗜ ᵔ ) ]
