Chapter 45 — TVF Chapter 45

Metaphysics Master (2) The system delivered the spirit stones directly into Qin Jingzhou’s sea of consciousness.

Qin Jingzhou took out a single top-grade, attribute-less spirit stone. Watching it float before him, he calculated the rate at which spiritual energy dissipated and quickly arrived at a conclusion.

Judging by this, the highest level of cultivation this world could support was the Foundation Establishment stage. And Foundation Establishment cultivators couldn’t outrun even slightly advanced modern thermal weapons. From this, it wasn’t hard to infer that while cultivators in this world enjoyed certain privileges, their strength wasn’t enough to significantly affect social order—so they clearly weren’t “noble” in any real sense.

Qin Jingzhou sensed that the original body possessed spiritual roots, and that both the roots and the dantian were still “intact.” He set up a basic spirit-gathering array beside himself, along with a concealment array that blocked spiritual sense and visual observation. As he drew in water and wood attribute spiritual energy to repair his body, he pondered how to quickly gain the trust of his cheap son once the disguise was mostly restored.

The original wife wouldn’t be too hard to deal with.

But this time, the cheap son—Jin Yuansheng—was extremely difficult to fool. He lacked neither intelligence, methods, nor fortune. If it weren’t for the simp male supporting character brutally stealing his luck at the cost of his own life, Jin Yuansheng would have crushed the male lead with ease.

The original body, meanwhile, was a textbook scumbag. After the divorce, he’d barely had any contact for years, and before the kids reached adulthood, he hadn’t paid a single cent of child support… so the twins had long since changed their surname to their mother’s.

Watching layer after layer of flesh reattach itself over the exposed bone of his right leg—which had originally been so badly broken that the “big bone” was visible—Qin Jingzhou said calmly, “I don’t have much patience. I’ll just go with a shocking move and tell them that after the divorce, I went into closed-door cultivation.”

The system poured cold water on him. “But the original owner was a demolition-rich second generation who loved flaunting his wealth on social media. His ex-wife and kids could see all of it. He even died because he bet with his drinking buddies that he could cross an uninhabited zone alone. He’s been missing for fourteen days now, and those so-called friends are still shirking responsibility, too scared to even call 110.” It added disdainfully, “Better to say you went into the mountains to gather herbs and accidentally encountered a fortuitous opportunity. Anyway, once you make a move, whatever they think, they’ll have to swallow it.” Qin Jingzhou smiled. “Fair point.” While his body still hadn’t fully recovered, he took the chance to review the plot again.

The impression the original body had left on his cheap children was truly awful. As a result, the siblings couldn’t fully accept their mother’s new husband either, and they outright ignored the sickly, gloomy simp male supporting character they’d known in their youth.

Their biological mother was far more responsible than the original father, but she loved her career more than her family. The new husband she chose based on her own aesthetic wasn’t exactly a model stepfather either—but abuse and cold violence were out of the question.

When their mother was working, the atmosphere inside this restructured family could best be described as indifferent.

So even with both parents alive, the siblings were essentially dependent on each other.

Qin Jingzhou glanced at his nearly healed right leg, then extended his left hand and used spiritual energy to scrape across his palm, instantly clearing away all the rotten, decayed flesh clinging to it.

What remained were the repairs to his face and internal organs.

The original body had courted death, sure—but he’d also been genuinely unlucky. Sliding down a cliff… in the real world, there were no caves at the bottom. He’d died on impact. Then a heavy rain fell in the mountains, and mud and rubble washed down, completely burying the corpse.

Three hours later, Qin Jingzhou was finally presentable.

Using the last bit of spiritual energy remaining in the spirit stone, he cast a cleansing spell, washing away the mud and blood from his body and the backpack he’d just dug out of the earth. The spirit stone was exhausted and crumbled into fragments of various sizes.

Qin Jingzhou slung the backpack over his shoulder and followed the system’s navigation toward the mountain road.

He called it walking, but in reality, his feet never touched the ground.

Standing by the roadside, Qin Jingzhou waited about half an hour before the ride-hailing car he’d ordered slowly pulled up in front of him.

The original body had been dead for over ten days, and the phone’s battery was long drained. Luckily, the phone itself was extremely durable—stuffed in the backpack, it survived the rain (or more precisely, the mud). Once connected to an equally sturdy power bank, it booted up normally after a few minutes.

This task world’s Huaguo was also a full-blown infrastructure maniac. When Qin Jingzhou powered on his phone, he hadn’t even floated out of the ravine yet—and the signal was already full bars. He calmly opened a ride-hailing app and ordered a premium car for himself.

From the mountain area to the provincial capital was over three hundred kilometers. Sitting in the back seat, Qin Jingzhou charged his phone while browsing the group chat to see what his so-called friends had been saying.

The driver was a local. Seeing that Qin Jingzhou was clean and neatly dressed, he couldn’t help chatting. “Hey, handsome, you’re not heading into the mountains, are you?”

Qin Jingzhou looked up with a smile. “I just wandered around the roadside a bit, looked at the mountains and trees, and immediately felt something was off… chickened out instantly.”

The driver laughed. “The internet keeps spreading rumors about immortal traces around here! Bullshit! I’m from the county at the foot of the mountain—lived here my whole life. If there were real masters or immortals, how could I not know? What we do get every year are hikers who go in and never come out. Not just hikers—even locals who go in to gather herbs, even rescue teams, some never make it back…” He caught himself and quickly corrected, “Ah—uh, not you, of course.”

Qin Jingzhou’s smile didn’t change. “You’re right. I looked at pictures online before coming and thought it was a scenic spot. Once I got down there and saw how steep it was, my legs went weak.”

The driver nodded repeatedly. “The roads connecting the mountain villages were only built the year before last… you think we locals don’t want this area developed?”

Qin Jingzhou chuckled. “Development costs too much.”

The mountainous region where the original body had died was as steep and dangerous as the deep mountains of Guizhou back in Qin Jingzhou’s hometown. Yet even in a world with spiritual energy, this area’s concentration was below average. On top of that, frequent accidental deaths had left the environment saturated with yin and baleful qi… Thankfully, there was no spiritual energy here—otherwise, it would definitely have bred a few “big things.”

At the same time, the presence of that baleful qi made the area completely unsuitable for living. If not for the fact that the mountains could produce a few valuable medicinal herbs and barely support the local economy, forget road construction—people would’ve fled long ago.

So Qin Jingzhou chatted casually with the driver while posting a message in the group chat: I’m back. The moment he appeared, the group fell silent for a full thirty seconds. Then the so-called friends all popped up, expressing concern and asking why he’d been out of contact for so many days.

Qin Jingzhou replied to none of them.

The original body might’ve been trash, but he wasn’t stupid. And trashy people tended to be extremely selfish. Despite loving to flaunt wealth, he wasn’t stingy—otherwise, how would he have gathered so many hangers-on?

That said, while he spent lavishly, he still had some financial sense. Over the years, his net assets had nearly doubled.

Just as Qin Jingzhou was about to block a few people who were privately messaging nonstop—either apologizing or desperately distancing themselves—someone sent him a voice message: “Brother Zuo, your daughter Ziyun was in a car accident. Do you know?”

The original body’s name was Zuo Jingzhou.

His pair of twins were named Jin Yuansheng and Jin Ziyun.

Qin Jingzhou replied, “I didn’t. Where is she?” Then he turned inward again. “How long can my cheap daughter hold on?” The system checked the plot carefully once more. “Three days.” Qin Jingzhou nodded slightly. Another voice message came through: “Ziyun’s at Third Hospital right now. Her condition isn’t good—she hasn’t woken up.”

Drive to the provincial capital, buy a plane ticket—if everything went smoothly, he could be back in the capital and appear at his daughter’s bedside that very night. He replied that he was on his way back, then said to the silent driver up front, “Please drive faster. I’ll pay extra.”

Hearing the voice message, the driver grew serious and stepped on the gas. “Don’t worry. No need for extra money.”

The driver first took Qin Jingzhou to a hotel, then waited in the parking lot. Ten minutes later, Qin Jingzhou finished the formalities and got back into the car with his backpack.

They sped all the way to the airport. Qin Jingzhou transferred three thousand yuan to the driver, then plunged into the airport amid the driver’s shouts of “That’s too much!” …with only fifteen minutes left before check-in closed.

At nine in the evening, he stepped off the plane and sent his ex-wife a message: I’ve landed. I’m heading to the hospital now. She replied instantly with a location pin.

Before boarding, he’d already contacted his ex-wife to ask about the situation and said he wanted to see their daughter at the hospital.

Even in her grief, she remained rational. Her daughter’s condition was extremely dire—she couldn’t bring herself to stop the child’s biological father from seeing her one last time. Even Jin Yuansheng, who normally went expressionless at the mere mention of his biological father, said nothing when he overheard the phone call. His silence was tacit consent.

By the time Qin Jingzhou rushed to the private hospital where Jin Ziyun was staying, it was nearly eleven o’clock.

Thanks to it being a private hospital—and Ziyun being the daughter-in-law of a wealthy family—he was able, at this hour, to at least… stand outside the ICU and look at his cheap daughter, whose body was connected to all kinds of monitoring and life-support equipment.

Through the large transparent glass of the ICU, Qin Jingzhou saw not only his daughter’s body lying on the bed—but also her soul, crouched at her bedside, softly sobbing blood-red tears.

The original body might’ve had the worst kind of five-element spiritual roots, but his children had inherited a sliver of that meager cultivation talent as well.

An ordinary person’s soul would dissipate after leaving the body for a single day. Yet his cheap daughter had held on for over two days already. Her soul state was far from good, and the fact that she’d begun shedding blood tears meant that if nothing was done soon, she would either scatter completely or turn into a vengeful spirit.

In front of his ex-wife—who looked utterly haggard but clearly didn’t want to speak to him—Qin Jingzhou lightly tapped on the ICU glass.

The daughter’s soul crouching at the bedside jerked her head up. Seeing it was him, she stared for a moment… then lowered her head again.

Qin Jingzhou smiled faintly and tentatively extended his divine sense, flicking her on the forehead.

Jin Ziyun was startled. She looked up again and saw her biological father on the other side of the glass, staring intently at her—then raising a finger to his lips in a “shh” gesture.

Her expression changed drastically. She shot up and flew straight to the glass, circling him in place.

This was a sign she was about to lose control.

Qin Jingzhou flicked her forehead again with his divine sense and transmitted a message: “Stop spinning. You’re making your dad dizzy.” Jin Ziyun was completely dumbfounded. What followed didn’t just stun her—it shattered her worldview.

Qin Jingzhou pulled out a dropper bottle no longer than his thumb and handed it to his ex-wife. “Put a drop on Yunyun’s forehead.”

On the way back, he’d refined and diluted a bit of wood-element spiritual energy, dissolved it into a low-concentration alcohol solution, and sealed it in the dropper bottle… Just this tiny amount of liquid was enough to reduce his daughter’s severe cerebral hemorrhage by more than half.

But firmly believing her ex-husband to be unreliable, Mother Jin refused to take it. “Where did you get this nonsense? Random junk. I told you I’d let you see Yunyun once—don’t push your luck, you bastard!”

Qin Jingzhou didn’t argue. Calmly, he took a small pair of scissors from his backpack and made a shallow cut in his palm with the tip. He squeezed a drop of the clear liquid onto the wound…

Before their eyes, the wound healed at a visible speed, completely disappearing within ten seconds, as if nothing had happened.

The blood on the scissor tip, however, was still clearly there.

Mother Jin snatched the dropper bottle and turned to rush toward the doctor. “I need to go into the ward!”

Watching her mother dash off in a flurry, Jin Ziyun couldn’t help providing her own sound effect: Mm, smells good. Qin Jingzhou reached out, grabbed his daughter’s wrist, and pulled her soul straight out of the ICU. “Don’t celebrate yet. You need to nourish your soul first. In a bit, you’re coming home with Dad.” With one hand, he formed a small hand seal, compressing her soul down to the size of his palm, then casually tucked her into his coat pocket.

Too many worldview-shattering things had happened in too short a time. Jin Ziyun didn’t even know where to start.

She cautiously poked her head out of her father’s pocket, looked up, and asked softly, “You didn’t care about us because you went to cultivate the Dao of Heartlessness, didn’t you?”

Qin Jingzhou lightly flicked her forehead, looking at his daughter—whose blood tears had already vanished. “You read too many novels.”