Plundering Worlds: I Have a Shotgun in a Fantasy World-Chapter 65: Recovery

[Squad Barracks - Captain’s Quarters - Morning]

Kael opened his eyes.

Ceiling. Grey. Unfamiliar for a moment—then familiar in the way things are when you’ve been gone long enough to forget the shape of home.

He lay still, letting his body remember where it was. No river. No blood. No sword through his chest. Just a bed. A room. Morning light through a window.

He sat up slowly.

His chest didn’t hurt. His ribs were whole. He touched the place where Baihe’s blade had punched through—nothing. Just skin, just muscle, just bone and blood. A body that had never been to that riverbank.

*I’m getting used to dying.*

He stopped the thought, shook his head and stood.

His legs felt strange. Too light. No Qi circulating beneath the skin, no foundation supporting every step. Just ordinary human weakness, ordinary human weight.

[World: The Dayan Empire — Low-Tier Complete World]

[Identity: Chief Disciple of the Buyan Sect — Lu Zhihuan]

[Status: DECEASED]

[Aether: 55.5]

He stared at the word. DECEASED.

Lu Zhihuan was dead.

He looked down.

[Abilities Available for Exchange:]

Internal Art — Returning Yang True Art "回阳真诀" (Mastery) | Cost: 15 Aether [EXCHANGED]

Sword Art — Reversal Sword "回身剑" (Grandmaster) | Cost: 4 Aether [EXCHANGED]

Movement Art — Reversal Steps "回身步" (Grandmaster) | Cost: 3 Aether [EXCHANGED]

Palm Art — Tide-Subduing Palm "镇海掌" (Mastery) | Cost: 7 Aether [EXCHANGED]

Memory Archive — Lu Zhihuan (Complete) | Cost: 5 Aether

He stopped.

Memory Archive.

His hand moved to the touchpad and hovered over the option. What would it feel like? To remember a life that wasn’t his? To know the exact taste of a meal someone else ate, the exact sound of a voice someone else heard, the exact weight of a decision someone else made?

He clicked.

[Confirm Exchange: Memory Archive — Lu Zhihuan (Complete)]

[Cost: 5 Aether]

[Warning: Memory integration may cause temporary disorientation]

He clicked again.

[Exchange Complete]

[Aether: 55.5 → 50.5]

The memories arrived.

Weight gathered behind his eyes. His skull felt crowded, as if new matter were being fitted into place. Thoughts slowed, then deepened.

He remembered winter mornings at age twelve, the cold so sharp it hurt to breathe. Master Yun’s voice: "Again." The sword in his hands felt heavier than his body. His fingers were numb. He wanted to stop. He kept going.

The taste of cheap wine in a brothel. Age twenty-four. The woman’s name was Mei. She laughed at something he said—the words faded, the laugh remained. How it sounded genuine. How that surprised him.

Standing in Master Yun’s study at sixteen, a book open on the desk. Records of Southern Sects: Customs and Techniques. Master Yun was meeting with another sect leader in the main hall; Lu Zhihuan was supposed to be practicing forms. Instead he was here, reading—allowing himself a rare hour of quiet, a pause from drills and expectations.

A novel. Cheap binding. Bad printing. He’d found it on a shelf in a smaller sect’s library during a diplomatic visit, taken it because he was bored, read it because he had time, forgotten it because it was—

Kael’s eyes snapped open.

The memories were still there. All of them. Accessible, complete, organized in his mind the way his own memories were organized—by time, by place, by significance. He could remember Lu Zhihuan’s tenth birthday. His first sparring match. The day his childhood friend died. The exact angle of sunlight through the window the morning he broke through to Second-Rate.

He sorted through them once, testing the edges. The line between his recollection and Lu Zhihuan’s no longer felt distinct; there was no seam to press against, no fracture marking where one ended and the other began.

And the novel.

[Items Available for Exchange:]

Fine-Forged Longsword | Cost: 2 Aether

Records of the Halt · On Chivalry (Incomplete) | Cost: 0.1 Aether

Field Conditioning Method — Third Battalion Issue | Cost: 5 Aether

The Immortal’s Ascension (Novel — Complete) | Cost: 0.1 Aether

There.

He clicked it. A short entry surfaced:

Minor literary work circulated in provincial sect libraries. Purchased by Lu Zhihuan during a diplomatic visit to Qinghe Sect. Content: fictional cultivation techniques.

[Exchange confirmed.] [Aether: 50.4]

Instantly, weight pressed into his palm. A thin book lay there—cheap binding, uneven stitching, ink slightly bled at the edges of the characters. The same crude title stamped across the cover. He turned it over once, then opened it.

The prose was exactly as he remembered: breathless, exaggerated, swollen with impossible victories. Techniques described in grand language, each more absurd than the last. The protagonist was a farm boy who discovered a hidden manual and rose to invincibility in a handful of Chapters.

Kael flipped to the section he wanted.

Dragon-Elephant Prison-Suppressing Body.

The description was detailed. Too detailed for a throwaway technique in a bad novel—sixteen full pages of breathing patterns, meridian routes, medicinal bath compositions, and conditioning sequences precise down to posture and duration. It read like a manual.

A body-refining method. An external path. Designed to temper flesh beyond steel, densify bone, thicken skin, multiply raw force. Each layer promised exponential growth in strength. At full completion, the text claimed, the practitioner would wield the strength of a dragon.

Kael read more slowly.

The technique relied on drawing power from beyond the body. That was the fracture point.

In the Dayan Empire—the world it had come from—cultivation refined what already existed. Breath. Blood. Bone. Power moved inward. Nothing gathered from the air. So a method built on external flow could never root there. It remained fiction.

But this was not the Dayan Empire.

Kael lifted his gaze. This world carried something: a current in the air, a pressure beneath stillness. They drew from it, shaped it, spent it, bled it dry. He had never touched it—never needed to. But it was present.

And this technique was written for a world where power lived outside the flesh. 𝓯𝙧𝙚𝒆𝙬𝙚𝒃𝙣𝙤𝒗𝓮𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

If the structure held. If the translation between worlds did not break.

Then it might function here.

There was only one way to know.

He closed the book, stood, and walked to the bathhouse.

Steam rolled out as he pushed the wooden door open. The fire beneath the cauldron had already been stoked, and the water in the tub trembled with heat. He stripped off yesterday’s clothes, set them aside, and stepped in. The hot water closed around his shoulders. He sat there, letting the heat sink into muscle and bone, letting his mind settle.

He rose from the bath. Dried himself. Dressed.

Kael stepped into the open ground behind the barracks. The morning air was cold and dry, the earth still holding the night’s chill. He opened the book to the first layer—breathing cadence, muscular oscillation, external flow induction—laid out with methodical precision.

He followed the instructions.

Inhale. Four beats. Hold. Two.

He kept his back straight and drew the breath low into his belly, just as the page described. The book spoke of drawing the world into the body—power slipping through skin, running hidden paths, settling deep before hardening flesh and bone.

He moved as written.

The air shifted.

A thin weight settled against his skin, light at first, then steadier. With each breath it tightened, gathering close around his shoulders and chest. The pressure clung to him, warm and dense, tracing the line of his arms and ribs.

He tried to guide it inward.

The weight pressed harder at his chest and along his shoulders. His pulse quickened. A sharp pull ran down his arm. The force collected along the surface of his body, crowding his skin and muscles, seeking space within him.

He held the pattern a moment longer, then eased his breath and let the rhythm break.

The pressure thinned and drifted back into the air. For a moment he wondered what would happen if he forced it, if he drove it inward against resistance.

He stood still and drew a slow breath.

In the world described by the book, power entered and settled. In this one, it gathered and moved on. It answered when called. It flowed around him. It remained its own thing.

He lowered his gaze to the page and passed over the lines about drawing it inside. What remained was simpler—breath, tension, repetition.

He began again.

Tighten. Release. Tighten. Release.

Muscle shuddered under strain. Heat rose through his arms and legs. Sweat slid down his spine. He kept the pace steady, driving the motion until the burn settled deep in his joints and bones.

When he stopped, his limbs felt heavy and packed with strength.

He walked to the training post.

Set his stance.

Struck.

Wood split with a sharper crack. The dent ran deeper than the marks he knew well.

He struck again with the other hand. The post jolted harder beneath the blow.

He flexed his fingers, rolled his shoulder. The density in his muscles remained. The force held.

He glanced at the open book.

The tale promised dragons and elephants. This was only the first layer, carved out of breath and strain.

He stood there a moment longer.

For an instant, the courtyard rose in his mind—the ginkgo tree shedding leaves, the twins arguing over footwork, a small wooden sword gripped in impatient hands.

He closed his eyes.

That path was finished.

He closed the book.