Pure and Turbid Spirit Arts

On the day they tested his spiritual roots, Ye Xuanxiao was found to possess top-grade dual lightning-and-fire roots. The whole village set off firecrackers, and the clan elders called him a cultivator's chosen one. Three days later, after he entered the mountains, he stood outside the hall and heard an elder say, "Can you really cultivate top-grade roots on this spiritual vein?" After three months without managing to draw in qi, he was demoted to menial labor. That night, he counted thirty strands of spiritual energy. Only nine made it into his dantian; the other twenty-one disappeared into the wound in his chest. No one knew he counted until dawn. Branded a waste despite his top-grade roots, he climbed higher and higher in a way no one could understand.

No System, no status screen, just a body even he couldn't make sense of.