The moment he opened his eyes, he knew he had died.
Everything around him was red and blurry.
He could not properly see where he was, but the smell immediately entered his nose. There was blood, burned flesh, smoke, and something metallic that reminded him of iron.
'Move.'
The thought appeared before he could understand anything else.
'Get up. Find somewhere safe.'
Yang Lujia attempted to push both of his legs against the ground.
Nothing happened.
He tried to use his hands instead, but his arms did not move the way he expected them to. He could feel them, but they lacked enough strength to lift even a small portion of his body.
Before he could determine what was wrong, the ground beneath him violently shook.
Rumble!
An explosion came from somewhere nearby.
Yang Lujia's body was immediately thrown into the air.
He could no longer tell which direction was above or below. His body turned several times before falling back onto the ground.
The impact sent pain through his back.
Smoke entered his nose and mouth, causing him to cough repeatedly. His heart also began beating faster, although the rhythm felt different from what he remembered.
It was too quick.
'What is wrong with my body?'
Yang Lujia attempted to raise one hand in front of his face.
A small arm entered his blurry vision.
The fingers were short, while the skin appeared red and soft. Dirt and blood covered most of it, but there was no mistaking what he was seeing.
'That is not my hand.'
He opened his mouth and attempted to shout.
However, the sound that left his throat was not his voice.
It was weak, thin, and helpless.
A baby's cry.
Yang Lujia became silent.
The ground shook again. Several pieces of dirt fell upon his face, while his body rolled slightly across the uneven ground.
He could still feel all of his limbs. He had not been paralyzed or buried beneath something heavy.
His body was simply too small to move properly.
'I became a baby?'
Yang Lujia could not immediately accept that conclusion.
He remembered dying.
He also remembered the lives he had lived before arriving in this place. Those memories remained clear enough that he could still recall people, decisions, and events he would rather forget.
Yet he had awakened inside the body of an infant.
More importantly, he had awakened in the middle of a battlefield.
'Is this hell?'
Another roar came from the sky.
'Is this punishment for everything I did in my previous lives?'
A memory appeared inside his mind.
A widow had been sitting across from him inside a courtroom.
Her eyes were swollen, and her hands trembled while she asked why her husband had needed to die. Yang Lujia remembered holding those hands and offering words that were supposed to comfort her.
However, he had already known the truth.
Her husband's death had helped him obtain what he wanted.
A family had been destroyed, and Yang Lujia continued moving forward as though the result had been unavoidable. He had benefited from their loss and still convinced himself that everything had been necessary.
Roar!
The sound above him interrupted the memory.
'Perhaps I should have expected something like this.'
Rumble!
The earth shook again.
His body rolled down a small slope before stopping against a piece of broken stone.
"Ugh!"
Another weak sound escaped his throat.
Yang Lujia had once signed contracts worth billions with a single stroke of a pen. He had made decisions that changed the lives of thousands of people, and many of those people had followed his orders without ever meeting him.
Now, he could not even turn his body properly.
He could not wipe the dirt from his face or protect himself from the debris falling around him.
"Come, my fellow Pages! Let us put an end to this narrative and return peace to our Archive!"
"Erase the anomalies!"
"Do not allow their corrupted Verses to spread any farther!"
"Bleed their stories dry until nothing remains!"
The voices came from somewhere above the battlefield.
Each one carried a pressure strong enough to make the surrounding air tremble.
Yang Lujia did not understand what they meant by Pages, Verses, or the Archive, but he understood that the people speaking intended to kill everyone standing against them.
Another voice answered from the opposite side.
"Shut your mouths, you dogs of Reality!"
The clouds shook.
"You call us anomalies only because we refuse to follow the endings written for us!"
"We will not kneel before your predetermined fate!"
"Come! We will use your blood as the Ink for our new story!"
Whoosh!
A massive shadow passed above Yang Lujia.
Because he remained flat upon the ground, most of his vision was occupied by the sky. Although everything still appeared blurry, the creature flying above him was far too large to miss.
It resembled a phoenix.
Its wings stretched across a large portion of the sky. Glowing characters covered the feathers beneath them, and every movement left several lines of burning Ink behind.
Another creature followed it.
A dragon.
Yang Lujia could not see the end of its body. Characters also moved across its scales, appearing and disappearing whenever it turned through the clouds.
'What kind of world is this?'
The phoenix released a cry.
The dragon opened its mouth.
Then the sky exploded.
Bang!
A shockwave struck the battlefield.
Yang Lujia's small body was thrown upward again.
There was nothing he could do to protect himself. He could not raise his arms quickly enough or control how he landed.
His back struck the ground.
Pain spread throughout his body.
His face felt cold from the mud, while the rest of him continued burning. Something also hurt near his lower back, and every breath became more difficult than the last.
Yang Lujia cried again.
He disliked hearing the sound, but his body did not care what he thought about it.
Every instinct inside him repeated the same thing.
Survive.
He needed to survive first.
If he remained alive, he could understand everything else afterward.
Suddenly, the battlefield stopped.
The fire falling from the sky remained suspended.
The phoenix no longer moved its wings. The dragon's mouth remained open, but the roar it had been releasing disappeared. Even the dirt and fragments of stone thrown into the air by the explosion stopped before returning to the ground.
The people fighting throughout the battlefield also became motionless.
In contrast, Yang Lujia continued breathing.
'Time stopped?'
Something about the stillness felt different.
It did not feel as though time itself had been frozen. Instead, everything around him seemed to have been temporarily prevented from continuing whatever it had been doing.
Then a voice entered his mind.
It did not come from any person standing nearby.
'The weak are written by the world.'
'The strong write themselves into it.'
'On rare occasions, the world writes back.'
Flip.
A page turned.
The sound was quiet, but it spread through the motionless battlefield more clearly than the explosions and roars that came before it.
Yang Lujia attempted to find where it had come from.
There was no book nearby.
No one stood above him holding a manuscript.
Still, another page turned.
Flip.
'A record that should have remained closed has opened.'
'An instrument that should have remained silent has begun writing.'
'A conclusion has been questioned.'
Several characters appeared before him.
[The Eternal Quill System inscribes…]
[The Eternal Record opens.]
A translucent page formed in the air.
It resembled a piece of old vellum. Its edges were slightly torn, while dark Ink slowly appeared across its surface.
[Name: Yang Lujia]
[Title: Redacted]
[Physique: Redacted]
[Current Page: Blank Page]
[Existence Calculation: Origin Beyond Calculation]
Yang Lujia stared at the words.
'A system?'
The word was familiar to him.
He had read stories involving similar things in one of his previous lives. However, knowing the term did not explain why one had appeared before him after he was reborn as an infant in the middle of a war.
More notifications appeared.
[System Alert: Manuscript Intervention.]
[Critical Narrative Discrepancy Detected.]
[The binding has been damaged.]
[The margins are bleeding.]
[The story has diverged from its assigned conclusion.]
[Due to the extreme vulnerability of the Host's current vessel, the Eternal Quill has initiated Emergency Revision Protocols.]
[A predetermined ending has been interrupted.]
[The page has been blotted.]
[The sentence is being rewritten.]
[Forces beyond the margins have already intervened.]
[Narrative Revision in Progress…]
Questions immediately filled Yang Lujia's mind.
What was the Eternal Quill? Who had predetermined his ending?
What kind of force possessed the authority to interrupt it?
Why had the System recognized his existence as something beyond calculation?
He attempted to focus on one question, but his body refused to allow him to forget his current situation.
The cold wind continued passing across his skin.
His back hurt.
The battlefield might begin moving again at any moment.
'Panic later.'
Yang Lujia forced himself to calm down.
'Survive first.'
He had been reborn inside the center of a war involving people and creatures whose strength he could not understand. In his current body, even a piece of falling debris could kill him.
The System was the only thing that appeared capable of changing that.
Yang Lujia looked at the translucent page again.
[Narrative Revision in Progress…]
Flip.
Another page turned.
[Original Conclusion]
[The infant perishes upon the War Battleground.]
[Cause of Death: Stray shockwave.]
[Estimated Time Remaining: Thirty-Seven Breaths.]
[Narrative Stability: 99.99%.]
[Outcome Classification: Acceptable.]
Yang Lujia read the final line twice.
'Acceptable?'
The world had already determined that his death would not affect anything important.
Thirty-seven breaths.
That was how much time he had left before the battlefield killed him.
Flip.
[Revision Request Submitted.]
[Transient Authority: Redacted.]
[Authority Verification: Successful.]
[Revision Permission: Granted.]
[Searching for acceptable divergences…]
[Searching for surviving narrative branches…]
[Searching…]
The page stopped changing.
Yang Lujia continued breathing.
One breath.
Two.
Three.
He did not know whether the thirty-seven breaths continued passing while everything else remained still. The possibility made his heart beat even faster.
Then another line appeared.
[One possibility found.]
[Probability of Survival: 0.000000004%.]
[Outcome Classification: Acceptable.]
[Beginning Revision…]
Yang Lujia did not know why the System considered such a small probability acceptable—well, the system itself was something beyond his understanding.
However, it was still better than the conclusion already written for him.
Flip.
A third page turned.
[A sword strike that should have fallen three inches to the left moved slightly to the right.]
[A dying cultivator who should have collapsed after ten breaths remained standing for eleven.]
[A fleeing Ink Beast altered its direction by a single step.]
[A gust of wind carried the scent of blood several hundred meters farther than intended.]
[An ancient figure looked down.]
Yang Lujia read each sentence.
None of the changes appeared important on their own.
A sword moved by several inches.
Someone remained alive for one additional breath.
An Ink Beast changed its path.
The wind carried the smell of blood slightly farther.
However, every one of those changes had been made for the same reason.
They led someone toward him.
[Narrative Revision Complete.]
[New Conclusion]
[An unexpected variable has arrived.]
[The infant survives.]
[Assigned Witness: Zhuquan De.]
[Future Designation: Grandfather.]
[Narrative Stability: 99.99%.]
Yang Lujia looked at the name.
'Zhuquan De?'
He had never heard it before.
The title beneath it was even stranger.
'Grandfather?'
Flip.
Once again, another page turned.
[Existence has accepted the amendment.]
The battlefield immediately began moving again.
The phoenix completed its cry.
The dragon's roar continued from where it had stopped. Fire and debris fell from the sky, while the people throughout the battlefield resumed their attacks without realizing that anything had interrupted them.
The ground shook.
At the same moment, a hand slid beneath Yang Lujia's back.
His small body was lifted from the dirt.
For the first time since opening his eyes, the movement did not come from an explosion.
Yang Lujia attempted to look at the person holding him.
His vision remained unclear, but he could see the face of an old man. Most of the man's hair had already become white, while several wounds covered his body. Blood stained one side of his robes, although Yang Lujia could not determine whether it belonged to him or someone else's.
The old man looked down at the infant in his arms.
"What a poor child," he said.
His voice remained calm despite the war continuing around them. "Why would anyone leave you in a place like this? You are fortunate that this old man noticed you."
[The Narrative Revision has been completed.]