The sky above Ashwind Empire's desolate west courtyard shimmered with violet clouds, twin moons casting pale light over the shattered remains of what was once a royal training ground.
There, half-buried in the mud and moss, lay a frail young man—his robes torn, his skin bruised, and a trickle of dried blood crusted near his temple.
No servants came. No guards watched. He was a prince, yes, but not one anyone cared to remember.
**Li Fan**, Third Prince of the empire, had been beaten nearly to death three days ago in a public duel by his half-brother, the famed Second Prince, Li Shen. His so-called "waste spirit root" had once again failed him, and the court had watched his humiliation in silence.
Everyone thought he was dead.
But the man who opened his eyes just then… was not the same Li Fan they knew.
---
Thousands of miles—and a world—away, on a small blue planet called Earth, a man named **Kieran Zhao** had taken his final breath in the middle of a rainy night, crushed between a delivery truck and a streetlight. In that instant of death, his soul had been torn from the cycle of reincarnation and flung across dimensions.
Now, it resided in this broken, discarded prince's body.
Li Fan's fingers twitched in the mud. His eyelids fluttered open. And for the first time in seventeen years, the Trash Prince *truly* awakened.
He gasped, as if surfacing from deep water.
"Where… am I?"
The voice that escaped his throat was foreign and familiar at once—light, noble, trembling with the weight of new memory.
---
Flashes bombarded his mind.
Courtroom sneers. His mother's quiet death. The contempt in the eyes of his royal siblings. Endless nights in the cold courtyard, trying to cultivate spiritual energy that never answered him.
> "A cripple."
> "Born with a shattered spirit vein."
> "A waste of royal blood."
But mixed in with those memories were **others**—memories of Earth. Of crowded cities, ramen shops, late-night anime binges. Of disappointment, loneliness, and longing.
The soul of two worlds now inhabited one body.
And the world of Ashwind would never be the same.
---
Suddenly, a faint chime echoed in his mind.
> **\[Soul Merge: Complete.]**
> **\[Earth-Origin Trait Unlocked: Dual World Insight.]**
> **\[Processing Legacy Fragment… ERROR.]**
> **\[Corrupted Manual Detected: "Heaven-Tearing Sutra (Fragmented)"]**
Kieran—now Li Fan—winced as a strange, jagged pain lanced through his sea of consciousness. A vision flickered before him:
A black lotus blooming beneath a blood moon.
A throne of bone.
A single, broken scroll etched with golden flame, whispering in a tongue no mortal should know.
> *"Cultivation is not just rising. It is rebellion."*
He clutched his chest, feeling something stir deep within. Not spiritual qi—something *older*, *hungrier*, and vastly more dangerous.
---
Behind the cracked stone walls, a pair of shadowed eyes watched him from the edge of the courtyard.
"He lives," whispered a hoarse voice. "And… he carries it."
A raven took flight into the night.
---
As the wind howled and storm clouds began to gather above the Ashwind Palace, the Trash Prince rose slowly to his feet.
Eyes burning with a clarity they'd never held before.
Mind sharpened by two lives.
And buried beneath the ruined courtyard stones, something ancient awoke with him.