The first thing he noticed was the stench of death—pungent, acidic, and terribly human.
Then came the cold.
It wasn't the icy chill of winter or the sharp frost of a battlefield. No, it was the heavy, lingering kind that clung to walls and furniture. The kind of cold that settled deep into your bones when a room had been abandoned by hope for far too long.
His eyes opened slowly.
A cracked ceiling. Mold. A dark smear on the wall. The dull gray of morning light barely pushed past a shattered windowpane, filtered through a threadbare black sheet nailed over it. Insects buzzed somewhere near a pile of rotting food. A rat darted across a torn poster of some forgotten idol on the wall.
Then the pain hit.
A dull, throbbing ache pulsed through his skull. His chest felt caved in, like his ribs had collapsed inward, and every breath scraped like sandpaper. His throat—dry. His muscles—thin and atrophied. He tried to move and felt his bones complain like rusted metal.
"…Where… am I?"
The voice that escaped his lips was wrong.
Too soft. Too fragile. It cracked midway, like a whisper dragged through gravel.
Then the memories surged.
Not his memories—foreign ones.
Flashes. Screams. Dark hallways. Pills in a box labeled "just in case." Cold stares. Laughter behind closed doors. A door slammed shut again, and again, and again, until the silence was permanent.
And then—cords. Rope. A chair. A pipe.
The final act.
But not final enough, apparently.
He sat up slowly, every joint popping, and saw the twisted electric cord lying on the floor like a dead snake. The chair beneath the pipe had tipped over. Blood had dried in a dark halo on the carpet below.
"…Suicide," he muttered. His fingers trembled as they reached for his chest.
He felt for the center—his Dantian, the core where Qi should flow, where his sword sea once raged, where entire sects once bowed to his strength.
But it was silent.
There was nothing there.
Not a flicker of Qi. Not a drop of spiritual essence. Not even the echo of what he once was.
The Heavenpiercer… was mortal.
> "Jian Wuxin," he whispered to himself, as if saying the name would bring the power back.
The Sword That Pierced the Heavens.
Slayer of Celestial Monarchs.
Founder of the Void-Edge Dao.
The man who cut through karma and laughed in the face of fate.
Gone.
All gone.
He stood with effort, body swaying like a candle in wind, and made his way to the cracked mirror above a small sink.
What stared back was not Jian Wuxin.
It was a boy—pale, sunken-eyed, barely human. His skin was the color of wet paper, veins visible beneath. Purple marks wrapped around his neck. His black hair was unwashed and clung to his forehead like a funeral veil.
And his eyes—
Dead.
But Jian Wuxin was in them now.
> "This… was your body," he said softly to the reflection.
"You… were Shen Mo."
He said the name aloud, and with it came a heaviness, like the world itself sighed in pity.
The boy's soul had shattered—hopeless, quiet, and forgotten. There had been no family. No sect. Not even a stray friend to cry at his funeral.
And now Jian Wuxin inhabited his corpse.
---
The room was filled with subtle details of a wasted life. Torn notebooks with scribbled phrases like "not enough," "I want to disappear," and "can someone please see me." A broken cultivation manual lay beneath a stack of cracked bowls: "Beginner's Qi-Gathering for Late Bloomers."
He opened it.
The first page was covered in water damage. The second was torn. The third simply read:
> "Qi is life. You are not lifeless. Try again."
His throat tightened unexpectedly.
Jian Wuxin, the Sword Saint who once bathed in divine tribulation and mocked thunder itself, now stood in the shoes of a child who had once just… tried.
He turned inward again, more carefully this time. He breathed slowly. The old breathing rhythm returned to him: inhale through the heart meridian, exhale through the spine. But every channel in Shen Mo's body was closed.
No wonder.
His meridians were sealed—not by an enemy, but by trauma. Starvation. Internal collapse.
> "Silent Meridians," he whispered. "A rare condition… barely known to the divine sects."
In ancient theory, Silent Meridians were said to be cursed—but Jian Wuxin had once read a forbidden tome that claimed they were sleeping.
If forcefully awakened, they could absorb Qi with absurd purity—far more efficiently than natural ones.
But the cost was unimaginable pain.
> "You were never trash," Wuxin muttered. "You were chained from birth."
He walked to the corner of the room and found a shard of glass—jagged, sharp.
He sat cross-legged, breath slowing.
The old habits returned like ghosts.
Inhale.
Still the mind.
Empty the thoughts.
Guide awareness inward.
He raised the shard—and without hesitation, sliced across his left wrist, tracing the path of the first arm meridian. Blood spilled instantly, and agony followed like fire. He bit down on the collar of the shirt, muffling the scream.
His vision blurred.
The room spun.
But in the silence, he felt it.
A twitch.
A flicker.
Qi.
Raw, chaotic spirit energy from the air drifted inward… and clung to the wound.
> One meridian opened.
His body began to tremble violently.
> "Three more..."
He knew the cost.
The average cultivator gently nurtured each meridian over months—years even. But Jian Wuxin was not average.
And Shen Mo was already dead.
So he bled. He carved the second path—across his shoulder—and screamed as old nerves snapped like guitar strings. He felt sick. He vomited bile.
But the Qi entered.
A warm, humming energy swirled at the base of his spine, coiling like a snake in anticipation. It wasn't enough to cultivate… yet. But the body was waking up.
---
By the time the third meridian was carved, night had fallen. He couldn't move. His body was in shock, his vision broken into fragments of red and black.
He leaned back against the wall.
The electric cord still lay on the floor beside him.
He stared at it.
> "You wanted to die… and you were given me instead."
"Fate is cruel."
"But if I climb again—if I reach the peak—your name will be carved in heaven's bones."
He forced one more breath.
> "From silence... I will forge thunder."
"From this broken body... I will birth a storm."
His eyes closed.
And for the first time in this broken room…
the air shimmered with Qi.