Wei Lian woke to pain.
The wound in his side throbbed, raw and angry. His mouth was dry, his hands shaking. He didn't know how long he'd slept, only that the village was quiet now—burned out, forgotten.
No bodies remained. The crows had taken what they wanted.
He sat up slowly, gritting his teeth. Every movement hurt. But he was alive.
That was something.
He searched the ruined homes for supplies. All he found were bones, soot, and silence. In one half-collapsed hut, he found a rusted dagger beneath a broken bed. Its edge was chipped, the handle wrapped in blood-soaked cloth.
"Better than nothing," he muttered.
He left the village with a limp and a stolen blade. No food. No water. No clear direction.
Just pain—and the rage that still lived beneath it.
By the second day, his lips had cracked. His wound had swollen. He moved only because stopping felt like dying.
At the edge of a stream, he collapsed.
There, half-buried beneath moss and stone, he found it.
A scroll.
Torn. Damp. Rotten.
He stared at it for a long time.
Not because it felt powerful—but because it didn't.
There was no golden glow. No runes. No sensation of fate. Just ink on half-rotted parchment.
He opened it with shaking hands.
It was incomplete. A list of physical training exercises—old, brutal, and crude. Pushes, strikes, joint locks. Movements meant for warriors, not cultivators.
And a note, scribbled at the top:
"When the world denies you the Dao, let your bones remember."
Wei Lian stared at the line for a long time.
He didn't understand it.
But he kept the scroll.
Not because it promised power.
But because it promised work.
And that, at least, was something he understood.
That night, he didn't rest.
He trained.
He stood in the dark, bruised and swaying, and tried to follow the first pattern from the scroll.
It was nothing special—just a stance. Knees bent. Fists raised. Breath held.
But his legs shook after moments. His vision blurred. He vomited twice.
And still—he kept standing.
Because no one was coming to help him. No scroll would awaken his power. No inheritance was waiting beneath the dirt.
Just his body.
Just the pain.
Just him.
When he collapsed at dawn, face-down in the dirt, he smiled.
It was small.
Ugly.
Crooked.
But real.
"Good," he whispered through bloodied lips.
"Let it hurt."