The sky broke like glass.
Shards of light fell through black clouds, each one humming with the sound of judgment. Mountains bent. Seas rose. The world held its breath.
Ye Tian stood alone on the ruined peak, robes torn, hair matted with ash. Blood ran from his palms, slow and steady, but his back was straight. His eyes were clear.
Across the sky, a ring of golden symbols turned slowly. It was not a halo. Halos were for saints. This was a wheel meant to crush.
The heavens had finally come in person.
"Ye Tian," the voice said. It came from everywhere at once. "You broke the rule. You reached for a place that was never yours to touch."
Ye Tian smiled. There was no humor in it. "I walked. The peak was there. The path was there. I took it."
"Bow," the sky answered.
"No."
Lightning formed as if the air were a cup filling with wine. Lines of silver cut the clouds, joined, and twisted into a spear that tipped with a cold blue light. All across the world, people knelt. In cities, in caves, in the halls of old sects, cultivators dropped their eyes and pressed their foreheads to the earth. Birds fell from the air. Rivers stopped.
Ye Tian lifted one hand.
He did not call on the power of a sect. He had no master to lend him strength. He had no artifact to cheat fate. He had only himself.
Between his fingers, a thin strand of invisible force tightened until it was a line you could see, then a blade you could fear. It hummed. It sang of long roads. It sang of winter nights and summer heat and years spent pushing a boulder from dawn to dusk until the hill became a flat plain.
The spear of heaven fell.
Ye Tian stepped forward and cut.
The world split along the path of that strike. Clouds folded. The sea bowed. For one heartbeat, everything became bright.
Then the light went out.
The spear did not stop. It bent, it wavered, it cut straight through him. The force behind it was not something a mortal could carry, not something an immortal could ignore. It was the weight of a law that had watched the first fire and planned the last snow.
Ye Tian staggered.
He did not fall.
Blood poured down his chest. He set his feet and lifted his blade again. The mountain under him shook like an old animal trying to stand. Stone broke. The peak sank by the height of a man and kept sinking.
"Three times," he said softly.
"What did you say," the sky asked.
"My master told me once," Ye Tian said, though he had never truly had a master. "A man who will not kneel can stand three times longer than he should."
He raised his blade a second time, and he cut.
The second strike did not split the world. It cut only the spear. It pushed the point back an inch. It carved a line of shadow across the sky that faded as soon as it was made.
The wheel turned faster.
The spear grew.
The third strike never came.
The spear fell through him as if he were air. The mountain cracked down the middle. The peak slid and slid again, then fell into the sea. Waves rose taller than palaces and threw themselves at the shore, white and hungry.
Ye Tian stood on nothing. He stood on the splinter of law that had remained for him, the one small angle where defiance could still be planted like a seed. Blood welled in his mouth. He swallowed it.
He looked up. "I am not finished."
"You are finished," the sky said.
The next spear did not give him time to lift his blade.
When it hit, it did not feel like pain. Pain is sharp, and this was not. It felt like someone had opened a door in the middle of his chest and let the wind pass through him. It felt like being hollowed with care, like someone could have put a candle inside him and the light would have been soft.
He fell.
He fell through days. He fell through everything he had done, the people he had saved, the enemies he had broken, the promises he had thrown away to reach higher, higher, always higher. He saw a boy on a poor road with a broken sandal, asking how long it would take to reach the gate of a sect. He saw a young man sitting alone on a winter night, fingers cracked from training, counting the stars like a miser counts coins.
He saw a man on a mountain cutting the sky and smiling at the audacity of it.
In the space between one breath and the next, a sound stirred that did not belong to this world.
Ding.
It was small. It was clean. If a snowflake had a voice when it touched the palm, it would sound like that.
"Binding," a mechanical voice said. It was flat. It was quiet. It was patient. "Origin System, searching. Host identified."
Ye Tian blinked.
Something moved in the dark. Letters formed out of nothing. They were not written with ink. They were not spoken with air. They were simply there.
[Origin System, initializing] [Error. Host life signs, failing] [Error. Timeline, collapsing] [Proceed with emergency protocol]
"Who are you," Ye Tian asked. He did not ask with his mouth. His mouth was full of blood and light.
"Origin System," the voice said. "All systems are born from me. All cheats are pieces of my body. I was broken. I am almost gone. I have chosen you."
"Why me," Ye Tian asked.
"Because you will not kneel."
The darkness shook. The feeling of falling slowed. It felt like someone had reached out with two fingers and caught his collar. He did not stop. He simply fell more gently. The night had hands.
"Where," he said. "Where are you putting me."
"Back," the voice said. "Where it begins."
Light opened like an eye. It was blue and cold. It smelled like iron and rain. Ye Tian raised a hand to shield his face and found he could feel his fingers again. His chest burned, not with lightning, but with breath.
He landed.
He did not land on a mountain. He did not land on a palace floor, or in a sect hall, or on the road he had taken as a boy. He landed on rough boards that had been sanded once by a bored apprentice, then forgotten.
He lay there for a long moment and stared at the ceiling.
It was low. It sagged in the middle. Someone had tried to hang a charm to keep mice away and failed. He could hear voices through the wall. He could hear rain.
His body hurt in ordinary ways. His knuckles were swollen. His ribs ached. His stomach cried.
He was hungry.
He sat up slowly and looked at his hands. They were thin. They had little white scars across the knuckles where cheap practice swords had split skin and the skin had healed badly. Dirt rimmed the nails.
A piece of polished copper leaned against the wall. He crawled to it and lifted it like a mirror.
A face looked back. It was young. It was not quite handsome. The nose had been broken once and had not set well. The eyes were large. They were not the eyes of the man who had faced the heavens without a blink.
He knew this face.
Trash, the sect had called him. Outer disciple. Barely passed the gate test. Good for carrying water and sweeping leaves. Good for bruises.
Memory came in pieces. A name formed and settled into a body that had been waiting for it.
Lin… no. That was someone else. This body had another name.
"Chen Mu," he said aloud.
The voice sounded wrong to his ear, like a musician forced to use a cheap flute. It was his voice now.
The door banged open.
Three boys in simple robes stood in the frame, damp from the rain. The one in front had a narrow smile that did not reach his eyes. The one behind him cracked his knuckles the way boys do when they hope someone will notice their hands.
"Trash," the narrow smile said. "The Elder is looking for you. Today is the day you are expelled."
Ye Tian looked at him and then looked past him and then looked at the gray square of sky. His heart was calm. It was curious. It sat in his chest like a student on the first day of a new lesson.
He stood.
The room wobbled for a moment and then steadied. He felt the floor. He felt the weight of his own bones. He felt the shape of the air inside his lungs.
"Come," the boy said. "Do not make the Elder wait."
"Of course," Ye Tian said.
He followed them down the narrow corridor that smelled of damp straw and old rice. The boards creaked. The rain fell in a tired way. The outer disciples' hall opened into a yard with packed dirt and a line of crooked stones that someone had set to look like a path and then stopped halfway.
Other boys glanced up as they passed, then looked away. One spat into the yard and missed his own sandal.
At the far end, a wooden platform stood under the eaves. An elder sat behind a table with a book and a small cup of tea he had not touched. He was not a cruel man. He was a tired man. He had a mole on his cheek and a gentle frown he had worn for so long that his skin had folded to fit it.
"Chen Mu," the elder said without looking up. "You failed the trial for the third time. The sect cannot carry a man who will not rise. You will be given a small pouch of coins and a rice ticket for one month. You will leave by dusk."
The boys behind Ye Tian shifted, eager for a scene.
Ye Tian looked at the elder. He looked at the book. He looked at the cup of tea until he could smell it, thin and over steeped.
He opened his mouth to speak.
The world flickered.
It was slight. If you had been watching a candle through a curtain and someone had passed a hand between the flame and the cloth, it would have been like that. A shadow that was not a shadow moved through the air.
Ding.
[Origin System, reconnecting] [Host synchronization, complete] [Alert. Local System detected]
Ye Tian blinked.
Words moved across the air in front of him. The elder did not see them. The boys did not see them. They were written where only Ye Tian could read.
[Target: Li Kang] [System: Minor Talent Assistant] [Function: Raises perceived talent by one grade in the eyes of elders during tests] [Integrity: 23 percent] [Recommendation: Seize]
Ye Tian turned his head slightly. The boy with the narrow smile stood to his right. He held his shoulders like a small officer in a small army. He looked at Ye Tian the way a cat looks at a bird on the ground that it has already decided to eat slowly.
Li Kang.
Ye Tian did not remember a system like that. In his first life, he had never looked down long enough to notice small cheats. He had thought only of high mountains and sky gates.
The words changed.
[Permission to open Origin Protocol] [Define intent]
He did not know what that meant, not yet. He knew enough. He knew what he had heard in the dark.
All systems are born from me.
Ye Tian drew in a breath, slow and even. He let it out. The yard smelled like wet dust. The elder's tea smelled weak. The boys smelled like sweat and pride and rain.
He raised his eyes and met the elder's gaze.
"Elder," he said in a voice that fit his throat and did not, "before I leave, grant me one request."
The elder looked up at last. His eyes were kind. His patience had been scraped thin. "Speak."
"Let me take the trial one more time," Ye Tian said. "Now. In the rain. In front of everyone."
A small sound ran through the boys like a fish through a shallow stream. Laughter wanted to appear. It could not decide how bold to be in front of the elder.
Li Kang smiled. It was not kind. "Trash wants to fall again. Let him."
The elder looked at Ye Tian for a long moment. He looked at the sky. He looked at the book. He sighed, the way a man sighs when he tells himself he will remember this later as a story that teaches nothing and changes no one.
"Very well," he said. "One more time. Then you will leave."
The yard stirred. Boys moved to the edges. A few jumped to stand on stones to see better. Rain tapped on the eaves as if counting the seconds. The elder closed the book and stood.
He lifted his hand. A small array stone set at the edge of the platform lit with a tired light. The trial was not grand. It was a stone that could weigh a man's spirit the way a merchant's scale weighs fruit.
"Step forward," the elder said.
Ye Tian walked to the stone. As he moved, the air in front of him tinged blue.
[Origin Protocol awaiting command] [Detected System nearby, Minor Talent Assistant] [Seizure chance, 81 percent] [Consequence for target, three days of spiritual weakness] [Proceed]
He placed his palm on the stone.
His heart beat once. He remembered the spear of heaven. He remembered the voice in the dark. He remembered walking alone for years because he had chosen to walk where there were no roads.
"Proceed," he thought without moving his lips.
The world tilted.
No one else saw it. No one else felt it. But for Ye Tian everything went very quiet and very clean. A thin thread of light extended from his chest to Li Kang's body. It was not visible to human eyes. It was not meant to be. It was like a nerve discovered with a knife and a careful hand.
The thread pulled.
Li Kang gasped. He did not know why. His knees softened for a breath, then stiffened. He looked around as if someone had touched his shoulder and there was no one there. His smile fell and tried to climb back up.
Words burned in the air.
[Seizure complete] [Acquired: Minor Talent Assistant] [Origin System, digesting] [New function unlocked: Strip, Combine, Upgrade]
The array stone under Ye Tian's palm warmed. The tired light grew brighter. The elder's eyebrows lifted a little. Boys stopped whispering.
The light rose another finger's width.
Ye Tian did not press harder. He did not push. He simply stood. The stone read what was placed upon it.
It read a boy called Chen Mu, outer disciple, weak bones, weak root, poor talent.
It read something else living inside that name, something that had cut the sky.
The light climbed again.
The elder's eyes narrowed. His hand moved a little closer to the sleeve where he kept small sealing slips for when boys tried to cheat with talismans hidden in their sleeves. He did not see a talisman. He saw a boy's hand on a stone, fingers thin, nails a little dirty, skin a little red from the cold.
The light rose to the mark that meant the sect would keep you.
It rose higher.
Silence fell heavy. Even the rain decided to wait and listen.
The light stopped at a line that would have placed any outer disciple into the inner courtyard with new robes and new lodging. It shivered as if it wanted to go higher, as if something under the floor had more to say.
It settled.
The elder let out the breath he had not known he was holding. He looked at Ye Tian for a long time. He felt the way a farmer feels when the seed he threw away grows a green shoot through a crack in a stone.
"Chen Mu," he said quietly. "It seems we judged too soon."
Li Kang found his voice. It was small. "He cheated."
The elder turned his head. His gaze was not sharp, but it was tired enough to be heavy. "With what, boy. Your eyes."
Li Kang closed his mouth.
Ye Tian took his hand off the stone.
The words in the air shifted again, unseen by all but him.
[Minor Talent Assistant, integrated] [Combine with base parameters, success] [Current modifier, slight] [Potential, large] [Recommendation: Public demonstration within three days for optimal devotion harvest]
Devotion.
He did not understand that part yet. He did not need to. He knew the shape of a road when he saw one. It ran straight, then bent, then vanished into fog, and still it called forward.
The elder cleared his throat. "Chen Mu. Prepare yourself. You will take the inner courtyard test at dawn. I will see that you have dry robes and a bowl of hot rice."
Ye Tian bowed.
Li Kang stared at him as if hate could hold a man down by the shoulders. It could not. It never had.
Ye Tian turned away from the stone.
Somewhere deep inside him, a quiet hum began, like a hive waking at first light. He could feel the Origin System there, not heavy, not loud. Patient.
He stepped off the platform and the rain touched his face. It was cool and felt honest.
He thought of the mountain. He thought of the spear. He thought of the voice that had said, Because you will not kneel.
In the corner of his eye, something flickered again.
[Nearby Systems detected, six] [Targets, outer disciples, minor grade] [Recommendation: Seize at least one before dawn]
He looked up at the gray sky and smiled, small and real.
"Very well," Ye Tian said in his heart. "Let us begin."
The yard, the boys, the rain, the tired elder, all of it faded a little at the edges as if the world had stepped back to make room.
In the distance, a bell struck once.
Ding.