# Chapter 1: The Grind Begins
My name is Zhang Wuji, and I'm about as far from the legendary cultivators of my bloodline as a man can get.
Twenty-seven years old, living in a cramped studio apartment on Dongbi Street where the walls are so thin I can hear Mrs. Chen arguing with her husband about rent money three doors down. The paint peels like dead skin, the radiator coughs like an old man dying, and my mattress has more springs poking through than a medieval torture device. But it's mine—all 200 square feet of it—and in this world, having any roof over your head is a blessing.
I work three jobs just to keep this place. Mornings at the construction site, hauling rebar and concrete until my back screams. Afternoons delivering food on my beat-up electric scooter, weaving through traffic that could kill me faster than any monster. Evenings cleaning office buildings, emptying trash cans of people who make more in an hour than I do in a month.
Every muscle in my body aches. My hands are callused and cracked. My bank account hovers perpetually between empty and negative. Yet every night, when the world finally quiets down, I pull out the most precious thing I own—a bundle of yellowed papers wrapped in faded silk.
My family's cultivation notes.
The pages crackle like autumn leaves when I unfold them, the ink so faded it's barely legible. Ancient Chinese characters dance across rice paper, describing breathing techniques, meditation postures, and something called "Thunder Path Body Refinement." Most people would call it superstition. Fantasy. The desperate delusions of a man who can't accept that his ancestors were probably just good at kung fu movies.
But I've seen what this world has become. I've seen the impossible made manifest. If spatial tears can vomit demons into shopping malls, if people can develop powers that defy physics itself, then maybe—just maybe—these old papers contain something real.
---
The first Tear opened in Seoul on March 15th, 2019. A jagged wound in reality itself, twenty meters wide, crackling with energies that made nearby electronics explode and birds fall dead from the sky. What came through defied every law of nature humanity had ever discovered.
Creatures of living shadow with too many teeth. Floating jellyfish made of crystallized screams. Humanoid things with backwards joints and eyes that showed you your worst memories. The Korean military responded with tanks and missiles, only to watch their most advanced weapons bounce off hide tougher than diamond or pass harmlessly through entities that existed only partially in our dimension.
Within six hours, Seoul's population dropped by forty percent.
Within a week, similar Tears began opening worldwide. London. New York. Tokyo. Moscow. São Paulo. No pattern anyone could discern, no warning anyone could give. Reality simply... tore. And through those wounds poured nightmares that refused to follow the rules of our world.
Humanity adapted the way it always has—through violence, ingenuity, and the stubborn refusal to extinction. Conventional weapons proved largely useless, but the energy radiating from the Tears changed people. Not everyone. Not even most people. But enough.
The first recorded Awakening happened to a convenience store clerk in Busan. Security footage showed him cowering behind the counter as something that looked like a spider made of broken glass and human screams burst through his store's front window. The creature raised what might have been a limb to strike, and the clerk simply... ignited. Not with fire, but with raw kinetic force that reduced the creature to powder and left a crater where his store used to be.
He lived. The creature didn't. And humanity's first Hunter was born.
Five years later, Hunters are the new aristocracy. Government-sponsored killing machines with abilities that range from the merely superhuman to the functionally godlike. They clear Tears, hunt escaped creatures, and generally keep civilization from collapsing under the weight of interdimensional horror. In return, they receive wealth, status, and the kind of respect usually reserved for deities.
The rest of us? We survive in their shadows, picking up the pieces and hoping the next Tear doesn't open in our neighborhood.
China responded to the crisis with typical efficiency. The Hunter Association was established within months, a government body that identifies, trains, and deploys Awakened individuals. They rank Hunters from F-Class (barely stronger than a normal human) to the legendary S-Class (walking natural disasters). Registration is mandatory. Training is provided. Refusal is... discouraged.
But the system has gaps. Always does.
See, the Association only cares about people who Awaken naturally—those random souls blessed or cursed with powers by proximity to Tear energy. They don't know about cultivation. Don't understand that some humans have been developing supernatural abilities for thousands of years through discipline, meditation, and techniques passed down through bloodlines like mine.
Which means people like me exist in a gray area. Not quite civilian, not quite Hunter, practicing arts that predate their fancy classification system by millennia.
If I could make it work.
---
Tonight is different. I can feel it in my bones, in the way the air seems to hum with potential. I've been following the breathing patterns described in my family's notes for three months now, sitting in lotus position until my legs go numb, visualizing energy pathways through my body that I'm not even sure exist.
The notes speak of something called "Body Refinement Stage One"—the first step on the Thunder Path. According to my ancestor's cramped handwriting, it requires "tempering the flesh with heaven's fury until mortal clay becomes divine bronze."
Poetic. Vague. Utterly useless as practical instruction.
But tonight feels different. Tonight, as I sit on my threadbare carpet with the notes spread before me, something deep in my chest responds to the ancient breathing pattern. A warmth. A tingling. A sense that electricity is building just beneath my skin.
I close my eyes and focus on the sensation, guiding it through what the notes call "meridians"—channels of energy that supposedly run through the human body like rivers of power. The warmth grows stronger. Spreads. My muscles begin to twitch and spasm as if touched by live wires.
Pain follows. Not the dull ache of overworked construction muscles, but something sharp and electric that races along my nerves like lightning in my veins. I grit my teeth and continue the breathing pattern, trusting in ancestors I've never met and techniques I barely understand.
The pain intensifies. My skin feels like it's burning from the inside out. Sweat pours down my face as my body convulses, every cell seemingly restructuring itself according to some ancient design. I taste copper in my mouth, smell ozone in the air.
Then, just as I think I might pass out from the agony, it stops.
The pain vanishes so suddenly I gasp. But the sensation doesn't fade entirely—it transforms. The electricity in my veins settles into a steady thrum of power, like having a dynamo installed in my chest. When I flex my fingers, tiny sparks dance between them. When I stand, my movements feel effortless, as if gravity has less hold on me than before.
I look down at my hands—still calloused, still cracked from manual labor, but somehow different. Stronger. More real. As if they've been given additional substance by forces I don't fully comprehend.
Body Refinement Stage One. I actually did it.
That's when the voice speaks in my mind, clear as a bell and twice as shocking.
**[Congratulations, Host! You have successfully completed Body Refinement Stage One of the Thunder Path cultivation method.]**
**[The Heavenly Grinding System has awakened.]**
**[Initializing...]**
**[System integration complete. Welcome to your path of eternal cultivation, Zhang Wuji.]**
I stagger backward, hitting the wall hard enough to crack the plaster. A translucent blue screen hovers in my vision, displaying text that definitely wasn't there a moment ago.
[HOST STATUS]**
Name: Zhang Wuji
Cultivation Stage: Body Refinement Stage 1
Spiritual Energy: 100/100
Thunder Affinity: 67%
Available Skills: Basic Lightning Palm, Meridian Circulation
System Points: 0
Daily Grinding Quota: Incomplete (0/10 hours of cultivation practice)
I blink hard, rub my eyes, even slap myself across the face. The screen remains, patient as a saint and twice as mysterious.
"What the hell..." I whisper.
[The Heavenly Grinding System is your family's greatest secret, Host. For generations, the Zhang bloodline has used systematic cultivation combined with relentless practice—grinding—to achieve supernatural mastery. Previous hosts simply lacked the determination to fully activate the system.]
[You, however, have demonstrated the necessary dedication. Working three jobs while pursuing cultivation despite poverty and hardship shows the grinding mentality required for true advancement.]
The screen flickers, displaying what looks like a complex web of information.
[Your ancestors achieved great power not through talent or luck, but through systematic, methodical improvement. Every day. Every hour. Every moment spent cultivating is a step toward immortality.]
[The system will guide your development, provide rewards for consistent effort, and ensure that your grinding never goes unrewarded. But be warned—the path requires absolute dedication. Half-measures will yield half-results.]
I stare at the floating display, my mind reeling. A system. Like something out of those web novels I used to read during lunch breaks. Except this is real, and it's connected to my family's lost heritage.
"So if I keep cultivating," I say aloud, feeling ridiculous for talking to a magical screen, "I get stronger?"
[Correct. But strength is only the beginning, Host. The Zhang family Thunder Path leads to abilities that transcend mortal limitations. Speed like lightning. Strength like thunder. Eventually, even immortality itself.]
[But first, you must complete your daily grinding quota. Ten hours of cultivation practice per day. Miss a day, and your progress stagnates. Maintain consistency for extended periods, and receive bonus rewards.]
[Will you accept the system's guidance, Zhang Wuji?]
I look around my cramped apartment—at the peeling walls, the broken furniture, the stack of unpaid bills on my kitchen table. Then I look at my hands, still tingling with residual electricity, and feel the steady thrum of power in my chest.
For the first time in years, I'm not tired. Despite working construction all day and studying cultivation notes all night, I feel like I could run a marathon or lift a car. Body Refinement Stage One has literally remade me on a cellular level.
If this is just the beginning...
"Yeah," I say, surprising myself with the firmness in my voice. "I accept."
[Excellent. Your grinding journey begins now.]
[First Daily Quest Generated: Practice Thunder Path meditation for 6 hours. Practice Lightning Palm technique for 4 hours. Reward: +10 System Points, Body Refinement Stage 1 consolidation.]
[Remember, Host—in this new world of Hunters and monsters, power is the only true security. Your ancestors understood this. The system will ensure you do too.]
As the screen fades from my vision, I feel something I haven't experienced in a long time: hope. Real, tangible hope backed by power I can feel thrumming through my veins.
Tomorrow I'll still have to haul concrete and deliver noodles and empty trash cans. But tonight, I'm going to grind my way toward something greater.
The world thinks Hunters are humanity's answer to interdimensional threats. They don't know about cultivators yet.
But they will.
I settle back into lotus position, crack my knuckles, and get back to work. After all, grinding never hurt anyone—and in this world, it might just save everyone.
The real question isn't whether I can become strong enough to matter.
It's whether I can become strong enough to survive what's coming.