I wake with a start, head ringing like a broken bell.
For a moment I don't even know where is up. The sky above is a dull gray-blue, the color of dying coals, and it takes me a slow, stupid second to realize it's already late afternoon. The light is fading.
Pain crawls across my body, sharp and cold, like someone dragged a blade under my skin. I try to sit. My ribs scream.
Move or die, I tell myself, and somehow I listen.
The forest is a giant shadow. I stumble until I find a tree that looks climbable, bark rough and black as old iron. I climb, slipping once and almost falling like a idiot, but finally wedge myself into a high branch. Wind cuts across my face, cool and clean.
Above, stars start popping out one by one, small white fires in the purple sky. For a breath, I almost forget the pain. It's… quiet. Too quiet maybe, but the kind of quiet that makes you want to breathe slower.
I fold my legs and close my eyes.
Father's voice comes back, the lesson he always pressed on me: draw breath through the dantian, guide the chi like a river that knows where to go.
At first there is nothing. Then the cold arrives. It pours into my bones, into my blood. Sweat drips down my face, slick and sticky. The cold hurts more than the wounds. My teeth rattle.
Then whoosh—a sudden gust bursts from me, shaking the branches. Leaves spiral into the dark.
When I open my eyes again, dawn is crawling over the mountains.
"Status window," I say, voice dry.
> Name: Fan Ling
Age: 32
Strength: 12
Agility: 10
Intelligence: 9
Chi: 20
Skill: Comprehension Lv.1 — Cooldown 30 days
"Thirty days?!" I almost shout myself off the branch. Thirty days before I can learn anything new. I'm clearly just ten years old—why the hell thirty-two? This system is broken.
And something else needles at me.
The strike Father gave his life to teach—the Heaven-Rending Fang—where is it?
No listing. No technique window. Not even a hidden tab.
I whisper the name again like it might wake up: Heaven-Rending Fang.
Nothing.
Why? Did the system not see it?
Or… does it refuse to call my family's art a real technique?
That thought digs like a thorn. Father's blade split boulders, tore the sky. How can some cold machine ignore it? Maybe the tower only counts power born of mana, not chi. Maybe it fears what it can't measure.
I climb down, heart burning hotter than the bruises, and just as my boots hit the ground a flat voice echoes in the air:
> First day objective: Survive.
Kill 100 goblins.
One hundred goblins. Great. I can't even find one.
I walk. And walk. The forest never ends. Hours pass. No birds. No squirrels. Just trees and my own heartbeat. It feels like the world is holding its breath.
Then—rustle. Quick. Close.
Something whistles through the air.
I swing my sword on pure instinct.
Clang! A stone smashes against the blade and bounces away in sparks.
Shapes slide from the bushes. Small, crooked, skin like rotting moss. Goblins.
Their eyes burn red.
The biggest one—probably the leader—carries a dented iron shield. He growls a word I don't understand, more a bark than a language.
Dozens pour out behind him. Arrows and stones rain down.
I dodge left, but a club catches me mid-jump. Pain explodes in my side and I hit the ground hard, breath gone. Blood fills my mouth.
Focus your chi.
The memory of Father's voice cuts through the panic.
> "Remember, Fan Ling. Heaven-Rending Fang is not only a strike.
It is the will of our bloodline. One swing to shatter the sky itself."
I grit my teeth and drive my foot into the earth. Power surges upward, a shockwave that cracks the soil and throws three goblins into the trees.
Blood runs down my cheek, hot and sticky, but I raise the blade.
Chi gathers, heavy and bright.
"Heaven-Rending Fang!"
Light flashes.
I spin.
The sword sings and the world tears open.
A perfect circle of destruction bursts outward. Trees shear in half. Goblins scream as the arc of energy slices through them.
Silence.
My knees buckle. I cough until blood splatters the moss.
This technique… it eats me alive. And worse—I know it's incomplete. Only one strike of the family art survived, the rest lost to time. One swing and my body feels like glass ready to break. And still, the system says nothing, like it never even happened.
Darkness creeps into my vision.
> System Notification:
Congratulations, Fan Ling. Level Up.
Level 1 → Level 2 → Level 3.
Eliminated 20 goblins. Stat points awarded.
Golden light seeps around me, stitching wounds, easing the ache. But it's far away, like a lantern at the end of a long, long tunnel.
My last thought before the black takes me is messy and half formed:
If one strike already kills me, what about the next? And why… why won't this damned tower admit that Father's art is even real?
The world tilts sideways.
The trees blur into a smear of green and gray.
Then everything goes silent.
Fan Ling's body slumps to the blood-soaked ground, breath shallow, eyes half-open—
and at last, he faints, sliding fully into darkness.