The sky was silent.
No thunder. No screams. Just the static hum of dying satellites and the distant crackle of orbital debris. The Last War had ended—not with peace, but with exhaustion. Nations collapsed. Networks failed. Cities became shadows. And he lay prone atop a fractured rooftop, spine aligned with the curvature of the earth, breath measured like a sniper's prayer.
His rifle rested against his shoulder, custom-built, sacred in its silence. No scope. No recoil. Just intent.
Target: orbital commander.
Distance: 1,800 meters.
Wind: 4 knots west.
Heartbeat: one every six seconds.
He exhaled.
The bullet left the chamber. No sound. No flash. Just motion. A ripple in the air. A fracture in fate. The commander fell. The mission collapsed. The war shifted.
He adjusted. Next target: 1,200 meters.
No ammo.
He blinked once. The silence grew louder.
Twelve enemies approached—boots crunching glass, rifles raised, voices mocking. They didn't know his name. They didn't know his record. They only saw a man with no bullets left.
He raised his hand. Not in surrender. Not in defiance. But in ritual.
Index finger extended.
Thumb locked.
The gesture of death.
They laughed.
He died.
No bullet. No breath. No recoil.
Only silence.
Then—darkness.
Then—light.
A cry. A gasp. A heartbeat.
He was reborn.
A child. Small, quiet, breathing slowly in a world of qi and swords. No rifles. No battlefield. No satellites. But his finger remembered. His breath remembered. His silence remembered.
The midwife called him weak.
The elders called him dull.
The clan forgot his name before the week ended.
But beneath the floorboards of the ancestral hall, beneath the roots of an ancient pine, something waited. A scroll. A method. A pulse.
He would find it.
He would cultivate.
He would never fire a bullet again.
Because this time, his qi would be the bullet.
His gaze would be the scope.
And his silence would be the recoil.