Chapter: The Soul's Throb
A tier-two beast, the Steel-Fang Dusk Panther, smashed through the gates of the sect. Its sleek black body, longer than a horse and bristling with killing intent, burst into the registration hall like a streak of midnight lightning.
The crash shook the entire mountainous gate. Stone pillars cracked, banners tore from their hooks, and disciples screamed as the monster pounced. Its claws sliced through a group of outer disciples who had been scrubbing the hall floors. Blood sprayed across the walls. Flesh tore. The reek of iron filled the air.
The elder on duty? Nowhere to be found.
The alarm bell? Silent.
The beast moved too fast, too savage, for anyone to react.
By the time the first disciple even thought to raise a warning, entrails already decorated the tiles. Chaos descended without mercy, and the hall became a slaughterhouse.
Far away from the carnage, Wei Shiyan sat alone, reminded—once again—of his fragile existence.
He was born frail. Sickly. Always hovering on the edge of death like a candle that guttered at the faintest breeze. He had survived countless brushes with the grave, not through strength, but through sheer dumb luck. And sometimes, he cursed that luck. Sometimes, he wished he had been allowed to just die in peace rather than stumble through this cruel existence.
Cultivation? That was a dream beyond him. Without a divine degree, he couldn't even step onto the first rung of the ladder. His constitution was broken, his body so weak that ordinary chores left him coughing blood.
While others longed for immortality, for power, for the Dao, Wei Shiyan's wish was strange, even absurd.
He wanted to gather every so-called fiction writer across the ages and scold them to death. Drag their ancestors out of the dirt if necessary, line them up, and spit in their faces.
"Why?" he often muttered to himself. "Because those bastards wasted their parents' efforts raising them, just to fill the world with delusional lies about cultivation."
That was his obsession. His fire.
Not immortality. Not fame.
Just the chance to curse those dream-peddling idiots for giving him false hope.
But obsessions, no matter how intense, did not change reality.
Every day, he dragged his half-dead body up Luminary Mountain to clean the Skill Hall. The sect had no place for dead weight. If he didn't contribute, he'd be tossed down the mountain like rotting meat for the wolves.
That was the law of this world.
A world where cruelty reigned supreme.
A world where—
Loved ones discarded each other for profit. A mother abandoned her child if weakness shamed her family. Fiancées severed engagements at the first sign of declining status. Cities were butchered over petty insults. Emperors decreed massacres that washed entire provinces in blood. Sects clawed at each other like rabid dogs for resources. Men were castrated for daring to look at the wrong woman. Schemes toppled dynasties overnight. Slavery was entertainment. Demonic cultivators left oceans of corpses in their wake.
Wei Shiyan knew all of this. He had seen enough to understand that survival meant adaptation.
And though he could not cultivate, he was not entirely empty-handed.
He had one thing.
A soul.
Not just any soul, but a monstrously strong one. He could feel it pulsing deep inside, hidden, vast, terrifying. It had saved him before, when death had almost closed in. And now—today—it pulsed again.
His steps grew unsteady. His body was weak, but his mind… his mind burned bright, sharper than it had ever been. The world no longer looked dull and gray. It gleamed. Dust motes sparkled in the air. Sounds came clearer. Even the beat of his own heart thundered like a war drum.
His soul was awake.
Yet he couldn't help but sneer. "What good is a soul this strong if the body carrying it is rotten?"
At the library entrance, he greeted the hall keeper.
"Uncle Tang."
No response. The old man sat slumped against the wall, wine jar clutched to his chest, reeking like an overturned brewery.
Wei Shiyan sighed. Walking wine gourd. That was what everyone called him. It fit.
Inside, the Skill Hall was pitiful. Rows of shelves sagged with worm-eaten scrolls and faded parchments. Out of all the sects in the kingdom, the Luminary Hall's library was the joke of them all. Five measly tier-one mortal-grade martial arts manuals. And one so-called cultivation technique.
One.
Wei Shiyan spat in his heart.
He thought, This is poverty. No, this is poverty's ancestor.
Even if he weren't crippled, what use was this trash? Trying to cultivate from these manuals was like taking off your underwear to hang yourself with.
And he knew, because he had seen it happen.
Three years ago, a new disciple had swaggered into the sect. Young, brash, full of dreams, the kind who thought the world existed just for him.
He strutted into the Skill Hall every day, puffed up with pride, and followed Uncle Tang's "guidance."
Guidance that led him straight to Shura's Kingdom.
One day, during practice, his qi spiraled out of control. His veins ruptured. Blood gushed from every orifice. His body twisted in agony. Then, with a sickening crack, his intestines forced their way out through his backside, splattering across the floor like some grotesque offering.
He died bent over, ass up, forehead pressed to the ground—like he was giving his final kowtow to his great teacher, the wine gourd.
Wei Shiyan could still remember the elder's sigh.
"Youths these days are too rash."
If that boy's ghost had heard him, he would have vomited blood in fury.
Wei Shiyan chuckled darkly. "I wonder if he became a eunuch in Shura's Kingdom. That'd be the only justice."
Shiyan's day ended with his usual routine of cleaning. Dusting shelves. Straightening manuals.
And then he came to it.
The sect's lone cultivation technique.
The one-page relic.
His personal nickname for it: Mister One-Page Division.
It sat alone, as pathetic as it was. A yellowed scrap of parchment with a bold title written across it:
Soul Rings.
He touched the page.
BOOM.
A thunder roared inside him. His soul convulsed. His chest tightened. His heartbeat thundered louder,