The clatter of a keyboard.The dull hum of fluorescent lights.The bitter taste of instant coffee at midnight.
That was the last thing Lu Tian remembered before his vision blurred, his chest seized, and darkness swallowed him whole.
When he opened his eyes again, he wasn't in his cramped office cubicle.Instead, he was kneeling in the center of a grand martial hall, a hundred disciples pointing and laughing as an elder's voice thundered above him.
"Lu Tian, for bringing shame upon our sect, you will be stripped of your outer disciple privileges!"
Lu Tian blinked. Wait… stripped? Sect? What the hell—
Pain lanced through his skull, flooding him with foreign memories. A different Lu Tian. A useless disciple born with a shattered meridian, unable to cultivate past the first stage of Qi Condensation. Ridiculed for years. Mocked as the sect's eternal trash.
And worst of all—this Lu Tian had somehow been betrothed to ten different women at once. The sect had arranged marriages with powerful clans, throwing him in as the sacrificial groom. Now every one of his fiancées looked at him with open disgust.
"Trash.""Worthless.""I'd rather die than marry him."
The words cut deeper than knives, yet Lu Tian only lowered his head, his lips curling faintly. So that's the role I've been given, huh? A talentless punching bag, humiliated in front of my so-called wives-to-be?
Before he could think further, a tall young man in rich azure robes stepped forward, sneering. His name surfaced from the new memories—Xu Han, favored disciple of the sect master, and one of the countless rivals eager to see Lu Tian destroyed.
"Fiancées you cannot protect, cultivation you cannot advance, and a life not worth living," Xu Han said, his voice dripping with arrogance. "Lu Tian, why don't you save us the trouble and cripple yourself here?"
The disciples roared with laughter. Even the elders looked on with pity.
Lu Tian clenched his fists. If this were the old Lu Tian, maybe he would have. But I didn't give up after fifteen years of soul-sucking corporate slavery just to kneel in some cheap knockoff cultivation novel.
A sudden heat burned in his chest.No—in his meridians.
His body shuddered, pain ripping through his veins as if molten metal had been poured inside him. His vision swam, his breath ragged, but through the agony he felt it—something awakening.
A whisper echoed in his mind.Cold. Hungry. Eternal.
Heaven-Devouring Meridian… unsealed.Condition met: humiliation in front of destined bonds.Beginning assimilation.
Lu Tian's eyes snapped open, glowing with a faint crimson light.
The laughter around him died instantly.