Cluttered bedroom. Wooden bed that creaked with every breath.
"My head... feels like someone took a sledgehammer to it."
"Still breathing?"
Each thought felt like swimming through molasses. Memories surfaced one by one—some familiar, others completely alien. New experiences crashed into his consciousness like waves, merging with his soul until the boundaries blurred.
Transmigration. The impossible word tasted like copper in his mouth.
Wrong body. Wrong time. This fifteen-year-old frame belonged to someone else—another Ye Tian from another life. 2019 had been his era, filled with smartphones and skyscrapers. Now 2119 stretched before him. The First Century of the New Era. One hundred years of history he'd never lived, compressed into fragments of inherited memory.
The Age of Yuan Qi. The Age of Talents.
The memories hit him like a data dump, each revelation more staggering than the last.
Early 2019. Reality tearing apart at the seams. Spatial rifts gaped across Earth's surface like infected wounds, bleeding creatures from nightmare dimensions. Their roars still echoed in these borrowed memories—sounds that froze human blood and sent entire cities fleeing in panic. Humanity's reign as apex predator ended in a single day.
Modern weapons? Worthless scrap metal. Yuan Qi—that mysterious atmospheric poison—had infected everything. Firearms seized up. Missiles became expensive fireworks that refused to ignite. Nuclear arsenals, humanity's ultimate insurance policy, transformed into the world's most expensive paperweights.
Back to swords and spears overnight. Humanity armed with glorified kitchen knives against monsters that could tear through steel plating.
Suicide. Pure suicide.
Thank the heavens the first wave brought only fodder-level beasts. Breathing room. Time to adapt or die trying.
Scientists worked like madmen. Their breakthrough salvation: humans could actually harness Yuan Qi instead of just suffering its effects.
Warriors crawled from civilization's ashes.
Bodies pushed beyond natural limits. Yuan Qi flowing through meridians like liquid fire. But evolution demanded more than just physical transformation—something dormant in human DNA finally awakened.
Talents.
Maybe one person in a hundred manifested abilities. Cultivation talent determined how far someone could climb the martial ladder. Beyond that lay elemental mastery: sword techniques that could split mountains, flame control that melted steel, ice manipulation that froze enemies solid. The possibilities were endless.
These gifts let humanity claw back from extinction's edge. Slowly. Painfully. Most of Earth remained beast territory, but scattered survival bases offered islands of hope in an ocean of death.
The planet itself had mutated. Yuan Qi's influence expanded Earth hundreds of times over—vast continents where none had existed before, filled with resources and dangers beyond imagination.
"Yuan Qi. Talents. Monsters." The words felt strange on his tongue. "What a world to wake up in."
Excitement flickered in his chest. Maybe this insane situation offered opportunities his mundane past life never could.
Then the crushing weight of darker memories descended. The excitement died like a candle in a hurricane.
When the rifts first opened and Yuan Qi poisoned the atmosphere, some humans awakened talents spontaneously. Cultivation talent was innate—no awakening required. Other abilities could manifest later through training or trigger events.
For those first awakeners, power meant death.
Bodies unprepared for Yuan Qi couldn't contain the energy surge. Historical records painted the carnage in gruesome detail: awakeners exploded from within, their own abilities tearing them apart. The lucky ones just suffered permanent disability.
His original death crystallized in perfect, horrible clarity. Yuan Qi flooding his system like molten metal in his veins. His body swelling, cracking, finally detonating like an overcharged battery.
What kind of ability could cause such violent rejection? Even the earliest, most catastrophic awakening failures resulted in swelling or crippling at worst. Complete bodily destruction suggested something incredibly powerful.
A talent so potent it had crossed dimensional boundaries with his soul.
Current assessment: fifteen-year-old body in peak condition. The golden age for cultivation in this era.
Pre-fifteen meant underdeveloped physique—training would cripple rather than strengthen. Post-twenty meant diminished potential even with exceptional talent. Wealthy families used rare treasures to accelerate physical development, but common folk waited for nature's timeline.
"At least I'm not stuck wearing some ancient grandfather's worn-out frame."
The relief lasted exactly three seconds before reality gutted him.
This body's talent assessment. The memory hit like ice water in his veins.
Novice Talent.
Rock bottom. The absolute nadir of human potential. Cultivation hierarchy climbed from Novice through Inferior, Elementary, Intermediate, to Advanced. Rumors whispered of grades beyond Advanced, but those secrets remained locked away from ordinary people.
Anyone reaching fifteen could purchase talent stones for assessment. His predecessor had practically vibrated with excitement, rushing to test himself privately. The results—Novice Talent, the genetic equivalent of a death sentence—had stopped his heart from pure despair.
"Novice Talent. Condemned to mediocrity forever."
The cultivation ladder started with Martial Apprentice and Martial Artist. Apprentice barely counted—glorified physical training. Martial Artist marked true cultivation's beginning, requiring the strength to lift a thousand pounds barehanded.
But advancement demanded Inferior Talent minimum. Even someone blessed with that pathetic grade could barely scratch into early Martial Artist realm after decades of effort. Still, they commanded respect above ordinary civilians.
Novice Talent meant Apprentice ceiling. Forever. An absolute genetic prison with no possibility of parole.
"If only talent could be rewritten..."
Knock knock knock!
Gentle rapping interrupted his spiral into despair.
"Brother, are you okay in there?"
The voice belonged to a girl barely past childhood. Ye Yu—his thirteen-year-old sister from inherited memories. The only family he had left in this dangerous world.
He opened the door to find delicate features that belonged on expensive porcelain. Large, innocent eyes filled with worry.
"Brother, how did your talent assessment turn out?"
Talent information was sacred. Asking others constituted provocation unless family bonds permitted such intimacy. In this predator-eat-prey world, revealing abilities to the wrong people meant assassination or worse.
But little sisters were different. They deserved protection, not lies.
"Xiao Yu, your brother's talent is... quite promising. I'll definitely become a great warrior someday!" Each word tasted like broken glass, but her hopeful expression demanded the fiction.
Then his vision exploded into impossible data streams.
A translucent interface materialized directly on his retinas, displaying information that shouldn't exist:
Name: Ye Yu
Cultivation Talent: Inferior
Ice Talent: Elementary (Unawakened)
[End of Chapter 1]