The dust motes swam in the late afternoon light, a silent, golden blizzard filtering through the grime-streaked glass of the classroom window.
Ao Yetian stared at the back of Ye Ziyun's head, not with the admiration a nameless extra should feel for the destined heroine, but with a cold, sickening clench of dread that tightened his chest like a rusty vice.
He had no memory of his life before this moment, before waking up as a nobody orphan in a world he only knew from a novel.
He knew he was in the Holy Orchid Institute, in a city called Glory, a place destined to be annihilated by a Demon Beast horde because the true hero—Nie Li—hadn't yet been reborn to save it.
He was sitting in the back row, a ghost in the narrative, waiting to be crushed into paste alongside millions of others.
His current body, a weak frame with a negligible Soul Force of maybe Red 3, was utterly useless—a brittle twig in the face of a tsunami.
"Soul Force is the foundation of all cultivation,"
The droning teacher, a man whose voice scraped like chalk on stone, lectured, his pointer tracing a faded diagram of the human meridians.
"Without it, you are nothing. You must strive to reach your peak!"
Strive?
Ao Yetian scoffed inwardly, the thought of a bitter taste on his tongue.
He knew the secrets of the world's most powerful beings, the intricate array patterns, and the weaknesses of the Demon God, yet he was stuck here, paralyzed by the limitations of this tiny, doomed realm.
He needed power, raw and immediate, not placating advice.
He closed his eyes, ignoring the oily sound of Shen Yue's arrogant whispers nearby, focusing on the only thing he had: the alien knowledge of the Profound Way.
He had the power system of Against the Gods—a brutal path fueled by Profound Energy and the potent Evil God Meridians.
It was an alien cultivation, and in this world of gentle Soul Force, it was an impossibility... but the alternative was annihilation. He had to try.
Focusing his mind, Ao Yetian tried to recall the most fundamental circulating technique, the initial breathing method.
He didn't have the meridians for it, but he had the concept, the blueprint for a power that ripped through stars.
He forcefully tried to draw in the external energy, not the ambient Soul Force which was too weak and gentle, but the raw, chaotic power that existed beyond this small, fragile realm.
The silence of his mind was shattered by a searing, explosive pain behind his eyes.
The air around him didn't flow in; it cracked.
The sound was a sharp, tearing, shrinking!—like silk being ripped apart in a hurricane, but a thousand times louder, vibrating the very bones in their ears.
A point of shimmering, violent light erupted a foot above his desk, quickly expanding into a ragged, crackling tear in space no larger than a basketball.
The students screamed, a chorus of high-pitched terror, scrambling back and knocking chairs over.
The classroom light suddenly bent and warbled around the vortex, plunging half the room into an impossible, black shadow.
The tear lasted for barely two seconds, the air smelling of ozone and burning metal, but in that moment, two items shot out of the unstable void and clattered onto Ao Yetian's desk.
The tear instantly vanished, leaving a ringing silence broken only by terrified, ragged gasps.
The first was a fist-sized chunk of dark-red crystal, faceted like a jewel but rough and ancient. It pulsed with an intense, heatless glow, a deep, tyrannical energy that Ao Yetian's soul instantly recognized.
The second was a sleek, black metallic object—a credit card. It had a strange, geometric silver logo on it and numbers that meant nothing here.
Ao Yetian didn't hesitate. Plot knowledge was useless without a weapon.
The credit card could wait; the crystal was power.
Operating purely on instinct, a cold, ruthless drive that felt alien yet innate, he slammed his palm down and enclosed the red crystal.
A wave of profound, burning energy—the raw, condensed power of another universe—slammed into his weak body.
It didn't try to merge with his Soul Force; it overwrote it, the foreign energy treating his pathetic cultivation base like an irrelevant flicker of a candle.
Meridians he didn't even know he had were instantly activated, flooding his weak frame with unparalleled strength.
He bit down so hard his jaw ached, fighting back the scream as the power of the Evil God started to circulate.
It was less a gentle flow and more an internal crucifixion. Bones cracked and reshaped in a storm of agonizing fire.
His weak, spongy muscles were purified and hardened into resilient cords.
Sweat poured from him in sheets, instantly drenching his clothes as his body was forcibly reconstructed into a vessel capable of holding Profound Energy.
A low, guttural moan escaped his lips, sounding less like fear and more like a triumphant roar.
When the transformation settled, Ao Yetian gasped, his vision sharpening with preternatural clarity.
He could hear the panicked, staccato pulse of everyone in the room.
He felt the weak, flickering candlelight of their Soul Force, and then he felt his own power—a deep, endless well of burning, unyielding energy resting in his core.
He was no longer a Red 3 Soul Force student. He had the seeds of a profound cultivation.
The teacher, her face pale and glistening with shock, rushed to the desk, her voice barely a choked whisper.
"Ao Yetian! What in the heavens was that artifact? Where did it come from?!"
Ao Yetian slowly stood up. His eyes, now clear and intense, locked onto the elder's terrified face.
He felt the cold confidence of a world-shaking martial artist, not a terrified, doomed student.
He casually picked up the black card, its surface cool and smooth under his fingers, and pocketed it without a glance.
"It was a gift,"
Ao Yetian said, his voice surprisingly steady and deep, carrying a new, chilling resonance.
"And you wouldn't understand."
He knew what he had to do. He had power now, but he was still surrounded by future corpses.
He needed a safe, secluded place to master his newfound strength. The time for schooling was over.
The time for survival—and domination—had begun.
He simply walked past the frozen teacher and the terror-stricken students, his strides confident and powerful, and headed for the door, leaving behind a classroom shattered by a tear in reality.