The next morning, he woke to the chilling silence of his own irrelevance. No one came to check on him. No servant brought a morning meal. He was a stone dropped in a pond, and the ripples had already vanished. The hunger gnawing at his stomach was a sharp, clarifying reminder of his new status: if he didn't act, he would simply be forgotten.
The memory of his mother's visit was a fresh, burning brand on his soul. Her cool, knowing smile. Her finger tracing his jaw. My son wakes with strange eyes, strange words, and a stranger's hunger. The thought was a cold knot of fear in his gut.
He dressed in the stiff, unfamiliar robes, his fingers fumbling with the ties. He looked like a child playing dress-up in his father's clothes. He felt like one, too.
Leaving the suffocating confines of his room, he stepped out into the crisp morning air. He looked up. The sky was crisp blue, and hanging in its center was not a simple sun, but a brilliant, white-hot orb of light he knew from the boy's memories was called Lumina. Its rays were sharp and clear, casting stark, well-defined shadows on the ground.
In a nearby courtyard, two older clan members, men in their forties with the hard, tempered bodies of lifelong warriors, were engaged in a controlled spar. Their movements were not clumsy like the younger disciples.
They were precise, powerful. As one of them, a man with a thick beard and a steady aura at the Early Stage 3, threw a punch, a faint, visible ripple of fiery energy distorted the air around his fist.
Star Force, was the energy a cultivator forged within their own body, a refined power made personal. The sight sent a jolt of primal fear and a bitter spike of envy through him. That faint ripple was a chasm, a universe of power separating him from every other person in this clan. He was a man with no arms in a world of swordsmen.
He forced himself to move, keeping to the shadows of the eaves, making himself as small and unnoticeable as possible. He had a new, desperate purpose. He had to learn the rules of this world before they crushed him.
His destination was a memory, a faint map from the mind of the boy he now inhabited: The Pavilion of Fading Sunlight. The clan library.
The air of the main estate felt thin, tasteless, after the rich, vitalizing energy of his seclusion chamber. Yang Wei walked with a stiff annoyance, his new robes of fine First House silk whispering against the stone path. Peak Stage 2. Solid as a mountain stone.
He could feel the new, potent flow of Star Force in his meridians, a quiet river of power waiting to be unleashed. And his mother had sent him to fetch herbs like a common errand boy.
The indignity of it was a sharp, bitter taste in his mouth.
He knew why, of course. It was all because of that useless cousin. Since the cripple had inexplicably woken up, a cloud of failure and shame had descended upon the entire clan, a constant, irritating distraction from what was truly important: his own path. The elders were distracted.
His father, the Patriarch, was distracted. And his mother, for all her serene composure, was clearly annoyed by the Second House's sudden, pathetic resurgence of relevance.
"Wei'er, your consolidation elixir requires three stalks of Silvervein Grass. The Grand Elder keeps the keys to the medicinal stores. Go now. Do not delay." Her quiet command had been absolute.
He approached the western edge of the estate, his frown deepening as the Pavilion of Fading Sunlight came into view. The building was a disgrace, a leaning, rotting tomb that was a physical monument to the clan's decline.
He wrinkled his nose in distaste at the smell of dust and decay that seemed to cling to the very air around it. He would be quick. He would get the keys from the old man, retrieve the herbs, and return to the purity of his own training ground. The thought of his cousin, the source of all this distraction, did not even cross his mind. The boy was a ghost, a non-entity. A sleeping shame was, at least, a quiet one. An awake one was simply an inconvenience.
He pushed the groaning doors open and stepped into the gloom.
Yang Kai, found the library at the western edge of the estate, a sad, neglected two-story building leaning as if weary of its own existence. It looked less like a hall of knowledge and more like a tomb.
The heavy wooden doors groaned in protest as he pushed them open. The air inside was thick and musty, the scent of decaying paper and profound neglect. The light of Lumina struggled to pierce the grime-caked lattice windows, casting long, dusty shadows across rows of towering, empty shelves. The sight was a punch to the gut. The great Yang Clan's library was a ghost.
A dry, rasping cough came from a dark corner of the room.
Yang Kai froze. The Grand Elder, Yang Tian, sat behind a low, ink-stained desk, his face a web of wrinkles.
"Come to read the history of our failure, boy?" the old man rasped, his voice thin as parchment.
Yang Kai gave a small, jerky bow, his throat too dry to speak.
The Grand Elder let out a dry, rasping sigh. "This hall was once the pride of the province. The complete repository of the Sun-Forged Art, a treasure that kings would have killed for. Now..." He gestured with a withered hand at the empty shelves. "Now it is a tomb for dusty tax records and children's primers. The lions are gone, boy. Only the ghosts and the mice remain." He closed his eyes. "Take what you will. Knowledge is free. It is the power to use it that has a price."
Permission granted, Yang Kai moved deeper into the library. Even common knowledge was better than nothing. He ran his fingers along the spines of the few remaining scrolls.
'Abridged History of the Azure Empire, Vol. III'
'Common Yāoshòu of the Titan's Tooth Range'
'Introduction to Mortal Meridians'
He pulled that last one from the shelf. It was a start. As he opened the scroll, his eyes scanned the room, landing on a small, unassuming shelf near the back, almost completely hidden in shadow. It held only three books, bound not in bamboo, but in thick, dark leather.
He moved towards them, his heart beating a little faster.
The first was titled, 'The Star-Forged Path: A Cultivation Compendium.' The second, 'The Unified Codex of the Grand Accord.' The third… the third had no title. Its black leather cover was bare, save for the clan's sigil—the cracked sun—embossed in faded gold.
He reached for the first book. His fingers had just brushed the cool leather when a voice, sharp and laced with disdain, cut through the silence.
"What do you think you're doing?"
He spun around, his heart leaping into his throat.
His cousin, Yang Wei, stood there, his arms crossed, his handsome face a mask of profound annoyance.
Yang Wei strode towards him, his movements fluid and confident. He let out a short, sharp laugh of pure disbelief. "Looking? Do you have any idea what these texts represent? I spent three years just mastering the first volume of 'The Star-Forged Path.' I bled in the training yards every single day while you were drooling on a pillow. These books are the legacy of our ancestors, bought with their blood and spirit. They are not picture books for the clan's sleeping shame to gawk at."
"I… I was just…" Yang Kai stammered, hating the weakness in his own voice.
Yang Wei stopped in front of him, his taller frame casting a shadow over him. He smelled of clean sweat and a faint, metallic tang, like ozone after a storm. He gestured to the books. "'The Star-Forged Path' details the nine stages of mortal cultivation. 'The Grand Accord' explains the very structure of the heavens. They are the foundational texts for any true cultivator." He paused, letting the implication hang in the air. And you are not one.
His eyes then fell on the third, untitled book. A flicker of frustration crossed his face. "And that one… that one is a monument to our failure. Our clan's core technique. Sealed by a formation none of us are strong enough to open."
Yang Wei reached past him and plucked the 'Introduction to Mortal Meridians' scroll from his hand. He glanced at it, a smirk twisting his lips. "This is more your speed. Learn how your own body works. It's the only part of this world you might ever have a hope of mastering."
He thrust the scroll back into Yang Kai's chest, the act both a dismissal and a deep, cutting insult.
Without another word, Yang Wei turned and strode towards the Grand Elder's desk. "Grand Elder, my mother sent me. She requires three stalks of Silvervein Grass for my consolidation elixir."
Yang Kai stood frozen, the scroll clutched in his hands. The humiliation was a hot, bitter taste in his mouth. Yang Wei was right. He was a fool. A weak, useless fool in a world of demigods. In his old world, on Earth, he had been weak too. But weakness there could be overcome not just with physical strength, but with information. In the games he played, in the stories he read, in the very structure of his modern world, the side with the best intelligence, the best data, always had an edge.
The thought was a lifeline.
He couldn't compete with them on "hardware"—his body was trash-tier. But "software"... knowledge... that was different. He looked around the dusty, decaying library. He no longer saw just a collection of books. He saw a server room. A repository of data files. The clan's operating system. Its history logs. Its patch notes.
He clutched the mundane scroll tighter. Yang Wei had meant it as an insult, a child's primer. But Yang Kai now saw it for what it was: the first page of the tutorial. And he would learn it. He would learn it all.