The world returned to him through fragments: the sting of smoke in his lungs, and then... silence.
He assumed he was in an hospital and thought and found out something wrong, there was not the sterile quiet of an operating theater between procedures, no, this was deeper. A place where even the hum of electricity had ceased. No beeping monitors, no distant chatter from nurses' stations, no sirens wailing in the distance.
When Arin Vale opened his eyes, he was staring at a ceiling made of bamboo.
He didn't move at first. His training as a surgeon taught him that panic clouds perception; observation comes first.
"What the fuck?"
No pain. No blood. Just the faint creak of wood beneath him and the smell of damp earth rising through floorboards that felt thin enough to splinter under pressure. The air was humid, thicker than any hospital's oxygen-enriched atmosphere, laden with the faint sweetness of grass and old wood, undercut by something unfamiliar—incense, perhaps.
Somewhere beyond the thin paper walls, a bell rang: deep, deliberate, resonant. Not metallic, but bronze, its tone low.
His fingers flexed against the rough weave of the mattress beneath him. Skin smooth, callus-free.
"These are not my hands." He thought suspiciously
He lifted one slowly, turning it in the dim light filtering through rice-paper windows. Long fingers, narrow palms, unmarred by years of scrubbing, suturing, No surgical scars, no nothing.
His chest rose; no pain, no machines strapped to his ribs, no coppery taste of blood in his mouth from biting down during resuscitation attempts gone wrong.
"Not my body."
He blinked once, twice. Tried to sit up, but stopped himself. *Don't rush.*
"A dream?" he thought. The words came in a voice that wasn't entirely his—higher, clearer, lacking the gravel of thirty-eight years of stress and caffeine.
*No. Dreams don't smell or feel this real. Is this a lucid drea—*
Then the headache hit.
It wasn't a headache. It was a force.
A pressure behind his eyes, like someone had jammed a syringe full of molten lead into his skull and was slowly pushing the plunger. Heat bloomed across his temples, radiating outward in jagged pulses. He grunted, low and involuntary
"Fuck."
His hands flew to his temples, fingers digging in as if he could pry the pain out like a foreign object lodged in soft tissue.
And then the memories came.
Not his own. Never his. But "the body he was possessing of."
Narrow courtyards slick with morning dew. Boys in gray robes punching the air in perfect synchronicity, their movements sharp as blades. The chill of mountain mornings seeping through thin cotton. A voice calling "Ye Lan."
Each image struck like a hammer blow to the base of his skull.
"Arin, stop. Breathe. Count."
He forced his diaphragm to move: in for four, hold for four, out for six. The rhythm was automatic, drilled into him during trauma rotations when adrenaline threatened to override reason. The pain didn't ease, but it "shifted", like a scalpel sliding between bone and tissue.
Another wave crashed over him.
He rolled onto his side, knees drawn to his chest, teeth clenched so hard he tasted blood, or what felt like blood.
"This is not good, this is not blood, This is copper, my Stress response has increased"
The boy's memories flooded faster now, less fragmented, more coherent:
- Age fifteen.
- Orphan. Parents lost in a border skirmish with the Iron Fang Sect,details vague
- Yong Mo Clan, outer pavilion. Lowest tier of disciples. Charity cases.
- Awakening Day: seven nights from now.
- Fail the test, and be cast out.
He laughed once, a sharp, ragged sound.
"Of course. A deadline."
The pain crested like a tsunami, white-hot and all-consuming.
His vision tunneled, edges bleaching into static.
"Stay conscious."
Instinct took over. He slapped his own cheek: once, twice. The sting grounded him, pulled him back from the brink of blackout.
"Focus on the body."
- Height: ~180 cm. Lean frame but not undernourished.
- Weight: ~65 kg. Light for his height suggesting low fat mass.
The pain finally ebbed, leaving behind a dull throb like the afterglow of a migraine. He lay there, sweat cooling on his skin, breathing shallow. The incense smell had intensified, mingling with his own salt and fear.
"So I died" he said quietly "and woke in fiction."
The thought wasn't as absurd as it should have been.
He had read these wuxia stories once, between shifts, late nights when the hospital lights dimmed and exhaustion dulled his skepticism. Web novels, translated badly, filled with terms like "qi," "meridians," and "spiritual roots." He'd skimmed them for distraction, never belief. They were fantasy, escapism for people who'd never held a dying child in their arms or watched a colleague collapse from burnout.
Yet here he was, breathing proof.
He pushed himself up slowly. The thin mattress, stuffed with dried reeds, probably, creaked beneath him. His balance felt off: gravity tuned to a lighter constant, or perhaps his center of mass had shifted. The floorboards groaned beneath bare feet, cool and damp with morning condensation.
"The wood feels unusually light, its density low and almost spongy to the touch. The air carries a weight of its own, thick with moisture, every breath humid and heavy. Despite the warmth, there is a faint sense of thinness in the atmosphere, a subtle reduction in pressure that most would not notice but the body does. It explains the elevated lung capacity; the constant demand for oxygen in this damp, low pressure air forces the lungs to stretch beyond their normal limits."
On the far wall hung a bronze mirror framed with hairline cracks, tarnished green at the edges. He stepped closer, each footfall silent despite his tension.
The stranger in the mirror stared back.
Pale skin with a faint luminescent sheen like moonlight caught in porcelain. Hair white as bone, disheveled but soft, falling just past his jawline. Between his brows, a small huadian mark, crimson, petal-shaped, pulsing faintly like a heartbeat synced to some unseen rhythm.
And on the right side of his neck, etched into the skin yet alive with faint silver light, the Yong Mo crest: a crescent moon curled around a blade.
He reached up, touched the mark.
Warm. Not hot, not cold, warm, as though blood flowed through it in a separate circulatory loop.
"Not a tattoo. Living tissue. Responsive to touch?"
His new face was young, sharp-boned, and objectively too symmetrical for coincidence. Cheekbones high, jawline clean, eyes soulless.
Genetic engineering?
He frowned, dismissing the thought for now. "Whatever. I'll test this later. Trying it on myself now would be too risky."
"Wait…" he murmured, a sudden thought freezing him mid-step.
He closed his eyes and sifted through Ye Lan's memories, fragmented flashes of a life not his own. Faces surfaced in his mind, strangers yet familiar, each bearing the same peculiar mark etched into the skin on the right side of their neck. It wasn't just him. There were others.
He inhaled, deep. Felt his ribs expand fully, effortlessly.
Lung capacity larger. Heart rate steady at fifty-eight beats per minute
lower than normal for a teenager, but consistent with elite athletes or meditators.
"Efficient," he murmured. "This is built to channel something."
Qi: the word surfaced from memory fragments, unbidden but certain. Energy that saturates the world. Invisible, yet fundamental. In Ye Lan's recollections, qi flowed through meridians like rivers through valleys.
If that energy existed, it obeyed some principle.
In his old world, every system, no matter how strange, followed order. Quantum entanglement, protein folding, even placebo effects, they all operated within frameworks of cause and effect.
If qi moved, it transferred energy.
If it healed, it altered cell behavior, perhaps via bioelectric signaling or mitochondrial modulation.
If it enhanced strength, it likely recruited dormant muscle fibers or optimized neural firing patterns.
He would treat it as anatomy until proven otherwise.
A slow smile ghosted his face, the first since he'd awoken. Not joy, not relief.
"This is a research opportunity!" he said with a excited tone.
On the low table beside his bed, carved from a single slab of cedar, lay folded gray robes, a clay jug of water, and a parchment sealed with red wax stamped with the Yong Mo crescent-and-blade.
He picked up the seal, cracked it open with his thumb.
The handwriting was neat, official, ink slightly smudged from humidity.
> To all outer-pavilion orphans:
> The Awakening Ceremony shall be held in seven days within the Hall of Spirit Veins. Attendance is mandatory. Prepare body and mind.
He read it twice, then folded it carefully along the original creases.
"Seven days. 168 hours. 10,080 minutes."
"Enough time"
He poured water from the jug into a shallow bowl. The liquid was clear, odorless,
He splashed his face. The temperature was mild, not chilled. As droplets ran down his neck, his reflection rippled in the bowl and the red mark on his forehead flared briefly.
He slipped into the gray robe, the fabric coarse against his skin but surprisingly well kept. It smelled faintly of woodsmoke and dried mugwort, the kind used in old remedies to ward off insects or "cleanse bad qi," at least according to what Ye Lan once believed.
As he tightened the sash, fragments of memory stirred. Faces, voices, the sound of footsteps before dawn, it all came back in flashes. These robes weren't a mark of honor. They were the uniform of the lowest disciples, the orphans the clan had taken in out of pity or practicality.
Shelter, two meals a day, and the barest scraps of cultivation training, that was the deal. In exchange, they scrubbed latrines, hauled firewood, and swept the courtyards while everyone else still slept.
He looked down at himself for a moment. The robe hung loose and plain, but it said everything about who he was here, and how far he had to climb.
And once, only once, they got a chance.
The Awakening Ceremony was the first true threshold every disciple faced, the moment that decided whether their path ended in servitude or began in cultivation. It tested the alignment of one's spiritual roots, the fragile connection between body, soul, and the world's unseen flow of qi.
If your body could resonate with the energy in the air, if your meridians were unblocked and your dantian capable of holding power, then you were chosen. You would rise as an inner disciple, gifted with guidance, resources, and a chance at a future.
For everyone else, it was the quiet end of ambition. Failure meant dull roots, blocked meridians, or a weak spirit. They would remain as laborers, servants, or nameless outer disciples, watching others ascend while they stayed chained to the ground.
Ye Lan stood in silence, his gaze steady as he recalled the ceremony's purpose. "The gods in this world never judge effort, only potential, he thought. The world calls it fate, but in truth, it is just nature choosing who gets to rise and who is left behind."
Fail, and the sect would revoke support by sunset.
He felt no moral outrage. Only the acceptance of a man who'd seen systems run on triage.
"They can't feed those who produce nothing" he thought. "Even hospitals run on the same logic. Resources go to those with salvageable outcomes."
From habit, he straightened the room, folded the reed-stuffed blanket into precise thirds, stacked the empty water bowl atop the jug, aligned the straw sandals by the door with toes.