Pain was the first architect of his new reality.
It was not a dull ache or a sharp sting. It was a deep, systemic burning, as if every nerve ending
had been frayed and dipped in acid. It was a fire in his muscles, a grinding in his bones, and a
hollow, searing agony in his chest.
Ren Wei's eyes snapped open.
The ceiling was not the familiar, cracked plaster of his graduate school apartment. It was
rough-hewn wood, stained dark with moisture and time. The air didn't smell of stale coffee and
old books; it stank of sweat, herbal liniment, and a faint, coppery tang that his brain, sluggish
and screaming, identified as old blood.
He tried to sit up. The simple motion sent a wave of agonizing fire through his torso, and he
collapsed back onto a sleeping mat that was little more than straw stuffed into a rough-spun
sack.
"What...?" His voice was not his own.
It was reedy, thin, and cracked with a desperate thirst. It was the voice of a boy, not a
25-year-old man.
Then the memories came.
They didn't flow. They slammed into his consciousness like a tidal wave, a chaotic flood of
images, sounds, and emotions that were not his.
A brutalist mountain peak, shrouded in mist. The jeering faces of other boys, all dressed in the
same gray, patched robes. The searing pain of striking a practice dummy until his knuckles split
and bled. The impossible, terrifying sensation of... energy... moving under his skin. A small,
stubborn trickle of it that refused to grow. A name. His name. Ren Wei. The same name. A
cruel, cosmic joke.
The memories converged on a final, agonizing point. The original "Ren Wei," a 16-year-old
outer-sect disciple of the Verdant Jade Peak, had been desperate. Hopeless. His talent was
classified as "Low-Mid Grade," a polite term for "trash." In a final, foolish bid to break through to
the next stage of Qi Condensation before the quarterly assessment, he had forced his
cultivation.
He had gathered the sparse, thin spiritual energy—the Qi—of the mountain air, pulling it into his
body with a crude and inefficient technique. But his meridians, the "rivers" for this energy, were
narrow and brittle. He had pushed too hard.
The energy, instead of refining his body, had shattered his core pathways.
The original Ren Wei had died, alone, on his straw mat, from a catastrophic internal rupture.
And now, he—the other Ren Wei, the psychology graduate student from a world of steel, glass,
and existential dread—was here.
He lay there for a long, silent moment, the pain in his body a dull roar beneath the screaming
panic in his mind.
"This isn't real," he whispered, this time in the familiar Mandarin of his old life. The words felt
thick and alien on his new tongue. "This is a psychotic break. I'm in a hospital. I... I fell asleep
studying Jung again."
He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to will the world away. This is a dream. Wake up. Wake up.
He opened them. The crude, dark-stained wooden ceiling remained.
No. No, no, no.
A new, colder terror settled into his gut. He was a man of logic, of cause and effect, of rational
thought. But he was also a man who had read his fair share of web novels in his spare time. There was no blue-screen interface. No angelic guide. No "Beginner's Gift Pack."
There was only the pain. The thrumming, foreign energy in his limbs. The cold, stark memories
of a life that was not his. And the crushing, absolute realization that he was alone.
He painstakingly, agonizingly, rolled his new body onto its side. Every muscle fiber felt like it was
tearing. He saw the room clearly for the first time. It was a cell. A 10-by-10-foot box made of
stone and wood, shared with two other empty straw mats. A single, small, unglazed window let
in a sliver of gray, misty light. In the corner was a wooden bucket. The source of the coppery
smell.
He was in a cultivation world.
The words tasted like ash. This wasn't some grand adventure. This was a death sentence.
In his old life, he had been a thinker. His expertise was in the human mind, in the "why" of
people's actions. He specialized in personality disorders—the subtle, terrifying ways a mind
could break and reshape itself around trauma. He could de-escalate a-patient, analyze
a-motive, build a-rapport.
What good was that here?
This world, according to the original Ren Wei's memories, was not one of words. It was one of
power. Here, a strong man could shatter boulders. A powerful cultivator could fly. Here, "talent"
was not a turn of phrase; it was a physical, measurable-resource.
And his talent was trash.
He was at the bottom of a brutal, unforgiving pyramid. He was the food. He was the stepping
stone.
His modern conscience, his empathy, his deep-seated belief in the value of human life—these
weren't advantages. They were liabilities. They were anchors that would drag him to the bottom
of this cold, dark ocean.
A wave of dizziness and hunger—a profound, cavernous emptiness—swept over him. The
original owner hadn't just died from over-exertion; he had been starving himself, saving his
meager rations to trade for a single, low-grade spirit stone he'd hoped would save him.
The stone was still clutched in his stiff, cold hand. A gritty, dull-gray pebble that pulsed with a
faint, almost imperceptible warmth. It was useless.
Ren Wei let the stone drop. It clicked hollowly against the wooden floor.
He was weak. He was in pain. He was in a body that was a "C-," in a world that only respected
"A+." He had no system, no cheat, no legendary grandfather's ring.
He had only his own mind. A mind that was screaming, right now, that he was well and truly,
hopelessly... screwed.
A dry, rattling sob escaped his throat. It was a sound of pure, unadulterated terror. He was no
hero. He was just a man. And he was terrified.
The gray light from the window shifted, and he heard the distant sound of a bell tolling. It was,
the original Ren Wei's memory supplied, the call for morning practice.
He had to get up.
If he didn't appear, his tiny, pathetic ration of thin rice gruel would be forfeit. In this world, a day
without food was a step closer to a grave.
His new life had begun. And the first order of business, he realized with a cold, sinking dread,
was simple survival.