Dawn arrived as a searing cramp in Bai Xingyue's lower back.
He woke not to the gentle chime of his smart blinds, but to the raw, physical memory of yesterday's labor.
Every muscle from his shoulders to his calves was a tight, complaining knot.
He groaned into his thousand-thread-count pillow, the sound muffled and pathetic.
"Good morning, Host!"
"Sleep efficiency: 87%. Acceptable."
"Lingering muscular fatigue: Expected. Time to begin Day One of your actual life: Now."
Xiao Zhu's voice was a violent, cheerful splash of cold water in the quiet room.
The creature was perched on his headboard, its blue eyes glowing in the dim light.
"It's still dark," Xingyue mumbled, pulling the duvet over his head.
The plush enclosure had never felt more like a trap.
"The best time to reshape reality is before it has fully woken up and decided to oppose you," the system replied.
A sharp, electric tingle—not painful, but profoundly irritating, like the buzz of a trapped fly—coursed through Xingyue's spine.
He yelped, flinging the covers off.
"What was that?!"
"A neuromuscular stimulant. A gentle nudge. Consider it my version of an alarm clock."
"Now, vertical. We have a foundational assessment to conduct before the household stirs."
Grumbling, Xingyue pushed himself upright.
The clean, ordered state of his room was a silent accusation.
He felt a flicker of pride at the memory, quickly drowned out by the ache.
"Assessment? For what?"
"For the raw, unpalatable dough that is your current physical form."
"Your previous 'training' was aesthetic maintenance. We will now test your actual limits."
"Put on exercise attire. Meet me in your home studio in five minutes."
The home studio was a converted wing of the mansion, soundproofed and mirrored, equipped with a sprung floor, a grand piano, and every piece of training tech money could buy.
It had always felt like a playground.
Today, under the sterile LED panels, it looked like an operating theatre.
Xiao Zhu hovered in the center of the room.
"We begin with flexibility and core stability, the forgotten pillars of your so-called dance training. Follow the guide."
A holographic figure materialized in front of Xingyue.
It moved into a deep, perfect lunge, back straight, hips squared.
"Hold for three minutes per side. Begin."
Xingyue shrugged.
This was easy, he'd done stretches before.
He dropped into what he thought was a lunge, his back knee hovered an inch off the ground.
"Incorrect. Depth insufficient. Pelvis tilted. Adjust." Xiao Zhu's voice was flat.
Xingyue wobbled, sinking deeper.
A sharp pull screamed through his hip flexor. He gasped.
"Hold. Do not speak. Breathe."
The seconds crawled.
The pleasant burn he was used to transformed into a deep, structural ache.
His supporting thigh began to tremble.
Sweat beaded on his neck within the first minute.
"Discomfort is data, Host. It is your body reporting its weaknesses. Listen to it."
By the two-minute mark, tears of strain prickled at the corners of his eyes.
His breath came in ragged hitches.
This wasn't dancing. This was torture.
"Thirty seconds remaining. If you break form, we restart the timer."
A sob of frustration caught in his throat.
He locked his jaw, staring at his red-faced reflection in the mirror, muscles quivering like plucked wires.
The hologram held its perfect, silent pose, a taunt of impossible standard.
When the three-minute chime finally sounded, his leg collapsed from under him.
He crumpled to the floor, panting, massaging his screaming thigh.
"Satisfactory. Now the other side."
The next hour was a meticulously orchestrated hell.
Plank holds where his spine was corrected millimeter by millimeter until it felt fused.
Side planks where his obliques shrieked in protest.
A series of spinal twists that revealed shocking rigidity.
Xiao Zhu was a merciless diagnostician, its cheerful commentary a stark contrast to the brutal physicality it commanded.
"Your core is decorative. Your flexibility is a polite suggestion.
"Your proprioception—your sense of where your body is in space—is tragically vague.
This," it declared as Xingyue lay in a soggy, defeated heap after a failed V-sit hold, "is the foundation of the palace of sand."
"It cannot hold the weight of a dream."
The old Xingyue would have cried.
The old Xingyue would have called for Aunty Zhang.
The Xingyue who had folded clothes until his fingers bled and vacuumed until he saw double simply pushed sweat-slick hair from his forehead, his chest still heaving.
The naive excitement was gone, sanded down by pain, but in its place was a stubborn, single-minded focus.
"So we fix it," he rasped. "What's next?"
Xiao Zhu tilted its head.
The host's resilience was not born of toughness, but of a simplistic, almost idiotic, reframing of suffering as 'steps.'
It was inefficient, yet… effective.
"Next is your first vocal assessment under my parameters. Stand."
At the piano, Xiao Zhu displayed a simple vocal exercise on the sheet music stand—sustained notes on an "Ah" vowel, climbing the scale.
"You will sing this. I am not listening for beauty. I am listening for stability."
"For the absence of the wobble your previous coach called 'emotional vibrato.' It is weakness."
"Begin."
Xingyue took a shaky breath, still winded, and sang.
His voice, usually clear and bright, wavered with exhaustion.
He fought to control it, his diaphragm protesting.
"Stop. Your breath support is originating from your throat. You are strangling the sound. From the diaphragm. Again."
He tried. He failed.
"Again."
Fail.
"You are thinking about it. Do not think. Engage."
After the seventh attempt, frustration boiled over. "I'm trying! It's not working!"
"Trying is the anthem of the mediocre," Xiao Zhu chirped.
"You are not trying. You are performing 'trying.' There is a difference."
"The girl whose dream you carry did not have the luxury of 'trying.' She had only doing, or failing. Connect to that."
The words landed differently today. Yesterday, the girl was a spectral inspiration.
Today, through the prism of muscle failure and vocal frailty, her dream felt heavier, more concrete. Her practice until her feet bled.
His legs trembled beneath him now.
Was this the same currency?
He closed his eyes.
Not to find a note, but to find that ghostly echo of desperation in his chest.
He took a breath, and this time, he didn't think about his diaphragm.
He thought about a small, cold studio. He thought about a laugh cut short.
He pushed the air from a place deeper than habit, raw and unpolished.
The note that came out was not pretty. It was blunt, slightly ragged at the edges, but it held.
It was stable.
Silence hung in the studio.
"...Adequate," Xiao Zhu said, its voice devoid of its usual colorful commentary.
"That is the seed. That raw, ugly stability is worth ten thousand of your previous pretty trills. We will cultivate it."
A notification popped up in Xingyue's vision, the first since the primary quest.
[SKILL UNLOCKED: Foundational Breath Control (Lv. 0)]
[Awareness of core engagement for vocal stability has been initiated. Proficiency: 1%]
One percent. After all that pain, one percent. He should feel discouraged.
Instead, staring at that tiny, hard-won number, Bai Xingyue felt a jolt of pure, electric triumph.
It was a real number. It was proof. The mountain had a foothold.
A soft knock echoed through the studio door. "Young Master? Your mother asked me to tell you breakfast is ready."
It was Aunty Zhang's voice, warm with concern. "She said she heard… thumping?"
Xingyue looked at his trembling hands, at his sweat-soaked shirt, then at the cheerful yellow monster floating nearby.
The path ahead was nothing but brutal reality checks. But he had his one percent.
"Tell her I'll be right there, Aunty Zhang!" he called back, his voice hoarse but bright.
He turned to Xiao Zhu, a tired but genuine grin breaking through.
"So, Coach. What's for breakfast? And when do we start again?"
Xiao Zhu observed the grin, the resilient shine in the host's eyes despite the physical wreckage.
The system's smile widened, a silent acknowledgment of a strange, new variable in its calculations.
"Nutrition is next. Then, we begin planning your academic pivot."
"The real world awaits your entrance, Host. I do hope you find its lessons… amusing."