The shovel was too heavy.
That was Yin Jie's first, stupid thought.
The wooden handle was slick with grime and something worse. The iron head was chipped and rusted. It was a tool for an animal.
He leaned on it, his breath pluming in the frigid morning air of the Lin Clan's stable yard, and watched.
Ten yards away, in a swept stone courtyard, a group of youths his age—no, Lin Feng's age—moved through a basic martial form.
Their punches were sloppy, their stances shallow. Amateurs.
Worse than the most novice disciple in his old empire.
But then, a flicker of blue light.
A translucent, rectangular screen, the size of a large book, popped into existence in front of a beefy boy as he threw a punch. It flashed with silver script.
[Skill: Iron Fist - Proficiency Increased!]
[Current Level: 2]
[Effect: Punch force +5%]
The boy grinned, a stupid, triumphant thing, and threw another punch. The air cracked slightly.
Yin Jie's grip tightened on the shovel.
A System.
A quantified, universal interface. Lin Feng's fragmented memories supplied the term, laced with longing and bitterness.
Everyone had one.
It measured your strength, granted skills, gave you missions. It was the absolute law of this broken, post-apocalyptic world.
It was why Lin Feng was trash.
His System evaluation at the Meridian Awakening ceremony had been a single, flashing red character: [F - Talentless].
No skills unlocked. No growth path.
Just a life sentence of being less than nothing.
"You planning to stare that dung into cleaning itself, Useless?"
Lin Tao's voice snapped him back. His cousin was leaning against a fence post, picking at his teeth.
"The Bloodmanes won't wait all day. Move your pathetic ass."
Yin Jie looked at him.
Not with hatred. With the analytical detachment of a surgeon observing a tumor.
He saw Lin Tao's own faint, ever-present blue status bar hovering at the corner of his vision, visible only as a soft glow to onlookers: [Lin Tao - Lvl 8].
A level eight.
A speck.
He turned back to the stall, the stench of ammonia and wet animal thick in his throat. He thrust the shovel into the filthy straw.
Why is there a System?
He pondered, the work a mindless rhythm. Who built it? A crutch for the weak. A cage that defines their limits.
In his world, power was infinite, a path of comprehension and will.
Here, it was… menu options. Notifications.
He needed to see his own.
Back in the storage closet as twilight bled into dark, his body a single ache of exhaustion, he tried.
He sat on the pallet, crossed his legs in a basic meditation pose, and focused.
Interface. Status. System.
He willed it to appear, just as Lin Feng had done a thousand times in desperate, private hope.
Nothing.
Just the dark, the cold stone, the sound of his own breathing.
He tried a different command, a deeper probe using the remnants of his spiritual sense.
Open.
A flicker.
Not blue. A jagged, painful flash of red, like a corrupted file error, in the extreme periphery of his right eye. It was gone before he could read it, leaving a phantom ache in his temple.
He tried again, straining.
This time, the red text lingered for half a second, searing itself into his vision:
[Identification Error. Entity: UNREGISTERED.]
[Protocol: Quarantine. Access: DENIED.]
Then, blackness.
UNREGISTERED.
The word echoed in the silent room.
Not "F-Talentless." Not "Weak." Unregistered. As if he didn't belong here. As if his very soul was a glitch in this world's programming.
A cold chuckle escaped his lips, dry and brittle.
So. The System, this all-seeing god of this realm, had no data on him. It saw the shell of Lin Feng, but the soul of Yin Jie… was an anomaly.
Was that why the void within him existed? Was it outside the System's jurisdiction?
His stomach cramped, a vicious, hollow twist.
Hunger.
Real, gnawing, human hunger. He'd been given a meager ration of gruel at midday. Lin Wei had "accidentally" knocked his bowl into the drainage ditch.
The humiliation was a footnote.
The emptiness in his gut was a pressing reality.
He had no power.
He had no status.
He had no food.
The three truths of his new existence.
For the first time, a tremor that wasn't from cold went through him. This wasn't a battle of cosmic will. This was base survival.
And he was losing.
He closed his eyes again, not to call the System, but to retreat inward. To the only thing that was truly his.
The void.
He sank his awareness into that crushing emptiness at his core.
It was like diving into a black ocean trench. The pressure was immense, a weight that promised to annihilate his fragile new consciousness. This was where his god-like power had been.
Now, it was just… absence.
But wait.
He pushed deeper, past the sense of loss.
There, in the absolute center, was the echo. The presence. It was clearer now, after it had tasted that tiny thread from Lin Tao.
It wasn't hungry.
It was hunger.
A bottomless, silent need.
And wrapped around it, being slowly, inexorably dissolved by it, were the last fading shreds of his Dark Heaven Emperor's divine power.
The void wasn't just empty.
It was consuming. It had eaten the remnants of his old self.
It was making room.
For what?
A sound outside—footsteps, too heavy and purposeful to be his cousins. He snapped his eyes open.
The door didn't burst in. It was opened with authority.
A man stood there, silhouetted by a torch in the corridor. He was in his forties, with a lean, pinched face and the insignia of a Clan Supervisor on his sleeve—a man named Lin Kuo, responsible for discipline among the lower-tier youths.
His eyes swept the bare room and landed on Yin Jie.
They held no contempt, only a cold, administrative disdain.
"Lin Feng."
"Supervisor," Yin Jie said, the word unfamiliar on his tongue.
"You were absent from the evening headcount at the dormitory. Loitering in an unauthorized area after curfew."
Lin Kuo's voice was flat.
"Regulation 12-C. You know the penalty."
Yin Jie just looked at him. He didn't know. Lin Feng's memories supplied it: Ten lashes. Public courtyard.
"Come," Lin Kuo said, turning.
It wasn't an invitation.
The central training yard was lit by flickering braziers. A small crowd had gathered—maybe two dozen youths and a few bored-looking guards.
Word traveled fast. A beating was better than nothing to watch.
Lin Tao and Lin Wei were at the front, smirking.
Yin Jie was led to a worn wooden post. He said nothing. His mind was racing, but it was a cold, clear race.
This was a test.
Not for them. For him. For the void.
"Bind his hands," Lin Kuo ordered.
A guard roughly yanked Yin Jie's arms around the post, tying his wrists with coarse rope. The bark bit into his forehead.
"Lin Feng, minor of the Lin Clan, found in violation of curfew and loitering. Penalty of ten lashes is to be carried out immediately. May this serve as a reminder of discipline."
Lin Kuo recited the words like he was reading a grocery list.
The guard with the whip stepped forward. It wasn't a cat-o'-nine-tails, just a single, thick leather strap, hardened at the tip.
Designed to hurt, not to maim. To teach a lesson to useless kids.
"Begin," Lin Kuo said.
The first lash came with a sharp CRACK that split the night air.
Fire exploded across Yin Jie's back. A line of pure, shocking agony. Lin Feng's body convulsed, a gasp tearing from his lips.
The crowd murmured, a few nervous laughs from his cousins.
The pain was immense. Real.
But underneath it… a vibration.
Where the leather had torn his skin, where the blood was welling up, the cool, sucking sensation returned. Stronger.
The void inside him twitched, like a sleeping beast sniffing the air.
The second lash. CRACK.
Another line of fire. Yin Jie gritted his teeth, his knuckles white against the post.
The world narrowed to the searing pain on his back and the deep, awakening pull in his soul.
CRACK.
Third. The fabric of his tunic was shredded now.
CRACK.
Fourth. He could feel warm blood tracing paths down his spine.
With each impact, the void's response grew sharper. It wasn't absorbing the pain.
It was reaching for the energy released by the trauma—the frantic biological response, the surge of heat and life force rushing to the wound.
It was feeding on his own suffering.
The fifth lash landed. The pain was a blinding white sheet.
And Yin Jie laughed.
It was a choked, breathless sound, barely more than a huff of air through clenched teeth. But it was there.
Lin Kuo, watching from the side, frowned.
"Is the prisoner mocking the clan's justice? Strike harder."
CRACK. Sixth. Seventh.
Yin Jie's head hung low. Blood dripped from his chin—he'd bitten his tongue.
But his mind was soaring, detached from the ruin of his body.
The void was awake now, a slow, clockwise vortex of absolute darkness spinning in his core. With each lash, it spun faster, drawing in the chaotic energy of his pain.
He wasn't healing. The wounds were still there, raw and screaming.
But he wasn't breaking.
Eighth. Ninth.
The crowd had gone quiet. The expected cries, the begging, hadn't come.
There was just the crack of the whip, and the ragged, steady breathing of the boy at the post.
The tenth and final lash came with the guard's full strength.
CRACK-THUD.
Yin Jie's vision went grey at the edges. He sagged against the ropes.
Silence.
Then, Lin Kuo's voice.
"Cut him down. Let this be a lesson to all."
As the guard moved forward with a knife, Yin Jie, through a haze of pain, looked down at the packed earth between his feet.
Drops of his blood pattered onto the dirt.
Except… they didn't.
Just before each drop hit the ground, a faint, almost invisible wisp of grey vapor rose from it.
The blood didn't soak in.
It evaporated. Dissipated into a fine, hungry mist that hung for a second in the torchlight before fading into nothing.
The void wasn't just feeding on the energy of the wounds.
It was claiming the very substance. The essence.
As the ropes fell away and his legs buckled, dumping him onto his knees in the dirt, a new sound pierced the quiet.
Not from the crowd.
From the air itself. A soft, crystalline ping, like a single note from a glass bell. It was a sound no one else seemed to hear.
Directly in Yin Jie's swimming vision, a blue screen—crisp, official, and utterly different from the red error—materialized.
It held a single, stark line of text:
[Anomaly Detected. Biological Resource Reallocation Inefficiency.]
[Threat Level: LOW.]
[Subject: Lin Feng (Unregistered). Protocol: OBSERVATION initiated.]