The first thing Li Hao noticed was that his left knee didn't click when he bent it.
He had torn a meniscus playing terrible amateur basketball in 2019. It clicked every morning for five years. He relied on that click. It was the metronome of his miserable, caffeine-fueled existence as a mid-level software engineer.
He sat up in the bed. No click.
Instead, the skin across his left palm pulled tight—a fresh, half-healed sword cut tearing slightly at the edges.
Li Hao stared at the hand. The fingers were too long. The calluses were in the wrong places, thickened heavily around the webbing of the thumb and index finger.
He looked up. The ceiling was dark, lacquered wood, intricately carved with interlocking phoenixes. A single, fat spider was crawling across the beak of the easternmost bird.
"Okay," Li Hao said to the empty room.
The voice that came out of his throat belonged to someone who had never apologized for anything in his life. It was a deep, cold baritone, carrying a faint, aristocratic resonance. It vibrated in a chest cavity that felt fundamentally alien.
He didn't panic immediately. The human brain is remarkably good at protecting itself from complete reality collapse by focusing on stupid things. Li Hao spent approximately twelve seconds intensely analyzing the spider on the ceiling, trying to convince himself that he was simply having a very vivid stroke.
Then the memories arrived.
They didn't flow. They hit him like a bag of wet cement swinging into the back of his skull. A copper taste flooded his mouth.
Wei Liang.Sect Master of the Azure Void Sect.Twenty-four years old.Dead.
Wei Liang had died of qi deviation three days ago, coughing up black blood on this exact bed following a catastrophic territorial clash with Elder Zhao Feng of the Crimson Scale Sect. But before his heart gave out, the arrogant, desperate young master had activated a forbidden bloodline array. He had burned the absolute last dregs of his soul to pull a foreign replacement into his dying vessel.
You wanted someone with nothing to lose, Li Hao thought, bracing his unfamiliar hands against his unfamiliar knees as a phantom ache radiated through his dead meridians. Someone who didn't know the rules of this world well enough to be paralyzed by them.
A blue panel slid open in his vision.
Not a physical screen. It hovered behind his optic nerve, projecting a cold, clean light into his mind. It looked like an unholy fusion of a mythological jade slip and a modern mobile interface.
[ SOUL CULTIVATION BOND ARRAY — SYSTEM INITIALIZATION COMPLETE ]
[ HOST CONFIRMED: LI HAO → WEI LIANG ]
[ AZURE VOID SECT STATUS — CURRENT ASSESSMENT: ]
[ ▸ Sect Members: 2 (including Host) ]
[ ▸ Spirit Stone Balance: -4,000 (debt) ]
[ ▸ Active Territorial Disputes: 7 ][ ▸ Assassination Contracts on Host: 3 ]
[ ▸ Current Disciples: 1 (Rating: ABYSMAL) ]
[ ▸ Host Cultivation Base: QI GATHERING STAGE 2 → Current Ambient Qi Absorption: 0.0% ]
[ ▸ Special Note: Host can ONLY cultivate via Soul Bond formation. ]
[ ▸ Current Soul Bonds: 0 ]
[ Welcome. Please try not to die immediately. ]
Li Hao stared at the text. His left shoulder began to shake. Just the shoulder.
"Four thousand in debt," he read aloud, his new aristocratic voice making it sound like a casual observation rather than a death sentence. "Three assassination contracts. Zero percent ambient Qi."
He swung his legs over the side of the bed. His stomach performed a slow, sickening roll, but his physical body—Wei Liang's body—moved with infuriating grace. The predecessor had possessed a legendary, ironclad composure. Li Hao did not. Inside, Li Hao wanted to crawl under the heavy silk blankets and scream into the mattress.
Instead, guided by muscle memory, he folded his hands behind his back and walked to the window.
The Azure Void Sect spread out below him in the gray morning light. The system panel hadn't done the ruin justice. It wasn't romantically overgrown. It was just depressing. The third post of the main training yard was snapped in half and someone had tried to tape it together with standard hemp rope. The spirit stone pathways were dark, completely depleted of energy. A stray dog was sleeping on the steps of the ancestral hall.
In the center of the cracked courtyard, the single remaining disciple was awake.
He was maybe nineteen, round-faced, and soft in the middle. He was sweeping the stones with a broom that was missing half its bristles. The boy swept the way a hostage digs a trench—slowly, waiting for the end.
The boy looked up. He saw the Sect Master standing at the second-floor window.
The broom hit the stones with a hollow clatter. The boy didn't gasp or shout. He just dropped straight to his knees, pressed his forehead to the dirt, and began to cry. It wasn't a dignified weeping. It was a wet, snotty, hiccuping despair.
Zhou Bao, the inherited memories provided. Nineteen. The only disciple left after the disaster three months ago. He hadn't stayed out of fierce loyalty. He stayed because he literally did not have the cultivation base to survive the walk to the next town.
Li Hao watched the boy sob into the dirt.
I should say something comforting, Li Hao thought. I should tell him it's going to be okay.
He opened his mouth. Wei Liang's muscle memory overrode his vocal cords.
"Prepare the sect," Li Hao's voice rolled across the courtyard, heavy, cold, and entirely devoid of empathy. "For war."
Zhou Bao choked on his own saliva and began to cry significantly harder.
Wait. No. Stop, Li Hao panicked internally, though his face remained a flawless mask of jade. Why did I say that? He thinks I've gone mad. He thinks I'm going to use him as a meat shield.
He couldn't take it back. Apologizing would break the only asset he had left: the terrifying mystique of the Sect Master. He held the cold expression. He let the silence stretch until it was physically uncomfortable.
Down in the dirt, Zhou Bao finally managed to scrape together enough breath to whisper, "Yes, Sect Master." He sounded like a man agreeing to dig his own grave.
Li Hao turned away from the window before his eye could twitch.
He made it exactly four steps down the dusty corridor when the pressure in his skull spiked. It felt like someone had shoved a hot iron spike directly behind his right ear.
"You."
The voice didn't come from the corridor. It came from the absolute darkest, deepest chamber of the soul he now inhabited. It vibrated with the weight of an entity that had once crushed continents for entertainment.
"You are the new host."
Li Hao stopped walking. The air in the hallway suddenly smelled like ozone and burning copper.
"I have been sealed in this bloodline for three thousand years," the ancient voice ground against the inside of Li Hao's skull, practically radiating a massive, cosmic disgust. "I have maintained the formations. I have preserved the pinnacle of cultivation legacy through eleven generations, waiting for the one genius with the transcendent potential to challenge the Heavens."
A heavy, suffocating pause.
"And they sent me you."
Li Hao stared at a water stain on the floorboards. It vaguely looked like a duck. He considered demanding answers. He considered fainting.
He settled on: "Hello."
Silence. A long, profoundly offended silence.
"I am," the voice vibrated, dropping into a terrifyingly quiet register, "the Primordial Dao-Emperor of Ten Thousand Bonds. First Creator of the Soul Cultivation Array. The being whose name alone caused the Heavenly Dao to—"
"I'm going to call you Old Geezer," Li Hao said.
The phantom spike behind his eye twisted.
"I will unseal your dantian for exactly long enough for you to die with dignity," Old Geezer whispered.
"You won't," Li Hao replied. His heart was hammering against his ribs, but the aristocratic voice remained perfectly steady. "If you could kill me, I'd be dead. You need me to use the array. I need you to explain it. Let's skip the posturing."
Another silence. Then, a heavy mental sigh that sounded like a mountain settling.
"The array is simple," Old Geezer sneered. "You form genuine emotional bonds with women. Each bond transfers a fragment of their soul's unique cultivation law to you. The deeper the bond, the greater the power. Five stages."
"But understand this, boy," the voice sharpened into a blade. "You cannot fake it. The array detects authenticity. Use someone transactionally, pretend to care, and the Qi backlash will liquefy your organs."
"Noted."
"You have zero ambient Qi absorption. Your meridians are dead. Without the array, you will rot from the inside out within six months."
"Also noted."
"And the Heavenly Dao," Old Geezer added, almost casually, "has already detected the array's reactivation. A divine executioner will be dispatched within the month."
Li Hao walked into the sect's main hall. It smelled of old incense and rat droppings. He sat down at the head of a long, splintered table. He looked at the empty wooden chairs stretching out before him.
He didn't have any Qi. He had a month before God sent an assassin. He had one fat disciple who was currently having a panic attack in the courtyard.
"Old Geezer," Li Hao said to the empty room.
"What."
"Tell me everything you know about the women in this region."
A pause. "That is not how I expected this conversation to go."
"I have four thousand stones of debt and seven enemies who want me dead," Li Hao said. He laced his fingers together on the table. "My only resource is genuine human connection. Start talking."
Old Geezer was quiet for a long moment.
"In the northern range, there is a Glacier Sect disciple. Shen Yuebing. Core Formation Stage Seven. She has never lost a duel. She has never allowed anyone within arm's reach." A faint hum of interest entered the ancient voice. "She is also the one person here who would recognize the Soul Bond signature."
"Why?"
"Because her bloodline," Old Geezer said, "is what I originally designed the Ice Law fragment for."
Li Hao looked at the empty chair to his right. He stood up. He brushed a layer of dust from his dark silk robes, adjusting the fabric until it hung with imposing, immaculate symmetry.
He walked out of the hall, down the steps, and toward the ruined archway of the sect's main gate. Outside, the world was waiting to kill him.
He didn't feel ready.
He kept walking anyway.