## Chapter 2: A Beggar's Fate
The light didn't fade so much as it was smothered.
One moment, Li Chang'an was stepping into a pillar of cool, celestial radiance. The next, he was drowning in a thick, suffocating darkness that smelled of rotten vegetables, wet earth, and something metallic and foul. A crushing weight settled on his chest—not fear, but a profound, bone-deep weakness. His limbs felt like bundles of wet straw. A sharp, gnawing ache pulsed from his stomach, a hollow scream of pure hunger.
He tried to open his eyes. The lids were gummy, crusted shut. He managed to peel one open a slit.
Grey. Everything was grey and brown. A sliver of dirty sky peeked between two towering, leaning walls of cracked wood and faded brick. He was lying in mud. Not picturesque mud, but the churned-up, garbage-strewn sludge of a forgotten alley. The cold seeped through the thin, coarse rags clinging to his shivering frame.
This is the Trial World?
The thought was a feeble spark in a mind clouded with fog. Then, the memories hit. Not like a book being read, but like a fever dream, visceral and immediate.
Xiao An. Your name is Xiao An.
He saw a woman with a kind, tired smile, her face blurring into the haze of sickness and a winter's chill. He felt the rough hands of an innkeeper shoving him out the back door, a half-rotten bun tossed into the mud at his feet. He heard the jeers of street vendors, the casual kicks from passing boots, the hollow echo of his own voice begging for scraps. The memories were a tapestry of cold, hunger, and a relentless, grinding humiliation.
He was sixteen. He had been an orphan for ten years. He was a ghost in the bustling city of Ironpeak, a stain on the cobblestones everyone stepped over.
And then, the final memory, sharp and cold as a shard of ice: a face. Brutish, with a broken nose and a permanent sneer. Bull Zhang. The local alley-master, a thug who collected "protection" from the other beggars and street rats. A disagreement over a stolen coin purse. A shove. The glint of a cheap, notched dagger. A searing pain below his ribs, the shocking warmth of his own blood spreading, the world tilting as he fell into this very mud…
Fated to die today.
Li Chang'an—Xiao An—gasped, a raw, ragged sound that scraped his throat. He pushed himself up on trembling arms. The world swam. His new body was a betrayal. Every joint ached. His muscles had no strength, only a persistent, fatigued tremor. He looked at his hands. They were caked in dirt, the nails blackened and broken, the wrists so thin he could see the bones pressing against the skin.
Panic, cold and slick, started to rise. This was his trial? To die as a beggar in a filthy alley? To defy this fate with this? He had no strength, no weapons, no allies. Only the memories of a short, miserable life and the certain knowledge of how it ended.
Think. You have to think.
He forced air into his lungs, ignoring the rattle in his chest. The official's words echoed: Defy the fate of your given avatar. Xiao An's fate was to be stabbed by Bull Zhang in this alley over a petty theft. To defy it, he simply had to not be here. Or to be stronger. Or to have the coin purse to give back.
He patted his rags. Nothing. The purse was gone, probably taken by Bull Zhang already. The fight, the stabbing—it was all still to come. He had arrived in the moments before.
A sound echoed from the mouth of the alley. Heavy, deliberate footsteps splashing through the puddles.
His blood turned to ice water.
Slowly, dread a physical weight in his gut, Li Chang'an turned his head.
A hulking figure blocked the dim light from the street. He wore a stained leather vest over a grimy tunic. His shoulders were broad, his arms thick with crude muscle. And his face—exactly as the memory had shown—was a map of petty violence, dominated by that sneer and a nose that had been broken and healed crooked.
Bull Zhang.
His eyes, small and piggish, scanned the alley and landed on Xiao An. The sneer deepened into a cruel smile.
"There you are, you little rat," his voice was a gravelly rumble. "Thought you could run off with what's mine?"
Li Chang'an's mind screamed, scrambling for options. Run? His legs felt like they'd snap. Fight? He'd last two seconds. Plead? The memory of Xiao An's countless pleas, always met with blows, answered that.
Bull Zhang took a step forward, his hand dropping to the worn hilt of the dagger at his belt. "You got one chance. Hand over the purse you filched from my spot, and I'll only break your arm. Keep playing dumb, and you'll be feeding the dogs in the river mud by sundown."
This was it. The exact moment from the memory. The demand, the threat, the approaching violence. This was the fate he had to break.
Desperation clawed at him. He had nothing. No power, no skill, no hidden advantage. Just his own mind, and the terrifying, all-consuming will to not die here.
Then, as Bull Zhang took another menacing step, his body shifting into a clumsy, aggressive stance, something clicked in Li Chang'an's perception.
It wasn't a sound. It was a feeling, deep behind his eyes, like a lock he never knew existed suddenly turning. The world didn't slow down, but his understanding of it crystallized.
He saw Bull Zhang's posture: weight too far forward on his left foot, right shoulder dipping slightly, his knuckles white on the dagger hilt. He saw the tension in the thug's calves, the predictable coil before a lunge. It was more than observation. It was… comprehension. A complete, instantaneous breakdown of movement, intention, and weakness.
A silent, shimmering line of text materialized in the very center of his vision, ethereal and undeniable:
[Innate Talent: Heaven-Defying Comprehension - Activated.]
[Analyzing hostile entity…]
[Basic Combat Posture (Flawed) detected.]
[Do you wish to comprehend?]
Bull Zhang's sneer turned into a roar of impatience. "Fine! Have it your way!"
He yanked the dagger free and lunged, a straightforward, brutal thrust aimed straight at Xiao An's gut—the killing blow from the memory.
Time didn't bend. But Li Chang'an's mind did.
He didn't just see the attack. He understood it. The angle of the thrust, the imbalance it created, the tiny opening under Bull Zhang's extended arm. The knowledge flooded him, not as learned skill, but as innate, instinctual truth. It was clumsy. It was reckless. It was begging to be countered.
His starving, feeble body moved.
Not with speed, but with perfect, minimal efficiency. He didn't try to jump back. Instead, he collapsed his weight, falling into the lunge, just slightly to the outside. The rusted blade hissed past his ribs, tearing his ragged shirt but missing flesh. The momentum carried Bull Zhang forward, over-extended.
Li Chang'an's hand, frail and bony, shot up not to strike, but to guide. He slapped the inside of Bull Zhang's wrist, not hard, but precisely where the tendon was stretched. It was a mosquito's bite with a viper's intent.
Bull Zhang yelped, more in surprise than pain, his grip loosening.
And in that split second, Li Chang'an's other hand, driven by every ounce of desperate survival instinct in his soul, formed a stiff, bony ridge. He drove it upwards, not at the thug's fortified torso, but into the soft, exposed hollow of his armpit.
A choked, gurgling sound escaped Bull Zhang's lips. His arm went numb. The dagger slipped from his fingers and splashed into the mud.
The thug stumbled back, clutching his dead arm, his face a mask of shock and dawning rage. "You… you little vermin! What did you do?!"
Li Chang'an stood there, chest heaving, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. The mud sucked at his bare feet. The metallic taste of fear was thick on his tongue.
He had done it. He had avoided the fatal blow. He had defied the first, most immediate part of Xiao An's fate.
But Bull Zhang was still standing. Still bigger, still stronger, and now utterly enraged. The dagger lay in the mud between them. The alley was still a dead end.
The thug's shock melted into pure, unadulterated fury. He rolled his newly-tingling shoulder, cracking his neck. "A lucky trick," he spat. "Now I'm gonna take my time with you."
Li Chang'an's mind raced, the strange, analytical clarity still holding. He saw Bull Zhang's renewed stance, more cautious now, but boiling with anger. He saw his own pathetic body, already trembling from the one precise move, on the verge of total collapse.
He had comprehended one flawed attack. It had bought him five seconds.
[Analyzing hostile entity…] the ethereal text shimmered again. [Basic Brawling Patterns (Aggressive) detected.]
[Do you wish to comprehend?]
Yes. The answer was a fire in his soul. Yes.
But comprehension alone wasn't enough. He needed strength. He needed power. As Bull Zhang balled his massive fists and began to advance again, a new, desperate thought screamed in Li Chang'an's mind.
This was a martial world. However low, however brutal. The memory-dreams of Xiao An's life held glimpses of guards practicing forms in the dawn light, of rumors about martial schools in the upper city.
His Heaven-Defying Comprehension had just dissected a thug's clumsy lunge. What could it do with… a real martial art?
Bull Zhang charged, no longer with a weapon, but with the intent to crush, to pulverize with raw force.
And Li Chang'an, the beggar boy named Xiao An, did the only thing he could think of. He closed his eyes for a single, blasphemous second, ignoring the thundering footsteps, and reached not for a weapon in the mud, but for a memory—the clearest, sharpest fragment of a martial form he'd ever glimpsed from a hiding place in the shadows.
A single, perfect stance of the common city guard's "Iron Body Foundation Fist."
He didn't remember it.
He comprehended it.
And as he opened his eyes, facing the oncoming avalanche of flesh and fury, the shimmering text in his vision flickered, dissolved, and reformed into words that sent a shockwave of impossible hope through his starving veins:
[Basic Martial Art Detected: 'Iron Body Foundation Fist' (Mortal Tier, Low-Grade).]
[Heaven-Defying Comprehension Engaged.]
[Comprehension Complete.]
[Evolving…]
(⭐ If you love the journey, please support us by collecting this story, adding it to your library, and leaving a rating! Your support keeps the adventure alive!)