Outside the main gates of Azure Sky Sect, in a rotting wooden shack that smelled of mildew and old blood, Lu Chen lay dying.
Again.
"Damn it…" Blood bubbled at the corner of his lips. "Is this really how I go out? Twice?"
He almost wanted to laugh.
Back on Earth, he'd been a convenience store clerk pulling night shifts when a gang shootout decided his fate. Wrong place, wrong time. One bullet, lights out.
He'd woken up in a cultivation world — a world where the strong held absolute dominion over the lives of the weak. Where a single irritated senior disciple could snuff out a commoner like blowing out a candle.
In a world like this, cultivation was survival. Cultivation was everything.
And Lu Chen? After eight years of grinding, he'd clawed his way to Body Forging Realm, Level Four.
The bottom of the ladder.
He would have given up long ago — if not for Shen Qing.
She wasn't blood. Just a girl who'd moved into the Lu household years ago, grown up beside him, called him brother like she meant it. Her name was Shen Qing, and she carried within her the Nine Heavenly Frost Physique — a constitution so rare it made legendary spirit bodies look commonplace, one that teetered on the edge of the truly divine.
Eight years ago, Azure Sky Sect's Grand Elder had been passing through on a journey when she sensed Shen Qing's constitution and halted in her tracks. She'd demanded to take the girl as her personal disciple on the spot.
Shen Qing agreed. On one condition.
Her brother comes too.
For a prize disciple of that caliber, it was a trivial price. The Sect accepted. Shen Qing became the Grand Elder's direct successor — the Azure Sky Sect's shining Divine Maiden. Lu Chen was shuffled into the outer sect and mostly forgotten.
But Shen Qing's name had been a shield. Outer disciples kept their smiles on when he was around, if nothing else.
Then, half a year ago, she entered the Forbidden Zone of Longevity Mountain.
And never came out.
The Sect Leader mobilized. Elders searched. Even sealed Great Elders broke their isolation to investigate. All of them returned empty-handed. The whispers started fast: she's dead.
Without his shield, Lu Chen became prey overnight. Resources stolen, meals sabotaged, dignity ground to dust one insult at a time. When they started mocking her — his sister, his reason for enduring all of it — something inside him finally broke.
He fought back.
The result was predictable.
Beaten bloody and stripped of everything worth taking, he'd been dumped here like garbage.
"Cough— cough—"
Fresh blood. His ribs ground against each other with every breath. The high-grade healing pills that could have saved him were long gone — stolen with everything else. All that remained was a single First-Grade Golden Wound Pill, the kind meant for paper cuts and bruised egos.
Useless.
"How do I even survive this one…"
The thought barely finished forming before—
[DING!]
A voice rang directly inside his soul — mechanical, crystalline, impossible.
[Detected: Host in critical condition. Emergency initialization triggered.]
[Binding to Host… complete.]
[System online. Welcome, Host.]
Lu Chen's breath stopped.
A system.
Every nerve in his battered body fired at once. He'd devoured enough cultivation novels in his past life to know exactly what those words meant. The system was the great equalizer. The cheat code that turned the world's biggest losers into its most terrifying monsters.
I actually got one.
[Core Function: All resources belonging to the Host may be enhanced by a factor of ten thousand.]
Ten. Thousand. Times.
The pain in his chest didn't disappear, but it suddenly felt very, very unimportant.
"System," he said, voice barely above a whisper. "What qualifies as a 'resource'?"
[Any item, attribute, or entity that belongs to the Host qualifies.]
Anything.
Pills. Techniques. Weapons. Cultivation base. His body itself.
[Scanning Eye unlocked. The Host may now identify enhanceable items.]
Golden frames materialized in his vision, overlaying the filthy room:
[Wooden Bed — Common Object — Enhance? Y/N]
[First-Grade Golden Wound Pill — Healing Pill — Enhance? Y/N]
[Bronze Mirror — Common Object — Enhance? Y/N]
[Azure Sky Sect Outer Disciple Robe — Common Object — Enhance? Y/N]
And then — a new frame expanded, larger than the rest, hovering directly over his own chest:
[Host Body — (Talent / Bloodline / Physique / Cultivation / Soul / Comprehension / Techniques / Skills) — Enhance? Y/N]