The taste of copper filled his mouth. Not the sharp tang of a bitten lip, but something old and industrialized, like licking the terminal of a nine-volt battery that had been rotting in a landfill.
Su Yuan tried to inhale. His lungs felt like wet paper bags, heavy and uncooperative.
He didn't open his eyes. Not yet. The sensory input from his skin was already overwhelming. The surface beneath him was cold—leeching the heat right out of his marrow. It vibrated, a low, rhythmic thrum that rattled his teeth. *Thud-hiss. Thud-hiss.* Like the heartbeat of a dying leviathan.
*I was at my desk,* he thought. The memory was fragmented, slipping away like oil on water. *Coffee. The glow of the monitor. The deadline.*
Then, a snap. A sound inside his skull, louder than a gunshot.
Su Yuan forced his eyelids apart.
The light was aggressive. It wasn't the warm yellow of his desk lamp, but a flickering, sickly neon violet that pulsed through a grime-streaked window. It illuminated a room that was less a living space and more a coffin. Exposed pipes snaked across the ceiling, dripping condensation that pooled on the metal floor near his cheek. Cables—thick, black, and greasy—hung in tangled loops, spliced into a junction box that buzzed with the frantic energy of an overloaded circuit.
He tried to sit up.
Pain, white-hot and jagged, spiked at the base of his skull. He gagged, rolling onto his side, dry-heaving against the cold steel grating.
"Warning," a synthetic voice droned, sounding like it was being filtered through gravel. "Neural load critical. Synaptic burnout imminent. Please consult a licensed bioware technician immediately."
The voice came from inside his own head.
Su Yuan clutched his temples. His fingers brushed against something hard and cold embedded in the flesh behind his ear. A port. Metal fused with bone.
He scrambled backward, his heels scraping against the floor, until his back hit a wall. He stared at his hands. They were pale, spindly, the knuckles bruised and stained with engine grease.
These weren't his hands.
Su Yuan was thirty-four, soft around the middle, with the beginnings of carpal tunnel from a decade of coding. These hands belonged to a stranger—someone young, malnourished, and worked to the bone.
He looked around the room, panic rising in his throat like bile. A cracked mirror hung above a rusted sink. He dragged himself toward it, using the edge of a stained mattress for leverage.
The face in the glass was a ghost.
Hollow cheeks. Dark circles under eyes that looked like bruised plums. Black hair, matted with sweat and dried blood near the temple. A teenager. Seventeen, maybe eighteen. And right there, pulsating with a faint blue light beneath the skin of his left temple, was a network of circuitry, jagged lines tracing down to his jaw.
"Transmigration," Su Yuan whispered. The word felt foreign, ridiculous on his tongue. It belonged in the trashy web novels he read to numb his brain after work, not here, not in the stench of ozone and mildew.
A sudden influx of data assaulted him. It didn't come as a thought, but as a violent insertion, a zip file unpacking directly into his hippocampus.
*Name: Su Yuan.*
*Status: Citizen Class-D (Provisional).*
*Location: Neo-Jiangnan, Sector 74, The Stacks.*
*Cause of Incident: Unauthorized Overclocking.*
The memories that followed weren't his, but he felt them. The desperation. The crushing weight of the Entrance Exams. The exorbitant cost of the official government learning chips. The shady back-alley deal for a "jailbroken" neural accelerator. The kid—this Su Yuan—had tried to force-feed his brain three years of cultivation theory and mechanical engineering in a single night.
He had burned his soul to ash for a chance at a passing grade.
"Idiot," Su Yuan rasped, the voice cracking. He touched the interface port behind his ear. It was hot to the touch.
The room shuddered again. Outside the window, a maglev train screamed past, closer than comfortable. The vibration knocked a tin of nutrient paste off the counter. It hit the floor with a hollow clatter, spilling grey sludge.
Su Yuan slumped against the sink. He needed to think. He needed to stabilize. The voice in his head—the cheap Operating System of this body's implant—was still flashing red warnings in his peripheral vision.
*Biometrics failing. Cardiac arrhythmia detected. Cortical stack overheating.*
He was dying. Again.
"System check," he croaked, relying on the instinct of the memories he'd just inherited. "Run diagnostics."
*Unable to comply,* the mechanical voice replied. *Core permissions corrupted. Hardware integrity at 12%. Shutdown in T-minus 180 seconds.*
Three minutes. He had three minutes before his heart stopped or his brain cooked inside his skull.
He scanned the room desperately. The kid had been an engineering student—a poor one, but a student nonetheless. There had to be something. Coolant. A stabilizer stim. Anything.
His eyes landed on the workbench in the corner. Amidst the scattered wires and disassembled drone parts sat a small, unmarked vial of blue liquid. *Coolant grade-B.*
He lunged for it, his legs tangled in the sheets of the mattress. He hit the floor hard, the impact jarring his teeth, but he scrambled forward on elbows and knees. He grabbed the vial.
His hands shook so badly he almost dropped it. He jammed the injector tip into the port on his neck and depressed the plunger.
Ice.
Absolute, shattering cold flooded his veins. It felt like he'd injected liquid nitrogen. His vision went white, then grey, then slowly sharpened back into focus.
The red warnings in his vision blinked, then faded.
*Core temperature stabilizing. Neural load reducing. You have... sustained permanent cognitive damage.*
"Better than being dead," Su Yuan muttered, rolling onto his back. He stared up at the dripping pipes. The adrenaline was fading, leaving behind a profound exhaustion.
He was in Neo-Jiangnan. A megacity of steel and spirit, where ancient martial arts had merged with cybernetics. People here didn't just lift weights; they cultivated *Qi* to power their implants. They didn't just learn coding; they used meditation techniques to expand their neural bandwidth.
And he was at the bottom of the food chain. A Class-D rat in the slums, dead broke, with a fried brain and a stolen body.
He closed his eyes, listening to the rain begin to hammer against the metal roof. It sounded like gravel.
*This is it,* he thought. *I survived the transition only to starve to death in a week.*
Then, the darkness behind his eyelids shifted.
It wasn't the red alert of the cheap bio-chip. It wasn't the neon bleed from the window.
It was a void. A deep, abyssal black that seemed to eat the surrounding light.
Slowly, text began to materialize in the center of his vision. It didn't look like the crisp, digital font of the world's technology. It looked like smoke, curling and twisting into legible shapes. It felt ancient. Cold.
**[ System Reboot Initiated ]**
Su Yuan froze. A cheat? A goldfinger?
**[ Hardware Detected: Obsolete. ]**
**[ Spirit Root: Dormant. ]**
**[ Soul Integrity: Fragmented but fusing. ]**
The text hovered, indifferent and ghostly.
**[ Scanning for Administrator... ]**
A sensation crawled over his skin, like a thousand insects marching in unison. It went deeper than skin, probing the marrow, probing the very electrical impulses of his thoughts.
**[ Identity Confirmed: Su Yuan. ]**
**[ Welcome, Root Administrator. ]**
**[ Analyzing Host Environment... ]**
The interface expanded, overlaying his vision of the dingy apartment. Wireframe grids drew themselves over the table, the chair, the leaking pipe. But unlike normal augmented reality, which labeled objects with prices or material composition, this system labeled them with... *variables*.
The table wasn't just wood and plastic; it was a structure of stress points and potential energy. The leaking pipe wasn't just plumbing; it was a flow equation.
**[ The SoulNet is Online. ]**
Su Yuan sat up, the motion making his head swim. "SoulNet?" he whispered. The name didn't exist in the kid's memories. The government network was the *Heavenly Grid*. The black market had the *Dark Web*.
This was something else.
**[ Current Protocol: Genesis. ]**
**[ Objective: Deduce and Iterate. ]**
A new window materialized, floating in the air like a hologram made of grey fog.
**[ SYSTEM STATUS ]**
* **Operator:** Su Yuan
* **Rank:** Mortal (F-Tier Trash)
* **Computing Power:** 1 Soul (Self)
* **Connected Nodes:** 0
* **Available Energy:** Critical Low
"Computing power..." Su Yuan murmured, his programmer instincts kicking in despite the haze of pain. "One soul."
He focused on the line labeled **Connected Nodes**.
**[ Detailed Explanation: The SoulNet utilizes the latent spiritual and cognitive processing power of connected biological entities (Nodes) to perform hyper-calculations, deduce martial arts, optimize technology, and warp reality protocols. ]**
**[ Current Connection Count: 0 ]**
**[ Warning: Without external Nodes, all processing burdens are placed on the Administrator's soul. Continued usage at current level will result in permanent soul dissipation. ]**
Su Yuan stared at the warning.
It was a computer. A supercomputer. But instead of running on electricity and silicon, it ran on souls. It was a distributed computing network, a botnet made of human spirits.
And right now, he was the only server.
He stood up, his legs wobbling. He walked to the window and looked out.
Neo-Jiangnan stretched out before him, a sprawling nightmare of verticality. Skyscrapers pierced the smog clouds above, glowing with the pristine gold and white lights of the Corporate Sects and the Aristocracy. Floating barges drifted between the towers, advertising cybernetic limbs and cultivation pills.
Down here, in the shadow of the giants, the slums were a neon-soaked labyrinth. Steam rose from vents, obscuring the grimy alleyways where hawkers sold rat skewers and recycled tech.
Millions of people. Millions of potential nodes.
Su Yuan placed his hand on the cold glass. The condensation chilled his palm.
"Deduce," he whispered, testing the command. "Deduce... a way to fix my neural damage."
The smoky text swirled violently.
**[ Task: Repair Neural Burnout (Grade 3). ]**
**[ Calculating complexity... ]**
**[ Estimated processing power required: 100 Soul-Cycles. ]**
**[ Current Output: 1 Soul-Cycle per minute. ]**
**[ Time to complete: 100 minutes. ]**
**[ Warning: Running this deduction using only Administrator's soul will cause excruciating pain and reduce lifespan by approximately 30 days. ]**
**[ Proceed? Y / N ]**
Su Yuan yanked his hand back from the window as if burned. Thirty days of life for a simple repair? And the pain?
He looked at the reflection in the window. The blue light of the implant on his temple pulsed weakly. He was broken. He was alone.
But he had the machine.
He looked back at the city. The lights flickered in the rain. Every single one of those lights represented a person. A mind. A potential battery.
If he wanted to survive—if he wanted to climb out of this hole and not die a nameless rat in a coffin apartment—he didn't just need money. He didn't just need martial arts.
He needed users.
"The Genesis Protocol," Su Yuan said, the words tasting heavy.
The system didn't respond. It simply hovered there, waiting. A silent, hungry thing.
He turned away from the window and looked at the workbench. The previous owner, the dead kid, had left a half-finished project there. A pair of combat gloves, wired with cheap haptic feedback sensors. A clumsy attempt to replicate a "Shockwave Fist" technique he'd seen on the Heavenly Grid.
Su Yuan picked up the glove. It was garbage. The wiring was wrong, the conduits were misaligned. It would blow the user's hand off before it delivered a punch.
**[ Object Identified: Flawed Kinetic Glove. ]**
**[ Deduction Available: Optimize Schematics. ]**
**[ Cost: 2 Soul-Cycles. ]**
Two cycles. Two minutes of his own soul's energy. A month of life for a brain fix, but only a fraction of his energy to fix a glove?
No. Not just fix the glove. Fix the *technique*.
"System," Su Yuan said, his voice gaining a hard edge. "Create a martial art. Something simple. Something anyone can use. Something that... connects."
**[ Defining Parameters... ]**
"Low barrier to entry," Su Yuan dictated, his mind racing. "Must rely on the SoulNet for optimization. Every time they practice, every time they strike, the data comes back to me."
**[ Analyzing... ]**
**[ Creating Schematic: [Primary Shockwave Fighting Technique]. ]**
**[ Rank: F- (Civilian Grade). ]**
**[ Description: A breathing and striking method that harmonizes weak biological electricity to enhance physical impact by 15%. ]**
**[ Hidden Attribute: Acts as a receiver for the SoulNet. Installs a dormant connection seed in the practitioner's spirit. ]**
**[ Deduction Cost: 10 Soul-Cycles. ]**
**[ Cost Consequence: Mild migraine. 3 days lifespan reduction. ]**
Su Yuan hesitated. Three days. He was already dying; what was three days?
He looked at the glove. He looked at the city.
In this world, knowledge was hoarded by the clans and the corps. Techniques were copyrighted, encrypted, locked behind paywalls that a slum-rat could never afford. If he gave them something free... something that actually *worked*...
They would flock to him. They would practice. And with every punch they threw, they would feed the network.
He gripped the edge of the workbench, his knuckles white.
"Do it," he commanded. "Deduce."
The air in the room seemed to drop ten degrees. The grey fog of the interface swirled into a tornado, drilling into his forehead.
Su Yuan screamed.
It felt like a hot iron was being driven into his frontal lobe. His vision tunneled. He fell to his knees, clutching his head, his fingernails digging into his scalp. The pain was absolute, a white noise that drowned out the train, the rain, the world.
And then, as quickly as it began, it stopped.
Su Yuan collapsed onto the metal floor, gasping for air, sweat pooling around him. He felt lighter. Thinner. As if a piece of him had been carved away.
But in his mind, a golden book hovered amidst the grey fog.
**[ Deduction Complete. ]**
**[ Skill Created: Primary Shockwave Fighting Technique. ]**
He laughed. It was a dry, hacking sound that turned into a cough. He wiped blood from his nose.
He had the bait. Now he just needed to cast the line.
Su Yuan crawled back to the computer terminal. It was an ancient, blocky thing with a cracked screen. He hammered the power button. The fan screeched to life.
He navigated to the local sector forums—the "Gutter Boards" where the low-lifes, the mercenaries, and the desperate students traded scraps of information.
He cracked his knuckles. His hands were still trembling, but his eyes were steady. Cold.
*Title: [FREE GUIDE] Optimize your Kinetic Output by 15%. No implants required.*
*Author: Root.*
He began to type.
He wasn't just writing a post. He was writing the first line of code for a new reality.
In the corner of his vision, the SoulNet pulsed, a steady, rhythmic beat.
**[ Nodes: 0 ]**
"Not for long," Su Yuan whispered.
He hit *Post*.
The screen flickered. Outside, the neon lights of Neo-Jiangnan buzzed, indifferent to the monster that had just been born in apartment 404.
**[ Genesis Protocol: Active. ]**
**[ The hunt begins. ]**