The first thing he noticed was pain!…
Not the dull kind that lingered after injury, but a sharp, deliberate ache—like it's something inside his body had been torn apart and stitched back together incorrectly. It was unfamiliar & unsettling and that alone made it interesting to him.
He lay still, listening, recalling, realizing, thinking, and simultaneously at the same time he was totally confused what had happened to him.
Wind passed through the broken wood. Somewhere nearby, someone laughed—a short, cruel arrogant mocking sound, followed by the scrape of boots against the stones. The air smelled of dust, old blood, and something faintly metallic.
Then he thought...This... isn't the Earth he knows….
The realization came calmly, without panic or disbelief. Because panic was for people who didn't understand what death felt like. He remembered dying very clearly: the moment his body reached the absolute perfection, the instant reality itself collapsed inward, as if the world…the universe had finally decided he didn't belong in it anymore because his single existence will break the reality itself….
So, this was what came after.
He opened his eyes…. like a butterfly gets to see the world by breaking its cocoon.
The sky above him was grey and cracked by drifting clouds, not the pollution, not the weather—it's something heavier. His vision wavered briefly, then instantly sharpened. Too sharp way too sharp. Every detail rushed in at once like the water in the Dams got opened to flow through its way: the grains of rotting wood beneath his cheek, the shallow impressions of human footprints around him, the faint tremor in the ground caused by approaching footsteps...HUMANS!!!
His body felt… wrong, too wrong.
Smaller. Weaker. Fragile in ways he hadn't experienced since childhood.
Interesting….
He thought...
A shadow fell over him.
"Well? Is he dead yet?"
A young man stood a few steps away, dressed in clean robes with an embroidered emblem on his chest. His face twisted with irritation rather than concern, as if the body on the ground were an inconvenience rather than a person.
Another voice answered, older, bored.
"Not yet, because all his meridians are shattered…. He's already finished either way."
A third figure in the group laughed mockingly with his ugly face.
"Good. The trashes should always know its place and where it belongs to."
Memories surged—not his own, but close enough to feel completely uncomfortable. A declining clan. Broken spiritual roots and shattered meridians. Years of humiliation and curses…pressed into a complete short, ugly life. This body had been continuously beaten and tortured earlier, and dragged into this abandoned courtyard, and left here as a warning to all.
Still, he lay there, slowly absorbing it all like a sponge absorbing the water, letting all the entire pieces settle completely.
Then he smiled.
It wasn't wide. It wasn't dramatic.
Just a slight curve of the lips, as if he'd heard a joke no one else could.
"That's…... Completely…. fucking.... rude,"
he spoke.
The voices stopped.
The young man stiffened.
"He's awake?"
Their attention snapped to him at once. Confusion crossed their faces, followed by annoyance. None of them stepped back. Why would they? Because to them, he was a crippled Qi Refining nobody, a failed cultivator with shattered meridians whose fate had already been decided.
He pushed himself up on using his one elbow.
The movement sent a spike of pain through his chest like a needle pierced slowly. The Bones protested. Muscles screamed. His breathing faltered for half a second—
—and then steadied. Completely steadied...
His Bloody red crimson eyes slowly lifted to meet theirs.
Silence fell and the wind whispers UH...UH...D.A.N.G.E.R.
It wasn't the colour that unsettled them, though that alone was unnatural. It was the look behind them. There was no fear. No desperation. Not even anger.
Only mild curiosity.
"You said my meridians are completely shattered,"
he continued conversationally, glancing slowly up & down at his own body as if inspecting the damaged property.
"That's unfortunate. This one will take some time getting used to."
The disciple scoffed.
"You're still pretending? Huh... Get up, then you trash. Or…...do you need us to finish it?"
He slowly tilted his head, considering the distance between to him and them. The current weight of his body. The angle of the nearest stone fragment by his hand.
His new heart beat once.
Twice.
Then he moved.
To the onlookers, it wasn't fast.
It was simply there like it's A Blur or A Blink
One moment he was on the ground. The next, he was standing inside the disciple's reach, his hand already placed lightly against the man's chest—right over the heart exactly where it's existing.
The disciple opened his mouth to shout.
But the sound never came because it got stuck in his throat.
A short, precise movement followed. No flash of light. No burst of qi. Just a dull, internal crack that only those standing close enough could hear.
The disciple collapsed, eyes wide, body folding as if the bones had forgotten how to hold themselves together.
Blood spilled across the courtyard stones.
The others stumbled back in shock and fear.
"W-What did you—?!"
He flexed his fingers slowly, testing the sensation. The pain was still there. Severe. Limiting.
But manageable.
"So, this is a cultivation world that's I have been reading it on the xianxia novels in my past life at EARTH."
he said softly, looking at them now, really looking
Something deep inside him stirred—old instincts stretching awake, something vast and patient adjusting to new rules.
He smiled again, this time with interest.
"Good, I was getting bored."
He said…