Wei Lun woke up to the taste of blood.
Not metaphorical blood. Real blood — metallic and thick, pooling beneath his tongue.
He lay on cold stone, cheek pressed against damp earth. For a long moment, he didn't move. He simply breathed.
In.
Out.
The air smelled of mold and old grain.
This isn't my apartment.
The thought was absurdly calm.
He remembered fluorescent lights. A computer screen filled with spreadsheets. The hum of traffic outside his window. Microwave dinners. A half-finished survival world he'd been building for three years.
Then—
Headlights.
Rain.
A horn that never stopped screaming.
And nothing.
The memories didn't fade. They layered.
A second set crashed into him like a flood breaking a dam.
Hunger gnawing at a child's stomach.
A rough hand shoving him aside.
Laughter.
"Orphans shouldn't get greedy."
A boy—no, he—kneeling in the sect courtyard, forehead pressed to stone as senior disciples walked past without seeing him.
Wei Lun.
The name surfaced with painful clarity.
Sixteen years old. Orphan of cultivators who died in a beast tide outside Greenvale Province. Raised by the Dustfall Sect not out of charity, but convenience. Free labor was still labor.
And tonight—
A beating in the storage cellar.
A missing spirit stone.
A senior disciple who needed a scapegoat.
The last memory was of a boot descending.
Wei Lun—this body's original owner—had died staring at a ceiling beam darkened by smoke.
The man who had been someone else for thirty-two unremarkable years swallowed hard.
"I'm sorry," he whispered into the darkness, unsure who he was apologizing to.
The cellar was quiet.
He pushed himself upright.
Pain lanced through his ribs. One eye was swollen nearly shut. His right arm trembled when he put weight on it.
Assessment first, he told himself.
It was a familiar instinct. In his old life, when deadlines loomed or contracts arrived full of predatory fine print, he didn't panic. He assessed.
He breathed in slowly and let something strange happen.
The world… shifted.
The cellar wall, once rough stone, broke apart in his vision. Not physically. Perceptually.
Layers.
Segments.
Blocks.
He blinked.
The vision snapped back to normal.
He focused again.
The stone resolved into neat, invisible cubes stacked upon each other. He could almost trace their boundaries. Cobblestone. Dirt beneath. A faint vein of something metallic three layers deep.
Iron.
He sucked in a sharp breath.
"No," he murmured.
He lifted a trembling hand and pressed it against the wall.
The sensation was wrong.
There was resistance. Weight.
But also—
Progress.
A hairline crack spidered across a single invisible cube.
His heart began to pound.
He punched again.
The crack deepened.
Again.
It took far too long—long enough that sweat beaded along his brow—but eventually, with a soft pop that only he seemed to hear, a cube of cobblestone vanished.
Something cool and compact dropped into… somewhere.
Not the ground.
Not his hands.
His mind.
Reflexively, he reached inward.
And found it.
A grid.
Nine slots arranged in three rows of three.
In the first slot rested a perfect, compressed cube of cobblestone.
Wei Lun sat there in the dark cellar, bruised and bleeding, and started laughing.
Not hysterical laughter.
Soft. Disbelieving.
"Of all things," he whispered hoarsely. "You give me Minecraft."
He did not immediately test further.
That was the difference between a reckless transmigrator and a man who had survived layoffs, rent hikes, and fine-print clauses.
He sat still.
Listened.
Above him, faint snores filtered through wooden floorboards. The servant disciples' quarters.
No footsteps. No voices.
Good.
He closed his eyes and focused on the grid again.
Nine slots. Empty except for one cobblestone.
No flashy interface. No blue screens. Just instinct.
He pictured moving the cobblestone.
It shifted.
Hotbar? No.
Too early to assume anything.
He exhaled slowly.
If this is real, he thought, it changes everything.
But another thought followed immediately.
If anyone finds out, I die.
Spatial rings in Wei Lun's memories were treasures elders killed over. Storage was power. Storage was war.
And he had just punched a wall and stored a block inside his head.
He looked at his hands.
They were thin. Calloused. Knuckles split.
Not a hero's hands.
Good.
Heroes died loudly.
He preferred quiet.
The first night, he mined only three blocks.
He replaced two of them carefully with loose stones from the cellar floor, pressing them into place to disguise the gap. It wasn't perfect, but no one inspected servant cellars closely. There was nothing worth stealing here.
That was precisely why it was safe.
On the third block, something different glimmered behind the stone.
He focused.
The vision sharpened.
Granite.
Dirt.
And a faint thread of ore—iron, yes—but laced with something else. A whisper of warmth that didn't belong.
Spiritual energy.
Wei Lun's pulse quickened.
In his inherited memories, low-grade spiritual ores were tightly controlled. Outer disciples needed permission to mine them. Servant disciples weren't even told where they were located.
And here it was.
Behind three blocks of cellar wall.
Hidden in plain sight.
He almost laughed again.
Information is everything, he thought. And everyone is blind.
He did not mine it.
Not yet.
Instead, he leaned back against the opposite wall and closed his eyes.
He let the two sets of memories settle.
An office worker who read investment portfolios for fun.
A starving orphan who learned that speaking up led to bruises.
They didn't clash.
They aligned.
Caution. Endurance. Patience.
"I'll live," he murmured into the dark. "For both of us."
Morning came with the clang of a bell.
Wei Lun was already on his feet.
He had returned the cellar to near-perfection. Wiped away loose dust. Spat blood into a rag and tucked it into his sleeve.
When he stepped into the courtyard, he kept his gaze lowered.
A senior disciple lounged near the well, sneering at a cluster of servant boys.
There he was.
Liu Ren.
The one who had accused Wei Lun of theft.
The one whose boot still throbbed against his ribs.
Their eyes met briefly.
Wei Lun let his shoulders slump. Let fear flicker across his face.
He even flinched.
Liu Ren smirked and looked away, satisfied.
Good, Wei Lun thought.
Let him think I'm broken.
The morning passed in hauling water and chopping firewood.
He worked steadily. Not too fast. Not too slow.
Average was safety.
But as he lifted logs, his vision flickered instinctively.
Wood grain separated into blocks.
Durability bars hovered faintly in his awareness.
He nearly dropped an axe when he realized—
He could see its wear.
Not visually.
But conceptually.
It wouldn't last the week.
Tools matter, his mind supplied.
His old world's logic overlaying this new one.
Punching stone had taken forever.
But a pickaxe—
He swallowed.
That night, after lights-out, he returned to the cellar.
From his inventory, he withdrew the cobblestone.
It materialized in his palm with a subtle weight.
He arranged the three stones in his mental grid.
Nothing happened.
He frowned.
Of course.
He needed wood.
He closed his eyes and pictured the dead spirit oak behind the latrine house. The one no one bothered with because its wood was too warped for proper talismans.
Tomorrow, during latrine duty.
A plan formed as naturally as breathing.
He would harvest carefully. One block at a time. No visible damage.
Four planks.
A square.
A crafting table.
He opened his eyes and stared at the cellar ceiling.
Above him was a sect that saw him as disposable.
Beyond it, a cultivation world filled with monsters, politics, and men who killed for lesser secrets.
And beneath it—
Stone.
Endless stone.
Waiting.
Wei Lun's lips curved into the faintest smile.
"Rule one," he whispered softly.
"Don't be seen. Don't be known. Don't be interesting."
His fingers tightened around the cobblestone block.
"In this world…"
"I'll build before I fight."