Rain fell from the dark heavens like countless silver needles.
The mountain road was steep, the stone steps slick with moss, and cold wind howled through the pine forest like ghosts crying in the night. At the foot of Black Tortoise Mountain stood a youth in ragged gray robes, one hand clutching his chest, the other gripping a rust-stained sword whose edge had long since broken.
His name was—
No.
That was not right.
His name had been Lin Yuan, twenty-six years old, a graduate student from a modern city full of neon lights, late-night delivery food, and endless concrete towers. His greatest skills had been writing code, skipping sleep, and arguing on internet forums about whether immortality novels had declined in quality over the past decade.
And then, just like that, he had died.
No thunder. No heavenly tribulation. No truck crashing through a red light.
Just a faint pain in his heart while staring at a screen at three in the morning.
He remembered darkness.
Then cold rain.
Then this body.
The youth staggered, his face pale as paper. Memory fragments crashed together in his mind like broken waves slamming against a cliff.
This body's name was also Lin Yuan.
Outer-sect disciple, Green Cloud Sect.
Age sixteen.
Mediocre talent. Fourth level of Qi Gathering.
No father. No mother. No backing.
In a world where the strong feasted on the weak and human lives were cheaper than grass, such a person was not even fit to be called cannon fodder.
Tonight, the original Lin Yuan had been ambushed on the mountain road by fellow disciples and beaten nearly to death over a single item:
A sword.
Not a treasured sword. Not a flying sword. Not even a proper spiritual artifact.
Just a broken, black iron sword the original owner had found years ago in a dried riverbed.
Yet because an outer-sect steward had once glanced at it twice, rumors spread. Rumors were fiercer than tigers; once they were born, even mud could be called gold. The original Lin Yuan refused to hand it over and was beaten until his soul scattered.
And so, the current Lin Yuan woke up in his place.
"Damn…" he muttered, spitting out a mouthful of bloody water.
The word sounded strange in this world, swallowed at once by rain and thunder.
He leaned against a stone pillar by the road and forced himself to breathe slowly.
In through the nose. Out through the mouth.
A habit from his old life.
A useless habit in this one.
The mountain above him was vast and dark, half-hidden among the clouds. Faintly visible on its upper slopes were clusters of ancient buildings, their roof corners curved like swallowing birds, lanterns swaying dimly in the storm.
That was Green Cloud Sect.
A place mortals dreamed of entering.
A place disciples dreamed of escaping alive.
The original Lin Yuan's memories were chaotic, but one thing was clear:
If he did not return before dawn, he would be treated as a deserter. If that happened, the sect would not even bother asking who beat him. He would be thrown into the labor pits or cast down the mountain to fend for himself.
In xianxia novels, transmigrators always got heaven-defying treasures, ancient inheritances, peerless beauties, old grandpas in rings.
Lin Yuan lowered his head and looked at the broken sword in his hand.
The sword was black, simple, and ugly. The blade was chipped. The hilt had no decoration. Rain slid down its surface without leaving a mark, as if the metal itself rejected the mortal world.
He laughed once, bitterly.
"So this is my golden finger?"
Thunder roared.
At that moment, a sharp pain exploded in his mind.
Lin Yuan groaned and nearly fell to his knees. The world spun. The rain froze. Even the sound of the wind seemed to grow distant.
Then—
He saw it.
Not with his eyes, but somewhere deeper.
The broken sword in his hand trembled once, and an ancient, desolate aura entered his sea of consciousness. A single phrase appeared there, incomparably clear, like words carved on a heavenly stele:
"To cultivate the sword, first sever the self."
Before he could understand what it meant, countless fractured images burst forth.
A blood-red sky.
A man in white standing above a sea of stars.
A sword light splitting heaven and earth.
Millions of cultivators kneeling in silence.
A corpse drifting between suns.
And finally—
A rusted sword buried in mortal dust for ten thousand years.
Lin Yuan's scalp went numb.
His grip tightened unconsciously.
The next instant, all the images vanished.
The rain returned. The mountain returned. The cold returned.
Only one thing remained in his mind: a strange feeling, like a thread had been tied between his consciousness and the sword.
He stared at it, breathing heavily.
No response.
No artifact spirit.
No old grandfather.
No ancient beauty calling him master.
"...Very good," he said hoarsely. "As expected of a xianxia world. Even cheats are cryptic."
He tried to laugh, but coughed up blood instead.
His injuries were not light. Three ribs were probably cracked. His left shoulder felt half-dislocated. There was dried blood at his temple. The original owner had been thrown down a slope and left in the rain like a dead dog.
Lin Yuan closed his eyes and sorted through the memories again.
The ones who attacked him were three outer-sect disciples led by Zhao Hu, a broad-shouldered brute at the fifth level of Qi Gathering. Zhao Hu had a cousin serving under an outer-sect elder, which gave him enough backing to bully the weak and fear the strong. A classic small villain.
"If the mountain does not turn, the water will. We'll meet again…" Lin Yuan muttered.
Then he paused.
"No, that's not enough."
His gaze slowly sharpened.
"In this world, if you leave weeds by the roots, spring winds will make them grow again."
The cold rain struck his face. For the first time since waking, he truly understood:
This was not a novel he was reading.
This was a world where a moment of softness could cost a life.
If he wanted to live, then from this night onward, he could no longer think like the old Lin Yuan from Earth.
He must become harder.
Sharper.
Like a sword.
He took a step toward the mountain.
Then stopped again.
At the edge of the road, just beyond a cluster of rain-soaked weeds, a corpse lay face-down in the mud.
Lin Yuan's eyes narrowed.
Not a corpse.
A man barely breathing.
He recognized him after a moment from memory—Sun Shou, a low-ranking servant disciple from the herb garden. Timid by nature, often beaten, the type who kept his head lowered and spoke as little as possible.
Why was he here?
Lin Yuan approached cautiously. In this world, even dying people could be traps.
When he turned the man over, Sun Shou coughed weakly, a mouthful of dark blood staining his chin.
"L-Lin… senior brother…"
"You know me?"
Sun Shou forced his swollen eyes open. "I… saw them…"
"Zhao Hu?"
Sun Shou gave the faintest nod.
A flash of lightning lit the night, illuminating his terrified face.
"They… they took something from me too…" he whispered. "A token… from the herb garden storehouse… I heard them say… if they could frame you for stealing spirit herbs… then no one would ask about the sword…"
Lin Yuan's expression changed.
The mountain wind grew colder.
So that was it.
The sword was only one reason.
The real plan was to pin theft on him, turning a beating into a death sentence.
In Green Cloud Sect, stealing sect resources was no small matter. At best, crippled cultivation. At worst, execution.
"A mantis stalks the cicada, unaware of the oriole behind," Lin Yuan said softly.
He had thought Zhao Hu was merely robbing him.
Instead, the bastard intended to bury him completely.
Sun Shou grabbed his sleeve with trembling fingers. "Senior brother… run…"
"Run where?"
Sun Shou froze.
Yes. Run where?
Under heaven's net, vast and wide, nothing escapes. In this cultivation world, a weak outer disciple fleeing his sect might as well step into a tiger's den after escaping a wolf's mouth.
Lin Yuan lowered his eyes.
For a moment, he looked almost calm.
Then he asked, "Where is the token now?"
Sun Shou struggled to answer. "Zhao Hu… should… should have given it to Steward Xu… before dawn…"
Steward Xu.
Outer-sect affairs steward.
A greedy man. Ruthless. Fond of bribes and flattery.
Lin Yuan's mind turned rapidly.
If the token reached Steward Xu, then by sunrise the charge would become fact. A false case, once stamped by authority, became truer than truth. In this world, reason was always beneath the sword.
Unless…
He looked toward the mountain path.
There was still time.
A crazy plan took shape.
Sun Shou saw the look in his eyes and shivered. "Senior brother… what are you going to do?"
Lin Yuan rose slowly, the broken sword hanging at his side.
The rain seemed to grow quieter around him.
"Since they want my life," he said, "I'll take theirs first."
Sun Shou's face turned white.
That was Zhao Hu!
Fifth level Qi Gathering, broad as a bear, backed by a steward. Even among the outer sect, he was not someone a half-dead Lin Yuan could provoke.
Yet Lin Yuan had already begun walking uphill.
One step.
Then another.
He was limping, and his body looked like it might collapse at any moment, but his spine was straight.
Some people fear death and cower. Some people see no road ahead and despair. But there is another kind of person—when driven to the cliff's edge, he will bare his fangs and fight like a mad dog.
Lin Yuan had argued online for years about what made a good protagonist.
Now he finally understood.
The ones who survived were not necessarily the smartest, nor the most talented.
They were the ones who, when the sword reached their throat, dared to draw their own.
Sun Shou stared blankly at Lin Yuan's back.
Lightning flashed again, casting that thin figure in stark white light.
For one instant, he felt that the weak and silent outer disciple he had known for years was gone.
What remained was something colder.
Something dangerous.
Something that had awakened in the storm.
Lin Yuan climbed the stone steps one by one, his fingers tightening around the broken sword. As he moved, that strange connection within his mind flickered again.
And suddenly—
The mountain path before him seemed different.
His eyes passed over the wet stones, the trees, the slope, the drifting rain.
Then lines appeared.
Countless faint lines.
Cracks in the rock. Weak points in the branches. Imbalances in the slope. Even the flow of the wind seemed to reveal hidden gaps and seams, as if the world before him had become a poorly written piece of code full of vulnerabilities waiting to be exploited.
Lin Yuan's breathing stopped.
This was—
He did not know what this was.
But instinctively, he understood one thing:
The sword was showing him flaws.
Not just flaws in weapons.
Flaws in movement. Flaws in techniques. Flaws in force.
A path of weakness hidden within all things.
His heart suddenly pounded like thunder.
The ancients said: When heaven cuts off one road, it always leaves another.
Perhaps this broken sword was not broken at all.
Perhaps the truly broken thing… had only been its owner.
At the end of the long stone path, beyond the swaying pines and rain curtain, a lantern-lit courtyard gradually came into view.
Zhao Hu's residence.
Warm light glowed behind the windows.
Laughter drifted faintly into the storm.
Lin Yuan stopped outside the gate.
Blood ran down his fingers and onto the sword hilt.
He lifted his head. His eyes were dark and still.
Behind him was the mortal dust of a dead life.
Before him was the first killing night of a cultivator's road.
He raised the broken sword.
And knocked once on the courtyard gate.
Bang.
Inside, the laughter abruptly ceased.