Chen Wei's last memory on Earth was deeply, cosmically embarrassing.
Not a car accident. Not a heroic sacrifice. Not even something cool like getting struck by lightning while confessing to a girl.
No.
Chen Wei — age 26, senior programmer at a mid-tier tech company in Shenzhen, owner of zero girlfriends and three dying houseplants — choked to death on instant noodles.
Spicy beef flavor.
At 3:17 AM.
While reading chapter 2,847 of "Emperor of Ten Thousand Realms" on his cracked phone screen.
The noodle — a single, treacherous strand — lodged itself in his throat with the determination of a final boss. He reached for his water bottle. It was empty. He stumbled toward the kitchen. His foot caught on the charging cable. He fell. His face hit the desk corner.
And that was it.
Chen Wei, dead at 26.
Cause of death: Noodle.
If the afterlife had a blooper reel, he'd be the opening act.
The last thing he saw was his phone screen, still glowing on the floor, showing a reader comment on that novel:
「 Lmao if I transmigrated I'd at least die in a cool way 」
Yeah, Chen Wei thought as darkness swallowed him. Me too, buddy. Me too.
☠️ PART 1: THE WORST REINCARNATION PACKAGE IN HISTORY
Consciousness returned like a hangover — slow, painful, and deeply unwelcome.
The first thing Chen Wei felt was cold.
Not air-conditioned-office cold. Not forgot-my-jacket cold.
This was bones-are-freezing, wind-is-cutting-my-skin, I-might-actually-be-dead-again cold.
The second thing he felt was pain.
His entire body screamed. His left arm was bent at an angle that arms should never bend. His ribs felt like a xylophone that someone had played with a hammer. Something warm and wet was pooling beneath his head.
Blood, his programmer brain noted calmly. That's blood. That's a lot of blood. That's an unreasonable amount of blood.
The third thing he noticed — and this was the part that made him question his sanity — was the sky.
It was purple.
Not sunset purple. Not pollution purple. It was a deep, rich violet streaked with veins of gold, like someone had cracked an egg of light across the heavens. Three moons hung in the sky — one white, one pale blue, one the color of dried blood.
Three moons.
Three.
Chen Wei stared.
"...I'm not in Shenzhen anymore," he whispered.
His voice came out wrong. Higher. Younger. His tongue felt clumsy, like he was speaking a language his mouth knew but his brain didn't.
He tried to move. His body refused. He tried again. Something in his spine made a sound like stepping on bubble wrap.
So he did the only logical thing.
He lay there, bleeding, staring at three moons in a purple sky, and said:
"Okay. Cool. This is fine. Everything is fine."
Everything was not fine.
The memories hit him like a freight train.
Not his memories. Someone else's. They poured into his skull — fragmented, chaotic, soaked in humiliation and pain — and Chen Wei gasped as sixteen years of another boy's life crashed into his consciousness.
A boy also named Chen Wei.
Convenient, some distant part of his mind noted. At least I don't have to learn a new signature.
The original Chen Wei was the youngest son of the Chen Clan, a mid-tier cultivation family based in Qinghe City, in the southeastern corner of the Qianling Continent.
The Qianling Continent.
A landmass so vast that even Immortal-realm cultivators couldn't cross it in a single flight. A world divided into five great regions — the Verdant East, the Scorching South, the Abyssal West, the Frozen North, and the mysterious Central Heavenly Lands where the strongest sects resided like gods looking down on ants.
Qinghe City sat in the Verdant East, which was considered the "beginner zone" of the cultivation world. The weakest region. The place where Golden Core cultivators were considered big shots and Nascent Soul cultivators were legends.
The original Chen Wei had been born into the Chen Clan — not the main branch, not even a respectable side branch, but the "we don't talk about them at family reunions" branch.
His mother had died giving birth to him.
His father had disappeared on a mission when he was seven.
He'd been raised by servants who stole his allowance.
And when he turned twelve and underwent his spiritual root examination — the test that determined a cultivator's potential, their entire future, their worth as a human being in this brutal world — the examiner had tested him three times.
Not because the results were impressive.
Because the examiner couldn't believe anyone could score that low.
Spiritual Root: Mud Grade.
Below Earth Grade. Below Trash Grade. A classification so rare and pathetic that it wasn't even in the official rankings — the examiner had to make it up on the spot.
The examiner, a weathered old man who had tested thousands of children, had looked at young Chen Wei with an expression caught between pity and fascination, like a scientist discovering a new species of failure.
"Remarkable," the examiner had said. "In forty years, I have never seen potential this... absent."
The Chen Clan elders had been mortified.
His cousins had been delighted.
For four years, the original Chen Wei had endured. Mockery in the training halls. "Accidental" injuries during sparring. His cultivation resources quietly redirected to more "deserving" members. He was the clan's shame — living proof that even decent bloodlines could produce absolute duds.
Then, three days ago, his eldest cousin Chen Hao — a Marrow Cleansing Stage 7 genius and the clan's golden boy — had decided that the embarrassment had gone on long enough.
In front of the entire clan, during the Spring Ancestral Ceremony, Chen Hao had ripped the clan jade token from the original Chen Wei's neck, declared him "unworthy of the Chen name," and with the silent approval of the elders...
Thrown him off the Mourning Cliff.
A 300-meter drop into a ravine filled with jagged rocks and low-level demonic beasts.
No one had objected.
No one had even looked away.
The original Chen Wei — broken, betrayed, and alone — had died on impact.
And then he showed up.
The noodle guy.
"This is the worst isekai setup I've ever seen," Chen Wei muttered, staring at the purple sky. "No golden finger at the start. No mysterious old grandfather in a ring. No beautiful fairy finding me in the woods. I'm just... lying in my own blood at the bottom of a cliff."
He tried to take stock of his situation.
Body: Broken. Multiple fractures. Severe blood loss. Probably internal bleeding.
Cultivation: Breath Condensation Stage 1. The absolute rock bottom. A child could sneeze harder than his spiritual energy output.
Resources: Zero. His clan token was gone. He had no money, no weapons, no pills.
Location: Bottom of Mourning Cliff. A ravine in the outer wilderness of Qinghe City. Known to contain Stage 1-3 demonic beasts that would find a bleeding, broken teenager to be a wonderful snack.
Allies: None.
Prospects: Death. Again.
Chen Wei closed his eyes.
I survived 996 work culture, mass layoffs, Beijing rent prices, and my landlord's cooking, he thought. I am NOT dying at the bottom of a cliff in a fantasy world because some pretty-boy cousin has anger issues.
He opened his eyes.
"Alright," he said to no one. "If this is a transmigration, where's my cheat? Every transmigrator gets a cheat. That's the rule. That's the WHOLE POINT. I read 2,847 chapters of—"
[DING!]
The sound rang through his skull like someone had flicked a crystal glass inside his brain.
Golden text exploded across his vision.
「 ————————————————— 」
「 SUPREME SHAMELESS FORTUNE SYSTEM 」
「 Version: ??? 」
「 Status: Initializing... 」
「 ————————————————— 」
「 Host detected. 」
「 Scanning... 」
「 ... 」
「 ...Still scanning. There's very little to scan. 」
「 ... 」
「 Scan complete. 」
「 」
「 HOST PROFILE: 」
「 Name: Chen Wei 」
「 Age: 16 (body) / 26 (mental — debatable) 」
「 Cultivation: Breath Condensation Stage 1 」
「 Spiritual Root: Mud Grade 」
「 Talent: ERROR — VALUE TOO LOW TO DISPLAY 」
「 Physical Condition: ☠️ 」
「 Charm: "Your face won't start wars, but it won't stop traffic either." 」
「 Lucky Stat: -7 」
「 」
「 Overall Assessment: You are, statistically speaking, the least impressive host this System has ever bonded with. And I once bonded with a chicken. The chicken lasted longer. 」
「 」
「 However! Your pathetic state has triggered the ultra-rare PITY PROTOCOL! 」
「 Congratulations! 🎉 」
「 (The confetti is sarcastic.) 」
「 ————————————————— 」
Chen Wei stared at the floating golden text.
"...Did my cheat system just insult me?"
「 I prefer the term 'honest assessment.' 」
"You compared me to a chicken!"
「 The chicken had a Stage 2 spiritual root. You have Mud Grade. The chicken was objectively superior. 」
"HOW DOES A CHICKEN HAVE A SPIRITUAL ROOT?!"
「 It was a very talented chicken. 」
Chen Wei opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.
"I hate you already."
「 Wonderful. The feeling is mutual. Shall we begin? 」
⚡ PART 2: THE PITY PROTOCOL (OR: HEAVEN'S CHARITY CASE)
「 As your System, it is my sacred duty to assist you in your cultivation journey, help you overcome tribulations, and guide you toward supreme power and immortality. 」
「 Looking at your current stats, I estimate this will take approximately... 」
「 Calculating... 」
「 ...forever. It will take forever. 」
"Can you be helpful for even ONE second?"
「 I am being helpful. Managing your expectations is a form of help. 」
「 Now. Since you are actively dying — yes, right now, your HP is at 7% — let me activate your first gift. 」
「 ————————————————— 」
「 🎁 PITY PROTOCOL — FIRST GIFT 」
「 Skill Acquired: [Basic Regeneration Lv. 1] 」
「 Effect: Slowly heals minor wounds. Key word: SLOWLY. Don't get excited. 」
「 +3 Constitution 」
「 +1 Spiritual Energy 」
「 Note: You can now survive a light breeze. Previously, this was uncertain. 」
「 ————————————————— 」
A warm sensation spread through Chen Wei's body. Not dramatic — not a golden light or a heavenly choir. More like someone had placed a lukewarm towel on his forehead. His worst cuts began to close. The bleeding from his head slowed to a trickle.
His broken arm was still broken. His ribs still felt like gravel. But the immediate "you will bleed to death in ten minutes" situation had been downgraded to "you will bleed to death in maybe two hours."
Progress.
"That's it?" Chen Wei said flatly. "I'm dying and you gave me a band-aid?"
「 I gave you a band-aid AND a nice stat boost. Gratitude is a virtue, Host. 」
「 Besides, the System operates on a simple principle: 」
「 」
「 ✦ THE SHAMELESS FORTUNE PRINCIPLE ✦ 」
「 "The more shameless, absurd, or face-losing the action, the greater the reward." 」
「 」
「 In other words: dignity is a luxury you cannot afford. Abandon it. Embrace chaos. Profit. 」
Chen Wei processed this.
"So... you're telling me that to get stronger, I have to embarrass myself?"
「 Not just embarrass. Humiliate. Debase. Reduce yourself to a level where even face-slapped young masters would say 'that's too much, bro.' 」
「 Think of your pride as a currency. Spend it wisely. Or recklessly. Recklessly pays better. 」
"This is the worst System in the history of Systems."
「 And yet, I'm the only thing standing between you and becoming demonic boar breakfast. So. Shall we discuss your first mission? 」
「 ————————————————— 」
「 🎯 EMERGENCY MISSION 」
「 Title: "Don't Die, Idiot" 」
「 Objective: Survive for 24 hours. 」
「 Difficulty: ★★★☆☆ (For a normal person. For you? ★★★★★★★★) 」
「 Reward: [Random Skill Ticket] x1, [Basic Healing Pill] x3 」
「 Failure Penalty: Death. Obviously. 」
「 ————————————————— 」
Chen Wei gritted his teeth.
Twenty-four hours. At the bottom of Mourning Cliff. With a body held together by stubbornness and a lukewarm healing skill. In a ravine where demonic beasts hunted.
He forced himself to sit up.
The world spun. His vision went white. He tasted blood and bile. Every nerve in his body screamed at him to lie back down and accept his fate.
He did not lie back down.
I already died once being pathetic, he thought. Choking on noodles. Alone. In a dark apartment. No one found my body for three days. THREE DAYS. My coworker only noticed because I stopped responding to emails.
I am NOT doing that again.
Not here. Not in this world. Not at the bottom of some cliff because some arrogant cousin decided I wasn't worth keeping alive.
He grabbed a rock jutting from the cliff wall and pulled himself to his feet. His left arm hung uselessly. His legs shook like a newborn deer's. His vision was a blurry watercolor painting of grey stone and dark trees.
But he was standing.
"Okay," he breathed. "I'm standing. What now?"
「 Now? You walk. 」
"Where?"
「 Away from here. I'm detecting three spiritual signatures approaching from the eastern end of the ravine. Based on their energy output... Stage 2 Shadow Fanged Wolves. 」
Chen Wei's blood went cold. "Wolves?"
「 Three of them. They've smelled your blood. Estimated arrival: four minutes. 」
「 On the bright side, your blood smells terrible — Mud Grade spiritual energy gives it a "stale pond water" aroma — so they might hesitate before eating you. 」
"THAT'S NOT A BRIGHT SIDE!"
「 It buys you approximately six extra seconds. You're welcome. 」
Chen Wei looked around frantically. The ravine stretched in two directions — east, where the wolves were coming from, and west, where the gorge narrowed into darkness between two towering cliff walls. Jagged rocks. Fallen trees. A thin stream of murky water cutting through the stone.
West it was.
He stumbled forward. Every step was agony. His broken ribs ground against each other like tectonic plates. His bare feet — the original Chen Wei's shoes had been taken by his cousins before the throw, because apparently even his footwear was too good for him — slipped on wet stone.
「 Speed: 0.3 meters per second. 」
「 Wolf speed: 8 meters per second. 」
「 Prognosis: You will be caught. You will be eaten. It will hurt. 」
"STOP NARRATING MY DEATH!"
「 I'm providing tactical information. It's not my fault the tactics are 'you're doomed.' 」
Chen Wei's mind raced. Programmer brain. Logic brain. Debug brain. When the code doesn't work, you don't panic — you find the bug.
The System rewards shamelessness. Absurdity. Face-losing actions.
What's the most shameless thing I can do right now?
He looked at the stream of murky water. He looked at the mud — thick, black, foul-smelling mud that lined the ravine floor.
An idea formed. It was disgusting. It was humiliating. It was absolutely beneath any human dignity.
It was perfect.
"System," Chen Wei said, already hating himself, "if I cover myself in mud and hide in that stream like a swamp creature, do I get points?"
A pause.
「 ... 」
「 Host. 」
「 Are you suggesting that you — a human being, a transmigrator from a technologically advanced civilization, a self-proclaimed reader of 2,847 chapters of cultivation fiction — plan to survive your first challenge in this world by... wallowing in mud like a pig? 」
"Yes."
「 ... 」
「 ————————————————— 」
「 🎯 BONUS OBJECTIVE TRIGGERED! 」
「 "Embrace Your Inner Swamp Thing" 」
「 Cover yourself completely in mud and successfully hide from the wolves. 」
「 Reward: [Mud Skin Lv.1] — Passive defense skill. +5 Constitution. 」
「 Bonus: Your spiritual root is literally called "Mud Grade." The irony is worth extra points. 」
「 ————————————————— 」
Chen Wei didn't hesitate.
He dropped to his knees and began scooping handfuls of black, stinking mud over his body. It was cold. It was slimy. It smelled like something had died in it — possibly several somethings. He smeared it over his face, his hair, his torn robes. He packed it into his wounds, which hurt so badly he had to bite his own tongue to keep from screaming.
Then he crawled into the shallow stream, pressed himself against the muddy bank, and went completely still.
The water was ice cold. Barely a foot deep. He lay face-down, breathing through a tiny gap between two rocks, his entire body submerged in mud and freezing water.
I read 2,847 chapters of cultivation novels, he thought miserably. The protagonists got divine flames. Heavenly swords. Ancient dragon bloodlines. I got MUD.
「 To be fair, the mud suits you. 」
Shut up.
「 You look like a turd with anxiety. 」
SHUT UP.
Footsteps. No — pawsteps. Heavy, deliberate, predatory. The splash of clawed feet on wet stone.
Chen Wei held his breath.
Through the tiny gap in the rocks, he could see them. Three wolves, each the size of a large motorcycle, with fur as black as ink and eyes that glowed a sickly yellow-green. Their fangs — the "Shadow Fangs" they were named for — extended past their lower jaws like curved daggers, dripping with a dark liquid that sizzled when it hit the ground.
Venomous. Great. Wonderful. Love that for me.
The lead wolf stopped. Its massive head swung toward the stream. Nostrils flared.
Chen Wei's heart hammered so hard he was sure the wolves could hear it. His body screamed to run. Every survival instinct he had — both from Earth and from the original Chen Wei's memories — shrieked at him to move, to flee, to do anything except lie in a muddy stream while apex predators sniffed for him.
He didn't move.
I'm mud. I'm just mud. I'm one with the mud. I am the muddiest mud that ever mudded.
The wolf took a step closer. Then another.
It was three meters away.
Two meters.
One.
Its nose was directly above Chen Wei's submerged body. Hot breath washed over the water's surface.
Chen Wei could see every detail of the wolf's face. The scarred muzzle. The intelligence in those glowing eyes. The way its lips peeled back from those venomous fangs.
If I die covered in mud at the bottom of a cliff, my obituary in two lifetimes will be the saddest document in human history.
The wolf sniffed.
Sniffed again.
Then it made a sound — a low, disgusted chuff, like a food critic encountering gas station sushi.
It turned away.
「 Analysis: The combination of Mud Grade spiritual energy and actual mud has created an odor so profoundly unappealing that the wolf has decided you are not food. 」
「 You are so pathetic that a predator chose hunger over eating you. 」
「 This is simultaneously the most humiliating and most effective survival strategy I have ever witnessed. 」
The three wolves padded away, their glowing eyes scanning for worthier prey. Their pawsteps faded. The ravine fell silent except for the trickle of water and Chen Wei's thundering heartbeat.
He didn't move for ten more minutes.
Then, slowly, painfully, he peeled himself out of the mud.
He sat on the stream bank — covered head to toe in black filth, shivering, bleeding through his mud-pack bandages, with one working arm and the dignity of a wet sock.
「 ————————————————— 」
「 ✅ BONUS OBJECTIVE COMPLETE! 」
「 "Embrace Your Inner Swamp Thing" 」
「 Reward Acquired: [Mud Skin Lv.1] 」
「 Effect: Passive. Reduces physical damage by 3%. Increases when in contact with earth/mud. 」
「 +5 Constitution 」
「 +50 EXP 」
「 」
「 Additionally — 」
「 🏆 TITLE ACQUIRED: "The Mud Immortal" 」
「 (A cultivator so attuned to mud that even demonic beasts mistake him for terrain.) 」
「 Effect: +10% effectiveness of all earth-element techniques. +20% stealth in muddy/swampy environments. 」
「 ————————————————— 」
Chen Wei stared at the notifications.
"...'The Mud Immortal,'" he repeated.
「 Inspiring, isn't it? 」
"I'm going to find a way to uninstall you."
「 I'd like to see you try. You can barely install yourself in an upright position. 」
Despite everything — the pain, the cold, the humiliation, the fact that he was sitting in a ravine covered in mud with a sarcastic AI roasting him — Chen Wei felt something he hadn't felt in a long time.
Not since his last life. Not since the endless grey days of coding, commuting, eating alone, sleeping alone, existing alone.
He felt alive.
Terrified and pathetic, sure. But alive.
"Alright," he said, forcing himself to stand on shaking legs. "Twenty-four hours. I need to survive twenty-four hours."
He looked west, deeper into the ravine. The darkness between the cliff walls was thick and uninviting. Anything could be in there.
He looked east, the way the wolves had gone. Beyond the ravine, somewhere past the wilderness, was Qinghe City. Civilization. People who might help him.
Or people who might finish what Chen Hao started.
"System. Which direction gives me better odds?"
「 East: Wolves, open terrain, possibility of reaching civilization. Survival odds: 12%. 」
「 West: Unknown. The ravine deepens into an area not mapped by the Chen Clan. Survival odds: ...unable to calculate. Insufficient data. 」
"You can't calculate it?"
「 The last person who went deep into this ravine was a Nascent Soul cultivator 200 years ago. He went in to investigate unusual energy readings. He never came out. 」
Chen Wei swallowed.
「 So your choices are: 'probably die' or 'die in a way that might be interesting.' 」
Chen Wei looked east. Then west.
He went west.
「 Of course you did. 」
🌑 PART 3: WHAT LIVES AT THE BOTTOM
The ravine narrowed as Chen Wei limped deeper.
The walls rose higher on either side — 200 meters, 300 meters, 400 meters — until only a thin ribbon of purple sky was visible above, the three moons reduced to pale slivers peeking through the gap. The air grew colder. Thicker. It tasted like old stone and something faintly metallic, like licking a copper coin.
The stream beside him widened into a shallow underground river, its water turning from murky brown to a strange, luminous blue-green. Moss on the walls began to glow — soft, bioluminescent patches of pale gold and ghostly white, casting the ravine in an ethereal light.
It was beautiful.
It was also deeply, fundamentally wrong.
Chen Wei could feel it. Not with any cultivator's sense — his spiritual perception was basically nonexistent at Breath Condensation Stage 1 — but with something older. Something instinctive. The animal part of his brain that made cavemen avoid dark places.
This place did not want visitors.
「 Interesting. 」
"What's interesting? When you say 'interesting,' I get nervous."
「 The ambient spiritual energy density here is approximately 47 times higher than the surface. 」
Chen Wei stopped walking. "Forty-seven times?"
「 At this density, even passive absorption would accelerate your cultivation significantly. If you stayed here for a month, you could reach Breath Condensation Stage 3 or 4 without any effort. 」
"That sounds too good to be true."
「 It is. High spiritual density attracts powerful beasts, breeds natural hazards, and occasionally warps reality. Also, there's something ahead. 」
"Something?"
「 A spiritual signature. Faint. Ancient. And... 」
The System paused. Actually paused. In the short time Chen Wei had known it, the System had never hesitated.
「 ...I can't identify it. 」
That was when Chen Wei should have turned around. Any sane person would have turned around. The smart play, the safe play, the play that any rational human being would make, was to go east, take his chances with the wolves, and try to reach civilization.
But Chen Wei had read 2,847 chapters of cultivation novels.
And he knew — he KNEW with the certainty of a man who had consumed thousands of hours of fiction — that when a mysterious, unidentifiable energy source sits at the bottom of a ravine where a Nascent Soul cultivator disappeared, you go toward it.
Because that's where the opportunities are.
That's where the story begins.
"Let's go," he said.
「 Your survival instincts are impressively defective. 」
"I died eating noodles. My survival instincts were never good."
「 ...Fair point. 」
The ravine opened.
Chen Wei stepped out of the narrow passage and into a cavern.
Not a cave. A CAVERN. A space so vast that the glowing moss on its ceiling looked like stars in a private sky, hundreds of meters above. The luminous river fed into a still, mirror-perfect lake at the cavern's center, its surface reflecting the false stars above until it was impossible to tell where water ended and sky began.
And at the center of the lake, on a small island of dark stone...
Was a tree.
But calling it a "tree" was like calling the ocean a "puddle."
It was enormous. Hundreds of meters tall, its trunk wider than a city block, its bark the color of burnt copper and inscribed with patterns that seemed to move when Chen Wei looked at them — spirals and characters and images that flickered at the edge of comprehension. Its branches spread across the cavern ceiling like the arms of a god, and from those branches hung not leaves but crystallized droplets of light — thousands of them, each one pulsing with a soft, rhythmic glow like a heartbeat.
The air around the tree hummed. Not with sound — with meaning. Like the tree was speaking in a language that existed before words.
Chen Wei's Mud Grade spiritual root — the worthless, laughable, below-trash-grade spiritual root that had made him a joke — reacted.
For the first time in either of his lives, he felt energy move inside him. Not much. A trickle. A whisper. Like a single candle being lit in a dark warehouse.
But it was there.
And it was resonating with the tree.
「 Host. 」
The System's voice had changed. The sarcasm was gone. The mockery was gone. For the first time, Jiu sounded...
「 ...What is your spiritual root doing? 」
"I don't know. It's... warm. It feels warm."
「 That's impossible. Mud Grade roots don't resonate with anything. They barely conduct spiritual energy. They shouldn't be able to— 」
The tree pulsed.
A wave of golden light rippled outward from its trunk, across the lake's surface, through the air, through the stone, through Chen Wei.
And in that pulse, he heard a voice.
Not words. Not language. Just... a feeling. Ancient and vast and unbearably sad.
...finally...
Chen Wei's knees buckled. He hit the ground hard, his broken body protesting violently. The golden light washed over him, through him, into the pathetic flicker of energy in his dantian — his spiritual core, the seat of a cultivator's power.
And his Mud Grade spiritual root...
Cracked.
Not broke. Not shattered. Cracked — like an egg. Like a shell around something that had been sleeping.
For one impossible second, Chen Wei's spiritual root was not Mud Grade.
For one second, the System's display glitched:
「 Spiritual Root: M̶̧̛u̵͎̽d̷̰̈ ̵̹̈G̸̱̈́r̵̰̄a̶̗̿d̵̮̾e̸̢̛ — ERROR — ███████ — GRADE UNCLASSIFIABLE — ERROR 」
Then it snapped back.
「 Spiritual Root: Mud Grade 」
The golden light faded. The tree went still. The cavern was silent except for the soft dripping of water and Chen Wei's ragged breathing.
He lay on the stone floor, trembling, sweating, his mind reeling.
"System," he whispered. "What just happened?"
A long pause.
「 ...I don't know. 」
Another pause.
「 And I don't like not knowing. 」
Chen Wei stared at the tree. The crystallized light-drops on its branches pulsed gently, peacefully, as if nothing had happened.
But something had happened.
Something that made a System designed to mock him go quiet.
Something that made a "Mud Grade" spiritual root — the worst classification in the cultivation world — resonate with an ancient tree hidden at the bottom of a ravine where a Nascent Soul cultivator had vanished.
Chen Wei looked at his hands. They were shaking. Covered in mud and blood and bruises.
But beneath the skin, deep in his dantian, something new glowed. Faint. Fragile. Easily extinguished.
But real.
"...This is where I cultivate," he said quietly. "This is my place."
「 Host. This tree is clearly ancient, possibly sentient, and connected to forces I cannot identify. Staying here is extremely dangerous. 」
"More dangerous than going back to a clan that threw me off a cliff?"
「 ... 」
「 Point taken. 」
Chen Wei dragged himself to the edge of the lake and sat with his back against a smooth boulder. His body was broken. His spiritual root was a cosmic joke. His System was sarcastic. His clan wanted him dead.
But he was alive.
At the bottom of the world, in a hidden cavern, beside a tree that had whispered to something inside him that wasn't supposed to exist.
He closed his eyes.
"System."
「 What? 」
"I'm going to become strong."
「 You can barely sit upright. 」
"I'm going to become so strong that Chen Hao — that arrogant, waste-of-oxygen cousin — will kneel in front of me and beg."
「 You're currently weaker than the mud you're sitting in. 」
"I'm going to become so powerful that this whole continent will know my name."
「 Your name is 'Chen Wei.' It literally means 'morning light.' That's aggressively generic. 」
Chen Wei opened his eyes. And despite the pain, despite the blood, despite everything —
He smiled.
"Then I'll make it legendary."
「 ... 」
「 ... 」
「 ...You know what, Host? 」
「 You're delusional. Broken. Weak. Covered in mud. Alone at the bottom of a ravine. Your spiritual root is a joke. Your body is falling apart. Your clan abandoned you. You have nothing. 」
「 But... 」
「 ...that look in your eyes is interesting. 」
「 Fine. I'll play along. Let's see how far a mud-covered idiot can climb. 」
「 」
「 But if you die, I'm putting "Choked on Noodles, Round 2" on your grave. 」
"Deal."
Far above, at the top of Mourning Cliff, the wind howled across the edge where a boy had been thrown three days ago.
No one stood there. No one mourned. No one cared.
The Chen Clan had already moved on. Chen Hao was being praised for "cleaning up the family's shame." The elders had approved a feast. The servants had cleared out the original Chen Wei's tiny room before his body was even cold.
A boy had been killed by his own family, and the world hadn't even blinked.
But deep below — at the very bottom, in a cavern that hadn't been touched by sunlight in ten thousand years — a new Chen Wei sat beside an ancient tree, making promises to a sarcastic System.
And somewhere in the roots of that impossible tree, something stirred.
Something that had been waiting.
Something that looked at this broken, muddy, stubborn, ridiculous boy and thought:
...yes. This one.
This one will do.
「 ————————————————— 」
「 CHAPTER 1 — END 」
「 」
「 Chen Wei Status: 」
「 Cultivation: Breath Condensation Stage 1 」
「 HP: 11% (Critical) 」
「 Skills: [Basic Regeneration Lv.1], [Mud Skin Lv.1] 」
「 Titles: "The Mud Immortal" 」
「 System Mood: ...Intrigued 」
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