[Odyssey Matrix: World-Line 2.5 Sector Audit 100% Complete.]
[Target Realm: The Heaven-Severing Sword Sect (Uncoupled).]
[Total Asset Value Liquidated: 5,800,000 Primordial Units.]
[Initializing Local Extraction... Routing Dividends to Origin Pod.]
Lin Wei stood on the shattered edge of the Sect-Master's fallen jade pavilion, his grey linen sleeves fluttering in the cold, violet mountain breeze. Beside him, Xiao Liu was carefully logging the captured copper reserves into a new, soot-stained ledger.
Before Lin Wei could take his next step toward the mountain gates, his single volcanic left eye flickered violently. The purple HUD of the Sovereign Engine didn't display local sect coordinates; it fractured into long, jagged bands of green static, displaying a set of numbers that belonged to a world four universe-lines away.
[Origin Pod Sync: Active.]
[Location: Sector 01 — Capital Medical Spire (ICU Bed 409).]
[Host Body Status: Heart Rate 0 BPM $\rightarrow$ 72 BPM.]
[Neural Density: Increased by 18.4%.]
[Local Warning: Cyber-Coroner Team 'Arasaka-Lin' has detected an unauthorized bio-surge.]
Lin Wei closed his eyes.
Deep within the dark vault of his soul, right beside the spectral iron anchor of his old charcoal-violet blade, a long, thin tube of liquid amber light materialized out of thin air. It was a distilled thread of pure, perfect-grade Foundation Qi extracted directly from his victory over Sect-Master Lu.
The thread dissolved into a thousand glowing purple needles, shooting straight through the dimensional veil and slamming into a cold, stainless-steel pod sitting in a dark, rain-slicked metropolis millions of miles away.
[Real World — World-Line 01: Capital Medical Spire, Sub-Level 4]
The quiet hum of the ICU ward was broken by a sharp, violent BEEP.
A young woman in a grease-stained medical tunic—her sleeves rolled up to reveal crude, hand-soldered cybernetic wrist-jacks—jumped out of her folding chair, nearly spilling her lukewarm synthetic tea onto a bank of black-market bio-monitors.
Her name was Dr. Mei, and for six months, she had been guarding a dead man.
On the titanium gurney before her lay Lin Wei's original human body. He was thin, pale, his chest scarred from the high-voltage arc-flash that corporate enforcers had used to flatline him. His brainwaves had been a flat, dead line on the monitor for 180 days.
"What in the grid..." Mei whispered, her cybernetic eye zooming in on the glowing heart-rate monitor.
The flat green line hadn't just twitched; it had spiked into a terrifying, razor-sharp peak that forced the medical spire's diagnostic AI to let out a sharp, electronic warning chirp.
BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.
[SYSTEM ERROR: Patient 009-Lin displaying biological density exceeding human baseline.]
[Cellular Regeneration Speed: 4,000% above normal.]
[Warning: Foreign energy signature detected in muscle tissue. Density profile: 'Unknown Crystal-Mineral'.]
"He's... his bone marrow is calcifying into stone?" Mei stammered, pulling up the deep-tissue ultrasound scan.
On the screen, Lin Wei's shattered left arm—broken in three places during his 'accident'—was actively fusing back together. But it wasn't healing with normal human bone; the scanner showed a dense, braided lattice of violet slate-crystal creeping along his humerus, locking the joint into place with absolute, military-grade structural density.
Suddenly, the sealed iron doors of the ICU ward let out a loud, pneumatic hiss as two heavily armed corporate enforcers in chrome body-armor stepped into the room, their rifle-mounted laser sights targeting Lin Wei's pod.
"Step away from the pod, Doctor," the lead enforcer commanded, his voice distorted by his helmet's vocoder. "The board of directors signed the execution-and-salvage order ten minutes ago. We are here to harvest the patient's remaining organ tissue to offset his unpaid hospital debt."
Mei backed away slowly, her hand secretly dropping toward an emergency blow-off valve beneath the console. "He's... his heart started beating ten seconds ago. You can't harvest a live patient under Capital Law!"
"His brain is dead, Doctor. A twitching heart is just an involuntary muscle spasm," the enforcer scoffed, raising his heavy plasma cutter to sever the pod's primary coolant line. "Disconnect the fluid tubes. Let's wrap this up."
The enforcer reached out his gloved hand to grab the pod's main release valve.
He never turned it.
CRACK.
Inside the sealed, glass-fronted pod, the supposedly brain-dead body of Lin Wei didn't open its eyes, but his left hand—the real, flesh-and-blood human hand lying in the sterile fluid—suddenly twitched.
The purple Qi-Regulator running inside his transmigration soul in the Iron-Suture Sect generated a tiny, microscopic back-flow of pressure through the link.
A four-inch wave of absolute, violet frost erupted straight through the glass of the ICU pod, instantly freezing the enforcer's plasma cutter solid before shattering the weapon into a thousand useless shards of dead metal.
The room's temperature dropped thirty degrees in half a second.
On the bio-monitor, Lin Wei's neural activity didn't just register; a string of purple Xianxia rune-code scrolled across the corporate software interface at blinding speed, replacing the hospital's billing ledger with a single, dry line of text:
[ACCOUNT STATUS: UNDER AUDIT.]
[Xianxia World — World-Line 2.5: Third Courtyard Crater]
Lin Wei reopened his volcanic left eye in the Heaven-Severing Sect, his bare foot resting lightly on the broken chest-harness of Sect-Master Lu.
"System," Lin Wei thought, his voice carrying that cold, stone-milled rumble across two realities at once. "What is the current recovery percentage of the origin vessel?"
[Origin Pod Integrity: 14% Restored.]
[Physical Threat in Sector 01: Suppressed (1 Unit Neutralized).]
[Notice: To fully wake your original body and tear down the Capital Medical Spire, you must complete the audit of the Western Province Capital Grid.]
Lin Wei turned to Xiao Liu, who was watching him with wide, idolizing eyes.
"Liu," Lin Wei rumbled, picking up his short-handled iron shovel. "Pack the pills. We're going to the Capital, and we're bringing the whole balance sheet with us."