Shen Lu had always known what kind of story it was.
It was the kind that punished people for being weak, and punished them again for dreaming of being strong. The kind that called cruelty "growth," and called survival "righteousness" as long as the blade belonged to the right person. The kind of cultivation novel that made the heavens feel like a law court and made love feel like a crime.
He'd still read it anyway.
Not because he liked it. He never liked it. There were chapters he had skimmed with clenched teeth, chapters he had closed and reopened three times as if the words might rearrange themselves into something kinder. And there were scenes he could not forget no matter how hard he tried, lodged in his mind like a splinter under a nail.
The scene where the villain-alchemist, Shen Lu, was finally punished.
The scene where Helian Feng, righteous as winter, did not hesitate.
It wasn't even written as tragedy. It was written as satisfaction. The narrative voice had practically smiled as the sword fell.
Shen Lu had stared at the page long after the chapter ended, feeling an anger he couldn't quite place. It wasn't pity for the side character. The original Shen Lu had been openly vicious, an ugly kind of cruel that didn't even bother to hide itself. The book had made sure to show it, repeatedly, as if to prove the death was deserved.
Still.
There was something too neat about it. Too clean. A life reduced to ten chapters and one execution. A person turned into a lesson for the hero, a stepping stone soaked in blood that the story asked the reader to applaud.
He had shut the app with a thumb that trembled slightly, more irritated at himself than at the book. He'd been tired. He'd been stressed. He'd wanted a story to disappear into, and instead he'd found himself thinking about justice and punishment like it mattered.
Like fiction could stain his hands.
The next day, he went to work, and life did what life always did: it swallowed his feelings whole and asked for more.
He worked late at the pharmacy, filling orders under fluorescent light, breathing in the clean, sharp bite of alcohol wipes and powdered herbs. When he finally left, the city was already quiet, the kind of quiet that wasn't peaceful but simply empty.
His phone buzzed on the walk home, a message from a friend who had also read the novel.
Still mad about Shen Lu dying?
Shen Lu stared at the screen longer than he should have. He wasn't the kind of person who argued online about fiction. He didn't write comment essays. He didn't join fandom wars. He wasn't that invested.
But he typed anyway.
It's not the death. It's how easy it was for everyone to enjoy it.
A pause. Another buzz.
Lol it's just a book. Helian Feng is hot though.
Shen Lu huffed a laugh that held no humor, slipped the phone into his pocket, and kept walking. The night air was damp. A thin fog clung to the streetlights like gauze.
Helian Feng. Hot.
He could almost see him in his mind—black robes, cold eyes, a blade that flashed like lightning. Heavenly thunder spiritual root, the book had said, as if the heavens themselves had signed his birth certificate.
The righteous executioner.
Shen Lu didn't hate Helian Feng. The book had made it too clear that Helian Feng had reasons, that he had been wronged, that his hatred was sharpened by grief. The token. The mother. The missing woman whose name was never spoken in the lower cultivation world but whose absence hung around Helian Feng like a second robe.
Shen Lu understood that kind of absence. Even in a modern city, loss could feel like a missing limb.
What he didn't understand was why the story had needed Shen Lu to be a monster to make Helian Feng look righteous.
Why the universe always needed a villain to stay a villain.
He reached his apartment and climbed the stairs, one hand trailing the railing. His legs ached. His eyes burned. He wanted nothing but a shower and a bed and forgetfulness.
On his desk, the paperback version of the novel lay face down, spine cracked from rereading. He had bought it out of irritation, like owning the words would let him control them. The cover art showed Helian Feng in a swirl of lightning and snow, sword drawn, expression cold enough to cut.
Behind him, half in shadow, was another figure—Shen Lu, painted with a cruel smile that made him look like a caricature, a man made to be hated.
Shen Lu stared at the cover until his irritation softened into something tired. He sat, ran a hand through his hair, and flipped the book over.
He didn't know why he opened it again.
He didn't know why, after everything, his thumb traced the page where Shen Lu died.
The words were the same as always. The prose didn't become kinder. The story did not apologize.
Helian Feng's sword was described like a verdict. The blade's light, like heavenly thunder. The villain's body falling, like garbage finally taken out.
Shen Lu's throat tightened.
It's just a book, he told himself, echoing the message he'd received earlier. Just ink and paper and someone else's imagination.
But the page felt warm under his palm.
He paused, brow furrowing. Warm wasn't right. Paper didn't hold heat like that. Not in a room this cool.
He pressed his fingers down, and the warmth rose, spreading through his skin in a way that didn't feel like temperature at all. It felt like… sensation. Like something alive stirring under a sheet of dead words.
His pulse ticked faster.
He should have pulled his hand away. He should have laughed it off as fatigue, an overworked mind making nonsense out of ordinary things.
Instead, he leaned in, eyes narrowing, and read the line again.
The sentence swam.
The characters blurred, ink bleeding into ink until the words became a dark pool. The pool deepened. The page seemed to sink under his palm, not bending like paper but yielding like water.
Shen Lu's breath hitched.
"What the—"
The room shifted.
It wasn't dramatic at first. There was no lightning, no thunder, no cinematic flash. Just a subtle wrongness, like the world had tilted a few degrees and hadn't bothered to tilt back.
The air thickened, heavy with a scent he had no memory for: bitter herbs, incense, old stone warmed by sun. His desk lamp flickered once, twice, the light turning pale and thin.
His fingers sank through the page.
Not tearing. Not breaking. Sinking.
Panic surged through him so fast it bypassed thought. He jerked back, but the page clung to him like suction, like a mouth that had decided it would not let go. His chair scraped the floor as he stumbled, knocking into the desk.
The book didn't fall.
It held fast, open like an invitation.
No, Shen Lu thought wildly. No. That's not possible. This is—
His mouth opened, but no sound came out. His tongue felt numb, as if the air itself had stolen his voice.
The warmth on his palm flared into something sharper, a force that pulled with quiet certainty. Shen Lu braced his feet, grabbed the edge of the desk with his free hand, and tried to wrench himself away.
The desk came with him.
Wood groaned. Something toppled. The world stuttered like a broken video.
Then the pull became absolute.
Shen Lu felt his grip on reality slip like a wet rope. His fingers lost the desk. His chair tipped. His stomach lurched as if he were falling from a great height, except there was no wind, no drop—only the sensation of being swallowed by a page.
Ink rushed up around him, cold and dark. Characters flashed before his eyes, not words anymore but symbols, sharp as blades. He saw glimpses like fragments of dream: a mountain carved with sect halls, a discipline yard smeared with blood, a whip made of mist snapping through air, a sword drenched in lightning.
Helian Feng.
Shen Lu.
Someone screaming.
His own name—written in someone else's hand.
He tried to breathe and tasted smoke.
He tried to blink and saw snow.
He tried to think, and his thoughts scattered like birds startled from a tree.
Then the darkness cracked.
Light poured in, too bright, and the first thing Shen Lu felt was pain.
Not emotional pain. Not the familiar ache of modern exhaustion.
Real pain. A stabbing, sharp pain in his chest, as if someone had punched him hard enough to bruise bone. His throat burned. His head throbbed. His limbs felt heavy and wrong, like they belonged to a body that had been used badly.
He sucked in a breath—and choked.
The air was thick with incense. Bitter, medicinal, cloying in the back of his throat.
He coughed again, and the sound that came out startled him.
It wasn't his voice.
It was lower. Rougher. Hoarse with disuse or injury.
Shen Lu's eyes flew open.
At first he couldn't see properly. His vision swam, blurred around the edges. He was lying on something hard, a wooden bed perhaps, the surface covered with coarse fabric that scraped his skin through thin robes.
Robes.
His heartbeat hammered. Robes weren't right. He didn't wear robes. He wore T-shirts and sweatpants and work uniforms. He didn't sleep on wooden beds. He didn't—
He forced his eyes to focus.
The room around him was dim, lit by the red glow of an oil lamp. The walls were wooden planks, dark with age. A low table sat near the bed with a bowl of water and folded cloth. On the table lay a thin book of its own, bound in rough thread, with characters he could read even before he understood why he could read them.
His stomach dropped.
This wasn't his apartment.
This wasn't his city.
This wasn't his world.
He pushed himself up on shaking arms, and pain bit deeper in his chest. He hissed, hand flying to his sternum. His fingers touched bandages under the robe, the cloth stiff with dried medicine.
Bandages. Wounds.
A memory—no, not his memory—flashed behind his eyes.
A courtyard. A whip snapping. Laughter. Someone kneeling. A boy's face pale with humiliation, eyes burning with hatred so cold it looked like ice.
Shen Lu's breath caught.
He knew that face.
He knew those eyes.
He had read them.
Helian Feng.
The boy from the lower cultivation world, not yet the righteous executioner, but already carved into that shape by violence.
Shen Lu's blood ran cold.
He stared down at his own hands.
They weren't his hands.
His fingers were longer, knuckles slightly scarred, nails trimmed sharply. There were faint stains at the cuticles, the kind that came from grinding herbs and handling toxins.
Alchemy hands.
His hands.
Shen Lu's hands.
The villain's hands.
"No," he whispered, and the voice that came out belonged to someone who had been cruel with it.
His head snapped up. He stumbled off the bed, legs unsteady, and lurched toward the room's only mirror—a polished bronze disk hanging near the door.
He gripped the edge of the wooden table to keep from falling, then leaned in.
The face that stared back at him was pale, sharper than his own, beautiful in a way that looked like it could cut. Dark brows. A mouth that had learned how to sneer. Eyes that were too bright, too calculating, too used to watching others flinch.
Shen Lu.
Not the Shen Lu who had worked at a pharmacy and argued about fiction.
Shen Lu the side character. Shen Lu the bully. Shen Lu the man who died in ten chapters.
His stomach turned as if the ink-dark page had finally reached inside him.
He remembered the exact line.
In the tenth chapter, Shen Lu is executed in the discipline yard. Helian Feng's sword takes his head cleanly. The crowd cheers.
Shen Lu's knees threatened to give out.
He pressed a hand to the mirror, fingers splayed, as if touching the metal could prove it was real. Cold. Solid. Not a dream.
His mind raced, frantic, grabbing at the book's plot like a drowning man grabbing driftwood.
Ten chapters.
Ten.
He forced himself to breathe, shallow and quick. The room smelled of herbs, and the smell triggered another flash: this Shen Lu was an alchemist of the sect. Not just any disciple. Someone with access. Someone with power. Someone who abused that power openly.
Someone everyone wanted punished.
And Helian Feng… Helian Feng was the kind of man who would punish.
Shen Lu looked around wildly, as if the walls might provide an answer. The oil lamp flickered. Outside the window, faint and far, he heard the distant clang of a bell.
A sect bell.
It grounded him in the worst way. This was real enough to have schedules. Real enough to have rules. Real enough to have consequences.
He stumbled back from the mirror and sank onto the edge of the bed.
His chest still hurt. His head still throbbed.
He tried to remember what the prologue of this world should be, but the book hadn't started here. The book had started with Helian Feng suffering. With Shen Lu already cruel. With everything already set in motion.
So where exactly in the timeline was he?
He closed his eyes, trying to calm the storm in his thoughts, and listened.
Footsteps. Not in the room. Outside. Moving past his door, then stopping, then continuing. A murmur of voices, too soft to understand clearly. The sound of someone coughing.
Then, closer—at the door itself—he heard a pause. A sigh.
A voice, faint but unmistakably annoyed, spoke through the wood.
"Senior Brother Shen? Are you awake yet? The hall is waiting."
Senior Brother Shen.
Shen Lu's eyes snapped open.
His throat went dry.
The hall was waiting.
In his mind, the discipline hall flashed like an omen: cold stone, rows of faces, Helian Feng standing at the center like a blade given human form.
Shen Lu swallowed hard, and the movement tugged at his bandages, reminding him that this body had been hurt recently. Hurt by what? By whom? He didn't remember, and that terrified him more than remembering would have.
He forced himself to stand. His legs shook, but they held.
He didn't have time to collapse. He didn't have time to panic. He had ten chapters.
And fate, if it existed here, had already begun counting.
Shen Lu turned toward the door, drew in a careful breath of bitter incense and colder resolve, and spoke with a steadiness he didn't feel.
"I'm awake."
The voice outside paused, then replied, satisfied.
"Then hurry. Elder Liu's patience is short today."
The footsteps moved away.
Shen Lu stood alone in the room, the oil lamp's light trembling on the wooden walls.
He stared at the closed door for a long moment.
Then, very quietly, as if the world could hear him and punish him for daring, he whispered to himself in the only language that mattered now.
Survive.
He reached for the robe hanging beside the bed, fingers tightening around the fabric as if it were a weapon, and stepped toward the life he had once judged from the safety of a page.