The rain in Neo-Jiangnan didn't wash things clean. It just made the grime slicker.
Su Yuan stared at the ceiling. A water stain, shaped vaguely like a tumor, was spreading across the plaster. *Drip. Drip. Drip.* It landed in a plastic bucket near the foot of the bed with the rhythm of a slow, leaking faucet in a morgue.
He counted the drops. One hundred and forty-two since he woke up.
His head felt like a hollowed-out gourd filled with broken glass. The "reboot" from yesterday hadn't fixed him; it had just rebooted the pain receptors. He sat up, the springs of the mattress screaming in protest. The movement sent a wave of nausea rolling through his gut, tasting of copper and bile.
A holographic prompt flickered in his peripheral vision, unbidden. It wasn't the ghostly grey of the SoulNet. It was the garish, aggressive red of the landlord's automated debt collector.
**[ NOTICE OF EVICTION: PRE-WARNING ]**
**[ Tenant: Su Yuan (ID: 994-22-L) ]**
**[ Outstanding Balance: 4,200 Credits. ]**
**[ Interest Accrued: 12% daily. ]**
**[ Payment Deadline: 48 Hours. ]**
**[ Failure to comply will result in asset seizure and remand to Sector 9 Labor Camps. ]**
Sector 9. The rumors said people went into Sector 9 and came out as protein bars.
Su Yuan swiped the notification away. It dissolved into pixel dust, but the threat remained, heavy in the room. He checked his own account balance on the cracked wrist-comp strapped to his arm.
*12 Credits.*
Enough for three packets of nutrient sludge or one minute of clean oxygen at a breathless bar.
He stood up, swaying. The concrete floor was cold enough to numb his toes. He walked to the tiny kitchenette—a generous term for a hotplate and a sink that smelled of sulfur. He splashed water on his face. The reflection in the mirror was still a stranger's. Young, sharp-jawed, with eyes that looked too old for the face.
The previous Su Yuan had been a gambler. Not with cards or dice, but with his own life. He'd borrowed heavily to buy overclocking chips, hoping to ace the entrance exams for the corporate academies. He bet on his brain and lost.
Now, the debt was Su Yuan's inheritance.
*Hunger.*
It wasn't just his stomach. It was a gnawing, vacuous sensation at the base of his skull, right where the interface port met the brain stem. The SoulNet. It was idling, a V12 engine sitting in a go-kart, vibrating with potential energy that had nowhere to go.
**[ Energy Reserves: Critical. ]**
**[ Suggestion: Connect Nodes to mitigate consumption. ]**
The grey text floated over the sink, ignoring the laws of physics.
"Shut up," Su Yuan rasped. His voice sounded like gravel grinding together.
He needed money. Fast. In this city, there were two ways to get rich: kill someone richer than you, or know something they didn't. He couldn't fight—this body had the muscle mass of a starved bird—so he had to rely on the latter.
He sat down at the desk. The computer terminal was a relic, a bulky plastic casing yellowed by nicotine smoke and time. He hit the power stud. The fans whirred, sounding like a dying aircraft engine.
He accessed the public network. The *Heavenly Grid*.
The screen flooded with pop-ups. Pornography, weapon sales, organ harvesting services, and advertisements for the latest cultivation pills from the Azure Dragon Corporation.
*Consume. Upgrade. Ascend.* The mantra of the city.
Su Yuan ignored the noise. He navigated to the public archives. He needed to understand the baseline. If he was going to engineer a solution, he needed to know the variables.
He pulled up the standard-issue cultivation manual: *The Federation Basic Breathing Technique (Revision 14).*
It was free. It was mandatory in public schools. Every citizen in the slums knew it. It was supposed to help circulate *Qi*—the bio-energy that powered the implants and strengthened the body.
Su Yuan read the code.
To anyone else, it was a series of diagrams showing lung expansion and meridian points. To Su Yuan, looking through the filter of the SoulNet, it was a schematic. And it was a disaster.
The energy flow was inefficient. It routed power through the secondary meridians, bypassing the core entirely. It wasted 60% of the energy as heat. It was designed to keep people mediocre. It was a throttle, not an engine.
"Planned obsolescence," Su Yuan muttered. "Even in breathing."
He closed his eyes. The hunger in the back of his head spiked, sharp and demanding.
*I can fix this.*
The thought wasn't arrogance. It was the cold logic of an engineer looking at a bridge built with balsa wood.
"System," he whispered.
The room darkened. The grey fog bled into his vision, swallowing the yellowed plastic of the computer, the water stain on the ceiling, the eviction notice.
**[ SoulNet Online. ]**
**[ Administrator Recognized. ]**
"Input data," Su Yuan said, his mind projecting the diagrams of the Federation Basic Breathing Technique into the void. "Target: Optimization. Goal: Remove redundancies. Increase efficiency."
The fog swirled around the mental image of the technique.
**[ Analysis: Federation Basic Breathing Technique. ]**
**[ Grade: G (Garbage). ]**
**[ Flaws Detected: 47 major, 112 minor. ]**
**[ Deduction Potential: High. ]**
**[ Cost to Deduce: 15 Soul-Cycles. ]**
Su Yuan paused. *15 Cycles.*
His current reserve was his own soul. He didn't have a gauge, no hit-points bar. Just a feeling of fragility, like spun glass.
"Consequences?" he asked.
**[ Warning: User soul integrity is unstable. Deduction will require massive metabolic and spiritual burn. ]**
**[ Estimated physical trauma: Moderate to Severe. ]**
**[ Estimated lifespan reduction: 14 days. ]**
**[ Risk of coma: 18%. ]**
Two weeks of life. An 18% chance of not waking up.
He looked at the eviction notice still burning in his mind. If he didn't pay, he went to Sector 9. That was a 100% death rate, just slower.
"Do it," Su Yuan said.
The System didn't ask for confirmation. It simply engaged.
It didn't feel like thinking. It felt like excavation.
Invisible hooks sank into the meat of his brain. Su Yuan gasped, his back arching off the chair. The pain was white, blinding, and absolute. It wasn't a headache; it was the sensation of his neurons being stripped of their insulation.
He saw the breathing technique not as pictures, but as a three-dimensional structure of flowing light. The SoulNet grabbed the structure and began to twist it.
*Snap.*
He felt a meridian line in the simulation break and re-knit. His own body mimicked the trauma. A vessel in his nose burst, hot blood dripping onto his upper lip.
*Faster.*
The System was ruthless. It tore out the inefficient loops. It bypassed the throttling mechanisms the Federation had installed. It streamlined the flow.
Su Yuan slammed his fists onto the desk, his knuckles cracking. He couldn't breathe. The air in the room felt too thick, like syrup. His heart hammered against his ribs—*thump-thump-thump*—a frantic bird trying to escape a cage.
Data streamed through his mind at a velocity that scorched his synapses.
*Inhale on the count of four. Hold for two. Compress the diaphragm. visualize the energy not as a stream, but as a pulse. A shockwave.*
The logic was beautiful. It was sharp. It was violent.
It was tearing him apart.
He fell out of the chair, hitting the concrete hard. He curled into a ball, clutching his head. The grey fog was turning red. The hunger of the SoulNet was a vacuum, sucking the vitality right out of his marrow to fuel the calculation.
*Not enough power,* he realized with a jolt of terror. *It's eating me.*
He grit his teeth, grinding them until his jaw ached. "Finish it!" he screamed, the sound tearing at his throat.
The void expanded. The cold was absolute. He felt the edges of his consciousness fraying, dissolving into the static.
Then, silence.
The pressure vanished.
Su Yuan lay on the floor, panting. His shirt was soaked through with sweat. A pool of blood from his nose was expanding near his cheek. He stared at a cockroach scuttling across the floorboards. It looked high-definition, every leg movement crisp and sharp.
**[ Deduction Complete. ]**
The notification chimed, a bell sounding from the bottom of a deep well.
**[ New Technique Created. ]**
**[ Name: Primary Shockwave Fighting Technique. ]**
**[ Grade: F (Common - Optimized). ]**
**[ Efficiency Increase: 350% over baseline. ]**
**[ Attribute: Kinetic buildup. Each breath stores micro-charges in the muscle fibers. Release creates a concussive impact. ]**
Su Yuan rolled onto his back. He laughed. It was a wheezing, broken sound.
350%. He had turned a rusted bicycle into a motorcycle.
But the text wasn't finished.
**[ Hidden Protocol Imbedded. ]**
**[ The technique acts as a sub-routine for the SoulNet. ]**
**[ Every practitioner will act as a passive Node. ]**
**[ 10% of generated Soul Force during practice will be tithed to the Administrator. ]**
Su Yuan stared at the words. A tithe.
He wasn't just giving them a better way to fight. He was turning them into batteries. He was building a crypto-mining rig, but instead of graphics cards, he was using human souls. And the currency was power.
He dragged himself back into the chair. His hands shook so badly he had to clasp them together to stop the tremors. He wiped the blood from his nose with his sleeve.
He looked at the technique. It was perfect. Simple enough for an idiot to learn, effective enough to be addictive.
In the slums, power was the only drug that mattered. If he gave them this, they wouldn't just use it. They would worship it.
He opened a text editor on the terminal. He needed to package this.
*Title:* **[GUIDE] Break Your Limits. The "Shockwave" Protocol. No pills. No implants. Just breath.**
He began to type. He stripped away the mystical nonsense usually found in cultivation manuals. He wrote like an engineer. *Step 1. Step 2. Expected Output.*
He didn't mention the tithe. He didn't mention the SoulNet.
He hesitated at the "Author" field.
He couldn't use his real name. The Clans would skin him alive if they knew a slum-rat had cracked their code. He needed a handle. Something that sounded like it belonged in the dark, something that suggested a beginning.
*Zero.*
No. Too cliché.
He typed: **Genesis.**
He looked at the "Upload" button. The mouse cursor hovered over it.
Once he pressed this, there was no going back. He was introducing a virus into the ecosystem. A beneficial virus, perhaps, but one that fed on its hosts.
Was it wrong?
He looked around the apartment. The water stain. The peeling paint. The eviction notice that was one day closer to killing him.
Morality was a luxury for people with positive bank balances.
He clicked.
**[ Uploading to: The Gutter Forums / Sector 74 / Martial Arts General... ]**
**[ Upload Complete. ]**
Su Yuan leaned back, the exhaustion finally crashing over him like a tidal wave. He closed his eyes.
Deep within the interface, buried under layers of code and soul-stuff, something stirred.
**[ Genesis Protocol: Observation Mode Active. ]**
**[ Seed planted. ]**
**[ Awaiting germination. ]**
The voice was different this time. It wasn't the mechanical drone of the system. It sounded... interested.
Su Yuan forced his eyes open. The room was empty. Just the rain against the window. *Thud-hiss. Thud-hiss.*
He grabbed a packet of nutrient paste from the desk—his last one—and tore it open with his teeth. It tasted like chalk and old grease. He swallowed it down, feeling the sludge hit his stomach.
He watched the view count on the post.
*0 views.*
*1 view.*
*5 views.*
A comment appeared.
*User: RatKing77: "Fake trash. Probably malware. Don't download."*
Su Yuan smirked. "Just try it, RatKing," he whispered. "Just take one breath."
*User: IronOx: "Holy sh*t. I just tried the first cycle. My chest feels like it's on fire. But... my punch dented the wall. Is this real?"*
*User: AlleyCat: "Downloaded. This is different. The flow is weird."*
**[ Node Connected: IronOx. ]**
**[ Soul Force Input: +0.001. ]**
A tiny, microscopic trickle of warmth flowed into the back of Su Yuan's head. It was nothing. A drop of water in a desert. But it was *external*. It wasn't his.
The pain in his skull receded by a fraction of a percent.
**[ Node Connected: AlleyCat. ]**
**[ Soul Force Input: +0.001. ]**
The numbers began to tick up. Slowly. Then faster.
Su Yuan watched the screen, the blue light reflecting in his dark eyes. He wasn't just a debtor anymore. He wasn't just a victim of Sector 74.
He was the Server.
And the network was coming online.