[SOUL INTEGRITY: 0.0000%]
[LOCATION: THE VOID]
[TIME: BEFORE DAWN]
No pain.
Pain needed a body. Ren Wu didn't have one anymore.
He floated in absolute nothing. Not darkness—erasure. Like someone had deleted the concept of existence and left him behind as a glitch in reality's code.
Shit.
The thought came weak, distant, like thinking through thick mud.
Then words burned into his consciousness, each letter searing itself into his soul:
[VESSEL DESTROYED]
[LIFE FORCE: EXTINGUISHED]
[INITIATING REINCARNATION CYCLE]
A blinking cursor appeared in the void, cold and impatient.
> _
*Oh, hell no.*
Something deep inside Ren snarled. Not fear—pure, ancient rage that tasted like iron and burned like acid.
Who the fuck thinks they can recycle me like some common soul?
The anger felt massive. Old. Deeper than oceans. Like it belonged to someone who'd sat on thrones carved from the bones of gods and watched entire civilizations kneel.
Wait.
That wasn't just anger. That was memory.
Flashes hit him like lightning strikes:
Standing over armies of kneeling figures stretching to the horizon.
Seals carved into living flesh, binding bloodlines to his will.
Heaven's bureaucrats prostrating themselves before his throne.
Writing his name into the fundamental laws of reality with his own blood.
The taste of absolute power.
Holy shit. He wasn't some random dead businessman.
He was the Sovereign. The Grand Shaman. The Emperor of Laws. The one who'd made Heaven and Hell rewrite their entire operating systems to accommodate *his* authority.
No wonder they tried to erase him. No wonder they buried him so deep.
[ANOMALY CONFIRMED]
[SOUL MASS EXCEEDS MORTAL PARAMETERS]
[WARNING: REALITY STRAIN DETECTED]
The void started crushing inward like a closing fist. Existence itself was trying to squash him flat, compress him into something manageable.
[ERROR — SOUL TOO HEAVY FOR MORTAL SHELL]
[DISSOLUTION IMMINENT]
[ESTIMATED TIME: 3.7 SECONDS]
Figures. Even dead, I'm too big for this shitty system.
The pressure increased. His consciousness began to fray at the edges.
Then—
Tap.
Wood on wood. From somewhere impossibly far away.
Tap. Tap.
The crushing pressure hesitated, like a predator hearing an unexpected sound.
Cheap incense drifted through nothingness. Rain on tin roofs. Old wood soaked by decades of storms. The smell of home.
[EXTERNAL ANCHOR DETECTED]
[SOURCE: UNKNOWN]
[ANALYZING...]
The void cracked like an eggshell.
Grandma.
She sat on her crooked porch, cane gripped in arthritic hands, staring up at storm clouds that swirled with unnatural colors. Rain soaked through her thin sweater, but she didn't move. Didn't flinch.
She looked exhausted. Bent. Like she'd been holding up a mountain for twenty years and her spine was finally giving out.
But her eyes... her eyes burned with the same authority Ren remembered from his throne room.
"Grandma?"
She didn't turn. "I'm not praying, boy."
Tap. Tap.
"I'm bargaining."
Thunder rolled overhead, but it wasn't natural thunder. It was the sound of cosmic machinery grinding against itself.
"The Sky wants you gone." Her knuckles went white around the cane. "Been holding this door open since the day you were born. Twenty years of my soul bleeding into the void. My bones turning to dust."
She coughed, and Ren saw blood spatter the wooden boards.
"But the door's still open."
She raised the cane with trembling arms.
"Cost me everything. My strength. My years. My chance at peace."
CRACK.
She slammed it down with the force of a falling star.
"So don't you dare waste it. MOVE YOUR ASS!"
White light exploded through the void. Not harsh—warm, heavy, like liquid gold mixed with liquid fire pouring directly into his soul.
[ANCHOR ACCEPTED]
[SOURCE: THE KEEPER]
[SOUL FORCE INTEGRATION: COMPLETE]
[WARNING: FUSION PROCESS UNSTABLE]
SLAM.
Three things crashed together inside him with the force of colliding planets:
The ancient Sovereign soul—two thousand years of absolute authority, divine law, and the memory of making gods kneel.
The modern Ren Wu vessel—eighteen years of human emotion, doubt, mercy, and the ability to feel pain for others.
The Heavenly Law that had always been his—the fundamental code of reality, just filtered through a contemporary brain that needed boxes and menus to understand infinity.
The collision was agony.
Like being torn apart and rebuilt simultaneously. Like having molten metal poured into his veins while lightning rewrote his DNA.
But through the pain, Ren finally understood.
The System wasn't some game interface. It wasn't alien technology. It wasn't external.
It was his power. His authority. His crown.
The Underworld had stolen fragments of his Law and turned them into their bureaucratic operating system. Every menu, every status screen, every notification—it was all pieces of his original sovereignty, digitized and distributed.
He wasn't using the System. He WAS the System.
[ANCESTOR RECOGNIZED]
[SOVEREIGN AUTHORITY RESTORED]
[INTEGRATION: 47.3% AND RISING]
Blue lightning tore through nothingness, and reality screamed.
---
[LOCATION: LAST STOP FACTORY — LOADING BAY]
[TIME: 72 HOURS AFTER DEATH]
Ren's eyes snapped open like gunshots.
GASP.
Air ripped into dead lungs with the sound of tearing silk. His body convulsed violently, back arching off the concrete. Black sludge poured from his mouth and nose, sizzling where it hit the floor—all the mortal weakness and accumulated toxins burning away in the fusion fire.
Frost cracked off his skin in sheets, each piece hitting the ground like breaking glass.
The temperature in the room dropped ten degrees.
"REN!"
Ye Lingshan dropped beside him, her knees hitting concrete hard enough to crack it. She looked destroyed—red, swollen eyes from three days of crying. Matted hair. Armor dulled and scratched from refusing to leave his side.
She actually cared. How... unexpected.
Ren sat up slowly, every joint popping like gunshots. The world opened up around him.
He could see the true nature of things now.
Above Lingshan's head, information cascaded:
[SUBJECT: YE LINGSHAN]
[ROLE: VASSAL — SWORD SAINT BLOODLINE]
[LOYALTY: ABSOLUTE (SOUL-BOUND)]
[STATE: EMOTIONAL WRECK]
Across the room, the Spectral Reactor pulsed with hungry light:
[ARTIFACT: SPECTRAL REACTOR]
[STATUS: STARVING]
[TRIBUTE REQUIRED: 50 SOULS]
[EFFICIENCY: 23% (REQUIRES OPTIMIZATION)]
There it is. My crown, wearing a cheap digital suit.
"You were dead," Lingshan whispered, voice cracking like breaking stone. "Your heart stopped. For three days, Ren. Three fucking days. I checked. I listened. Nothing."
Ren stood smoothly, his movements fluid despite having been a corpse moments before. He brushed frost off his jacket with casual precision. Straightened his tie. Like dying had been nothing more than an inconvenience.
"Miss Ye." His voice came out deeper now, layered with harmonics that made the air itself vibrate. Authority that made her spine straighten involuntarily. "You look terrible."
She stared at him in disbelief. *That's it? That's all he has to say?*
Ren checked his cracked watch. The hands had stopped at 3:33 AM—the exact moment of his death. Now they began moving again, ticking forward with mechanical precision.
"Death is for mortals," he said simply, adjusting his cufflinks.
He walked toward the loading bay doors, each step echoing with newfound weight. The concrete cracked under his feet—not from force, but from the sheer *presence* he now carried.
"I was just remembering who I really am."
The fifty ghosts fused to the reactor turned as one. They didn't howl. They didn't scream.
They knelt.
Foreheads pressed to cold steel, trembling with recognition. They could see what Lingshan couldn't—the invisible crown of absolute sovereignty sitting on his head, wreathed in blue fire.
Ren pushed the massive loading bay doors open with one hand. The metal groaned in protest, but obeyed.
Grey industrial smog rolled in like fog, carrying the scents of desperation and opportunity. Sector 9 sprawled before him—broken factories, desperate souls, corrupt officials, and endless potential.
Perfect.
"Get the car," he said without looking back, his voice carrying the weight of divine decree.
"We have a tower to claim."
His eyes fixed on the distant silhouette of Nether-Core Tower, its neon signs flickering through the smog like a beacon of corporate power.
"Time to remind this sector who really owns the gateway between worlds."
[SOVEREIGN AUTHORITY: ACTIVE]
[FIRST DECREE: SEIZE THE ECONOMIC NERVE CENTER]
[ESTIMATED RESISTANCE: MODERATE]
[PROBABILITY OF SUCCESS: 97.3%]
The wind hit his face, carrying the scent of industrial waste, desperate ambition, and the metallic taste of coming war.
It smelled like incense.
And conquest.
Behind him, Lingshan scrambled to her feet, armor clanking. She didn't understand what had happened. Didn't understand the cosmic significance of his resurrection.
But she could feel the change. The weight. The authority radiating from him like heat from a forge.
The boy who'd died three days ago had been a businessman with mysterious powers.
The man walking toward their car was something else entirely.
Something that made the very air around him kneel.