The headache started directly behind Li Hao's left eye.
It was a familiar, thumping ache. It was a caffeine withdrawal headache. This was profoundly insulting, considering he was currently occupying the body of a twenty-four-year-old xianxia sect master who presumably had never consumed instant coffee in his life.
He stood in the gloom of the sect's kitchen. The floorboards were sticky. He didn't want to know why they were sticky. He was a software engineer from Chengdu, and his brain was currently refusing to process the cosmic horror of transmigration until he had a hot beverage.
Make tea, the residual muscle memory of the dead Wei Liang whispered, smooth and elegant in his mind. Rinse the leaves with warm water to awaken the spirit. Pour with deliberate intention, honoring the flow of Qi.
"Shut up," Li Hao muttered aloud.
He found a clay jar. He grabbed a handful of withered, brittle leaves, dumped them into a chipped ceramic cup, and poured scalding water directly from a rusted iron kettle straight over the pile. The leaves violently turned the water the color of a bruised plum.
The pressure inside his skull suddenly expanded. It didn't feel like a thought. It felt like a physical weight, ancient and suffocating, pressing against the inside of his temples.
"You," a voice echoed. It carried the tone of an entity that had once moved mountains, and was currently experiencing a profound, cosmic disgust. "You are committing a deliberate atrocity."
Li Hao took a sip of the tea. It tasted exactly like boiling an old shoe.
"You have the inherited memories of a high-tier cultivation sect master," the voice vibrated, peeling at the edges of Li Hao's sanity, "and the manual technique of a feral beast that has never seen a leaf. This is impressive in its specific flavor of incompetence."
Li Hao stared at the sticky floorboards. "Who are you?"
Silence stretched. It was an offended silence.
"I am," the voice boomed, adopting a terrifying, formal cadence, "the Primordial Dao-Emperor of Ten Thousand Bonds. First Creator of the Soul Cultivation Array. Vanquisher of the Seven Celestial Courts. The being whose name alone caused the Heavenly Dao to—"
"I'm going to call you Old Geezer," Li Hao said.
The temperature in the kitchen seemed to drop. The silence that followed was the silence of a deity encountering an audacity it hadn't witnessed in three millennia.
"I," Old Geezer whispered, his voice sharpening into a lethal blade, "will unseal your dantian for exactly long enough for you to die with dignity."
"You won't," Li Hao said. His chest felt tight, but his external voice—Wei Liang's voice—remained an unreadable, aristocratic baritone. "If you could kill me, I wouldn't be standing here drinking garbage water. You need a host. I need to know how this Soul Bond Array works. Skip the titles."
A heavy sigh echoed in his mind. It sounded like tectonic plates grinding.
"The array requires genuine emotional bonds with women," Old Geezer sneered. "You transfer a fragment of their soul's cultivation law to yourself. Five stages of depth. But you cannot fake it. The array detects authenticity. Use someone transactionally, and the Qi backlash will liquefy your organs."
"Fine. I understand the system," Li Hao lied. "But I have Wei Liang's memories. He was at the second stage of Qi Gathering. Why can't I feel anything in the air?"
Old Geezer laughed. It was an ugly, scraping sound.
"You are a cripple, boy. You have zero ambient Qi absorption," the ancient god said, with clinical cruelty. "Your spiritual veins are dead. 'Zero' does not mean hidden potential. It means the ambient Qi of this world passes through you like wind through a rotting skeleton. Without the array, you will die in six months."
Li Hao looked at his hands. Long fingers. Sword calluses. Completely, biologically useless. He couldn't even light a candle with magic if he tried.
Before the sheer terror of this reality could fully land, a sound cracked through the morning air.
BOOM.
It was heavy, resonant, and accompanied by the physical vibration of splintering timber. It came from the outer gate, roughly three hundred yards down the mountain path.
"Five presences," Old Geezer analyzed instantly, his mocking tone vanishing into cold tactical assessment. "One Foundation Establishment Stage. Four Qi Gathering Stage Eights. Hostile intent. They are breaking the outer ward."
Li Hao's brain short-circuited.
He had four thousand spirit stones in debt. The Iron Mountain Finance Pavilion. He was supposed to have an installment ready today.
He walked out of the kitchen and into the courtyard.
Zhou Bao—the round-faced, nineteen-year-old disciple who wept at loud noises—was standing by the moss-choked training posts. The boy was staring at the shattered main gate, his face completely devoid of color. He looked like he was about to vomit.
"S-Sect Master," Zhou Bao squeaked, pointing a trembling finger. "The debt collectors..."
I am a software engineer, Li Hao thought frantically. My only combat experience is an argument over server deployment in 2023. I have no Qi. They can crush concrete.
Li Hao noticed that Zhou Bao's left sandal was untied. It was a stupid, meaningless detail, but Li Hao's panicking brain latched onto it entirely. Tie your shoe, you idiot. You're going to trip when they murder us.
He forced Wei Liang's legendary composure over his features like a physical mask. Cold. Unfathomable. The classic xianxia protagonist routine.
"Pick up your broom, Zhou Bao," Li Hao said. His voice was heavy and terrifyingly calm. "We have guests."
Li Hao turned toward the gate. Five men in heavy martial robes were marching up the stone path, their hands resting on their weapons.
Li Hao didn't have a plan. He just knew that if he stopped walking, he would die.