The Azure Continent stretched vast beneath the heavens, divided by roaring seas and invisible barriers that mortals could never cross. Three regions split the land like wounds carved by the hands of ancient gods—the Northern Frost Wastes where body refiners walked through blizzards without flinching, the Southern Demon Territories where blood-colored mist choked the forests and demonic beasts ruled their own kingdoms, and Central Heaven's Reach where orthodox sects built their power on mountains that pierced the clouds.
The Snow Sect made its home in the eastern reaches of Central Heaven, nestled among the majestic peaks of the Heaven's Reach Mountain Range. Spiritual energy flowed thick here, dense enough that even mortals could sense it pressing against their skin like humidity before a storm. Cultivators of the First Heaven Realm walked the sect grounds as common as grass while labor disciples scrubbed floors and hauled water in the shadows.
In one of those shadows, in a shack that leaned against the outer wall of the labor disciples' quarters, Kevin stood and stared at his new home with mounting disbelief.
"Xiao Feng sure had it rough," he muttered while his eyes swept across the cramped space. "What the hell is this shit?"
The shack barely qualified as shelter. Four walls of rotting wood held up a roof that sagged in the middle, with gaps between the planks letting in slivers of light and wind. The floor was dirt packed down by years of footsteps, and the only furniture was a plank of wood propped up on two stones that served as a bed. A clay pot sat in the corner, cracked down one side. That was it. That was everything Xiao Feng had owned.
Kevin sighed and walked over to the makeshift bed before he sat down cross-legged on the hard wood. He winced as the plank creaked under his weight, and he pulled open his shirt to check the left side of his chest where he'd felt that burning sensation earlier.
Nothing. The skin looked normal, smooth and unmarked, and the burning had faded completely.
He touched the spot anyway while he tried to feel for something, anything that might explain what was happening to him. The voice in the void had said it left him an inheritance, and from those cultivation novels he'd read when he was younger, inheritances were always inside the body, hidden in the dantian or the soul or some other mystical place he couldn't access without looking inward.
Kevin closed his eyes and tried to turn his awareness inside himself, searching for what those old Chinese movies called the "inner eye." He wasn't sure if that was the right term, but it was the closest thing he could come up with, so he focused hard on trying to see inside his own body.
Nothing happened.
He tried harder, straining until sweat beaded on his forehead, but his consciousness refused to turn inward. Frustration bubbled up in his chest, and he opened his eyes with a growl.
From Xiao Feng's memories, he knew why it wasn't working. Only cultivators who reached the First Heaven Realm or higher could look inward with their spiritual sense, and Xiao Feng had never even reached the first layer of Body Tempering. His damaged dantian had seen to that.
"Great," Kevin muttered while depression settled over him like a wet blanket. "Just fucking great. What the hell did that stupid voice give me if I can't even access it?"
He sat in silence for a moment before a thought struck him, and a smile spread across his face. System. That was it. All those transmigration novels had systems, didn't they? Maybe he had one too.
"Hey, system," he said aloud. "Come out."
Nothing.
"System, activate."
Still nothing.
"Open system menu."
Silence.
Kevin tried every phrase he could think of for the next twenty minutes, his voice growing louder and more desperate with each attempt. "Status window. Character sheet. Inventory. Quest log. Shop. Skills. Abilities. Stats. Fucking anything!"
Nothing answered him.
Finally, he gave up and threw himself backward onto the plank, but he misjudged the angle and smacked the back of his head against the hard wood with a solid thunk that made his vision blur.
"Fuck!" Kevin sat up and grabbed the back of his head while he glared at the stupid excuse for a bed. "How the hell is this thing so hard? It's just wood!"
He rubbed his head and sighed while frustration and disappointment warred in his chest. No system. No easy answers. No cheat that would hand him power on a silver platter.
But he couldn't afford to give up. Not now. Not when he'd been given a second chance at life, even if that life came in a broken body in a shitty world.
Kevin forced himself to calm down before he sat cross-legged again and closed his eyes. If he couldn't access the inheritance directly, maybe he could do it indirectly. Xiao Feng's memories included fragments of cultivation knowledge, basic stuff that even labor disciples were taught so they could get stronger enough to work better.
He remembered the process. Sit still. Clear the mind. Feel the spiritual energy in the air. Guide it into the body through the meridians. Let it flow through the channels and settle in the dantian.
Kevin took a deep breath and tried to sense the spiritual energy around him. At first, he felt nothing, but then he noticed it—that thick, stifling pressure he'd felt in the courtyard earlier. It wasn't just air. It was energy, invisible but tangible, pressing against his skin and trying to seep into his body.
He imagined himself absorbing it, pulling it in with each breath, and to his surprise, it worked. The energy flowed into him, warm and electric, and it rushed through his body like water finding cracks in stone. The flow was chaotic at first, bouncing off his damaged meridians and scattering in every direction, but then something changed.
The energy veered sharply to the left and rushed toward his heart.
Kevin felt the burning sensation flare up again on the left side of his chest, hot and intense, and then—
BANG!
The world exploded.
Kevin's eyes snapped open, but he wasn't in the shack anymore. He stood in a different world entirely, a realm of fire and gold where the sky burned red and the ground beneath his feet was cracked and scorched. His heart pounded in his chest, fast and hard, and he felt like he was about to pass out from the sheer pressure of this place.
In front of him stood a pillar.
It was gigantic beyond comprehension, so massive that Kevin's mind couldn't fully grasp its scale. The pillar soared into the clouds and stabbed straight through the heavens themselves, and its base was impaled so deep into the earth that Kevin couldn't see where it ended. It looked both majestic and tyrannical, wreathed in immortal mist while golden light shined from its surface in waves that hurt to look at directly.
Kevin stared at it with his mouth hanging open, and he couldn't form words for a long moment.
On the pillar were several large words carved in script Kevin couldn't read at first, but then the meaning slammed into his mind like a hammer.
"Ruyi Jingu Bang!"
Each word carried weight, crushing and absolute, and Kevin felt his knees buckle under the pressure. The characters pressed down on his head like mountains, and he gasped for air while his vision swam.
On the pillar's surface were different words he could not even read, and staring at them hurt his brain.
It was too much! Too mind-blowing! Too impossible!
"What the hell is this pillar?" Kevin whispered while his heart hammered in his chest. "Just what is it?"
He couldn't tell if this was a vision or reality, and he didn't know if he was standing here physically or if his consciousness had been pulled into some other space entirely.
Before he could do anything, a voice boomed across the burning world, loud enough to shake the ground beneath Kevin's feet.
"HOW DARE YOU!!?"
Kevin felt his consciousness almost disperse under the weight of that voice, and dizziness slammed into him like a fist. His vision blurred, and he thought he was going to die right here in this strange place, but then the voice laughed.
It was a loud, boisterous laugh, full of amusement and satisfaction, and Kevin recognized it immediately. The same voice from the void. The same presence that had given him this inheritance.
Indignation surged through Kevin's chest, hot and fierce, and he yelled at the voice without thinking. "Are you trying to kill me already? I just got here!"
The laughter cut off, and then the voice spoke again, calmer this time but still carrying that crushing weight. "This is merely an imprint left behind, successor. I am not present to witness your success or failure."
Kevin's anger deflated slightly at that. An imprint which basically meant it was a recording. Not the real thing.
The voice continued, and Kevin felt the words burning themselves into his mind with each syllable. "I am the Immortal Realm Great Sage. Accept my legacy and defy the heavens! Destroy all that stands in your way!"
The voice was boundless, tyrannical, and penetrating, and it reverberated through Kevin's skull until he thought his head would split open.
Then—
Pa!
A name surged through Kevin's mind with brutal force, carving itself into his consciousness like a brand.
Primordial Sage Hegemon Body Art.
Purple spiritual energy erupted from the pillar and slammed into Kevin's body with the force of a tidal wave. He gasped as the energy flooded through him, hot and electric, and he felt his body healing. Bones that had been cracked knitted themselves back together. Bruises faded. Cuts sealed. The pain that had plagued him since he'd woken up in this world vanished in an instant.
But that wasn't all.
The purple energy surged toward his dantian, and Kevin felt something inside him shift. His dantian had been cracked, broken beyond repair according to Xiao Feng's memories, but now the cracks were closing. The damage was healing. The purple energy poured into the shattered meridians and sealed them shut, and within moments, the dantian was whole again.
It was like the crack had never existed.
The purple spiritual energy flowed into his dantian from the surrounding world, and Kevin was about to shout in triumph when the energy suddenly changed direction. It flowed outward from his dantian and rushed toward the meridians within his entire body before it seeped into his muscles.
Kevin felt it happen. He felt the energy entering his cells, felt the muscles absorbing it like dry earth absorbing rain, and he could swear he heard the cheers of countless cells inside his body as they drank in the power. The sore and exhausted feeling he'd carried since waking up vanished completely, replaced by abundant energy that made him feel like he could run for miles without stopping.
Then, floating in the air before him, a word peeled off from the pillar and appeared in golden light.
Birth of the Stone Monkey.
Kevin stared at it while the meaning and all it entails settled into his mind, and then the world shattered before he could contemplate it.
Kevin jerked awake and found himself still sitting cross-legged on the plank in his shack. Sweat poured down his face, and his heart pounded in his chest like a war drum, but he was back. He was alive.
He sat there for a moment while he tried to catch his breath, and then he felt something strange. Something wriggling on his body.
Kevin hurriedly pulled off his shirt and looked down at himself, and his eyes went wide.
His skin was falling off.
Not all at once, but in patches, peeling away at a visible speed to reveal new skin beneath. The old skin was gray and cracked, dead tissue that sloughed off like shed snakeskin, and the new skin underneath was smooth and clean.
His skin was being replaced.
Kevin realized what was happening with a jolt of excitement that nearly made him shout out loud. He'd broken through! He'd actually broken through! He'd reached the first stage of the Mortal Realm—Body Tempering Stage!
His heart pounded in his chest while disbelief and exhilaration warred inside him. Just moments ago, he'd been a cripple with a damaged dantian, unable to cultivate even a single strand of spiritual energy. Now he was a real cultivator, and he'd done it in less than an hour since arriving in this world!
And he'd done it just by being in that space for a few moments.
Kevin stood up from the plank with a wide, foolish smirk on his face, and he flexed his hands while he felt the strength surging through his muscles. He felt good. No, better than good. He felt strong, like he could punch through the wall if he wanted to.
He thought back to the words he'd seen in that burning world. Birth of the Stone Monkey. The words had come with something else, but before he could sit down and try to understand it, a shout from outside interrupted his thoughts.
"Trash Feng! Get your ass out here!"