I opened my eyes and the first thing that hit me was the absence of pain. Not the dull ache I had grown so accustomed to that it had become a part of my very identity, not the sharp stabbing sensations that would flare up in my chest and limbs without warning, not the constant, low-level nausea from the lactic acidosis. Just... nothing. A clean, empty, blissful silence where my body's constant screaming had once been.
The second thing that hit me was the smell. Damp earth. Moss. Something mineral and cold. And underneath it all, the faint, musky scent of old stone.
Ethan: Where am I?
My voice echoed slightly in the enclosed space. It sounded different. Younger. Smoother. Not the raspy, worn-out croak of a boy who had spent seventeen years coughing up his own lungs.
This is the afterlife? I used to be a Christian. Or I tried being one. I remember lying in that hospital bed, staring at the ceiling, listening to the beeping of the monitors, and trying to bargain with a God I wasn't even sure existed. I read the Bible, or parts of it. I prayed. I asked for strength. I asked for peace. I asked for a reason. I tried so hard to accept my suffering, to believe that there was some grand, cosmic purpose behind the relentless decay of my body, that if I just held on, if I just believed, someone upstairs would welcome me into his arms when I finally died.
From what? I remember thinking that, even as a kid. From what, exactly, did I need saving? From the disease that was killing me? From the loneliness of a hospital room where my family had become strangers? From the crushing knowledge that I would never get to grow up, fall in love, make mistakes, live a single goddamn day without fear? I had accepted the idea of a savior, and what had it gotten me? A slow, agonizing death in a sterile room while my parents signed papers and my sister laughed at my pain. So no, this didn't feel like any heaven I had ever been promised. And the complete, utter lack of fire and brimstone suggested it wasn't the other place either.
I felt good. As in, really good. My body didn't feel sick. My chest didn't hurt. My muscles weren't trembling with weakness. In fact, they felt... solid. Strong. I thought about getting up, and I actually got up. Without folding over in pain. Without my joints screaming in protest. Without the room spinning around me. I just... stood. My legs held me. My back was straight. I took a deep breath and my lungs filled completely, effortlessly, like they had been waiting their entire lives for this moment.
I looked around, my eyes adjusting to the dim light. It looked like a cave. Rough stone walls, a low ceiling, a narrow opening a few feet away that let in a sliver of pale daylight and the smell of damp vegetation. Okay, I thought, my mind racing to catch up with what my body was telling it. This could be an isekai.
That was the first coherent thought that formed. Because of course it was. I had consumed enough manga, manhwa, and web novels to recognize the tropes. The sudden awakening in an unfamiliar body, the absence of pain, the strange surroundings. It was textbook isekai. I had read dozens of stories that started exactly like this. Some poor bastard dies in the real world and wakes up in a fantasy world with a new body, new powers, and a new chance at life. It was a power fantasy. A wish fulfillment. A genre built on the premise that death was not an ending but a beginning.
I looked down at myself. My vision was incredibly sharp, better than it had ever been, even before the stroke-like episodes had started damaging my optic nerves. I could see individual grains of dirt on the stone floor, the tiny cracks in the cave wall, the way the light played on the moisture near the entrance. I found a small puddle near the opening, fed by a slow drip from the ceiling, and I knelt down to look at my reflection.
The face that stared back at me was... not my own. It was the face of a young man, maybe nineteen or twenty, with sharp, almost aristocratic features. High cheekbones, a strong jawline, and a straight, elegant nose. His skin was pale, not the sickly, papery pallor of Ethan Carter, but a smooth, almost luminous fairness that seemed to catch the light. His hair was a mess, black as ink and tangled, falling into his eyes in wild, unkempt strands. Those eyes... they were a striking, pale blue-gray, framed by long lashes. They looked tired. Not just physically, but spiritually tired, like someone who had seen too much disappointment and had learned to expect nothing else. There was a small scar on his cheekbone, barely visible.
And his clothes... I looked down at what I was wearing. A robe. A thin, worn, dirty blue robe over a white inner garment that was stained with mud and what looked like dried blood. The fabric was rough, patched in places, and frayed at the edges. A simple rope belt was tied around my waist. There was a cloth bag slung over my shoulder, mostly empty, and a small jade token hanging from a cord around my neck.
Holy crap, I thought, looking at the traditional, almost ancient style of the clothing. This looks like what cultivators wear in different sects. I stared at the jade token, inscribed with a crescent moon symbol. Oh no. Oh no no no. I got reincarnated in a cultivator universe. My god. Why? WHY?
I felt a cold, creeping dread settle into my stomach. Of all the fictional worlds to get tossed into, this was one of the worst. I knew this genre. I had read hundreds of these stories. They were power fantasies, sure, but they were also death traps. Especially for someone like me.
I looked at the body I was wearing, this young man with the tired eyes. He didn't look special. He didn't look like a protagonist. And in a cultivation world, anyone who wasn't a protagonist was expendable. The mortality rate was astronomical. You could die from a random beast attack, from a rival sect's aggression, from a pill that went wrong, from a qi deviation, from offending the wrong person who happened to have a powerful master. You could die because you were in the wrong place at the wrong time. You could die because a cultivator in a bad mood decided to test his new technique on the nearest living target.
Being a cultivator was dangerous, but being a random person? A bystander? A nameless disciple? That was a death sentence waiting to happen. You had no plot armor. No system to give you cheats. No ancient master hiding in your ring to pull you out of the fire. You were just a speck of dust in a world of gods and monsters, and the only thing you could expect was to be forgotten, or worse, to be used as a stepping stone for someone else's rise.
I had read stories where entire villages were slaughtered just to give the protagonist a tragic backstory. I had read stories where background characters were killed off-screen, their deaths not even worthy of a full sentence. I had read stories where the weak were literally enslaved, their qi harvested, their bodies used as cauldrons. The strong ruled everything, and the weak had no rights. They had no power. They had no future. They just had suffering and, if they were lucky, a quick end.
I fell to the ground. My head was throbbing, a sharp, splitting pain that had nothing to do with my old illness. Memories were flooding in, a torrent of images, sounds, and emotions that weren't mine. It was like someone had shoved an entire lifetime into my brain and pressed play at maximum speed.
I saw a small village, poor and remote. I saw a young boy, this body, running through muddy streets, laughing with two other children. A girl with black hair and eyes like moonlight, and a boy with a mischievous grin and a sharp, intelligent gaze. I felt their friendship, their promises, their dreams. They were going to join a sect together. They were going to become strong together. They were going to conquer the world together. They were going to be legends.
Then the memories shifted. The Azure Moon Sect. The three of them, standing before the imposing gates, their eyes filled with hope and ambition. I felt the hope, the determination. The belief that they were destined for greatness. And then the despair. The memory of the spirit root testing.
The girl, Ji Yuehan, went first. She placed her hand on the testing stone, and it blazed with a brilliant, silver light. The elders gasped. The Moonveil Celestial Physique. A body born for cultivation. A talent that appeared once in a thousand years. She was immediately taken as a candidate for the next Saintess, the future spiritual leader of the entire sect.
The boy, Pei Zhaoyu, went next. The stone flared with an earthy brown light, mixed with a strange, shimmering quality that made the elders lean forward with interest. Earth-Tier Spirit Root. Space Affinity. Rare. Valuable. Powerful masters fought over the right to take him as a disciple. He was swept away into the inner sect, his future bright and assured.
And then it was Xu Qinghe's turn. He placed his hand on the stone, his heart pounding with hope and fear. The light that emerged was faint, watery, barely visible. Mortal-Tier Spirit Root. Water Affinity. Basic. Common. Worthless. The elders' faces fell. They exchanged glances, their expressions a mixture of pity and dismissal. They told him he could join the outer sect, the lowest rung of the sect's hierarchy, where the untalented and the unwanted were sent to either fade into obscurity or work themselves to death trying to prove their worth.
I felt his shame, his inadequacy. I felt the joy of his friends, Ji Yuehan and Pei Zhaoyu, as they were singled out for greatness. I felt his hope that their friendship would endure, that they would climb the mountain together, even if he had to take a slower path. And then I felt the slow, agonizing erosion of that hope.
The first time they were too busy to spar with him. The first time they forgot his birthday. The first time they looked at him with pity in their eyes, like he was a charity case they had outgrown. The way they slowly, inexorably drifted away, pulled into the orbit of the sect's elite while he was left behind in the dust.
The abandonment was a quiet, creeping poison. It was in the empty seat beside him in the dining hall, in the unanswered messages, in the way they stopped calling him by his name and started referring to him as that outer disciple from their village. It was in the way they would wave at him from across the courtyard, their smiles bright and distant, before turning back to their important friends and their important conversations.
I felt his years of loneliness, of grinding, thankless effort, of watching his childhood friends ascend while he remained stuck at the bottom. I felt his desperation, the thing that had driven him to buy that unstable pill from a shady merchant, the desperate gamble to break through to the next stage, to prove himself, to maybe, just maybe, be worthy of their attention again. I felt the pill's violent rejection, the fire in his meridians, the final, choked gasp as his heart gave out.
And then I felt something else. A deep, profound sadness that wasn't entirely mine. A sense of regret. A longing for the past. A bitterness at the way things had turned out. It was Xu Qinghe's soul, or his residual emotions, imprinted on this body. I was feeling his feelings. His grief, his anger, his jealousy, his loneliness. It was overwhelming. It was intimate in a way that felt like a violation.
I am a monster, I thought, my stomach churning. I am a parasite. I stole someone's body. I stole someone's life. And for what? To be a random, no-name extra in a world that would chew me up and spit me out without a second thought.
So I'm a random. A fodder. A background character. That's... that's bad. In the stories, people like me were the ones who died in the first chapter to establish the stakes. We were the ones who got killed by a random beast, or a rival disciple, or a natural disaster, just to show how dangerous the world was. We were the ones whose deaths were mentioned in passing, if at all. We were the ones who existed to make the protagonist look better, or stronger, or more compassionate.
I thought about Pei Zhaoyu. In this storyline, he was most likely the protagonist. Earth-Tier Spirit Root, rare affinity, handsome, charismatic. He had all the hallmarks. And Ji Yuehan, the beautiful, powerful childhood friend, was the perfect love interest. They would ascend together, overcoming tribulations, saving the world, becoming legendary figures. And I would be a footnote in their story, if that. I would be the friend they left behind, the one who died in obscurity, a sad reminder of the past they had outgrown.
But damn. I couldn't even blame the original Xu Qinghe. I really couldn't. I imagined it. Joining a sect at twelve. Being filled with hope. And then... nothing. Eight years. Eight years of scraping and bowing and working harder than anyone else, and you haven't even advanced a single major realm. You're stuck at Qi Awakening, the very first step, the most basic foundation. You're an adult now, nineteen, and you're still a child in the eyes of the cultivation world. Meanwhile, your childhood friend and the girl you probably loved, the girl you grew up with, is now in Foundation Establishment. Elite tier. She's a candidate for a position that's like third in the entire sect, after the Sect Leader and the Supreme Elder. She's untouchable. And your other friend, the boy you shared secrets with, is almost certainly dating her, or at least incredibly close to her, their destinies intertwined. They're living the dream, the grand adventure, and you're... you're here. In a cave. Having just died from a cheap, defective pill you bought because you were desperate.
I even feel bad about getting isekaid here. I feel like I've kicked a man while he was down and stolen his shoes. His life was already a tragedy, and I just added another layer of violation to it. I'm not the hero of this story. I'm a thief. A grave robber in a world of immortals. I felt a wave of nausea that had nothing to do with my new body. It was guilt, pure and simple. I had taken everything from a boy who had nothing left. What kind of a person does that make me?
Li Wei: Xu Qinghe!
A voice called out, cutting through the spiral of my self-loathing. I froze, my heart lurching in my chest. Someone was here. Someone was looking for me. Someone knew this body's name.
Li Wei: I'm really worried about you, dude! It's been several weeks! Are you alive? If so, say my name!
The voice was young, male, and filled with a genuine, anxious concern that felt foreign and warm. I heard footsteps crunching on the gravel outside the cave, and a shadow fell across the entrance. From Xu Qinghe's memories, the name surfaced immediately. Li Wei. Another outer disciple. Another random. A boy from a family of merchants who had joined the sect a year ago. He was chubby-cheeked, with a perpetually rumpled appearance, eyes that were a bit too trusting, and a heart that was far too kind for a cultivation world. He was assigned to the same peak as Xu Qinghe. The Verdant Peak. The lowest of the sect's peaks, a dumping ground for disciples with poor talent, weak backgrounds, or both. It was where the sect sent the ones it couldn't be bothered to train properly, giving them just enough to survive, or not, without wasting valuable resources.
Ethan: Yo.
I said, the word out of my mouth before I could think. Wait, no, he wouldn't know what that means. I cursed myself internally. Stupid. Stupid. This wasn't my world. I couldn't just be Ethan. I had to be Xu Qinghe.
Li Wei: You're alive?
Li Wei said excitedly, his round face appearing in the cave entrance, his eyes wide with disbelief. He was wearing the same simple, grayish-blue outer disciple robes as me, but on him, they looked almost comical, stretched tight across his belly. He had a friendly, open face, with a smattering of freckles across his nose and a mop of messy brown hair.
Ethan: Why do you sound so surprised?
I asked, trying to keep my voice steady. It was strange, hearing this younger, smoother voice come out of my mouth. It didn't feel like me yet.
Li Wei: Surprised?
Li Wei sputtered, rushing into the cave and dropping to his knees beside me. He grabbed my shoulders, looking me up and down, his gaze frantic.
Li Wei: You don't know the Qi Gathering Pill was clearly unstable! I told you not to buy it! I told you to wait, to save up for a proper one, or to apply for a grant from the sect, even if they would have laughed at us! You took it anyway, and you collapsed right in the middle of the training yard! You were convulsing, spitting up black stuff! We all thought you were going to die! The healers said your meridians were torn up, that your core was shattered! How are you... how are you okay?
That's because he did, I thought, the words a silent confession in my own mind. Or I did. I'm not sure. I didn't say it out loud. I couldn't. Instead, I just looked at Li Wei, at the genuine terror and relief on his face. He had been here, in this world, worrying about Xu Qinghe. He was the kind of friend Xu Qinghe had been longing for, the kind that Ji Yuehan and Pei Zhaoyu had become too important to be. And yet, from the memories, I knew that Xu Qinghe had kept Li Wei at a distance. He was too wrapped up in his own misery, his own obsession with his past, to appreciate the friend who was right in front of him.
Li Wei: You stink.
Li Wei said suddenly, wrinkling his nose.
Li Wei: No offense, but you smell like a dead animal.
He scrambled to his feet, pulling a small bundle from his own shoulder bag. He tossed it at me. It was a spare outer disciple uniform, identical to the one he was wearing. Same with a pill he pressed into my hand. It was a small, brown, unremarkable-looking thing.
Li Wei: Here. It's a basic Qi recovery pill. Nothing special, but it should help stabilize your qi. We're about to miss the morning sermon. Inner Disciple Han Chen is leading it today. He's a stickler for punctuality, and he already hates us outer disciples. Take this and go clean yourself up in the river. Eat this and let's go.
He pointed at the pill.
Li Wei: You can't show up looking like a corpse.
He paused, his eyes scanning my face.
Li Wei: You look... different, Qinghe. I mean, besides the whole almost dying thing. You look... sharper. More alert. Did you... did something happen?
I really looked at him then. Li Wei. The famed best friend. The chubby, kind-hearted sidekick. The trope in cultivation stories that never gets old. The one who is loyal, who supports the protagonist, who is always there with a kind word or a helping hand. And the one who, more often than not, gets killed off to give the protagonist a motivation boost, or gets forgotten on a dusty peak while the protagonist goes off to fight gods. In this story, if Pei Zhaoyu was the protagonist, then Li Wei was... nothing. He was a background character in the background character's life. And yet, here he was, the only person who had come looking for me. The only one who had worried. The only one who had brought me clothes and medicine.
A wave of emotion washed over me, and I realized with a start that it wasn't entirely Xu Qinghe's. It was mine. Mine, Ethan Carter, the boy who had died alone in a hospital bed, surrounded by strangers. This boy, this chubby, unremarkable disciple from a merchant family, had shown me more kindness in five minutes than my own family had in years.
Ethan: Thank you.
I said, and the words felt pathetically inadequate.
Ethan: Thank you so much.
Li Wei stopped and really looked at me, his eyes narrowing slightly. He tilted his head, like a curious puppy.
Li Wei: Hold up.
He said, his voice dropping to a whisper. He took a step closer, peering at my face, at my eyes.
Li Wei: You... you broke through. You really broke through. You're now at Mid Qi Awakening!
Li Wei: You did it! You actually did it! After eight years! The pill worked? It actually worked? I thought it was poison! I thought you were a goner, and you actually advanced!
From the original body's memories, the cultivation system of this universe began to settle into my mind, organizing itself like a textbook I had studied but never truly understood until now. The Tenfold Origin Path. That was the name of the system. It was a path in which practitioners progressively transformed themselves from ordinary mortals into beings capable of commanding natural laws, creating worlds, transcending heavenly order, and eventually establishing their own principles of existence. It was built around a fundamental principle. True cultivation was not merely accumulating energy. It was the progressive refinement of the cultivator's body, spiritual energy, soul, understanding of the Dao, and authority over reality.
The stages were milestones on this journey. First, Qi Awakening, where one learned to sense and absorb the ambient spiritual energy of the world, awakening the dormant power within. Then, Foundation Establishment, where that energy was condensed and solidified, forming a stable foundation for the cultivator's future path. Then came Golden Core, Spirit Transformation, Nascent Soul, Void Shattering, Dao Transformation, Dao Sovereign, and Heavenly Venerate. And there were surely more. There always were, in these stories. It went on and on, an endless ladder to climb, each rung more difficult and more dangerous than the last.
And within each stage, there were sub-realms. Low tier, Mid tier, Elite tier, Advanced tier, Peak. And in rare, exceptional cases, Perfection. Xu Qinghe had been at Low Qi Awakening for eight years. He had been stuck at the very bottom, unable to even sense the qi properly, let alone absorb it. He was a failure by the sect's standards. A waste of resources. And now, according to Li Wei, he was at Mid Qi Awakening. He had advanced. A minor breakthrough, barely a blip on the radar of a real cultivator, but for him, it was everything. It was a miracle.
I smiled, a small, tired smile.
Ethan: It isn't impressive. I've been stuck in the basic realm for about eight years. But thank you.
Li Wei's smile faltered for a second, replaced by a look of earnest, almost fierce disagreement.
Li Wei: Not impressive? Are you kidding me, Qinghe? Eight years! You've been grinding away for eight years! Everyone else gave up on you! The elders, the other disciples, even your...
He trailed off, his face flushing with embarrassment.
Li Wei: Even your old friends. But you didn't give up. You kept going. You kept trying. And now you've broken through. This is huge! This is the beginning! You're not a failure anymore. You're a cultivator who is finally moving forward.
He clapped me on the shoulder, his grip surprisingly strong.
Li Wei: Don't you dare sell yourself short. This is a good day. This is a day to celebrate.
His voice was so full of conviction, so full of genuine happiness for me, that for a moment, I almost believed him. I almost believed that this was a good thing, that I had accomplished something. But then the weight of reality settled back in. I was in a cultivation world, in a body that was considered trash, with a target on my back because of my association with two rising stars who had abandoned me. And I was an imposter, a soul from another world, just trying to survive.
Li Wei's expression shifted again, his initial excitement giving way to a more thoughtful look.
Li Wei: You know, I was really worried about you. Not just because of the pill. I mean, you've been in a bad place for a long time, Qinghe. Ever since...
He paused, searching for the right words.
Li Wei: Ever since things changed with Ji Yuehan and Pei Zhaoyu. You shut everyone out. You stopped coming to the practice sessions. You stopped eating with the rest of us. You just... disappeared. I thought maybe you were going to do something stupid.
His eyes were filled with a genuine, deep-seated fear that made my chest ache.
Li Wei: I didn't want to lose my only friend here.
Only friend. Li Wei saw Xu Qinghe as his only friend. And Xu Qinghe, in his obsession with his lost past, had barely even noticed. I felt a fresh wave of guilt, a sharp pang of shame. The original Xu Qinghe had been so consumed by his own misery that he had missed the person right next to him, the one who was actually there, the one who cared. It was a tragedy. A stupid, senseless tragedy. And I was now the one who had to live with the consequences.
Ethan: You didn't lose me. I'm here. I'm not going anywhere. I owe you one, Li Wei. I owe you more than one.
Li Wei's face broke into a wide, relieved grin.
Li Wei: You don't owe me anything, you idiot. Just don't scare me like that again.
He stood up and offered me his hand.
Li Wei: Now come on. We really need to go. Han Chen will skin us alive if we're late. And I am not missing breakfast. I heard they're serving congee with pork today, and I haven't had pork in a month.
I took his hand, and he pulled me to my feet. My new body felt light, strong, responsive. I looked down at my hands, at the long, pale fingers that were now mine. I felt the qi flowing through my meridians, a faint, gentle current where before there had been only a shattered, blocked mess. It was a strange sensation. It wasn't a superpower. It wasn't a sudden, overwhelming surge of strength. It was more like the feeling of a limb that had been asleep finally waking up, a tingling, pins-and-needles warmth that spread through my entire body.
I was at Mid Qi Awakening. A minor achievement. A single step on a very, very long path. But it was a step I had taken. Not Xu Qinghe, not Pei Zhaoyu, not anyone else. Me. Ethan. The boy who had never been able to walk without pain. The boy who had never been able to run. The boy who had spent his entire life in a hospital bed, dreaming of adventure. And now, here I was. In the middle of a goddamn cultivation novel. With a chubby merchant friend and a trunk full of borrowed memories. It was terrifying. It was absurd. And, for the first time in a long time, it felt like a chance. A messy, dangerous, completely unpredictable chance.
I looked at Li Wei, at his kind, anxious face, and I made a decision. I wasn't going to be fodder. I wasn't going to be a footnote. I wasn't going to let this life, this second chance, be a repeat of the first one. I had no protagonist halo. I had no system. I had no special talent. I had a Mortal-Tier Spirit Root and a body that had just barely clawed its way to the bottom rung of the ladder. But I also had something else. I had knowledge. I had read thousands of these stories. I knew the tropes. I knew the patterns. I knew the mistakes that side characters made. I knew the traps. I knew the shortcuts. And I had a mind that had devoured medical textbooks for fun. I might be weak, but I wasn't stupid. I might be a random, but I was a random who knew the script. It was a small advantage. A negligible advantage. But it was something. And in a world where the difference between life and death could be a single, well-timed decision, something was better than nothing.
Ethan: Alright. Let's go.
I said, taking a deep breath. And with that, I followed Li Wei out of the cave, leaving the dark, musty hideout behind. The world outside was a shock to the senses. The Verdant Peak, despite being the lowest and least prestigious, was still a place of stunning natural beauty. A sea of green mountains stretched into the distance, their peaks shrouded in mist. The air was clean and crisp, filled with the scent of pine and damp earth. Birds sang in the trees, their melodies sweet and unfamiliar. The sun was just beginning to rise, casting a soft, golden light over the world. It was a far cry from the sterile white walls of my hospital room. It was vibrant, alive, overwhelming.
I had to clean myself up. I had to wash away the grime of the cave, the blood from the pill's aftermath, the lingering remnants of Xu Qinghe's death. I had to eat the recovery pill Li Wei had given me, to stabilize the precarious new balance of my qi. And I had to go to the morning sermon. I had to blend in. I had to be Xu Qinghe. The thought was daunting. The task was monumental. But as I walked beside Li Wei, listening to him chatter about the upcoming sermon and the promise of pork congee, I felt a strange, unfamiliar sensation stirring in my chest. It wasn't hope. It was something harder, something fiercer. It was a raw, desperate, almost angry determination. I had died once, alone and forgotten, a victim of a body that had betrayed me from birth. I was not going to die again. Not like that. Not in a cave, not in a ditch, not as a footnote in someone else's epic. I would survive this world. I would carve out a place for myself, no matter how small. I would live.
I looked down at the jade token on my chest, at the crescent moon symbol of the Azure Moon Sect. I had been given a second chance. A terrible, terrifying, impossible second chance. I wasn't going to waste it. I clenched my fist around the token and followed Li Wei toward the river, leaving the cave and the remnants of my old life behind.