The acrid smell of burnt ozone and vaporized flesh was the last sensation Lâm Minh registered before oblivion claimed him.
His 50-year-old body, scarred and weary from decades of relentless warfare, finally gave out.
A Madakaros warrior, its chitinous armor gleaming under the blood-red sky of what was once Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, had impaled him with an energy lance.
The pain was a distant memory even as his vision tunneled.
His last thought, a bitter curse: If only… if only we'd known sooner. If only I could do it all again.
Then, nothing. A void. Cold, empty, infinite.
He expected judgment, or perhaps the endless peace of non-existence.
He did not expect the sharp, piercing ring of an old-fashioned alarm clock.
Lâm Minh's eyes snapped open.
Confusion warred with a primal instinct to fight.
He flailed, expecting the weight of his combat gear, the cold steel of his rifle.
Instead, his hands met soft, worn cotton sheets.
The air didn't smell of death and desperation.
It smelled… of dust, cheap instant noodles, and the faint, cloying sweetness of jasmine from a neighbor's struggling window box.
He sat bolt upright, his heart hammering a frantic rhythm against ribs that felt strangely… pliable.
He looked down at his hands.
Slender, uncalloused, the skin smooth and pale.
These weren't the gnarled, battle-worn hands of a fifty-year-old veteran.
These were the hands of a boy.
Panic, cold and sharp, lanced through him.
He scrambled out of the narrow bed, his legs tangled in the thin blanket.
His bare feet hit a cool, cracked linoleum floor.
The room was tiny, barely large enough for the single bed, a rickety wooden desk piled high with textbooks, and a small, grimy window that looked out onto a narrow alleyway crammed with overflowing bins.
Clothes were strewn over a solitary chair.
His reflection stared back at him from a cheap, cracked mirror hanging precariously on the wall.
A boy.
No older than sixteen.
Dark, unruly hair falling into wide, terrified eyes. A thin, almost gaunt face, but with the underlying structure that would one day become familiar to him.
His face.
But decades younger.
"What… what in the seventh hell?" he whispered, his voice higher, unbroken.
He stumbled towards the desk.
A calendar, a promotional freebie from some local noodle shop, was tacked above it.
The garish illustration depicted smiling children sharing a bowl of steaming pho.
The date, circled in red ink, read: June 14th, 2025.
2025.
Lâm Minh sank onto the edge of the bed, his mind reeling. He had died in 2059.
Thirty-four years.
He was back thirty-four years in the past.
But… this wasn't the past he remembered from his original first life.
In his original timeline, 2025 was a year of burgeoning technological advancement, global interconnectedness, and relative peace, albeit with the usual undercurrents of political tension.
The Madakaros invasion hadn't happened until… no, that was wrong.
This timeline was different from the start.
The Madakaros.
The alien bastards.
They had arrived in 1998.
He remembered the history lessons, the ones taught in hushed, fearful tones in the fortified bunkers of ASEAN.
They came for the Earth's petroleum, not as a fuel source as humanity understood it, but as Linh Nguyên – Spirit Essence.
A substance they could absorb to fuel their bizarre cultivation, to climb the ranks of their martial power.
Qi Refining: Drawing the combusted essence of petroleum into their bodies, refining it in their Dantian. Even the weakest could overpower a lion.
Foundation Establishment: Circulating that refined Qi to temper their bodies, making them resilient enough to take down a grizzly bear with ease.
Golden Core: Condensing all bodily essence back into the Dantian to form a Golden Core. A punch from a Golden Core master could level a city block.
Nascent Soul: The Golden Core shatters to form a miniature spiritual self, a Nascent Soul. The destructive power of an exploding Nascent Soul was comparable to a tactical nuclear weapon.
Void Shattering: The Nascent Soul evolves into a bottomless void, capable of absorbing any natural element for cultivation – a feat impossible for lower realms. At this stage, they typically left Earth, deemed too resource-poor for their advanced needs, to join the "Maka Legion" in their cosmic conquests.
Primordial Chaos Realm: The internal void, saturated with absorbed elements, explodes to create a miniature, chaotic universe within their Dantian, brimming with raw cosmic energy.
God Realm: The cultivator organizes the chaos within, forming nascent, energy-rich planetoids in their Dantian, achieving a god-like state.
The Madakaros had systematically purged continents, their advanced cultivation rendering humanity's conventional and nuclear weapons largely ineffective in the long run.
Only Southeast Asia, the ASEAN bloc, had managed to form a desperate, united front, erecting massive defensive perimeters, a final bastion for the dwindling human race.
From eight billion, humanity had been culled to a mere 500 million souls by 2025, clinging to survival in this heavily fortified corner of the world.
The war was a daily, grinding reality.
And he, Lâm Minh, had been reborn into this.
At sixteen.
In Vietnam, within the ASEAN safe zone.
But this time, he wasn't just a scared teenager.
He was a 50-year-old veteran, a man who had fought, killed, and died in this very war, albeit in a future that might now never come to pass.
He carried the scars of that future in his soul, the knowledge of tactics, of Madakaros weaknesses, of mistakes humanity had made.
A sudden, sharp pain shot through his temples, like a thousand needles pricking his brain.
He gasped, clutching his head.
A cold, mechanical voice, devoid of any emotion, echoed directly in his mind.
[System Initializing… 10%… 30%… 70%… 100%]
[Sentient Anomaly Detected: Temporal Displacement Confirmed.]
[Recalibrating… Soul-Host Compatibility: 99.8%.]
[Divine Retrograde System Activated!]
[Welcome, Host Lâm Minh.]
Lâm Minh's eyes widened, not in fear this time, but in stunned, almost manic disbelief.
A System?
Like in the fantastical, pre-invasion webnovels he'd devoured in his youth?
Was this the source of his rebirth?
[Host Profile:]
[Name: Lâm Minh]
[Age: 16 (Mental Age: 50)]
[Physiological State: Malnourished, Untrained]
[Spiritual Potential: Locked]
[System Mandate: Survive. Evolve. Reclaim. Prevail.]
[Novice Gift Package available. Open? Y/N]
He was still reeling, but the analytical, pragmatic part of his mind, honed by decades of brutal warfare, took over. "Yes," he subvocalized, his thoughts racing.
[Novice Gift Package Opened!]
[Received: Potential Unlocking Elixir x1]
[Received: Basic Madakaros Cultivation Manual (Qi Refining Stage – Human Adapted) x1]
[Received: 10 Low-Grade Spirit Stones (Petroleum Condensate)]
His breath hitched.
Human Adapted?
The Madakaros guarded their cultivation techniques jealously.
Humans had tried for decades to replicate them, with minimal, often fatal, success.
Their physiology was different.
But if this System could provide an adapted version…
This changed everything.
In his previous life, he was just a soldier.
A good one, a ruthless one when necessary, but still reliant on guns, explosives, and the desperate courage of his comrades.
He'd risen through the ranks through sheer grit and a grim talent for survival, but he'd always been fundamentally outmatched by the cultivating aliens.
Now? Now he had a chance to fight them on their own terms.
To cultivate.
The pain in his head subsided, leaving a strange clarity.
The memories of his past life were vivid, sharp, a brutal library of experience.
He remembered the faces of fallen friends, the strategic blunders, the moments of despair, and the fleeting, precious moments of hope.
He remembered Tố Quyên…
A pang of raw grief, so intense it almost buckled his young knees, shot through him.
Tố Quyên, his love, his anchor in a world gone mad.
Lost.
Killed during the disastrous counter-offensive of 2047.
He'd held her broken body…
He clenched his fists, the boyish knuckles turning white.
No. Not this time.
This time, Tố Quyên would live.
His friends, his comrades, his people… he would not let them fall.
He was Lâm Minh.
Born at the bottom rung of society in this new, brutal 2025.
His parents, he vaguely recalled from this body's faint memories, were low-wage laborers in one of the vast, subterranean hydroponic farms that fed the ASEAN bloc.
They worked grueling shifts just to keep their tiny apartment and put meager food on the table.
He was just a student at a third-rate public combat school, destined for the front lines as cannon fodder.
But he was also Lâm Minh, the fifty-year-old battle-scarred commander, cunning and ruthless, yet fiercely protective of his own.
He knew the enemy.
He knew their tactics, their arrogance, their internal divisions.
And now, he had a System.
A grim smile touched his lips.
It looked utterly out of place on the young, innocent face in the mirror.
"Madakaros," he whispered, his voice a low growl that sounded far too old for his apparent age.
"You wanted our oil. You wanted to turn our home into your fucking cultivation farm. You took everything from us."
He looked at the items displayed in his mind by the System: the shimmering elixir, the mental scroll of the cultivation manual, the dull, oily sheen of the spirit stones.
"This time," he vowed, "this time, we fight back with your own fire. And I will burn your entire civilization to the ground for what you did to Earth. For what you did to my people."
The shrill whistle of the morning factory siren cut through the air, a signal for the city to awaken, for another day of struggle and war to begin.
For Lâm Minh, it was the clarion call of a new beginning, a second chance forged in the ashes of a future he would not allow to repeat itself.
His immediate priority was to understand the System fully, consume the elixir, and begin cultivating.
He needed strength.
Desperately.
The world outside his tiny room was a slaughterhouse, and sixteen-year-old boys without power were just lambs for the Madakaros.
He focused on the [Potential Unlocking Elixir].
[Potential Unlocking Elixir: Consumable. Unlocks latent spiritual pathways and enhances affinity for Spirit Essence absorption. Recommended for immediate consumption.]
"No time like the present," he muttered.
He willed its consumption.
A phantom vial appeared in his mental space, uncorked itself, and poured a stream of cool, invigorating energy directly into his spiritual perception.
It flowed through his nascent, sixteen-year-old body, a tingling wave that simultaneously soothed and energized.
He felt… lighter.
More aware.
The dusty air in the room seemed to pulse with faint motes of energy he hadn't perceived before.
[Host potential unlocked. Spiritual Root Grade: Heaven Tier (Sealed – Stage 1/9 Unsealed).]
[Due to Temporal Displacement and Soul Resonance, Host has awakened unique talent: Power Conferral (Latent – Requires further development and specific conditions to activate).]
Lâm Minh's eyes widened further.
Heaven Tier?
Power Conferral?
He didn't fully understand the implications of a "sealed" Heaven Tier root, but the name itself sounded impressive.
And Power Conferral… the ability to grant cultivation potential to others?
That was a game-changer of unimaginable proportions.
If he could empower others, truly empower them…
A knock on the door, sharp and impatient. "Minh! Get up, lazybones! You'll be late for school again! Do you want another demerit? Auntie Lien from next door said the sirens for Sector Gamma went off an hour ago. Another skirmish near the Wall."
His mother's voice.
Younger, less strained than he remembered her in his original youth before the full brunt of the later-stage war had crushed her spirit.
He took a deep breath.
School.
Right.
A place teeming with young, unsuspecting souls, potential allies, potential liabilities.
A place where he could observe, learn about this specific timeline's nuances, and perhaps, find the first seeds of his future army.
And Tố Quyên… was she at this school?
His heart skipped a beat.
He vaguely remembered her from his original early youth, a bright, pretty girl from a well-off family.
Their paths hadn't truly crossed until much later.
"Coming, Mom!" he called out, his voice cracking slightly with forced normalcy.
He cast one last look at his reflection.
The boy staring back was still too thin, too young. But his eyes… his eyes held the cold, hard light of a veteran reborn, a predator unleashed in a world that thought him prey.
The crimson dawn of Earth was breaking, and Lâm Minh, armed with the knowledge of a bitter future and the power of a mysterious System, was ready to paint it with the blood of his enemies.