The city never slept.
Neon lights blinked in restless patterns. Traffic whispered on distant roads. Far above Shanghai, on the seventy-fifth floor of a glass tower, Wu Jian sat alone in his sanctum, surrounded by silence and money.
He wasn't meditating — not in the old sense. No incense. No chants. His "cultivation" came through machines: a halo of jade circuitry wrapped around his head, reading brainwaves and adjusting biofeedback. Artificial Qi flowed through synthetic meridians embedded in his body. Smooth. Clinical. Efficient.
Just like everything else in Wu Corp.
His eyes remained closed, but the numbers spoke clearly in his mind.
Net gain: 12.4 million yuan.
Spiritual traffic index: green.
Void signature: negative.
He allowed himself a faint smile. "Balance maintained," he whispered.
Then — the numbers vanished.
All at once.
His eyes snapped open.
The lights in the room flickered, then died. The temperature dropped five degrees in seconds. Outside, the sky darkened, though no clouds passed. The jade circuits around his head sparked, then cracked.
"What the—"
A sound rolled through the room. Not thunder.
Footsteps.
Soft. Barefoot. Slow.
Jian stood quickly, nearly tripping over his meditation platform. He reached under the desk and slammed a panel. A gold-tinted glyph exploded into light above him — the Heaven Seal Formation, one of the last true ancient artifacts in his possession.
Protective light folded around him in six layers.
The temperature dropped again.
Then — the formation shattered.
Not burst. Not burned.
It simply cracked down the middle, like glass touched by cold water.
And out of the dark mist at the far end of the room stepped a man.
Hospital gown. Bare feet. Long black hair drifting in air that no longer obeyed physics. His eyes... silver, ancient, impossibly calm.
Jian's mind blanked.
"Who are you?" he demanded, backing toward the wall.
"You don't remember," the man said. His voice was low, clear — with no emotion behind it. "But your blood does."
Jian's back hit the wall. "I don't know you. You broke into the wrong building. You'll regret this—"
"You are Wu Jian," the man continued. "Forty-first in your line. Descendant of Wu Sheng."
The name made Jian's stomach twist. "That's just... myth. History."
"To you," the man said. "To me, it was yesterday."
And suddenly Jian did remember. Not from books. From dreams.
As a boy, he used to have visions. A man burning. A mountain screaming. Silver eyes that stared into his bones.
His hands shook.
He reached for the blade mounted on the wall. It wasn't ceremonial — it was bound to his Qi signature. A relic. A weapon of the old age.
He pulled it free, slashed forward.
The silver-eyed man caught it between two fingers.
The blade froze, then cracked. Jian felt the connection sever, as if his soul had been unplugged.
"You killed my ancestor," he gasped.
"No," the man said.
He struck Jian in the chest with a single palm.
The blow didn't push him. It dropped him — straight down, like gravity itself had bent just for him.
He hit the floor gasping, ribs screaming.
"I didn't kill him," the man continued, stepping closer.
"I trusted him."
Jian coughed blood.
Lin Xian knelt beside him.
His eyes weren't cruel. They weren't angry. They were worse — detached. As if justice wasn't something he felt, but something he was.
"You helped seal me," he said quietly. "You dragged my soul from the heavens to the dirt."
"I didn't—" Jian wheezed. "I wasn't there—"
"No. But you benefited."
He placed a finger against Jian's forehead.
"I told your ancestors I'd remember."
Then everything went white.
Jian screamed once — just once. Then nothing.
No smoke. No blood.
Just absence.
His body remained intact.
But his soul was gone. Not destroyed. Not shattered. Unwritten.
Lin Xian stood.
The jade console behind him sparked once more. A blinking red glyph hovered over it.
ALERT: LINEAGE SERVER CORRUPTEDSPIRITUAL RECORD: DELETEDFAMILY NETWORK: OFFLINE
Down below, alarms finally triggered.
Steel doors slammed open. Armed guards stormed the elevators. Three dozen elite security agents — some trained in spiritual suppression, some wielding Qi-infused weapons — poured into the top floor.
They found Lin Xian standing alone.
Wu Jian lay slumped beside him, untouched, unburned — but unmistakably dead.
"On the ground!" one of them shouted.
He didn't respond.
Five rifles opened fire.
The bullets never reached him.
They stopped mid-air, hung for a moment, then turned. Quietly. Slowly.
They returned to their senders, one by one, piercing helmets, throats, chests.
Some tried to run.
Lin Xian blinked.
A ripple passed through the air — not visible, not audible — but felt.
Twenty men dropped without a sound. Hearts stopped. Spirits shattered.
One survived long enough to scream. Then the scream was cut off.
Silence returned.
Lin Xian looked around. He wasn't angry. He wasn't even focused on them.
His gaze turned eastward — far beyond the tower, beyond Shanghai — toward something older, deeper.
He raised a hand.
A black scroll appeared, ink trailing from the void.
On it were names.
Faded, but not forgotten.
He touched the top one: Wu.
The ink flared. The name dissolved.
He looked to the next.
Bai.
He nodded.
"I'm coming," he said softly.
Elsewhere... Tibet.
A monk sat cross-legged on a cold stone peak, meditating beneath the stars. His eyes opened.
Blood ran from his nose.
"Void pressure…" he whispered.
He began to chant a seal, but his fingers trembled.
New York.
A woman in a business suit dropped her wine glass mid-call. She didn't know why. She just felt cold. Like something massive had shifted.
The spirits in her vault — ancestral souls — were screaming.
India.
A retired cultivator sitting in a field of wild marigolds opened his eyes for the first time in thirty years.
"So," he murmured. "The Overlord walks again."
Back in Shanghai...
The tower burned quietly.
Not with fire — but with spiritual imbalance. Like the laws of reality had tilted slightly and refused to right themselves.
Lin Xian walked through the front doors barefoot, covered in blood not his own.
No one saw him leave.
But thousands would feel his presence in dreams that night.