The biting December wind cut through the streets of Manhattan as Brian Glock stepped outside the Hilton Hotel. The city buzzed around him, vibrant and chaotic, a constant reminder of the relentless pace of life—of business, of ambition, of everything he'd built. He adjusted his coat, his breath visible in the crisp air. For a man who had spent two decades climbing the ladder of corporate success, this was supposed to be another ordinary evening. Another step in a life meticulously planned.
But something wasn't right.
A figure approached, too quickly for comfort, yet Brian's mind remained a whirl of fragmented thoughts. A meeting earlier that day—numbers, projections, a potential merger. The kind of things that demanded his attention every waking moment. He had built a fortress of pragmatism around himself, but here, in the quiet of the evening, cracks seemed to form.
How many decisions had I made today? He wondered. How many lives did those decisions touch? The numbers swirled in his head—not just the billions in revenue or the shareholders' expectations, but the people behind them. Patients. Families. Employees. For years, he had convinced himself that sacrifices were necessary, that the system was broken long before he arrived, and he was merely playing by its rules.
But now, as the shadow of the man grew closer, something in him faltered.
Was I wrong?
The thought struck him as suddenly as the first sound—a voice, sharp, calling his name. And then, the cold barrel of the gun. Time seemed to slow. His breath hitched. His heart pounded.
This can't be happening.
He tried to make sense of it, but there was no logic here, no strategy to employ, no market data to analyze. The man before him wasn't a boardroom adversary. There was no negotiation to be had.
The first shot rang out, a shockwave tearing through his body. Pain. Searing, all-encompassing. His knees buckled, and he collapsed onto the pavement. The city lights above blurred as he stared at the sky, his thoughts unraveling into chaos.
And then, clarity.
A memory surfaced, unbidden—a younger version of himself, standing outside a hospital room. His mother's frail hand in his own, her face pale but smiling weakly. She had believed in him, trusted that he would do something meaningful with his life. That he would make a difference.
Did I?
The pain was fading now, replaced by a strange, cold numbness. The sounds of the street grew distant. The questions echoed louder in his mind. The decisions, the compromises, the justifications—were they worth it?
As his vision dimmed, a tear slipped down his cheek, and for the first time in decades, he let himself feel the weight of everything. The lives he had touched. The lives he had hurt. The man he had become.
And then, silence.
The wind carved through jagged black cliffs, shrieking like a starving beast. Qi drifted through the Valley of Despair in murky currents — invisible, toxic, and old. There were no stars here. Only a blood-red sky that pulsed like a wound.
Wei Feng opened his eyes.
His fingers clawed into the frozen soil. His chest heaved, lungs like cracked bellows. Cold bit into his skin, but the pain felt distant — as if the body wasn't his.
It wasn't.
Somewhere far away, a different man had died.
A gunshot in Manhattan. Concrete still warm beneath his knees. Blood soaking into his thousand-dollar suit. Brian Thompson — CEO, butcher in a suit, apex predator of a broken world. Slain not by market forces, but by a hand he never saw coming.
He remembered it now.
The barrel pressing against his ribs.
The trigger's click.
The flash.
The fall.
Not rage. Not fear.
"Was I wrong?"
The question echoed through death.
He had built empires, rewritten laws, torn industries apart — convinced all the while that he was fixing something rotten. But in his final moments, it wasn't profit he saw. It was his mother's hand, frail and trembling in a hospital bed. Her eyes full of belief.
"Did I make a difference?"
The memory faded.
Now he was here — in a place colder than death, crawling in a corpse not his own.
"So I'm Wei Feng now."
This body was young, but wasted. A shell of skin stretched thin over brittle bone. Torn robes clung to ribs like iron chains. Blood crusted at the corners of his lips. His left arm bore a brand that hadn't faded: the character for "discarded."
The memories came in fragments.
A disgraced heir. A mistake of the Wei Clan. Beaten. Poisoned. Buried. Tossed into this cursed valley — a place where the unworthy rot in silence.
And yet something throbbed in his hand.
A crimson scroll. Clutched in dead fingers.
He didn't remember picking it up.
It unrolled with a crackle of old parchment. The ink writhed like veins pulsing with venom.
"Path of the Hidden Serpent."
The technique was old. Vile. Slow. Not a path of flame or sword, but of stillness. Deception. Parasite. It didn't roar — it coiled.
It suited him.
The first line struck like a whisper into his skull:
"Open the First Meridian with stillness. Do not fight. Let the serpent coil."
Wei Feng sat cross-legged. Spine straight. Breath shallow. He let the Valley's Qi seep into him — bitter, violent, toxic. It tore at his meridians like rusted nails.
He didn't cry out.
He bled from the nose. A vein burst behind his eye. His heartbeat slowed.
Time passed.
And then—
A pulse.
A thread of Qi trickled in.
One meridian opened.
He didn't smile.
He bared his teeth.
"Still alive. Still climbing."
Far above, in the distant skies of the continent, something vast stirred.
Old.
Watching.