Sato Senz Kaito watched the gold credits vanish from his digital vault. Ten thousand. Twenty thousand. Fifty thousand. The numbers ticked down in a blur of light as he purchased every available stack of Celestial Marrow on the server auction house. In Path of the Heavens, progress was a matter of how much capital a player was willing to burn to reach the apex. As a Level 30,000 Sword Master of the Righteous Sect, Senz was the undisputed king of the leaderboards.
He knew every frame of every sword animation. He knew the exact millisecond a boss would telegraph an ultimate move. To him, the beautiful landscapes of the Central Plains were just a collection of hitboxes and loot tables.
The raid boss, the Asura King, lunged with a massive obsidian blade that took up half the screen. Senz watched the pixels shift, calculating the trajectory before the attack even fully registered on the server. He tapped the keys with a mechanical, rhythmic precision. It was a frame-perfect parry. The boss staggered, its posture broken, ripe for a finishing blow.
But as Senz reached for the macro to end the fight, the world inside the monitor began to ripple.
A sudden, violent pressure built behind his left temple. It felt like a white-hot needle was being driven through his brain. His left arm suddenly went dead, falling from the desk like a piece of lead. He tried to squint at the screen, but the pixels were bleeding together into a mess of static. He tried to draw a breath, but his lungs felt like they had been welded shut. His head hit the mechanical keyboard with a dull thud, the 'W' key clicking repeatedly under the weight of his skull as his legendary character ran aimlessly into a wall.
The hum of the PC fans was the last thing he heard in that life.
Then, the chime. It wasn't the dull beep of a hospital monitor or the silence of a grave. It was the high-pitched, crystal-clear notification of a successful login.
(System: Welcome to Murim: Path of the Heavens.)
Senz bolted his eyes open and immediately went into a convulsing fit of coughing. He wasn't in his gaming chair. He was lying on a thin, damp mattress that smelled of mildew and wet stone. The ceiling above him was made of rotting wooden beams, draped in thick cobwebs that swayed in a cold, biting draft.
(What is this? Where am I?)
He tried to sit up, but a white-hot flash of agony scorched through his spine. He screamed, or tried to, but only a wet, gargling sound came out of his throat. His body didn't just feel weak; it felt broken. Every single nerve ending was firing at once, screaming in a language of pure pain. When he tried to move his legs, he felt nothing but a sickening, distant numbness, like they belonged to someone else.
His arms were skeletal, the skin stretched so tight over the bone it looked ready to tear. They were covered in yellowing bruises and deep, jagged scars that looked like they had been poorly stitched.
(No. No, no, no. This isn't right. This is too much. My chest... it feels like it's collapsing!)
The panic set in like a physical weight. His heart hammered against his ribs a frantic, uneven thudding that made his vision swim. He tried to grab at his throat, but his hands were trembling so violently they were useless. The air in the room was freezing, but he was drenched in a cold, sickly sweat.
(Status Window!) He screamed the command in his head, desperate for some kind of anchor to reality.
A blue screen flickered into his field of vision. It was translucent, hovering exactly where his HUD used to be in the game, but the data it displayed was a nightmare.
Character Profile
Name: Han Senz
Title: Disgraced Third Son
Level: 1
Condition: Crippled (Severed Meridians), Acute Malnutrition, Internal Bleeding (Minor)
internal Qi: 0/0
Attributes:
Strength: 2
Agility: 1
Stamina: 1
Intelligence: 45
Senz stared at the stats through eyes blurred by tears of pain. In the game, a Level 1 character usually started with 10s across the board. A 1 in Agility meant he was practically a statue. The Severed Meridians debuff was a permanent status effect in the game lore used to write NPCs out of the story. If your meridians were severed, you couldn't circulate Qi. You were a walking corpse.
(I'm in the body of a trash NPC. I'm Han Senz. The one who dies in the prologue!)
He remembered the lore now. Han Senz wasn't a noble. He was a low-level lackey in the Blood Shadow Sect. This was the most brutal demonic faction in the game. He was the disposable grunt who was beaten into a coma by his own squad leaders and left to rot in a damp, stone cell. In this sect, weakness wasn't just a flaw. It was a death sentence.
(The sensory feedback is at 100 percent. I can feel the rot in the air. I can feel my own bones grinding against each other. The stroke... I actually died.)
He looked at the Intelligence stat. 45. That was the only thing that made sense. It was a carry-over from his pro-gamer brain. He didn't have his gear, his gold, or his levels, but he had the database. He knew every hidden quest, every exploit, and every optimal cultivation route that the developers had been too lazy to patch.
He focused on the Severed Meridians tag. In the official guide, this was listed as incurable. But Senz remembered a forum post from a beta tester years ago. There was a glitch in the Qi circulation engine. If you didn't try to force Qi through the meridians, but instead vibrated it against the bone marrow, you could bypass the broken paths entirely.
(I have to fix this. Now. If I don't move, the scavengers in this sect will literally eat me alive.)
He closed his eyes and tried to find the breath of the world. He began to breathe in a specific, jagged pattern. Four seconds in, a sharp hold, two seconds out. The pain flared again, making him want to vomit, but he forced himself to stay conscious.
Immediately, a red notification popped up.
(Warning: Internal Qi circulation is impossible. Meridians are destroyed.)
(Shut up! I'm not using the meridians!)
He focused the tiny, microscopic amount of energy in the air toward his sternum. He pushed it against his bone. The sensation was sharp, like a cold needle touching his skeleton. He pushed the energy harder, vibrating it at the exact frequency he used to use for frame-perfect animation cancels in the game.
(System: Error. Hidden attribute Marrow Tempering has been forced open.)
(System: Level 1 Qi Circulation initiated. Efficiency: 0.01%.)
A small wave of warmth spread from his chest. It was minuscule, but the crushing weight on his lungs eased just enough for him to take a real breath.
The sound of a heavy iron door screeching open interrupted him. A man walked in wearing the dark, blood-stained leather of a Sect Overseer. He looked down at Senz with pure disgust, his nose wrinkled as if he were looking at a pile of offal.
"Still breathing, Senz?" the overseer asked, kicking the side of the stone slab Senz lay on. The impact rattled Senz's fragile ribcage, sending a fresh spike of agony through his nerves. "The Blood Pond needs fresh sacrifices by tomorrow. If you can't stand up and work the mines, you're going into the water. At least your blood will be useful for the Elders."
Senz didn't respond. He kept his eyes on the floor, his teeth clenched so hard he thought they might shatter.
(Fuck...why now)
As the door slammed shut, Senz looked back at his blue screen. The numbers were low, the pain was agonizing, but the potential was infinite.