A Workhorse's Lament, Soul Lost in the ICU

Outside the window, the sky had shifted from a heavy ink-blue to grayish white. Another dawn.

Chen Beixuan rubbed his bloodshot eyes, painfully dragging his gaze away from the glaring computer screen. Dense lines of code covered the display like a swarm of wriggling black tadpoles, making his head spin. He picked up the cup of instant coffee at the corner of his desk, long gone cold and murky as muddy water, and took a huge gulp. Bitterness instantly flooded his mouth, yet it still could not dispel the exhaustion that seemed ready to freeze his very soul.

How many days has it been? he wondered blankly, leaning against the cold back of his gaming chair. His memories were like a broken videotape, muddled and fragmented. Had it been seventy-two hours? Or ninety-six? He could no longer remember. Time had lost all meaning in this office, filled with clattering keyboards, monitor glare, and the sour stench of takeout containers.

He was a programmer—or rather, a "workhorse" penned up in a major internet corporation. A proud practitioner of the "996 Blessing," a veteran corporate drone on the verge of attaining the realm of "007." His life consisted of endless requests, unfixable bugs, never-ending review meetings, and project launch deadlines that were always counting down.

"Beixuan, there's an urgent bug online in the 'Kunlun' project. The client's gone ballistic. You have to fix it before dawn!" The project manager patted his shoulder with a fake look of concern, but his tone brooked no argument.

"But I..." Chen Beixuan opened his mouth, wanting to say that he had already worked overtime for nearly four days straight, that his heart was pounding as though it wanted to break free from his chest.

"The capable ones should do more! The company won't treat you unfairly. I'll put your name forward for the year-end awards." The manager cut him off, drawing yet another familiar empty promise before turning and leaving behind his greasy silhouette.

Wouldn't treat him unfairly? A bitter curve tugged at Chen Beixuan's lips. His salary might have been higher than those of his peers, but he had paid for it with his health, his life, perhaps even his life itself. He felt like an insect tightly entangled in an invisible web; the more he struggled, the tighter it bound him. Mortgage payments, car payments, his parents' expectations, the pressure of surviving in the city... all of it formed an airtight net that left him unable to breathe.

He turned back to the screen and tried to focus, but the code before his eyes began to twist and distort as if it had come alive. His heart suddenly clenched, and a sharp, piercing pain tore through his chest, instantly drenching him in cold sweat. He clutched his chest instinctively and gasped for air.

No. I can't keep this up... A clear thought rang through his mind. He had to take leave. He had to go to the hospital.

The instant that thought of survival arose, another, stronger thought crushed it down. Take leave now? The Kunlun project is at a critical stage. If you drop the ball at a time like this, do you still want your year-end bonus? Do you still want next year's promotion slot?

Reason was screaming, but his body's alarm had already gone off. Waves of dizziness washed over him, and the edges of his vision began to darken like an old television with poor reception. He felt weightless, as if his soul were trying to leave this overused shell.

He struggled to his feet, intending to splash some cold water on his face in the restroom. Maybe that would wake him up a little. Yet the moment he took a step, the whole world suddenly tilted.

The LED lights on the ceiling split into countless blinding streaks of white. His colleagues' voices, the tapping of keyboards, the hum of servers... every sound rapidly faded away, warping into a strange, drawn-out echo. He felt like a feather falling from a skyscraper, weightlessness enveloping his entire body.

I... what is this...

His final awareness was the indescribable agony bursting from his chest, followed by boundless darkness swallowing him—gently, yet cruelly.

There was no life flashing before his eyes. No angels, no ox-headed or horse-faced underworld guards.

Chen Beixuan's consciousness was like a lone boat drifting across an endless sea of chaos. He could not feel time or space—only void and deathly silence. Occasionally, fragmented flashes of light and warped scraps of sound swept past him, like garbled text read from a damaged hard drive: impossible to understand, impossible to grasp.

He remembered that final agony. He remembered the suffocating exhaustion. Was this death? Eternal solitude and nothingness?

An immense grief and unwillingness surged within him. Was his life really ending just like that? Like an insignificant speck of dust quietly vanishing in some corner of the city. He had not yet properly spent time with his parents, had not yet gone to Tibet to see the starry sky he had always wanted to see, had not yet truly... lived for himself.

In that abyss of despair, who knew how much time passed—perhaps an instant, perhaps ten thousand years.

A faint glimmer lit up ahead without warning.

At first, the light was incredibly weak, like the dying flame of a candle in the wind. Yet it carried an indescribable warmth and pull, piercing through the endless darkness. Chen Beixuan's nearly frozen consciousness instinctively drifted toward that tiny glimmer.

The closer he got, the brighter it became. He "saw" that it was not merely light, but a strand of... "qi" formed from countless incomprehensible, strange runes flickering with Dao Rhyme.

It was pure, ethereal, and lively, as though it contained the most primordial mysteries of heaven and earth. It drifted leisurely through the chaos, and wherever it passed, even the void seemed to brim with life.

What is this?

His consciousness touched that strange current of qi.

Boom—!!!

It was as though the Big Bang had replayed within his mind!

An immense torrent of information beyond all description surged into his fragile consciousness like a breached galaxy. It was no longer code, no longer requirements documents, but knowledge and visions that were older, more fundamental, and more vast—

A boundless, desolate land stretched before him. Mountain ranges wound like dragon spines, soaring into the clouds with their peaks out of sight, leaving only the lingering will of "supporting heaven and earth." Giant trees towered into the sky, auspicious qi cascading from their branches and leaves, radiating an ancient aura that had endured for hundreds of millions of years. There was neither sun nor moon in the sky, yet endless clear qi and heavy turbid qi continuously converged, collided, and evolved into earth, water, fire, and wind... Even more unimaginably massive figures appeared and vanished between heaven and earth. Their auras were terrifying; a mere projection of one was enough to shatter the stars.

The Primordial World! This was the Primordial World!

Didn't I die? How could I...

Immediately afterward, another cold, emotionless will rang directly within the core of his consciousness. Like a system command with the highest authority, it overrode every stray thought:

[Environment scan complete... Coordinates confirmed: Primordial World, eastern foothills of the Kunlun Mountain range.]

[Carrier scan complete... Origin confirmed: First Strand of Innate Immortal Qi (newborn, unformed).]

[Soul binding in progress... Binding successful.]

[Great Dao Origin System activated.]

A system? Chen Beixuan's consciousness was in chaos. As an avid reader of web novels, he was no stranger to the concept, but did such a thing really exist? And he had become a strand of... qi?

Before he could process this shocking information, the system's prompt sounded again, carrying an unquestionable forcefulness:

[Novice survival mission issued: Energy Accumulation.]

[Mission description: As a newly born Innate Immortal Qi, the host is extremely fragile and must absorb external energy as soon as possible to stabilize spiritual awareness and strengthen the origin. Current energy level: 0.01% (on the verge of dissipation).]

[Mission objective: Energy level reaches 1%.]

[Mission reward: Chaos Heaven-Opening Art Qi-Guiding Chapter.]

[Failure penalty: Spiritual awareness disperses; origin returns to heaven and earth.]

Failure meant complete death! An unprecedented sense of crisis replaced his confusion and shock at having crossed over.

His instinct to survive made him immediately follow the extraordinarily profound innate breathing method transmitted by the system and attempt to communicate with the outside world.

The next moment, he "felt" it.

His surroundings were no longer void, but boundless Innate Immortal Qi so dense it seemed impossible to dissolve! It was like a warm ocean, enveloping his weak strand of qi. As the breathing method circulated, tiny but incomparably pure strands of spiritual qi slowly began to merge into the origin of his immortal qi.

It felt like parched land on the verge of death finally receiving nourishing rain. Every "cell" rejoiced and leaped with joy. His consciousness, once so weak that it could extinguish at any moment, became a little clearer and more stable, as if injected with a powerful stimulant.

At the same time, an indescribable sense of comfort flowed through his entire body... if he had a body right now. It was millions of times more invigorating than any coffee or energy drink he had consumed in the past twenty-odd years! This was pleasure on the level of life itself.

Yet that pleasure did not last long.

A cold, greedy will suddenly locked onto him like a venomous snake!

Through his immortal qi's faint perception of energy, Chen Beixuan "saw" a murky Malevolent Spirit nearby, formed from tangled motes of miscellaneous qi and resentful thoughts, staring at him covetously. To the Malevolent Spirit's simple consciousness, his pure strand of Innate Immortal Qi was undoubtedly a delectable feast!

The Malevolent Spirit let out a silent shriek, transformed into a gray-black shadow, and lunged at him! Wherever it passed, even the flowing spiritual qi became dim and polluted.

Danger!

Chen Beixuan was horrified. He had only just awakened, and his strength was negligible. Even moving was clumsy and slow. How could he possibly resist a Malevolent Spirit that had clearly existed for a long time?

Run!

Using every ounce of his will, he drove his immortal qi body to "float" away in the opposite direction. But he was far too slow. After just a few surges, the Malevolent Spirit had closed in, its icy aura nearly corroding his core.

At the height of his despair, the system's cold prompt sounded again:

[Host has encountered a survival threat. Emergency protocol activated. Consuming 1% origin energy to temporarily activate "Basic Aura Concealment."]

An invisible ripple spread from his immortal qi body, isolating all of his aura from the outside world. At the same time, the system forcibly guided his consciousness toward a mass of spiritual qi below, nearly solidified within a crack between rocks.

The Malevolent Spirit lunged at the spot where he had just been, only to lose its target. It circled the area in confusion a few times, letting out several unwilling hisses before finally drifting away.

Hidden deep within the narrow yet relatively safe rock crevice, he continued painstakingly absorbing energy with the help of the dense spiritual qi there. Chen Beixuan's consciousness was filled with lingering fear.

This place was not the heavenly paradise he had imagined.

This was the Primordial World—a primeval world full of danger, where the strong devoured the weak!

The path of survival for a strand of immortal qi had only just begun. In the distance, the boundless, towering, unfathomable outline of Kunlun Mountain stood silently amid endless clouds of spiritual qi, as though quietly watching this insignificant strand of Innate Immortal Qi that carried a trace of an anomalous aura.