Great Liang Dynasty, northern frontier, Black Stone County.
The biting cold wind was like a rusty, blunt knife, scraping across Ji Ye's face again and again. He huddled on the sheltered side of an earthen wall, the tattered cotton-padded jacket on his body long since stiffened into hard lumps, exposing the blackened reed floss inside.
This was his third month after transmigrating.
No system, no old grandpa, no broken engagement, not even a healthy body.
Ji Ye stretched out a hand frozen blue-purple and pulled half a black-flour bun, hard as stone, from his clothes. He had traded his life for it—yesterday, for this half-bun, that one-eyed refugee had viciously kicked him in the ribs. Even now, every breath carried the taste of rust.
"Cough... cough cough..."
The violent coughing tugged at his wounds, and Ji Ye curled up in pain like a boiled shrimp. Before transmigrating, he had been a polished office drone in the CBD, complaining about the 996 grind and fretting over his mortgage. Only after transmigrating did he understand what heavenly luxury it was to sit steadily in an office chair and drink a cup of hot coffee.
This world was too rotten.
This place was called Great Liang, a world at the end of a dynasty. Warlords fought in chaos, droughts came year after year, and exchanging children to eat was no longer an idiom from history books, but a sight everywhere by the roadside. The original owner of Ji Ye's body had been a down-and-out scholar, unable to lift with his hands or bear with his shoulders. Other than recognizing a few words, he was utterly useless in these troubled times.
Ji Ye had tried.
In the first month, he had tried to find copying work at the county yamen. Since he had no money to grease the gatekeeper's palm, he was beaten out with a stick.
In the second month, he had wanted to make something using modern knowledge. Glass? Smelting it required a high-temperature furnace and a formula, and he could not even get a hot meal. Gunpowder? Saltpeter and sulfur were controlled even more tightly than salt and iron. The moment he asked about them, he was arrested as a spy and thrown into jail, then beaten with planks before being tossed out.
In the third month, which was now, he learned to fight wild dogs for food.
"Is this the treatment transmigrators get?" Ji Ye tugged at the corner of his mouth in self-mockery, and blood seeped from his cracked lips.
He bit down hard on the black-flour bun. His teeth protested with a sour ache, but he did not dare stop. Several pairs of gleaming green eyes watched him from afar—refugees desperate with hunger. Once they sensed weakness, they would pounce like hyenas.
If he did not eat it, the bun would no longer be his.
Time blurred amid hunger and cold.
Ji Ye did not die that winter, but part of him had already died.
The Ji Ye from civilized society had died. What survived was a beggar leader called "Dog-Scraps."
Ji Ye became a minor leader in Black Stone County's beggar gang. He learned to read faces and moods, learned to speak human words to humans and ghost words to ghosts, and even learned to use those few clumsy turtle punches to bully newly arrived refugees.
He no longer thought about glass or gunpowder, no longer thought about princes and generals. His dream now was simply to save a few coins, buy one night of warmth from the widow in the south of town, or trade for a cotton coat without patches.
But he never saved enough.
Because war came.
The Barbarians' iron cavalry trampled through Black Stone County's walls. That day, flames shot into the sky, and cries shattered the night. Ji Ye's only "property" in this world—that drafty, ruined temple hideout—was burned to ashes in a single fire.
He fled south with the crowd.
Along the way, he saw true hell. There were so many corpses lying by the roadside that no one buried them. The wild dogs ate until their bellies were round, and even their eyes were no longer fierce, but carried a strange kind of mercy.
In the tenth year.
Ji Ye was thirty, yet looked fifty. His back was bent, and one leg had been broken while fleeing. It had healed poorly, leaving him limping with every step.
He settled in a small southern town, making a living by hauling night soil for wealthy households. No one wanted this work, so competition was scarce, and he could at least fill half his belly.
In the dead of night, he would sometimes stare blankly at the moon in the sky.
"What exactly did I come here for?"
He had asked himself that question for ten years.
There was no answer. Heaven had thrown him into this world like garbage, seemingly only to watch him struggle in the mud, to watch him rot away bit by bit.
He was unwilling.
Truly unwilling.
Even if he had to die, he wanted to die in a blaze of glory, not like this—reeking from head to toe, lowly as an ant.
So, he began secretly practicing martial arts.
It was no peerless divine art, merely a few rough farming moves he had stolen from the household guards' martial instructor while hauling night soil. Even the lowest-grade Savage Bull Strength, he practiced with obsessive devotion.
He could not afford medicinal baths, so he washed his body in cold water. He could not afford meat, so he caught toads from the river and ate them.
In the fifteenth year.
Ji Ye finally cultivated a trace of sense of Qi. Though weak as a candle flame in the wind, it was power that belonged to the extraordinary.
He was so excited that he did not sleep all night, believing he had finally seized fate by the tail.
Yet fate did not merely refuse to open the door for him—it shut the window in passing.
The day after he cultivated that sense of Qi, the local bully set his sights on a mute little girl Ji Ye had taken in—his "daughter," who depended on him for survival, though they shared no blood.
The bully burst into the shabby house with his men, intending to seize a civilian girl by force.
Ji Ye erupted.
Fifteen years of suppression, fifteen years of humiliation, turned into that faint trace of sense of Qi at that moment.
Roaring in fury, he charged forward and slammed the move he had stolen, Savage Bull Headbutt, viciously into the bully's chest.
"Crack."
The sound of bones breaking rang out.
But he did not send the bully flying. Instead, he was the one flung away.
His body was too frail. Years of malnutrition and hidden injuries could not support such an outburst at all. That blow failed to hurt his opponent and instead shattered his own ribs.
"Old bastard, courting death!"
The bully grinned savagely and planted a foot on Ji Ye's face, grinding the mud and grit from his sole into Ji Ye's mouth.
Ji Ye struggled desperately, his hands clawing streaks of blood into the muddy ground. He watched Little Mute being dragged away, watched the despair in her eyes, watched her open her mouth wide and silently cry, "Father."
"Ah—!!!"
Ji Ye let out a beastlike roar, bloody foam spraying from his throat.
But he could not stand.
That foot was like a mountain, crushing down on his skull and shattering every shred of his dignity and hope.
That night, Ji Ye's limbs were broken, and he was thrown into the mass grave outside town.
The rain fell heavily.
The icy rain washed the blood and filth from his body, carrying away the last of his warmth.
He lay amid the piles of corpses, surrounded by the stench of rot and the chewing sounds of wild dogs.
He was not completely dead yet.
His eyes remained open, fixed stubbornly on the pitch-black night sky.
Rain fell into his eyes, but he no longer had the strength even to blink.
This life had been like an absurd joke.
A transmigrator? A protagonist?
To hell with that.
He was a joke. Worthless trash who could not even protect the person he wanted to protect.
"If there is another life..."
Ji Ye's consciousness began to scatter, darkness swallowing him like a tide.
"If there is another life..."
He repeated it over and over in his heart, even as his soul trembled.
"I will win... I will crush every one of those people who trampled on my head..."
"I want... power..."
The old crow he had seen countless times on the ruined temple's roof now perched on a dead tree nearby, letting out a hoarse cry, as if seeing this lowly soul off on its final journey.
If you think this book is good, please remember to add it to your bookshelf so you do not lose it next time.
Ji Ye's fingers twitched faintly, trying to grasp something, but in the end they only clutched a handful of rotten mud beneath him.
His heart stopped beating.
Transmigrator Ji Ye died in the year 423 of the Liang Calendar, at the age of thirty-five.
Cause of death: beaten to death.
Life evaluation: ant.
[Host vital signs detected as vanished.] [Soul fluctuations confirmed.] [Reincarnation System activating...]
In the darkness, a cold mechanical voice suddenly rang out, exploding like thunder within the depths of Ji Ye's silent consciousness.
Then, that pitch-black world instantly collapsed.
Ji Ye felt like a drowning man suddenly dragged from the water's surface, taking a sharp breath—even though he no longer had lungs.
Before him was no longer the bleak wind and bitter rain of the mass grave, but a space of pure white.
There was no up or down, no left or right, no passage of time.
Only a pale-blue translucent panel floated before him.
Ji Ye's dazed consciousness gradually gathered. As he looked at the panel, an emotion of extreme absurdity and wild joy surged into his heart.
A cheat?
You only came after I died?!
[Reincarnation settlement begins] [Current world: Late Great Liang (No. 098 · Micro World)] [Survival time: 15 years] [Achievements: None] [Status: Beggar / Night-soil carrier] [Cause of death: Beaten to death by a local bully] [Overall evaluation: F (A life of no value. You were like a speck of dust and had no impact on this world.)]
That red "F" stabbed at Ji Ye's "eyes."
[Based on your F-grade evaluation, you have received one "White Common" talent draw.] [Drawing talent...]
The text on the panel flickered, finally freezing on a gray-white icon.
[Talent obtained: Brute Strength (White)] [Effect: Innate strength is 30% greater than that of an ordinary person.]
"Brute Strength..."
Ji Ye looked at the talent and wanted to laugh, but could not. If he had possessed this talent back then, perhaps he could have pushed away that bully. Perhaps Little Mute would not have been taken away...
A cheat that came late was cheaper than grass.
[Please configure talents for your next life.]
The panel changed, revealing three empty slots.
[Talent Slot One: Empty] [Talent Slot Two: Empty] [Talent Slot Three: Empty] [Current Talent Pool: Brute Strength (White)]
The mechanical voice prompted without emotion:
[Note: Talent slots can equip acquired talents. These talents will take effect in the next life. Once acquired, talents are retained permanently.]
Ji Ye looked at the three empty slots, then at the solitary Brute Strength.
He had only one choice now.
With a thought, he dragged Brute Strength into [Talent Slot One].
Just as he was about to click "Begin Reincarnation," possessed by some strange impulse—or perhaps some vengeful mindset—he tried dragging the Brute Strength icon again.
He had assumed that an equipped talent could not be selected again, or that it would replace the talent in Slot One.
But it did not.
That gray-white icon was dragged out again!
Ji Ye froze.
Cautiously, he placed the second Brute Strength into [Talent Slot Two].
[Ding!] [Talent Slot Two equipped successfully: Brute Strength (White).]
No error?
Ji Ye's soul trembled violently. He dragged a third Brute Strength into [Talent Slot Three].
[Ding!] [Talent Slot Three equipped successfully: Brute Strength (White).]
At that moment, the panel displayed:
[Talent Slot One: Brute Strength (Strength +30%)] [Talent Slot Two: Brute Strength (Strength +30%)] [Talent Slot Three: Brute Strength (Strength +30%)] [Current stacking effect: Strength +90% (based on the host's reincarnated body's base attributes).]
Ji Ye stared fixedly at that "+90%."
If... if three SSS-grade talents stacked together?
What if it were three immortal bodies?
At that moment, the despair and humiliation from the mass grave transformed instantly into towering ambition.
This late system seemed to have a bug.
[Configuration complete.] [Resetting world...] [Target world: Late Great Liang (No. 098 · Micro World)] [Note: As you have not obtained an SSS-grade evaluation, the world ascension passage cannot be opened. You will continue reincarnating in the current world until you break the shackles of fate.]
I still have to return to that damned place?
Ji Ye looked at that line, and there was no fear in his soul—only blazing fury.
Going back was fine too.
Perfect. There were still some debts left unsettled.
"This time," Ji Ye roared in his mind, "I'm going to live like a real man!"
[Reincarnation begins.]
White light swallowed everything.
Before you continue