"I longed to buy osmanthus flowers and share wine on the journey..."
The bitterly cold wind howled across the rooftop. Tylen stood before a massive floor-to-ceiling glass wall, staring at the reflection it showed him.
The man in the glass had a head full of graying white hair and three deep furrows etched across his forehead.
His eye bags were a sickly gray-black, and a few glaring age spots marked the corners of his eyes.
This body looked like that of a half-century-old man nearing the end of his life.
But in reality, Tylen was only thirty-three.
Once a rural kid who had studied his way out of poverty, Tylen had relied on hard work and talent to climb from the countryside to his current position as a vice president at a publicly listed company.
His personal assets exceeded a hundred million, and he held countless stock options.
By worldly standards, he should have been lounging on a yacht, surrounded by beautiful women, enjoying champagne and the sea breeze.
Yet when he finally looked up from the desk that was forever buried under a packed schedule, what awaited him wasn't the attentions of a pretty secretary in a pencil skirt. It was a cold diagnosis.
Pancreatic cancer. Late stage. The king of cancers.
Tylen knew perfectly well what had caused it.
Ever since graduate school, he had been living beyond his means, spending his life as if it were an inexhaustible resource.
To get his name on those few core journal papers, he had stayed up all night crunching data while trying to read his advisor's mind.
He was always available at a moment's notice, and he never missed a drinking session.
He had fawned over his advisor until the man was perfectly comfortable, and at last earned himself an entry ticket into the field.
Starting his own business had been no different.
With his knack for getting along with everyone and the social skills he had honed to perfection, he had turned one difficult client after another into a source of growth for the company over countless late nights of clinking glasses.
Did he regret it?
He did.
But if he could do it all over again, would he make the same choices?
Of course!
If a poor kid with no connections and no backing wanted to defy fate, what else could he do but fight with everything he had?
If it had been some other illness, even losing a hand or a foot, he might have found the courage to fight back and go through rehabilitation.
But pancreatic cancer... He couldn't take it anymore.
It hurt.
The pain was beyond description.
It was as if countless rusty, dull knives were churning through his abdomen. Even breathing had become a form of torture.
The Grim Reaper had come for him, and modern medicine couldn't save him. It laughed equally at all money and power.
"If that's how it is, then so be it."
His will was already made. His assets, worth over a hundred million, would be more than enough for his parents, who were nearing sixty, to enjoy their retirement, and for his younger brother, still in school, to establish himself in a big city.
His life had been short, but he had lived it well.
Facing the bone-chilling wind, Tylen straightened his expensive tailored suit one last time.
He had never been one to wallow in regret. He accepted the consequences of his choices.
He leaned forward, his balance tipping.
As he fell, he closed his eyes. One last line drifted through his mind.
"...never again like those carefree days of youth."
When Tylen opened his eyes again, he was greeted by a stench far more primal and overpowering, one that stirred an instinctive fear deep within the human body.
It was the cloying sweetness of rotting protein, mixed with the acrid sting of preservatives and an indefinable, chilling mustiness that seemed to seep into his very bones.
"Ugh—"
His stomach convulsed violently. Tylen retched instinctively, but brought nothing up.
He struggled to raise his upper body, and his vision gradually focused in the dim, flickering candlelight.
He was in a low-ceilinged, damp, oppressive underground stone chamber.
Moss covered the walls. Beads of moisture gathered into rivulets, dripping steadily onto the filthy flagstones.
Ten enormous ironwood racks stood in neat rows in the center of the room.
Each rack had two levels. There were no goods on them; instead, pale corpses lay sprawled across every shelf.
They were displayed carelessly, like cheap frozen meat for sale in a supermarket.
On the left lay a boy of barely ten or so, his chest marked by huge claw scratches, his face frozen in the terror of his final moments;
on the lower shelf lay a middle-aged man in his forties or fifties, his skin a deeply unnatural purplish black, clearly dead from poisoning;
farther away were a mercenary missing an arm, a scantily clad prostitute, and even several stitched-together bodies with obvious seams.
Silence reigned.
Only the occasional crackle of the candle flame and the sound of water flowing through a distant sewer disturbed it.
"The Seven Towers Alliance? Did I... transmigrate?"
A pain like a red-hot iron rod twisting through his brain surged from deep within.
Two completely different lifetimes of memories were forcibly merging inside this young body.
The Seven Towers Alliance. Cain Wizard Tower.
A city-sized tower belonging to the Soul Wizard school.
And his current identity: Tyron Arthas Magnus.
Sixteen years old, born to commoners, the third child in his family.
His father was a blacksmith in the western part of Wave City, and his mother was a full-time homemaker.
Among the usual transmigrator templates—orphans or children cast out by their families—this was a rare start with both parents alive and a warm, harmonious family.
Six months earlier, the original Tyron had drawn on a fierce determination tinged with an addiction to studying, passed the written exam for Cain Wizard Tower, and finally earned a ticket into the supernatural world.
In this world, Wizards embodied the supernatural and were synonymous with privilege.
Even the lowest-ranking Official Wizard could easily provide for an entire family for the rest of their lives.
But social classes weren't easy to cross.
The chasm was built out of money.
Wizard Towers weren't charities. They were ravenous beasts that devoured gold.
The basic tuition and required textbooks for the first year alone cost a whopping 22,000 Purple Gold Coins.
Tyron's father swung a hammer day and night, working himself to the bone to earn just 1,000 Purple Gold Coins a month.
That was barely enough to keep a family of five from starving.
Naturally, he had to take out a loan for the 20,000 Purple Gold Coins in annual tuition.
So Tyron had barely set foot in school, without learning a thing, and already had 100,000 Purple Gold Coins of debt hanging over him.
And that was only the beginning.
On top of tuition, textbooks cost another 2,000 Purple Gold Coins each academic year.
Without the books, you couldn't even attend class!
His family had tightened their belts as far as they could and managed to scrape together only 400 coins for him.
Tyron would have to make up the remaining 1,600 himself.
But that wasn't even the most despairing part.
The worst part was the suffocatingly strict hierarchy inside the Wizard Tower, and its rigorous assessment system.
Knowledge was power, but knowledge came at a price.
Here, growing stronger meant constructing Spell Models, refining Mana, and unraveling the mysteries of death and the soul.
The truly crucial knowledge—efficient meditation methods, safe soul-splitting techniques, stable rune diagrams—was all locked away in the upper levels of the tower.
Unless they were privileged core disciples or rich kids, commoner apprentices like Tyron weren't even allowed to glance at the covers.
The strict assessment system was an execution line in its own right.
During the five-year program, anyone who failed the Half-Year Assessment twice in a row would be expelled on the spot and stripped of their apprentice status.
Expulsion not only meant they could never become a Wizard for the rest of their lives; it also meant the 100,000 Purple Gold Coins in student loans would become a nightmare they'd spend their entire lives repaying.
He—and his family for the rest of their lives—would be reduced to slaves paying off the Wizard Tower.
To survive and avoid expulsion,
six months ago Tyron had volunteered for what was widely regarded as the filthiest, most exhausting, most cursed job at Cain Wizard Tower, one even Goblins wouldn't touch: Corpse Collector Apprentice.
Soul Wizards had an enormous demand for corpses.
They needed bodies to study anatomy, rotting flesh to cultivate corpse poison, fresh brains to test for traces of souls, and intact skeletons to make Skeleton Servants.
Tyron's job was to meet all these varied—and sometimes perverse—demands.
The work wasn't complicated. After half a month of training, Tyron had gotten the hang of it.
By day, he scoured the city's slums and sewers, even the mass graves outside the city, like a vulture searching for unclaimed bodies.
Vagrants, beggars who had starved to death, gangsters killed in turf wars, unlucky people mauled by beasts.
At night, he returned to this chilly basement and prepared the bodies.
Cleaning off filth, stitching up severed limbs, cutting away rotten flesh, sorting and preserving the corpses...
The stench of death clung to him like an evil spirit, sinking deep into his skin and hair.
No matter how much he bathed or where he went, people around him instinctively covered their noses and looked at him with disgust.
But he had no choice.
The job paid him 250 Purple Gold Coins a month, which went toward the cost of his textbooks.
Without that money, he couldn't even afford the textbook Soul Primer, let alone qualify to enter the classroom!
Half a year had now passed, and next month he would finally receive his first paycheck since arriving at the Wizard Tower.
A person's will might be endlessly resilient, but the body had its limits.
Long-term malnutrition, grueling physical labor, tremendous mental pressure, and the anxiety brought on by the looming Half-Year Assessment had finally snapped the taut string.
A few hours ago, the original Tyron had stayed up late in this corpse-stinking room, trying to memorize a few more formulas, and keeled over.
"This setup..."
Tylen rubbed his throbbing temples, the corner of his mouth lifting in a complicated smile.
"Why does this feel like getting into the top high school in town after barely surviving junior high in the countryside, then facing the first semester?"
It had been just like this back then.
All around him had been polished city kids. They spoke fluent English, had all kinds of talents, and attended every sort of cram school.
He had desperately pored over his textbooks for two months, only to end up near the bottom of the class on the midterm.
Only here, failing didn't mean repeating a year. It meant being damned for eternity.
The Half-Year Assessment was the gate to hell.
It was more than a measure of an apprentice's progress. It was a watershed that determined their fate.
Those with good grades earned their mentors' favor and received more resources;
those with bad grades could only sink to the bottom as servants, becoming fuel for those above them.
And Tylen, as things stood, was undoubtedly at the very bottom of the class.
He closed his eyes and checked his Wizard stats.
[Name: Tyron Arthas Magnus] [Rank: Level 0 Apprentice] [Constitution: 1] [Spirit: 3] [Magic Control: 0.36] [Spell: Spirit Summoning Control Method (360/100,000)] [Skills: None] [Knowledge: None]
Forget using a flashy Soul Scream or Skeleton Summoning. He could barely even control Mana well enough to make a feather float.
According to past experience, the passing marks for this assessment were six points in Spirit and three in Magic Control.
Aside from the strict practical requirements, there was also a written exam enough to make your hair fall out.
Wizarding Basics: Runes and Mental Power; Soul Primer: The Boundary Between Spirit and Flesh; Alchemy Basics: Material Processing and Solvent Ratios; Meditation Atlas: Mental Power Explained...
There were eight textbooks in all. The original Tyron had studied desperately, but he had only managed to memorize thirty percent of the exam material.
There was only one month left until the exam.
It looked like a no-win situation.
"But..."
Tylen drew a deep breath of the air, heavy with preservatives, and his gaze gradually sharpened.
"Hardship like this is nothing."
In his previous life, he had faced pancreatic cancer, an inevitable countdown to death, and the despair of countless nights spent writhing in pain.
But now?
Tylen slowly stood up and stretched this young body.
His joints made no grinding sounds, and though his muscles were lean, they were strong and supple.
No blurry vision, no head of white hair, no herniated discs tormenting his lower back, no beer belly like a ticking time bomb.
Most importantly—
It didn't hurt.
There was no dull knife churning through his abdomen, no void inside him devouring his life.
His hands were covered in rough calluses, and corpse oil still clung beneath his fingernails.
But beneath his taut skin surged the blazing collagen and vitality of a seventeen-year-old.
"Being healthy is so damn good."
Tylen murmured in awe, a wildfire-like gleam flickering in his eyes.
Since the heavens had given him a second chance at life, and since they had given him this healthy body, he would never give up.
He bent down and picked up a thick book from beside a corpse's feet.
It was a hefty, 200-page, large-format book: Meditation Atlas: Introduction to Mental Power.
The cover had been worn pale, and the corners were curled. A bookmark made from a dried leaf was tucked inside, marking page 57.
By the dim candlelight, Tylen opened the book.
The blank spaces on the pages were densely covered with notes.
The handwriting was neat but somewhat childish, and the cheapest charcoal pencil had been used to record the original owner's understanding of and questions about each rune.
"This part... you've got it wrong."
Tylen skimmed a few pages, his brow furrowing slightly.
"Comparing Mental Power to a flowing stream is right, but memorizing the stream's course by rote is the most foolish approach. You should understand it in terms of pressure and pipes..."
"These notes on meditation postures are too trivial. It's all rote memorization, and they've completely missed the core logic of clearing your mind."
As someone who had clawed his way out of the countryside to become the king of overachievers, a top student,
Tylen had developed an extremely efficient study method that worked for him back when he was a student.
He spotted the original owner's problem at a glance: plenty of diligence, but the wrong method.
This kind of rote memorization was terrifyingly inefficient when it came to the vast, abstruse knowledge of Wizards.
"If it's a written exam..."
Tylen closed the book and lightly tapped its cover with his fingers, his mind racing.
"Give me a month. With my ability to organize and summarize, and this young brain's memory, I can reorganize the logical framework of these eight books and scrape a passing grade—or even land somewhere in the upper-middle range. It shouldn't be a problem."
When it came to exams, he was a professional.
But then his brow furrowed again.
The written exam was only a soft skill. His real weakness was in his attributes—
3 points of Mental Power, a full 3 points short of the passing mark.
0.36 points of Magic Control, 2.63 points short of the passing mark.
That was the real, insurmountable chasm.
Poor apprentice commoners had no advanced meditation techniques passed down through their families. They could only rely on the basic meditation technique issued by the academy: Meditation Atlas, whose efficiency was appallingly low.
They couldn't afford "Meditation Essential Oil" or "Mental Crystals," either—the kind of things that could help boost Mental Power.
Without resources, there was no attribute growth.
Without attribute growth, there was no passing the exam.
And if he failed the exam, he'd be kicked out.
Another perfect vicious cycle.
"Am I already tap-dancing on the execution line right after transmigrating?"
Tylen looked at the heap of cold corpses before him, weighing his options.
"With one month, doubling my Mental Power... would take a miracle, or..."
"Or some kind of unreasonable external force intervening."
Just as he was racking his brains for a way out, a strange distortion suddenly appeared in his vision.
[Friend, want to recharge your Small Monthly Card and Big Monthly Card? They're totally worth it!] [Invest in the future with your time!] [Come on, chant with me: Monthly Card holders never lose!]
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