Agonizing pain dragged Weilin out of his slumber.
A strong smell of alcohol and cosmetics flooded his nose.
Wasn't I in the lab? What's going on?
He found his head resting on a pair of soft, full thighs. Dark red velvet skirts gathered between them, barely concealing several bite marks.
His gaze moved upward. A girl stared down at him in panic, her eyes like those of a startled fawn, her lashes trembling anxiously.
She wore a daringly cut server's uniform with a name tag pinned to the neckline, but the taut fabric rose and fell with her rapid breathing, making the writing impossible to read.
The sensual scene did not sweep Weilin off his feet. He tried to make sense of what had happened to him, but his memories were scattered, and he could recall nothing.
"Where... am I?" Veylin instinctively spoke in a language he could not identify.
"Young Master Weilin, you're awake?" The girl's voice was almost too faint to hear. "You... you've lost so much blood."
Bang!
A sudden crash rang out as someone burst through the door.
"Weilin Klein!"
The newcomer was a young girl. Her gaze swept across the wrecked room, disappointment and anguish filling her eyes.
"This again... how much further are you going to sink?" she demanded through gritted teeth, her voice trembling slightly.
Veylin struggled to make sense of this turn of events.
The girl looked familiar, but he could remember nothing more.
To avoid saying the wrong thing, he silently pointed at the back of his head, which was still bleeding.
Only then did she notice the large patch of blood. Her anger vanished at once, and she anxiously examined his injury.
"Quick! Take my brother home for treatment!"
The two guards behind her immediately stepped forward and helped Weilin out of the building.
In the carriage returning to Baron Kaman's residence, Weilin closed his eyes and endured the collision between his soul's memories and those of his body.
His name was Weilin Klein, and he had undergone two bloodline awakening rituals. Both had failed.
That usually meant he was one of the unfortunate "Bloodless." Either you had a bloodline or you did not. Two consecutive failures to activate it had essentially determined the course of Weilin's entire life.
In this world, where bloodlines determined everything, the Bloodless did not even count as nobles. They occupied an awkward position between the nobility and the common people.
The body's original owner had been exceptionally intelligent, once the hope of his family's younger generation. Even after his successive failures, he had refused to give up, buying ancient books and texts in search of clues to a bloodline breakthrough.
But last month, rumors had spread that his engagement to his childhood sweetheart, Countess Diana Chenxi, would be annulled. Feeling utterly abandoned, Weilin had finally struck his head in a drunken accident and died.
Veylin sighed inwardly. He had actually transmigrated—and into a fragile young man at that. To him, the original owner's troubles had been nothing more than setbacks on the road to success, nowhere near a dead end.
His greatest regret was that his paper, which had been on the verge of revolutionizing gene editing, would never see the light of day.
Once they returned to the residence, his younger sister Lilia brought warm water and carefully cleaned his wound.
Her touch was gentle and full of concern.
Just then, a series of mechanical notifications sounded in his mind:
[Host soul integration complete.] [Life Origin Canon System activated!]
Veylin's eyes lit up. A transmigrator's cheat? He focused his attention on himself.
[Weilin Klein] [Level: none] [Bloodlines: Song of the Forest (silver tier) 23%, Primordial Furnace Core (silver tier) 10%, Lifeweave (gold tier) 7%, mixed bloodlines 60%] [Abilities: none] [Overall assessment: bloodlines are mixed and mutually incompatible. Soul power is abnormal. Current soul strength is sufficient to attempt bloodline purification.] [Purification potion: primary ingredient: 5 grams of primordial blood crystal powder. Auxiliary ingredients: 3 three-year-old tranquility flowers, 10 milliliters of Thorn-Tailed Scorpion venom, 200 milliliters of purified water.] [Preparation method: ...]
Lines of translucent information floated before his eyes.
Bloodlines... this world's version of genetic sequences?
Veylin thought this might be an interesting research subject.
Wasn't the nobles' fanatical worship of bloodlines simply the primitive fear of unknown powers found among people in an age of ignorance?
But primordial blood crystal powder...
According to the original owner's memories, primordial blood crystals were hard currency among this world's nobility. They contained pure Ether energy and were extraordinarily precious.
Five grams represented an astronomical sum to him.
A knock came at the door, and his father, Kaman Klein, entered with his mother.
Kaman was Count Lane's younger brother, a noble from a collateral branch who had barely managed to awaken his bloodline. Looking at the bandage near Weilin's temple, he sighed heavily. "Weilin, bloodlines are bestowed by the will of the gods. You cannot force them into existence. You should accept the family's arrangements."
His mother silently nodded, her eyes red-rimmed.
After his parents left, Lilia brought a bowl of medicinal broth and watched him drink it.
"Earl Dawn will visit in person in three days." Lilia lowered her voice, her expression grave. "Several of our uncles favor annulling the engagement. Someone even suggested that an engagement like this is too valuable to waste, so our cousin Leonard should take your place. He has the greatest Bloodline Gift in the family's younger generation, making him a 'suitable match' for Countess Chenxi."
Leonard was the count's third son, four years younger than Weilin. He had competed with Weilin in everything since childhood, but Weilin's two failed bloodline activations had settled the contest once and for all. Over the past two years, Leonard had taken every opportunity to keep him down.
After Lilia left, Weilin sat alone beneath the lamplight. His forefinger unconsciously moved toward the bridge of his nose, as though a pair of glasses still rested there.
Bloodline purification, Diana, the broken engagement, Leonard.
...I have to prepare the purification potion as soon as possible, awaken my bloodline, and shed this "Bloodless" identity!
This was not merely about saving face. It was about securing a better life.
The system had already provided the most direct solution, but those five grams of primordial blood crystal powder loomed like a mountain.
His self-destructive behavior over the past few months had left him with little savings. He could still afford ordinary herbs, but what he had was a drop in the bucket compared with the price of primordial blood crystals.
"I have to find the ingredients, or... get enough Gold Suns," he murmured. "Data doesn't lie, but obtaining it is a practical problem."
Late that quiet night, Weilin searched the original owner's room, which was piled high with all kinds of notes. Though he had integrated the memories, that did not mean he could remember every detail.
Despite failing to awaken twice, the original owner had been almost obsessively devoted to bloodline knowledge, dreaming of changing his fate through learning. Although he had not lived to see a miracle, he had left Weilin a slim chance.
At last, tucked between the pages of a thick volume titled Study of Variant Bloodlines, Weilin found a small notebook. He opened it to the first page, where crooked handwriting read: "Thorn-Tailed Scorpion, low-tier magical beast. Could its tail-stinger venom stimulate dormant bloodlines? To be verified."
Veylin was surprised... the original owner's research had actually brought him to the threshold of changing his fate!
Veylin quickly leafed through the notebook, the memories in his mind growing clearer.
"Interesting," he murmured. "I'll have to start everything from scratch."