Chương 18: He Shouldn’t Be Here (1/3)

The math checked out perfectly, reflecting the ruthless exponential scaling of the Daoless vessel.

Execute it.

This time, the biological refinement washed over his entire frame in a synchronized, harmonious wave—not the isolated, bone-deep pressure of before, but a totality of transformation that spread through every interconnected system at once.

Because his body was finally catching up to the density he had forced onto his skeleton during the boss fight, the tendons in his arms and chest pulled incredibly taut, fibers braiding together like steel cable drawn through industrial looms. The sensation was precise, mechanical—tissue reorganizing itself with surgical efficiency, no wasted motion, no excess heat.

His calves tightened visibly beneath the frayed hem of his cloak, every muscle compacting into coiled springs that pressed against the interior of his boots with newfound, restrained pressure.

The black-iron vambrace on his reconstructed forearm creaked faintly as the limb swelled just slightly beneath it, pressing against the metal with enough force that the ancient rivets groaned in protest. The sound was soft, nearly inaudible beneath the array's hum, but unmistakable—metal yielding fractionally to flesh that had become something closer to forged iron than mortal tissue.

He packed on terrifyingly dense microfiber muscle without increasing his overall bulk, maintaining the lean, whipcord frame of a reconnaissance operative. The transformation occurred at the cellular level—fibers compressing, cross-linking, weaving into architectures that defied normal human physiology. His shoulders settled slightly broader, but the change was subtle—functional, not ornamental. The heavy straw cloak hung the same as before, concealing the transformation beneath its rain-stained, mud-crusted folds.

His visual acuity sharpened dramatically. The individual motes of ancient dust drifting through the dark shaft suddenly moved lazily across his vision, easily trackable—each particle rendered in perfect clarity against the darkness, their trajectories predictable, their descent smooth and measurable. He could count the striations in the bedrock walls as they slid past, see the hairline fractures in stone that had stood for centuries, trace the mineral veins threading through rock like frozen lightning.

The faint golden glow of the runes beneath his boots seemed brighter now, each character crisp and distinct, the brush strokes of whatever ancient hand had carved them visible in perfect detail despite the dim light.

His senses felt surgically precise. The hum of the array no longer rattled his teeth—it registered as a clean, measurable vibration at 42 Hz, a frequency he could feel resonating through the platform's stone and into the bones of his feet with mathematical clarity.

The cold air moving past his face carried trace scents he hadn't noticed before: old iron oxidizing slowly in the shaft's stale atmosphere, burnt ash settled into porous stone over decades or centuries, and something faintly metallic from the shaft walls themselves—perhaps copper, perhaps something rarer embedded in the bedrock.

The sheer, terrifying physical force now coiled in his limbs finally felt entirely balanced—no longer a stolen weapon bolted awkwardly onto an inadequate frame, but an integrated system where skeleton, tendon, and muscle existed in perfect equilibrium.

His left hand flexed once, slowly. The reconstructed forearm moved with perfect mechanical efficiency, no lag, no resistance—just smooth, controlled power flowing from shoulder to fingertip without deviation or tremor. The vambrace bit harder into his flesh, but the discomfort was distant, irrelevant.

His right hand mirrored it. Both felt like they could crush bone without effort, fold steel, tear through solid wood with the same ease a man might rip wet paper.

He was, mathematically and physically, the absolute apex of what a human vessel could achieve before igniting a core, a Golden Core or what it was called.

Well...

[ATTRIBUTES UPDATED] [Physique: 39 | Agility: 39 | Might: 39] [All parameters at Tier-1 Mortal Limit.] …

A few minutes later, the air began to change.

The suffocating, sulfurous chill of the abyss faded beneath him, gradually replaced by the sharp sting of freezing rain and the bitter, heavy scent of burnt Daoist incense drifting through the darkness above—a smell both acrid and sweet, thick with resins and herbs that clung to the back of his throat. The Ascension Array rose with that same deep, resonant hum—slow, inexorable, ancient—breaking through the surface like a surfacing leviathan of carved stone pushing through the boundary between underworld and earth.

The slab emerged seamlessly into an ancient stone pavilion carved with faded celestial sigils, their lines worn nearly smooth by centuries of rain and neglect—what might once have been dragons or phoenixes now reduced to vague, serpentine suggestions in weathered granite. Ghostly green flames danced silently inside massive bronze incense cauldrons stationed at its four corners, casting wavering shadows across the worn flagstones.

The firelight reflected dully off the rain-slick stone, illuminating the landing zone in cold, spectral green that gave every surface an unsettling, corpse-like pallor.

Shi Yan stepped off the formation, boots meeting solid ground with a quiet, grounding impact.

The freezing rain hit him like a wall—needle-sharp and relentless, soaking through the outer layers of his straw cloak within seconds. Each droplet struck with stinging force, driven nearly horizontal by gusting wind that howled between the pavilion's open archways.

The damp cold bit differently here: not the subterrane chill of stone and miasma, but the wet, clinging misery of mountain weather turned foul—the kind of cold that seeped through fabric and settled into joints, that turned fingers numb and made breath steam in thick plumes. Above him, the heavens were buried beneath endless, suffocating layers of ash-gray clouds that churned sluggishly, blotting out whatever sun might have existed beyond. The sky pressed down like a coffin lid.

Funeral smoke and cold mountain mist drifted between towering black pagodas, whose rotting wooden frames leaned precariously over the maze of narrow streets below. The structures loomed like dying giants, their foundations undermined by time and neglect, their upper stories tilting at angles that defied structural logic. Dim crimson lanterns swayed wildly beneath curved, tiled eaves, their chains creaking faintly against the wind—metal groaning against metal in rhythmic protest.

Blood-colored light trembled across rain-soaked stone paths and flickered over the hunched, miserable figures of rag-clothed mortals hiding desperately from the violent storm—pressed into doorways, crouched beneath overhangs, heads down and shoulders hunched against the deluge. Some clutched threadbare blankets. Others simply endured, empty-eyed and shivering.

The city felt ancient. Oppressive. Sick. As though it had been slowly rotting for centuries beneath the uncaring gaze of silent gods—a place where suffering had calcified into architecture, where every stone remembered cruelty. This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

Directly ahead stood a colossal archway of blackened ironwood, heavily bound in aged bronze rivets green with verdigris that streaked down the wood like infected wounds. Two enormous stone braziers guarded its entrance, their ghostly green fire roaring violently, completely unfazed by the freezing rain beating down upon them. The flames hissed where water struck the bronze rims, but never dimmed—fed by something other than mundane fuel, something spiritual and inexhaustible.

Four elite combatants of the Iron-Blood Prefecture stood beneath the archway's shelter, clad in immaculate, silver-scaled lamellar armor that gleamed even in the storm's gloom. Rain beaded and rolled off the polished metal without leaving a mark, the scales fitted so precisely that water found no seam to exploit.

They held ornate, crescent-moon halberds—weapons far too pristine to have ever seen the filth and horror of the abyss below, their blades mirror-bright and etched with flowing script that caught the brazier light. Their faces were hard, clean-shaven, eyes narrowed with the reflexive suspicion of men who dealt in threats they never personally touched. Their stances were parade-ground perfect, bodies relaxed but ready, hands resting near—but not on—their weapons.

All four turned their attention toward the array's arrival, heads swiveling in unison with practiced coordination.

Shi Yan stood completely still for a fraction of a second, rain streaming down the edges of his hood in steady rivulets, gloved hands loose at his sides, water pooling in the creases of his palms.

A true fantasy world. A living Xianxia... exactly as the novels described.

A faint glint sparked deep inside his dead eyes as the corner of his mouth curved—barely visible beneath the shadow of his cloak, a ghost of expression that never reached the rest of his features.

It was one thing to read about massive Daoist cities and ancient magical sects on a glowing screen in a barracks bunker, surrounded by the familiar stink of gun oil and instant coffee; it was an entirely different, overwhelming reality to feel the freezing, Qi-laden rain of that world soaking into his own skin, to smell incense that had never existed on Earth, to see architecture that bent probability itself.

For a single heartbeat, he felt a genuine, electric thrill of excitement—the dark appreciation of a professional hunter discovering an infinitely vast, pristine new hunting ground full of prey that had never learned to fear his particular brand of violence.

But the emotion lasted less than a second.

Focus. You haven't come here as a tourist.

Shi Yan immediately hunched his broad shoulders forward, deliberately breaking his flawless military posture—collapsing the line of his spine, rounding his back, letting his head sink between his shoulder blades. He let his heavy, mud-stained straw cloak drape awkwardly over his frame, the soaked fabric clinging in uneven folds that perfectly obscured the terrifyingly dense musculature of his torso.

He lowered his head, sinking into himself, adopting the exhausted, broken, and defeated posture of a lowly mortal cursed to shovel dead bodies for a living—weight shifted onto one hip, knees slightly bent, every line of his body screaming fatigue and resignation. His breathing turned shallow, ragged, the inhales catching slightly as though his lungs were damaged or weak. His hands hung limp at his sides, fingers slack and unresponsive.

"Halt!"

One of the heavily armored guards barked the command, his voice dripping with disdain as he stepped forward from beneath the archway's shelter into the rain's edge, drops beginning to spatter against his polished pauldrons. He pinched his nose aggressively beneath his silver helmet, face twisting into an expression of visceral disgust—lips pulled back, nostrils flared.

"Heavens, the stench of the abyss on you is revolting. State your business, sewer rat."

Shi Yan didn't speak. He offered no protest and made no eye contact—kept his gaze fixed downward at the rain-pooled flagstones, shoulders curled further inward as though the verbal abuse was expected, routine, unremarkable. He simply raised a trembling, mud-stained hand with agonizing slowness, silently offering the bone-carved Cadaver Writ to the guard. The tremor in his fingers was perfect—not theatrical, just the natural shake of someone chronically exhausted, malnourished, broken by labor that never ended.

The armored man scoffed, refusing to touch the grimy bone tally as though it carried plague. Instead, he pulled a polished, hexagonal Daoist mirror-talisman from his sealed belt pouch with obvious care, its jade rim glinting faintly in the ghostly green firelight—a tool worth more than a corpse-handler's entire lifetime of wages. The jade was cool green, flawless, carved with minute patterns that seemed to shift slightly when viewed from different angles.

"A corpse-handler. Disgusting. Hold still."

The guard swept the glowing spiritual mirror over Shi Yan's cloaked body in a perfunctory arc, his mouth curled in distaste, moving the artifact with practiced but disinterested efficiency—close enough to scan, far enough to avoid proximity to the perceived filth. The magical artifact was designed to scan for illicitly harvested spirit stones, dangerous artifacts, or hidden magical cultivation signatures—anything that might slip past checkpoint security wrapped in rags and corpse-stink.

The mirror's surface pulsed faintly with each pass, jade framework warming slightly in the guard's grip as spiritual circuits activated.

The mirror reflected absolutely nothing.

Its surface remained entirely dull and gray, like tarnished steel under overcast skies—no glow, no resonance, no reaction whatsoever.

Because Shi Yan's spiritual root had been violently ripped out in the abyss, his vessel was entirely Daoless. The magical artifact was calibrated to detect the flow of Qi and the heat of a cultivator's Dantian—the spiritual furnace that burned at the core of every practitioner who had ignited their cultivation base, a constant ember of spiritual energy that marked them as separate from mundane humanity.

It simply lacked the operational framework to read the sheer, non-magical physical density of Shi Yan's Tier-1 peak attributes—muscle and bone that had been forged through system mechanics entirely orthogonal to this world's spiritual laws.

Because he projected no aura, emitted no spiritual heat, and possessed no karma tether to the local laws of this world's Heavens, the mirror registered Shi Yan as nothing more than a mundane, broken, utterly useless mortal—just another suffering wretch ground beneath the machinery of sect hierarchy.

"Blank," the guard muttered, putting the mirror away with a sneer of profound disgust, sliding it back into the sealed pouch with exaggerated care to avoid touching Shi Yan or his filthy token any longer than necessary.