Lu Xuan lifted his gaze to his second uncle, who sat there calmly sipping his tea.
He was not asking out of greed.
He was asking because he had spent thirteen years watching his family’s name be eaten alive, and a part of him... a stubborn, foolish part... still wanted to hear someone say it out loud.
"If I am to leave... what about the family assets left behind by my parents?"
Lu Tianhe held his cup and blew gently across the surface.
His expression was one of pure confusion.
"Assets? What assets?"
He said it so naturally that, for a second, Lu Xuan almost doubted his own memory.
Then an elder spoke up, his voice sharp with false indignation.
"Xuan’er, you are out of line for saying that. The little bit your parents left behind... over these years, you’ve eaten the Lu Family’s food and slept under the Lu Family’s roof.
When you were five years old and critically ill, how many rare herbs did we use to save your life? If we actually tallied it up, the Lu Family has subsidized you quite a bit.
And you still have the gall to mention assets?"
Lu Xuan listened without a word.
His father, the former Patriarch, had died in battle fighting for this very family.
The vast fortune he left behind had been swallowed whole by these people... without a trace.
And now they were sitting here, in front of his father’s tablets, telling his son that he owed them.
As for that "critical illness" at age five?
That was the day they had forcibly extracted his heart vein to strengthen Lu Hao’s martial foundation.
The very same day the old Lu Xuan died... and a new soul took over his body.
Yes, Lu Xuan is not from this world, he is from Earth
On Earth, he had been an orphan once, no parents to call on holidays, no one will look twice at him when passing by.
He had learned very early that love was something that he could never have, so he worked.
Nine to five... then ten, then midnight. Reports, meetings, endless screens under cold white light.
Career was the only thing that never left him, he told himself that was enough for him.
Then one ordinary morning, a doctor looked at his scans for a very long time, and did not look him in the eye.
Cancer.
It had already spread too far, he sat in the hospital corridor, holding a piece of paper, waiting to feel something. Fear. Grief. Anger.
There was only a quiet kind of emptiness, he had died the way he had lived... alone, in a clean white room, with the machines humming softly beside him.
He remembered thinking, in that last breath, if there is another life...
I want to live it for someone and live till eternity.
And then he woke up burning with fever, in a small child’s body, the soul of a lonely man... inside the broken body of a boy that everyone had already given up on.
At that time, they had used cheap medicinal herbs just to keep him alive. Not out of mercy... but so that no one would ask questions.
And now they called that a favor.
It was utterly cruel.
Since that day, Lu Xuan had been filled with resentment. It had grown in him like a second heartbeat.
But he had never let a single word of it slip past his lips.
Over the past decade, he had long since learned the art of endurance.
Because he knew one truth better than anyone.
Anger without the strength to back it up would only bring about his own destruction, dead men cannot take revenge.
In this hall alone, the number of people who could kill him with a wave of their hand was beyond counting.
Even the servants could crush him.
So he lowered his head, not because he had given up, but because a wise man’s revenge knows no deadline.
"I understand."
The words felt like defeat.
Lu Xuan turned around and walked out of the Ancestral Hall.
Behind him, Lu Hao’s laughter followed like a shadow, he did not look back.
He did not look at his father’s tablet either. If he had, he knew he would not have been able to keep his face still.
He only walked, one step after another, until the light of the doorway fell across his face.
And then... just as his foot crossed the threshold...
[Ding!]
Lu Xuan froze.
[Lazy Cultivation System activated.]
[Host: Lu Xuan.]
[Core Mechanism: Cultivation Techniques are mastered instantly upon reading. Automatic cultivation occurs during sleep.]
[Efficiency: Sleeping for 4 hours ≈ 1 year of hard cultivation for a mortal.]
[Current Status: No Cultivation Technique × No Sleep = Cannot cultivate.]
[Suggestion: Obtain a Cultivation Technique first. Then sleep immediately.]
A System?!
The anger burning in Lu Xuan’s chest had not yet faded.
And suddenly... a dream come true appeared right before his eyes.
He had been trapped in this world for over a decade. Over a decade of swallowing insults. Over a decade of lying awake in the dark, waiting for a miracle that never came.
And now... finally... after so long...
His golden finger had arrived.
He thought that if this day ever came, he would cry.
But he didn’t.
Over a decade of enduring in silence had robbed him of even that. The tears simply would not come, as if that part of him had died somewhere along the way.
So he did the only thing he knew how to do, he kept his face blank.
His breathing steady, he could not let anyone behind him notice anything unusual.
Not when the people who had crushed him for years were still standing just a few steps away.
He only let his eyes drift, slowly, to the translucent panel hovering in his vision.
It needed a Cultivation Technique to work.
But he did not even have the money to buy himself a meal, let alone a cultivation technique.
Still, he was not panicked.
He did not need to win today.
He only had to win one day.
So he would lay low. Find a technique. And then... sleep.
It sounded ridiculous, even to him.
But for the first time in his life, it sounded like a plan.
"A trash and an ugly woman... what a perfect match! Hahahaha!"
The laughter came from behind him, stabbing into his back like a blade.
He kept walking.
His fingers curled slowly at his sides. His nails bit into his palms until he could feel the warmth of his own blood.
But his steps did not slow.
Lu Xuan did not look back.
He simply carved two words deep into his heart.
Lu Hao.
He walked out of the estate grounds.