Dawn in the Artifact Graveyard didn’t arrive gently.
It bled through the toxic smog like a bruised, sickly stain, lighting up the endless mountains of rust and shattered arrays one dull shade at a time.
Inside his shack, Lin Tian sat cross-legged on the mattress, the beast core from last night resting in his palm. Marble-sized, pulsing with a faint, sickly green glow.
He tried channeling the meager Qi in his meridians to absorb it. A sharp, stinging pain shot up his arm almost instantly, breaking the connection.
"System." He wiped cold sweat from his forehead. "Analyze this beast core."
[Ding! Scanning Target...]
The violet-and-gold interface snapped into view.
[Target: Low-Grade Corpse Rat Beast Core]
[Purity: 12%]
[Toxicity Level: Severe. Contains high amounts of corrosive rust and localized radiation from the Artifact Graveyard.]
[System Advice: Direct absorption by a Qi Gathering Level 1 Host will result in severe meridian damage and eventual Qi Deviation. This item is only suitable for trading or refining into low-grade poison powder.]
He sighed, dropping the core into the pouch at his waist.
Back on Earth, a failed function meant a red error log and a five-minute fix. Here, a failed absorption meant burning out the only body he had, with no backup save file waiting.
Unrefined fuel poured straight into a cracked engine. His body couldn’t handle raw power yet — it needed something processed first. Pills. Pure spirit stones. Anything that wouldn’t blow out his meridians on contact.
The old scavenger boy’s memories offered nothing useful here. He’d never held a beast core worth more than scrap trade value, let alone known what refining actually required.
Lin Tian’s own knowledge wasn’t much better yet — but at least he understood the shape of the problem. A resource pipeline, broken at the refinement stage. He needed to find where that pipeline started.
He strapped the wrist-blade back under his sleeve and stepped out into the morning air.
Not scavenging today. He walked away from the prime garbage mountains, toward the towering boundary that split this slum from the true center of power.
Thirty minutes through the mud and junk of Morning Sun Village, and the structure finally loomed ahead of him.
Every scavenger he passed on the way gave the wall the same brief, resentful glance before dropping their eyes back to the ground. Nobody stared at it for long. Staring too long just reminded you how far away it was.
The Boundary Wall of the Crimson Nimbus Sect.
Nearly a thousand feet of seamless white jade and reinforced steel, untouched by rust or decay. Azure arrays pulsed across its surface, projecting a shimmering barrier that climbed straight into the sky.
Nothing in the Graveyard came close to this kind of craftsmanship. Even the wealthiest scavengers who’d hoarded intact artifacts for years couldn’t touch what a sect threw into a single defensive wall.
It wasn’t just a wall. It was the line between the strong and everyone left to rot below them.
On his side, the sky stayed a permanent gray-crimson smear, choked by garbage-ship exhaust.
Past the barrier, the sky over the sect was crystal blue.
Through the shimmering wall, he watched inner disciples cut across that clean sky — some on sleek flying swords trailing rainbow light, others mounted on immortal cranes and roaring fire crows. Silk robes, effortless movement. Gods, by comparison.
None of them had ever touched a beast core with their bare hands and nearly fried their own meridians for it. None of them needed to.
"System." His eyes narrowed on a young master laughing as he soared past on a golden sword. "Breakdown of the Crimson Nimbus Sect’s hierarchy."
[Ding! Accessing local database... Compiling Sect Hierarchy...]
[The Crimson Nimbus Sect is built upon a strict, unforgiving pyramid of power.]
[Outer Disciples (The Base): Comprise 80% of the sect. Individuals like the Host who possess poor talent. Relegated to menial labor, scavenging in the Artifact Graveyard, and fighting for scraps. Considered expendable cannon fodder.]
[Inner Disciples (The Elite): Comprise 15% of the sect. Cultivation geniuses with high Spiritual Root Development Quotients and abundant resources. Live in luxury, practicing advanced martial techniques.]
[Core Disciples & Elders (The Apex): Comprise the top 5%. Heavily Matriarchal. Powerful, mature women dominate the highest peaks, controlling resources, artifacts, and life-and-death authority over lower ranks.]
He absorbed the structure the way he’d once read an org chart before a corporate restructuring. A rat in the dirt, dragons overhead.
The percentages weren’t the interesting part. The interesting part was where the System’s target pool sat — buried entirely inside that top five percent, behind the wall, behind the guards, behind a thousand years of accumulated cultivation he had none of.
Eighty percent at the bottom, fighting each other over scraps a Core Elder wouldn’t bother stepping over. Fifteen percent living like royalty for the crime of being born with better meridians. Five percent that owned everything, including the lives of the other ninety-five.
"Stay in the Graveyard fighting mutated rats for garbage-grade cores, and I never break past Level 1."
Worse — the System needed him close to powerful women to trigger Synergy. He couldn’t touch a Matriarch from outside a wall he wasn’t even allowed to approach.
He looked toward the misty peaks in the distance, where the Elders and Matriarchs supposedly resided, invisible from here.
Somewhere up there was a woman who could end his life without breaking stride, and somewhere up there was also, according to the System, someone whose favor could remake his entire existence. He had no way to tell which he’d find first.
"Can’t target what I can’t reach." He needed sect resources. Legitimate ones. A door into the hierarchy, not just a hole to dig through.
His eyes landed on a fortified gate cut into the base of the wall, already busy with movement — the entrance to the Outer Sect Task Hall.
Scavengers gave the gate a wide, wary berth as they passed, the way people on Earth used to avoid making eye contact with police cars. Not because the Task Hall itself was dangerous. Because everyone who walked through it either came back with something worth having, or didn’t come back at all.
The sect didn’t hand resources out for free. Disciples earned Contribution Points through official missions, and those points bought everything that mattered — spirit stones, low-grade pills, technique manuals.
Even an Outer Disciple with zero talent could climb, in theory, if he completed enough missions and survived long enough to cash in the points. Most didn’t survive long enough. That was the filter, and it was working exactly as the sect intended.
He pulled his windbreaker tighter. Dried blood from last night had stiffened into dark patches along the sleeve, but his eyes stayed clear, sharp, calculating.
The soft mentality he’d carried over from Earth was already half-buried. What remained had to go.
"No more picking through garbage." His voice dropped, flat and certain. "I need resources. I need access to the women who control them. This is the first door."
He wasn’t naive enough to think the Task Hall would be easy. Outer Disciples died on low-tier missions all the time — that was half the reason the sect kept handing them out to the desperate and the disposable. But dying slowly in a garbage heap wasn’t a safer bet either. At least this way the risk bought something.
He adjusted the blade hidden beneath his sleeve and turned his back on the Graveyard, walking toward the gates of the Task Hall.
Whatever arrogant young masters or lethal missions waited past that gate, he was done being the thing this world threw away.
The gate loomed closer with every step, its iron surface etched with sect insignia worn smooth by generations of desperate hands pushing through. He didn’t slow down.