The ancient town of Yunyang was crowded and noisy.
It was afternoon, and the streets were packed with people. Food vendors stood along both sides of the road, calling out to customers.
"Fresh steamed buns! Two copper coins for two!"
"Hot meat skewers! Come and have a look!"
"Fresh noodles! One bowl for only three copper coins!"
Their voices mixed with the sounds of people talking, bowls clinking, and footsteps moving through the crowded streets.
The air itself smelled rich and heavy, saturated with the mouthwatering aromas of sizzling oils, roasting meats, and steaming broths.
But only a short distance away from the busy street was a dark and dirty alley.
There, everything was quiet.
A young man sat against a damp brick wall.
The smell of food reached him from the street.
His stomach growled loudly.
He slowly looked toward the food stalls before lowering his head again.
On a dirty piece of cloth in front of him were only three copper coins.
He was a beggar. His appearance was utterly wretched.
He was dressed in filthy, threadbare rags—the kind of tattered garments worn by the lowest, most destitute beggars, patched a hundred times over and reeking of dust and despair.
"Is this even a life...?" he thought bitterly, a hollow, self-deprecating laugh trapped in his dry throat.
He didn’t even have enough money for a proper meal.
"Is this really my life now...?"
Chen Feng gave a bitter laugh.
His face was thin, and his body looked weak from days of hunger.
Yet there was one strange thing about him.
A pair of modern glasses rested on his nose.
They were something that clearly didn’t belong in this ancient world.
"Is this really what my life has become?"
Chen Feng lowered his head.
Before all of this happened, he had been an ordinary student on Earth.
He had been studying engineering at Shanghai Jiao Tong University and was one of the better students in his class.
His life had been simple.
He attended lectures, studied in the library, ate with his friends, and thought about his future.
Then, one afternoon, everything changed.
His professor was giving a lecture when a strange tear suddenly appeared in the middle of the classroom.
A glowing blue portal opened.
Before anyone could react, it swallowed Chen Feng and the other students.
When they woke up, they were no longer in their classroom.
They were inside a huge, dark castle.
There were no normal doors or windows.
Only endless corridors stretched through the castle.
And the worst part was that their friends began disappearing one after another.
Whenever the group became separated, they would later find another person lying motionless somewhere inside the castle.
They spent dayss trying to survive that nightmare.
Eventually, only a small group of 20 students managed to find a way out.
But freedom didn’t come.
The moment they escaped the castle, they found themselves in a huge and dangerous forest.
They struggled through the wilderness for days.
In the end, only nine or ten of Chen Feng’s friends survived.
At least, that was what he thought.
When they finally reached the edge of the forest, the sky suddenly darkened.
Several figures appeared in the air.
Hovering in mid-air were terrifying figures wrapped in celestial energy—beings who called themselves "Cultivators."
They were riding on gleaming flying swords and wielding incomprehensible magic artifacts that defied every law of physics I had ever learned.
Their cold, ruthless gazes swept over us.
Before we could even blink, an invisible force yanked my friends into the air. Streams of strange, glowing energy leaked out of their bodies, swirling toward the cultivators.
Chen Feng had never seen anything like them.
He felt as though someone was looking directly into his memories and soul.
Then one of the cultivators looked at him.
His expression immediately turned cold.
"This one has no talent. He’s useless."
The cultivator then looked toward the others.
"But these other nine... their natural bone structures and meridians are overflowing with potential!"
Panic erupted. The cultivators began to argue fiercely among themselves over my friends, their eyes glowing with greed.
"That one possesses the Heavenly Thunder Physique!"
"Move aside! This girl has the Nirvana Ice Meridians!"
Before my eyes, my remaining friends were snatched away like prized cattle, carried off into the clouds toward a world I could never reach. I was left behind, kneeling in the dirt, trembling and entirely alone.
No one cared about him.
No one even looked back.
Chen Feng was left alone.
When they left, I was stranded outside that monstrous forest with nowhere to go.
By sheer luck, after wandering for days, I stumbled upon this mortal town. At least the people here spoke chinese, much like back home, so there was no language barrier.
But that was where my luck ended. I had no money, no connections, and no survival skills suited for this brutal world.
When I tried to do basic physical labor, I quickly realized I was hopelessly outmatched; the local human laborers here were far stronger, tougher, and more powerful than average humans on Earth.
I couldn’t even secure a job as a manual laborer.
So he turned to the only thing he knew.
Engineering.
He began making simple mechanical devices and selling them in the market.
For a short time, things actually improved.
Then the Black Tiger Gang noticed him.
His small business was destroyed overnight.
They dragged him away and forced him to work for them.
For two years, Chen Feng was forced to build mechanical devices for the gang.
He was given little food and almost no rest.
Eventually, after their people learned everything they could from him, they had no reason to keep him anymore.
They threw him back onto the streets.
He had nothing.
Five years.
It had been five years since Chen Feng had arrived in this cultivation world.
For five years, he had struggled like a stray dog.
Then He had joined the Beggar Sect, but even there, only Martial Artists were allowed to advance through the ranks.
People like him were nothing more than ordinary beggars at the very bottom of the sect.
Their only job was to sit on the streets and listen to the conversations of people around them, gathering whatever information they could.
For doing this, he received only ten or fifteen Copper Coins a month.
That amount was barely enough to survive.
To make matters worse, he was also required to hand over most of the money he earned from begging.
This Beggar Sect is seriously rotten.
He wanted to leave, but once a beggar joined the sect, they were not allowed to leave, so he run away.
Now, he sat alone in a dirty alley with only a few copper coins to his name.
Chen Feng stared at the coins in front of him.
They weren’t even enough for a proper meal.
He reached into his pocket and found a few more coins.
With all of them together, he could probably buy a few cheap steamed buns.
That might be enough to get him through another day.
But Chen Feng didn’t feel hungry anymore.
He looked at the busy street.
People were laughing, talking, eating, and going about their lives.
No one noticed the young man sitting alone in the alley.
For the first time in five years, Chen Feng felt completely tired.
He had lost everything.
His friends.
His old life.
His future.
And now, even his hope was disappearing.
He slowly closed his eyes.
"Maybe... this is where it ends."
Suddenly, a young girl walked over and sat down not far from Chen Feng. She, too, was dressed in filthy, tattered rags that marked her as a beggar.
She was extremely thin, so thin that her bones were clearly visible beneath her skin. Her face was pale and exhausted, making it look as though she hadn’t eaten properly in months.
She kept looking across the street at the shops where delicious food was being prepared.
Her eyes were filled with longing.
Then—
Grrrrr...
A loud growl came from her stomach.
Chen Feng noticed her.
A faint, bitter smile touched Chen Feng’s lips. He reached into his pocket, feeling the seven copper coins hidden inside, and looked down at the three worn copper coins resting on his own cloth.
"I’ve never done a single good deed in my past life on Earth, nor in this miserable world," he thought, his gaze drifting down to the rough rope he had prepared for his own end.
"Since I’m going to die anyway, why not do one final, small good deed before I go?"
He stood up, gathered the copper coins from his cloth and his pocket, and walked over, quietly placing the coins onto the cloth spread out in front of the girl.
The girl froze in sheer shock. She blinked up at Chen Feng, her lips parting in confusion. She couldn’t wrap her head around it: a fellow beggar, sharing the exact same miserable fate, was giving away his hard-earned coins to her?
Chen Feng offered her a gentle, weary smile and said softly, "Go buy yourself something to eat."
He turned around to leave when suddenly—
DING!