It was a strange feeling, living a life while sensing, deep down, that it was not the life you were supposed to have been born into.
Qin Yuan had felt that sensation for most of his life.
It was as if he had been dreaming through everything he experienced. Work. Sleep. Eating. Walking through crowded streets. Staring at the ceiling of his apartment after another ordinary day. None of it had been miserable, exactly. None of it had been unbearable. It had simply felt distant, like he was watching someone else live through his eyes.
And then one day, his eyes snapped open to a world he no longer knew.
He awoke with his left shoulder pressed between two strangers, his boots planted on cold alloy pavement, and a pale blue registration screen floating above his head.
A screen he had never once seen before.
It flickered.
CLEARBELL EASTERN PROVINCE — LICENSED EXOTIC BEAST COLLECTION MISSION
Temporary Labor Batch 77-C
Mission Grade: Low Common
Mortality Risk: Acceptable
Qin Yuan stared at those words for three silent breaths.
Then, before he could process anything, memories that did not belong to him poured into his head.
Jadefall City.
Clearbell Country.
Silvermist Continent.
Blue Meridian.
Qin Family.
Spirit Opening, 1st layer.
Ninth-Grade Spiritual Root.
Middle son of Qin Haoran and Qin Meiyue.
Protected because his parents were Origin Sky experts.
Ignored because he was trash.
His older sister, Qin Yuelan, was already a 4th layer Spirit Master at eighteen. That realm was so far above him that, compared to her, he might as well have been an ant.
His brother, Qin Tianze, had awakened a Mid Earthen Magical Core and was already being courted by Pale Moon Arcane College. With that kind of magical talent, Qin Tianze could crush him instantly without even treating him as a serious opponent.
Both of them were names people remembered.
Qin Yuan was not.
He was the family's quiet embarrassment.
Not crippled. Not worthless enough to abandon. Just average enough to be forgotten.
The old Qin Yuan had taken this mission because he needed contribution points. Low-level family members without academy sponsorship had to pay for their own cultivation stabilizers, Spirit Qi capsules, and training room time.
The Qin Family would not starve him.
But it would not invest in him either.
So here he was.
A 1st layer Spirit Opening cultivator standing in a public mission queue, waiting to risk his life for people who would not remember his name.
Qin Yuan lowered his eyes.
For a moment, the part of him that had once been Marcus Hale waited for panic to arrive.
It did not.
There was no screaming in his mind. No desperate denial. No shaking legs. No heroic speech about going home. Not a single reaction anyone would call normal.
Instead, he felt strangely awake.
More awake than he had ever felt on Earth.
On Earth, his life had been painfully average. He had been just a guy living in an apartment, working an average job, passing through average days. It was not as if he had hated that life. He had never felt some burning resentment toward it.
But he had never been able to feel strongly about it either.
Compared to that, fantasy had always pulled at him.
Especially the life of a Dao cultivator.
To him, it had never been only about experiencing a world beyond common sense. It had felt mysterious. Familiar, almost. As if the things written on mere pages should have been his life from the very beginning.
Most people would have dismissed that thought as delusional rambling.
Qin Yuan never had.
He could not dismiss it, even when he wanted to.
And now he was here.
In a body weaker than almost everyone around him.
In a world that could crush him.
In a line that might lead to his death.
Qin Yuan slowly exhaled.
Alright.
His gaze lifted.
The world around him was not ancient at all.
That was the first thing that truly caught his attention.
He had expected wooden halls, incense smoke, stone roads, maybe arrogant young masters in silk robes walking around with swords at their waists.
Instead, Jadefall City stretched into the distance like a dream of glass, steel, mist, and spiritual light.
Formation-powered towers rose into the clouds. Green spiritual mist drifted between high-rise buildings, curling around balconies and bridgeways like living silk. Flying sword lanes cut through the air in glowing bands, each path marked by floating traffic seals that pulsed whenever someone passed through. Spirit-energy vehicles hummed across elevated roads. Mana-screen billboards flashed advertisements for pill companies, academy entrance exams, body-tempering gyms, licensed duel arenas, and luxury wizard contracts.
Above everything, far away yet impossible to ignore, a pale green waterfall poured down from the cliffs behind the city. Its mist scattered the sunlight into soft jade-colored halos.
Qin Yuan stared at it for a second longer than necessary.
So fantasy got a technology update.
The line moved forward.
Around him stood people of every kind.
Some wore martial uniforms with sword emblems, saber badges, or sect marks embroidered on their sleeves. Their auras were thin but sharp, like needles wrapped in smoke. Obviously, these were martial cultivators.
Others wore long coats marked with glowing runes. A few held metal staffs, crystal rods, or floating spell tablets. Their eyes occasionally flashed with pale light, as if they were reading things in the air no one else could see.
Wizards, Qin Yuan guessed.
Then there were the body cultivators.
They were not hard to identify.
Some wore sleeveless combat vests despite the morning chill, their muscles dense and rippling beneath their skin. One woman had arms like polished bronze and a calm, heavy pressure around her that made nearby workers instinctively give her space. Another young man rolled his shoulders, and Qin Yuan heard something in his bones pop like stones cracking.
Body cultivators.
Or, according to this body's memories, Warriors.
Martial cultivators.
Wizards.
Warriors.
All standing in the same mission queue.
Qin Yuan felt the corner of his mouth almost move.
Very interesting.
"Next!"
The shout came from the front.
A gray-uniformed mission clerk stood beside a long weapons rack. Behind him, several armed instructors watched the temporary workers with bored expressions, as if they had already seen ten batches of frightened beginners that morning and expected half of them to disappoint.
A red sign floated above them.
SELECT STANDARD MISSION EQUIPMENT
PRACTICE TIME: FIFTEEN MINUTES
DAMAGED EQUIPMENT COSTS WILL BE DEDUCTED FROM PAYMENT
Qin Yuan moved with the line.
His body remembered what to do, so he let it guide him.
The old Qin Yuan had done small missions before. Herb sorting. Delivery work. Spirit warehouse lifting. Beast-cleaning labor.
Nothing impressive.
Nothing involving direct danger unless someone was unlucky.
This mission was different.
Exotic beast collection sounded clean.
The memory attached to it was much simpler.
Go outside the city.
Help capture or kill low-level beasts.
Bring back usable materials.
Do not die.
A young man in front of Qin Yuan chose a compact spirit rifle. The weapon unfolded with a sharp click, silver lines lighting across its barrel.
Another picked a reinforced spear.
A nervous girl chose a shock baton.
A wizard apprentice selected a cheap staff with three cracked mana stones embedded near the tip.
Then Qin Yuan reached the rack.
The clerk glanced at his bracelet.
"Qin Yuan. 1st layer Spirit Opening. Martial path. Low combat record." His tone was flat, already bored. "Recommendation: spirit pistol or defensive baton."
Qin Yuan looked over the weapons.
There were guns.
Better than Earth's guns, from the look of them. Compact. Elegant. Powered by small Spirit Qi cartridges. Some had formation grooves along the barrel. Others looked as if they could fire condensed energy bolts.
There were also swords, sabers, spears, axes, staves, shields, chain blades, talisman launchers, and something that looked like a folding crossbow mixed with a drone controller.
For a moment, common sense told him to pick the gun.
He had never used a sword on Earth. He had never fought a monster. This body had some basic training, but nothing impressive.
A gun would give him range.
Range meant safety.
Safety meant survival.
Qin Yuan's fingers hovered near the spirit pistol.
Then stopped.
A memory rose.
No.
Not a memory.
Something closer to an image. A vivid scene from another life.
An unfathomable expert standing above the heavens, wielding everything beneath the sky, ushering forth a force that could bring anyone down to their knees.
The sensation was too strange.
Too real.
Too lifelike to be called delusion.
Was a gun the safe choice?
Of course.
But Qin Yuan's entire being felt a pull toward a path he was supposed to step onto.
His eyes swept across the rack and locked onto the swords.
Most of the blades were standard training-grade weapons. Not precious artifacts. Not sect treasures. Just durable mission swords with simple formation reinforcement.
He picked one.
The clerk raised an eyebrow.
"You sure?"
Qin Yuan weighed the sword in his hand.
It was heavier than he expected. The old Qin Yuan's wrist almost dipped before he steadied it.
"I'll try it during practice," Qin Yuan said calmly. "If it doesn't feel right, I'll switch to a gun."
The clerk snorted.
"At least you're not completely stupid. Practice area three."
Qin Yuan nodded and walked away.
Several people nearby glanced at him once, then lost interest.
Average body.
Average cultivation.
Average weapon.
Average family branch child.
Nobody cared.
That suited Qin Yuan perfectly.
Practice area three was a square platform covered by transparent defensive glass. Thin white lines formed formation grids beneath his boots, pulsing faintly with each step he took.
A screen appeared before him.
STANDARD MISSION SWORD — BASIC BALANCE CALIBRATION
BEGINNER PRACTICE MODE AVAILABLE
Qin Yuan ignored the screen for the moment and walked toward the corner where fewer people could see him.
He lifted the sword.
Awkward.
His grip was too tight. His shoulders were stiff. The blade dragged slightly when he moved.
The old Qin Yuan's body had learned basic martial forms, but it had learned them the way a bored student memorized answers before an exam.
No depth.
No hunger.
No life.
Qin Yuan stared at the blade.
A thought rushed into his mind like hunger.
Do I have one?
The thought came naturally.
He had read enough stories to know how this was supposed to go.
Golden finger.
System.
Ancient inheritance.
Mysterious ring.
Old grandpa in the soul.
He waited.
Nothing happened.
A few meters away, someone sighed deeply as their spear slipped from their hands and clanged against the platform.
Qin Yuan remained still.
Then he closed his eyes.
Not because he expected magic.
Because panic was useless.
Complaining was useless.
If there was no golden finger, then he had a sword, a weak body, and fifteen minutes.
So he would use the fifteen minutes.
He adjusted his breathing.
Spirit Qi moved faintly through his body.
Rough.
Thin.
Scattered.
It passed through his skin and flesh like cold mist leaking through cracked pipes. He did not fully understand it, but the body remembered the sensation.
Qin Yuan focused.
Not on becoming powerful.
Not on shocking the world.
Only on one thing.
Raise the sword.
Cut down.
Raise the sword.
Cut down.
Make the second swing cleaner than the first.
His arms moved.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
On the seventh swing, something changed.
A cold blue screen opened in his vision.
Focused Growth Condition Met.
Soul Compatibility Confirmed.
Unlimited Talent System Awakening...