The local cultivator was an Arrogant Young Master type, the kind who smelled like incense, sandalwood, and a distinct lack of basic personal hygiene. He floated—or rather, hovered a few inches off the ground on a disc of shimmering, low-resolution purple light—and stared down at me as if I were a particularly offensive stain on his favorite rug.
"You," he sneered, his voice resonant with cultivated, echo-chamber arrogance. "You reek of filth and lack of purpose. Why are you blocking the path to the Sect's lower gate? Begone, commoner, before I erase your existence from this plane. My mercy is vast, but my patience is shorter than a mortal's lifespan."
I was currently kneeling in the mud, trying to figure out if I could steal his floating light-disc to use as a makeshift sled. It was hot, my knees were wet with what I desperately hoped was just dirty rainwater, and his interruption was not helping my concentration. I looked at the shimmering disc, noting the jagged, aliased edges of the light. Then I looked up at his face, which seemed to be suffering from a slight rendering lag around the eyebrows whenever he frowned.
"Listen, Discount Draco," I said, wiping a streak of thick, black mud off my ruined polyester cuff. "I don't have time for your monologue. Honestly, do you guys get a commission on word count for every syllable of arrogance you spout? Because if so, I respect the hustle, but otherwise, you're just wasting my time. Do you have a quest-giver anywhere near here? Or perhaps a shop that sells decent dress shirts? Because frankly, this whole experience is beneath my professional standards. I have a B-minus in Business Administration, you know. I shouldn't be negotiating with a guy wearing silk pajamas in the middle of a swamp."
His eyes narrowed to slits. The ambient air around him began to distort, a heat haze shimmering off his pristine robes. "You dare address the Outer Disciple of the Azure Cloud Sect with such insolence? Your meridians must be clogged with the sludge of your own ignorance. I am Wang Teng! My name strikes fear into the hearts of beasts!"
"Wang Teng?" I let out a dry, hacking laugh. "Seriously? The author didn't even try with your name, did they? That is the most generic, copy-pasted antagonist name in the history of eastern fantasy. I bet there are three other Wang Tengs within a five-mile radius, all of them waiting to get their teeth kicked in by some generic protagonist. Let me guess, your father is an elder, your grandfather is a retired grandmaster, and your cousin is a genius jade beauty who refuses to marry the main character?"
"Impudent dog! Die!"
He flicked his wrist. It was a gesture meant to be effortless, a display of refined, casual power. A whip of crackling, violet lightning lashed out at me, tearing through the air with a sound like a wet sheet being torn in half.
Now, under normal circumstances, a human being made of meat, bone, and a heavy dependency on processed caffeine would be turned into a pile of carbon ash. But my brain didn't register "magic." My brain registered the lightning as a very fast, very dangerous projectile, not unlike the delivery bikes that frequent the pavements of Canary Wharf.
I rolled to the left. It wasn't an elegant, wind-riding dodge. It was a desperate, mud-sprattering, shoulder-scraping dive that sent me face-first into another puddle. The lightning whip hit the stone wall behind me, shattering it into pixelated dust that floated in the air for a second before vanishing.
I didn't stop. As Wang Teng brought his hand back to strike again, I stood up and pointed a muddy, accusing finger directly at his face.
"Wait! Hold the phone!" I shouted. "Look at your stance! Your feet are practically glued together on that cheap nightlight you're floating on. You have zero leverage. If you strike me from that position, your recoil is going to push you backward because you're not grounded. And look at your left arm! Why is it folded behind your back? Is it cold? Are you hiding a sandwich? You're completely shutting off your lateral balance! It's a miracle you haven't tipped over already."
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
Wang Teng paused, his arm hovering in the air. "What... what nonsense is this? This is the Azure Cloud Lightning Stance! It has been passed down for ten generations! The left hand behind the back signifies the reserve of the immortal soul!"
"It signifies that you have no idea how basic physics works," I snapped, stepping forward. "You're venting energy from your left palm into your spine because you've blocked the channel with your own shoulder blade. It's sloppy. It's inefficient. Your qi-flow is literally looping in a circle around your armpit because your posture is so bad. If you were a boiler room, you'd have exploded three chapters ago. You're venting thirty percent of your heat through your left ear!"
"My... my ear?" Wang Teng's eyes widened. He involuntarily reached up with his right hand to touch his left ear, which was indeed slightly hot from the static discharge.
"Exactly!" I yelled, closing the distance. "And look at your breathing! You're inhaling through your nose but exhaling through your teeth. You're creating a massive backpressure in your lungs. If you try to cast another lightning bolt right now, the energy is going to route backward through your throat because you haven't cleared the exhaust path. You'll literally swallow your own spark!"
"I... I will?" Wang Teng's face turned pale. The violet aura around his hand began to flicker wildly. He tried to focus his mind, but my words were like a swarm of angry bees inside his head. He looked down at his floating disc, which was now wobbling violently. "No... the Azure Cloud Method is flawless... my master said..."
"Your master is a scam artist who probably wanted you out of his hair!" I shouted, stepping right into his space. I didn't use a secret technique. I just reached out and gave his extended elbow a sharp, downward tap—a basic leverage trick I'd seen a security guard use to disarm a drunk guy outside a pub.
With his focus completely shattered and his posture compromised, Wang Teng's qi misfired. A small spark of violet electricity shot out of his nose, and his floating disc vanished with a wet pop. He fell out of the air, landing face-first in the muddy puddle I had just dodged out of.
"My resonance!" Wang Teng wailed, scrambling in the mud, his pristine white robes instantly soaked in black filth. "My internal channels... they're blocked... the flow is reversed!"
"Yeah, go home and do some stretching," I muttered, shaking the mud off my hands. "And maybe read a book on basic kinetics. You're a walking health hazard."
Wang Teng scrambled to his feet, crying open-mouthed like a child who had just lost his balloon, and bolted down the path, leaving a trail of muddy footprints behind him.
I stood there, watching him run.
Then, the adrenaline left me in a rush, replaced by a cold, sharp spike of absolute terror.
My hands were shaking. I looked at the shattered stone wall where his first lightning bolt had hit. The stone was literally gone—reduced to fine dust. I looked at my muddy boots, then at my hands.
There was no system screen. No glowing health bar. No notification telling me I had gained experience points or unlocked a "Shattered Stance" technique.
"Wait," I whispered, my voice trembling. "I don't have a cheat. I don't have stats. I don't have a system. I'm... I'm just a guy in a ruined polyester shirt."
I'd been moving on pure, frantic adrenaline and office-brawl instincts. If Wang Teng hadn't paused to listen to my rant, or if he had just cast the spell without caring about his posture, I would be a pile of ash right now. I had just risked my life on a complete bluff, and it had worked purely because the local magic system was so ridiculously stupid that pointing out its lack of logic caused it to break.
"I'm a fraud," I breathed, backing away. "I'm a massive fraud in a world where teenagers can summon weather storms. The moment someone doesn't stop to argue with me, I'm dead."
The panic hit me like a physical blow. I turned and ran.
I ran down the muddy street, my heart hammering a frantic, irregular rhythm against my ribs. I turned corners, ducked down alleys, looking for anywhere to hide. I finally collapsed behind a pile of rotting crates in a dead-end alley, pulling my knees to my chest, gasping for air.
"This is bad. This is really, really bad," I whispered to the empty alley. "The author is a sadist. I'm going to get eaten by a giant turtle or stepped on by a cultivator, and my obituary is just going to read 'Here lies Caelan, he had a decent understanding of spreadsheets'."
I leaned my head back against the alley wall. As I did, I felt a strange, cold vibration running through the wood and clay behind me. It didn't feel like stone or earth. It felt like... a hum. Like a server room cooling system running in the basement.
I turned around, looking closely at the wall. The texture of the clay was slightly misaligned, like a bad wallpaper job. And deep within that misalignment, I could see a faint, pulsing blue glow of wireframe lines.
"Okay," I whispered, my voice shaking. "If the world is going to be this poorly coded, I'm going to find the seams. And I'm going to rip them open."