The silence in the Outer Court was heavy, pressing down like a physical weight.
Disciples who had been watching from the sidelines—expecting the daily entertainment of the sect's "trash" getting beaten—were now staring at Lu Chen with expressions ranging from shock to horror.
Disciple Zhao, the man who had just face-planted into the dirt, groaned. He rolled over, clutching his nose. Blood seeped through his fingers, staining his gray robes dark red.
"You... you cheated!" Zhao shrieked, his voice nasal and wet. He scrambled backward, crab-walking away from Lu Chen. "You used a hidden weapon! Or a demonic art! There's no way trash like you could dodge my Rock Crushing Palm!"
Lu Chen stood there, the adrenaline fading. As the chemical rush subsided, the pain in his chest returned—a dull, throbbing ache that reminded him of his physical reality. But his mind was clear. Sharper than it had ever been.
He looked down at Zhao. A semi-transparent window hovered over the bully's head, bobbing slightly like a marker in an MMORPG.
[Object: Disciple_Zhao]
[Status: Stunned, Fearful]
[HP: 85/100 (Minor Facial Fracture)]
[Qi: 12/100]
"I didn't use a weapon," Lu Chen said. His voice was raspy, but steady. He sounded different. Gone was the timid stutter of the old Lu Chen. In its place was the calm, detached tone of a senior engineer explaining why the server crashed.
"I simply exploited a logic error in your stance," Lu Chen continued, taking a step forward. Zhao flinched. "Your center of gravity was extended too far past your pivot point. Target.Balance was set to False. I just executed a push command. It's basic physics."
"What are you babbling about?!" Zhao screamed, scrambling to his feet. He backed away, pointing a trembling finger. "My cousin is Zhao Feng of the Inner Sect! You... you're dead, Lu Chen! You're dead!"
With that, Zhao turned and ran. His two lackeys, pale-faced, stumbled after him, looking back at Lu Chen as if he were a ghost.
Lu Chen watched them go. The green code in his vision faded, returning the world to its normal, dusty colors.
[Combat Encounter Resolved]
[EXP Gained: 10]
[Level Up! Current Level: 1 (Qi Condensation Stage 0.5)]
Lu Chen exhaled a long breath and looked down at his hands. They were trembling. Not from fear, but from weakness. This body was truly garbage.
"Right," he muttered, turning away from the staring crowd. "First things first. I need to check the hardware specs."
He ignored the whispers of the other disciples—"Did he really just beat Zhao?" "He must have used a forbidden pill!"—and limped toward the edge of the compound. His destination was a dilapidated wooden hut on the periphery of the sect grounds, a place reserved for servants and the lowest of disciples.
Lu Chen pushed the rotting door open and collapsed onto the wooden plank that served as his bed. The smell of mold and old straw filled his nose.
"Okay," he whispered, closing his eyes. "System. Interface."
Ding.
The blue holographic screen appeared in the darkness of his mind. It was comforting. Familiar. It looked almost exactly like his old IDE (Integrated Development Environment), but overlaid on reality.
On the left was a file tree showing his body parts. On the right, a terminal window displaying his current status.
[User: Lu_Chen]
[Role: Outer_Disciple (Trash)]
[HP: 15/100 (Injured)]
[Mana (Qi): 5/100]
[Status: CRITICAL_ERROR - MERIDIANS_BROKEN]
Lu Chen focused on the error message. A 3D wireframe of his body appeared. Inside, red lines pulsed—his meridians. They looked like shattered glass. In this world, meridians were the highways for Qi. If the highway is broken, the cars (energy) crash and burn before they reach the engine (Dantian).
"Broken meridians..." Lu Chen murmured. "In cultivation terms, this is a death sentence. But in coding terms... it's just a routing issue."
He pulled up the file for his cultivation method.
[File: Azure_Cloud_Basic_Breathing.txt]
function cultivate() {
gather_qi_from_environment();
circulate(meridian_lung_channel); // Error: Path disconnected
circulate(meridian_heart_channel); // Error: Path disconnected
store_in_dantian();
}
"Garbage code," Lu Chen scoffed. "It's trying to force data through broken cables. No wonder the previous owner of this body died. He was basically DDoS-ing his own organs."
Lu Chen sat up in a lotus position. His engineer's brain began to work. If he couldn't fix the hardware immediately, he had to patch the software to bypass the broken parts.
"If I can't use the main highways," he mused, "I'll use the side streets. I'll build a virtual network."
He focused on the terminal. A keyboard didn't appear, but his thoughts typed the commands directly.
> create_virtual_meridian(path="skin_surface_capillaries")
> reroute_traffic(source="lung_channel", destination="muscle_fiber_storage")
Instead of forcing the energy deep inside where the breaks were, he rewrote the script to absorb Qi directly into his skin and muscle fibers. It was inefficient, painful, and dangerous—like overclocking a CPU without a cooling fan—but it would work.
"Let's test this patch."
Lu Chen took a deep breath. He visualized the Qi not as a mystical mist, but as packets of blue data floating in the air.
Execute.
The air around him shimmered. Tiny motes of blue light began to drift toward him. They touched his skin. Usually, they would bounce off his "trash" body.
But Lu Chen forced the command: [Sudo: Force_Absorb]
Zzzzt.
A shock of static electricity zapped him. He gritted his teeth, his body seizing up. It felt like fire ants were crawling under his skin, biting every inch of him.
[ALERT: Unsigned Driver Detected. Proceed?]
"Yes, dammit," Lu Chen hissed through clenched teeth. "Confirm!"
The Qi surged into his muscles. The burning sensation spiked, then slowly settled into a warm, humming vibration.
[Status Update]
[Strength: +1]
[Agility: +1]
[cultivation_progress: 0.1%]
Lu Chen opened his eyes. Sweat dripped from his forehead, but for the first time, his chest didn't hurt. He clenched his fist. The air popped with a crisp sound.
A grin spread across his face. A grin that would have terrified his old project manager.
"I have root access," he whispered into the darkness of the hut. "I'm going to mod this whole damn world."
Just as he was about to check the 'Inventory' tab, a sound interrupted him.
Knock. Knock.
The flimsy door rattled.
"Lu Chen? Are you in there?"
The voice was cool, crisp, and sounded like wind chimes made of ice. It carried an authority that demanded an answer.
Lu Chen froze. The System identified the voice signature immediately, pulling up a profile from the previous owner's memories.
[NPC Identified: Lin Xue]
[Role: Saintess / Inner Sect Prodigy]
[Danger Level: EXTREME]
Lu Chen gulped. Why was the "No. 1 Jade Beauty" of the sect standing at the door of a trash disciple?
"Uh," Lu Chen called out, hastily closing his System windows. "I'm... compiling?"