There was no blinding flash of light, no sudden change in temperature, and no sound . One second, I was sitting in the middle row of a municipal bus bound for the Advanced Nurturing High School, watching the grey concrete of a tunnel slide past the window. The next second, the bus, the tunnel, and the very concept of Tokyo ceased to exist.
I fell approximately four meters.
Gravity asserted itself instantly, though it felt fractionally heavier than what I was accustomed to. I hit a perfectly smooth, freezing surface, rolling the moment my shoulder made contact to distribute the force. I came to a halt on my back, staring up at a vaulted ceiling illuminated by floating, luminescent pearls.
I did not immediately stand. I did not gasp, nor did I panic. Panic is a response to a lack of control, and while I lacked data, giving in to an emotional response would consume necessary cognitive bandwidth.
Instead, I lay still and gathered information.
The ambient temperature was cold, roughly ten degrees Celsius. The air density was thicker, requiring a slightly deeper inhalation to fully oxygenate my lungs. The floor beneath me was carved from a single, seamless piece of pale green stone—likely jade, given its thermal conductivity.
Then, I categorized the immediate threats.
I was at the center of a complex geometric pattern etched into the floor, which was currently fading from a brilliant silver glow to a dull grey. Standing around the perimeter of this pattern were twelve individuals.
They wore elaborate, flowing garments that resembled the traditional attire of historical dramas, woven from materials that caught the light in impossible ways. But it was not their clothes that demanded my attention; it was the overwhelming, presence they emitted.
Humans give off a certain atmosphere based on their confidence, physical capability, and social standing. The instructors in the White Room carried the heavy presence of absolute authority. These people, however, carried something entirely different. It felt like standing on a train track with a locomotive rapidly approaching. It was a tangible, crushing pressure that made my skin crawl and my instincts scream to flee.
Furthermore, there were strange, glowing insects hovering around their shoulders and hands. They defied gravity without the use of wings, emitting soft hums and radiating various temperatures.
A hallucination? Unlikely. The sensory details—the cold stone against my skin, the specific scent and incense in the air ,were too coherent. A kidnapping? Impossible. No sedative or transport method could account for the instantaneous shift in environment without a lapse in my internal biological clock.
Conclusion: I had been displaced from my known reality into an unknown one.
"The formation has ceased," a voice broke the silence. The language was archaic, heavily stylized, but fundamentally derived from Mandarin. I understood it perfectly.
I slowly pushed myself into a sitting position, keeping my hands visible and my expression completely blank. To them, I was the anomaly. The smartest move was to appear entirely harmless until I understood the hierarchy of the room.
An older woman stepped forward. Her white hair was pinned up intricately, and her eyes were cold and uncompromising. She looked at me not as a human being, but as an object that had trespassed onto her property.
"No primeval essence. A mortal," she noted, her voice dripping with casual disdain. "Yet the Venerable's spatial tear activated for him. How?"
"It matters little how," another elder, a heavyset man with a long beard, replied. "He came through Thieving Heaven's inheritance formation. He is the key. Extract his soul and read his memories. We will find out what the Venerable hid."
The old woman did not ask for permission. She simply turned her gaze back to me.
The moment our eyes locked, a sudden, agonizing spike of pressure pierced my skull. It was not a physical headache. It felt as though an invisible hand had reached directly through my forehead and was forcefully prying my consciousness apart, attempting to rip my memories out like pages from a book.
I braced my mind, instinctively attempting to compartmentalize the pain, but the intrusion was completely unnatural. It bypassed psychological defenses entirely.
Curiously, before the invisible hand could pull a single piece of information from my mind, a secondary force awakened within me.
It was cold and completely foreign. It felt like a dormant program had suddenly been executed in my chest. The energy surged upward, intercepting the woman's intrusion. it actively latched onto her energy, stealing the force of her attack and violently reversing it.
The woman gasped, violently staggering backward. Her hands flew to her chest as a thin line of dark blood leaked from the corner of her mouth. The floating insects around her buzzed frantically, emitting a harsh, warning light.
"Elder Jin!" the heavyset man shouted, stepping forward, the crushing pressure in the room suddenly multiplying tenfold.
I remained seated, watching the blood drip from the woman's chin. I hadn't done anything. Clearly, whatever mechanism had pulled me into this world had left a failsafe behind to ensure its "key" wasn't immediately dismantled upon arrival.
"Do not touch him."
The voice was quiet, lacking the booming aggression of the others, yet the moment it echoed through the hall, the suffocating pressure vanished. The other elders instantly froze, their body language shifting from aggression to a deeply ingrained, unquestionable deference.
A man stepped through the circle of elders. He wore elegant white robes with silver embroidery. He did not look angry, nor did he project any overt hostility. He simply walked with a center of gravity so flawless that it commanded the entire room.
He looked down at me. I met his gaze, letting a perfectly ordinary expression of mild confusion and fear settle over my features.
"A mortal whose mind is shielded by a Venerable's phantom defense," the man murmured, his eyes analyzing my strange, synthetic school uniform. "Fascinating. If you force your way in, Elder Jin, the backlash will shatter his soul and destroy the only lead we have had in three hundred years."
"Lord Feng," the bleeding woman hissed, wiping her mouth, her eyes glaring daggers at me. "He is an otherworldly demon. The formation confirmed it. If we do not kill him, the Heavenly Court will—"
"The Heavenly Court is not here," the man, Lord Feng, interrupted. His tone was light, but it held the absolute finality of a guillotine dropping. "The Spirit Affinity House found him. Therefore, he belongs to us. Take the boy to the eastern guest chambers. Guard him, but do not touch his mind. I will convene a sect meeting."
He turned and walked away. The other elders parted for him without a word.
Two men stepped forward, grabbing my arms and hauling me to my feet. I offered no resistance. Letting them drag me away was the safest option. The man named 'Lord Feng' stood at the absolute top of this localized hierarchy. He had just established my value: I was an 'otherworldly demon,' whatever that meant, and I was holding a locked 'inheritance.'
As I was escorted down a long, winding corridor lit by floating pearls, I finalized my immediate primary directive.
I had no power, no allies, and no knowledge of this world's rules. But I had value. Until they extracted that value, they would keep me alive. My task was to decipher their power system before they figured out how to bypass my mental shield.
---
The inner sanctum of the Spirit Affinity House was heavily warded. Sound, light, and even the natural flow of the world's energy were sealed out, leaving only a perfectly isolated space for the Supreme Elders to speak freely.
Feng Jiu Ge sat at the right hand of the Sect Leader, his expression perfectly unreadable as the seven elders in the room argued.
"It is too dangerous," Elder Jin stated, her voice tight as she circulated primeval essence to heal the lingering damage in her mind. "We all know the legends of Thieving Heaven Demon Venerable. He was a lunatic obsessed with a world beyond our own. This boy is exactly like him. An otherworldly demon. His existence defies Fate."
"Which is precisely why he is invaluable," a younger elder countered, tapping a jade fan against his palm. "For thousands of years, the Spirit Affinity House has failed to unlock Thieving Heaven's true inheritance . The Venerable deliberately rigged the locks so that only someone from his original world could open them. The boy is the key."
"He is a mortal!" Elder Jin snapped. "He has no primeval essence. Even if we put him in front of the inheritance, he cannot interface with the Gu worms required to open it. And we cannot soul-search him to find the password. The Venerable left a Theft Path Dao mark on the boy's soul. If we pry, it steals our own soul foundation."
The room fell into a tense silence. They were looking at a treasure chest made of solid diamond, and the only key they had was covered in poison.
"Then we make him one of us."
All eyes turned to Feng Jiu Ge. He hadn't spoken since the meeting began, simply observing the frantic bickering of his peers.
"Make him one of us?" The Sect Leader finally spoke, her voice echoing with the immense, unfathomable pressure of a Rank 8 Immortal. "Explain, Feng Jiu Ge."
"He is a mortal now, but that can be changed with a single Hope Gu," Feng Jiu Ge said calmly, resting his hands on his lap. "You look at the boy and see a threat. I look at him and see a blank slate. He does not know our language well, he does not know our history, and he does not understand Gu cultivation. He is entirely isolated."
Feng Jiu Ge leaned forward slightly. "We awaken his aperture. We give him the resources to cultivate. We groom him. If we bind him to the Spirit Affinity House through dependency, favors, and careful manipulation, he will open the inheritance for us willingly. Why break the lock when you can simply convince the key to turn itself?"
Elder Jin frowned. "He is an otherworldly demon. Their natures are unpredictable. What if he turns on us?"
"If he proves uncontrollable, I will kill him myself," Feng Jiu Ge stated. The absolute certainty in his voice left no room for debate. He was the strongest force in the sect beneath the Rank 8s; if he said a mortal would die, the mortal was already dead.
"Very well," the Sect Leader decreed, closing her eyes. "Feng Jiu Ge, you discovered him. You will take responsibility for his integration. Awaken his aperture tomorrow. Ascertain his aptitude. Do not let him out of your sight. The Spirit Affinity House will claim Thieving Heaven's legacy, and the Heavenly Court will know nothing of this."
Feng Jiu Ge bowed his head slightly. "It will be done."
As the meeting adjourned, Feng Jiu Ge mentally reviewed his brief interaction with the boy. The elders thought the boy was a terrified, ignorant mortal. But Feng Jiu Ge had seen the boy's eyes when the pressure was crushing the room.
There had been no terror.
*A blank slate,* Feng Jiu Ge thought to himself as he walked out of the sanctum. *Or perhaps, a very quiet monster.*
---
The room they placed me in was a holding cell dressed as a guest chamber.
I sat on the edge of the low wooden bed, keeping my spine perfectly straight. The temperature was regulated, likely by one of those hovering insects, but the stone floor was still freezing. I spent the first twenty minutes cataloging the dimensions of the room. There were no windows. The sliding paper doors were structurally weak, but I could detect the faint, rhythmic hum of energy running along the wooden frames. A barrier.
If I attempted to break through, the probability of severe physical blowback was absolute.
I checked my biological status. My heart rate had returned to a resting sixty beats per minute. My breathing was even. The strange, freezing energy that had protected my mind from the old woman's intrusion was completely dormant. I tried to mentally reach for it, to isolate its location within my chest, but there was no physical feedback. Whatever the 'Venerable' had placed inside me, it operated independently of my conscious will.
Footsteps approached from the hallway. They were completely silent, lacking the heavy heel-strike of a normal human. I only knew someone was there because the subtle pressure in the room shifted.
The paper door slid open with a soft glide.
The man from the grand hall stepped into the room. Lord Feng. Up close, his presence was even more overbearing, though he wasn't actively doing anything to project it. He wore elegant, flowing white robes. His posture was perfectly relaxed, his hands resting naturally at his sides. He carried no visible weapon, but the way he walked told me he didn't need one.
He stopped a few paces away, looking down at me with an expression that was clinical and detached. Like a researcher observing a foreign organism that had wandered into a sterile lab.
"You are awake, and you are entirely calm," he noted. His voice carried a strange resonance, vibrating slightly in the air itself.
I blinked, processing the sounds. The cadence was unusual, the pronunciation heavy on certain vowels, and the vocabulary was distinctly archaic. But the grammatical structure was undeniable. It was a derivative of Mandarin.
In the White Room, Mandarin had been one of the foundational languages pounded into my head. I was fluent enough to understand the nuances of a native speaker, allowing me to bridge this gap without revealing the depth of my education.
"Panic consumes energy and provides no solutions," I replied, keeping my tone perfectly flat, speaking in standard Mandarin.
The man's eyebrows rose a fraction of an inch. It was a microscopic shift, but it was enough to tell me he was surprised.
"You speak the language of the Central Continent," he observed, his gaze sharpening. "Yet your clothes are bizarre. The stitching is unnaturally uniform. There is no trace of spiritual energy, nor is it woven from any silk or cotton found in our world. It feels entirely devoid of life. Yet, it is highly durable."
"It's synthetic," I explained smoothly. "A mass-produced material from where I come from. It's designed for uniformity and longevity, not comfort."
I watched his eyes. He registered the term 'mass-produced.' In a world where absolute power is concentrated in the hands of individuals, the concept of industrial-scale uniformity without the use of supernatural energy might be a foreign concept. I needed to feed him just enough truth to satisfy his curiosity, without giving away the technological mechanics of Earth.
"Synthetic," Feng Jiu Ge repeated, clasping his hands behind his back. "A world that creates lifeless materials to clothe its mortals. Tell me your name, boy."
"Kiyotaka Ayanokoji."
I stated it clearly. I noticed a subtle shift in his expression. The phonetics of my name clearly clashed with the naming conventions of this world.
"Ayanokoji," he tested the word. "A strange title. You are an otherworldly demon, Ayanokoji. Do you know what that means in this reality?"
"I can deduce the basic premise," I said, leaning forward slightly, resting my elbows on my knees to appear less defensive. "It means I am not from here. And usually, when a society labels an outsider as a 'demon,' it means that outsider represents a fundamental threat to their established order."
A faint, dangerous smile touched Feng Jiu Ge's lips. "You are more perceptive than you appear. Yes. Otherworldly demons are entities whose very existence defies the natural order. You are not bound by the strings of Fate that tie the rest of us. Which makes you incredibly valuable, and inherently marked for death by the Righteous Path."
*Strings of Fate.* I filed that phrase away immediately. He didn't say 'rules' or 'laws.' He specifically used the word 'Fate' as a proper noun. In human history, fate is a philosophical concept used to control the masses. But the way he said it with absolute, objective certainty ,suggested something entirely different. In a world where physics can be rewritten by glowing insects, 'Fate' might not be a concept. It might be a literal, systemic mechanic.
If Fate is a tangible system that governs cause and effect, then an 'otherworldly demon' is simply a variable that exists outside that closed system's source code.
"If I am a threat to your order, then I assume you kept me alive because my value outweighs the risk," I stated.
"You were brought here by a formation left behind by Thieving Heaven Demon Venerable," Feng Jiu Ge said, pacing slowly toward the center of the room. "The elders of the Spirit Affinity House wish to vivisect you to extract the inheritance he left in our care. I, however, find that approach wasteful. An inheritance is just resources. But a living, breathing mind from another world? That is a unique opportunity."
He stopped and looked back at me. "Tell me about your world, Ayanokoji. What kind of cultivation exists where you come from? What paths do your strongest experts walk?"
This was the critical juncture. The most effective lie is a truth presented from a different angle.
"There is no cultivation in my world," I answered truthfully. " No magical insects. Every human is born completely mortal, and they die completely mortal. A single man cannot destroy a mountain with his bare hands. Our physical limits are absolute."
Feng Jiu Ge's brow furrowed slightly. "A world of mere mortals? Then how does your society function without collapsing into chaos? Who rules?"
"Those who control the rules," I explained. "Society is governed by complex webs of contracts, economics, and information. The 'strongest experts' in my world are simply the people who best understand how to manipulate the psychological and financial systems that bind everyone else. Physical strength is ultimately irrelevant if you control the resources everyone else needs to survive."
I watched him process this. For a man who had likely spent his life solving problems with overwhelming, supernatural violence, the idea of a world entirely governed by social contracts and systemic manipulation was a paradigm shift.
"Fascinating," Feng Jiu Ge murmured. "A world where the weak bind the strong through collective agreement. It is the exact antithesis of the Gu world. Here, a single Rank 8 Immortal can slaughter a million mortals without a second thought. Your worldly rules hold no value here."
"Rules are just structures," I countered calmly. "The currency changes. The environment change. But human nature doesn't. You still have hierarchies. You still have factions. You still have people who want things they don't have, and people who will do anything to keep what they own. If you understand the hierarchy, you can navigate the system."
Feng Jiu Ge stared at me in silence. I could almost see the calculations running behind his eyes. He had expected a terrified child. Instead, he was looking at someone who was already analyzing his entire reality .
"My name is Feng Jiu Ge," he finally said, turning toward the door. "In this sect, my word is law. The other elders want you dead. As long as you are useful to me, no one will touch you. Do you understand what I am offering you, boy?"
A collar. Protection in exchange for being his exclusive tool to unlock the inheritance. It was a heavily one-sided contract, but it was exactly what I needed. A shield.
"I understand," I replied. "But if I am to be useful to you, I need data. I need to understand exactly what these 'Gu' are. I need the foundational rules of your world's physics and geography."
Feng Jiu Ge paused at the threshold, glancing over his shoulder.
"I will have the basic texts on Gu cultivation sent to your room. Read them. Understand exactly how insignificant you currently are. Tomorrow morning, we will test your aptitude. If you truly wish to navigate this system, you will need the power to sit at the table."
The paper door slid shut, leaving me alone.
---
Thirty minutes later, a silent attendant brought in a stack of heavy bamboo scrolls, bound by thin leather cords. It was an incredibly inefficient method of data storage, but I adapted to the physical inconvenience quickly.
I spent the next six hours reading. I didn't sleep. The White Room had conditioned my body to operate at peak efficiency on minimal rest, and right now, information was my most critical lifeline.
The scrolls detailed the foundational truths of this world's power system. According to the opening lines of the primary text: *"Man is the spirit of all living beings, Gu are the essence of Heaven and Earth."*
It was a poetic, almost religious phrasing. I immediately stripped away the metaphor to find the mechanical truth beneath it.
If humans are the 'spirit,' it meant we were the only operators capable of conscious processing. In technological terms, humans were the hardware.
If Gu are the 'essence of Heaven and Earth,' it meant these insects weren't just biological creatures with strange abilities. They were physical, living manifestations of the world's natural laws. A Fire Path Gu wasn't a bug that magically created fire; it was a microscopic fragment of the literal concept of fire, given physical form.
Therefore, Gu cultivation was not magic. It was a process of assimilation. It was the act of a human the hardware installing fragments of the universe's source code—the software into their own bodies to manually rewrite reality.
And the energy required to fuel these upgrades, the electricity running the system, was called primeval essence.
I set the scroll down, staring at the flickering candle on the low wooden table.
In the White Room, the instructors had tried to create the ultimate human by pushing our biological and psychological limits to their absolute breaking point. But there was a hard ceiling. No matter how perfectly I was trained, my processing speed was limited by human neurology, and my flesh could still be pierced by a simple blade.
This world had no such ceiling. By assimilating these 'Gu,' humans could continuously upgrade their biological and physical limits until they became literal, walking anomalies of physics. The only limitation was one's aperture—the internal storage capacity for primeval essence.
Normal humans were closed systems. To become a Gu Master, that system had to be forcefully cracked open.
The candle on the table finally burned out, leaving a thin trail of smoke in the quiet room. My first night in the Gu world was over.
I neatly rolled the bamboo scrolls and placed them back in a perfect, identical stack on the table. I knew the foundational rules now. All that was left was to acquire the power to begin testing the system.
Tomorrow, I would crack the system open.
---