The last thing Aryan remembered was the screech of brakes and the sickening crunch of metal. Then came the floating sensation, like being underwater but without the wetness. He couldn't see, couldn't feel his arms or legs, couldn't even tell if he still had a body.
"This is death," he thought, and almost laughed at how anticlimactic it felt.
The darkness pressed in from all sides, thick as mud. Somewhere in the distance, he heard what sounded like wind chimes made of glass. The sound grew closer, clearer, until it became a voice—not quite human, not quite machine.
[Sign-in System Activation Detected]
[Host Profile: Aryan Patel, Age 22, Cause of Death: Traffic Accident]
[Begin Transmigration Protocol...]
"Wait, what?" Aryan tried to speak, but without a mouth the words just existed in his mind. "Sign-in system? Like... like a video game?"
The darkness shattered like a dropped mirror. Blinding white light flooded his senses. Aryan gasped—actually gasped, with real lungs that burned with cold air—and found himself lying face-down in dirt that smelled like copper and rotting flowers.
His fingers dug into the soil. Real fingers. Real dirt. He pushed himself up slowly, every muscle protesting like he'd run a marathon. The first thing he saw was a tree. But not any tree he'd ever seen on Earth—its trunk twisted in impossible spirals, and its leaves whispered even though there was no wind.
"Where the hell..."
Something wet hit his cheek. Aryan touched it and stared at his red-stained fingers. Blood. Not his—the tree was bleeding, thick crimson sap oozing from cracks in its bark.
[Welcome to the Profound Sky Continent]
[Current Location: Blood Spirit Forest, Outer Rim]
[Danger Level: High]
Aryan scrambled backward, his heart hammering so hard he could taste copper. The voice in his head was different now—still mechanical, but with an edge that made his teeth itch. Like it was trying too hard to sound helpful.
"Profound Sky Continent? That's... that's not funny." His voice cracked. He sounded like a kid who'd lost his mom in a supermarket. "This can't be real. I was just crossing the street. I had groceries. There was a sale on—"
A scream cut through the air. Human. Female. Close.
Aryan's body moved before his brain caught up, diving behind a cluster of rocks that looked suspiciously like skulls. The screaming stopped abruptly, replaced by the wet sound of meat being torn from bone. Something heavy dragged across the ground, coming closer.
Through a gap in the rocks, he saw them. Three people in tattered robes that might have been white once, now splattered with red. They surrounded a fourth figure—no, what was left of one. The body looked like someone had taken a blender to it. One of the robed figures held something that glowed sickly green, sucking tendrils of light from the corpse.
"Cultivators," Aryan whispered, the word tasting foreign on his tongue. He'd read about this stuff—wuxia novels, cultivation manhwas—but he'd always skipped the gory parts. The practical parts. The "what to do when people start murdering each other for magical herbs" parts.
[Daily Sign-in Available]
[Location: Blood Spirit Forest (Outer Rim)]
[Reward: Beginner's Qi Cultivation Manual + Low-Grade Spirit Stone]
"Now?" Aryan wanted to laugh, wanted to cry. "Someone just got turned into hamburger and you want me to... to sign in?"
The dragging sound stopped. One of the robed figures turned toward his hiding spot. The man's face was young, almost pretty, except for the black veins crawling under his skin like living tattoos. He smiled, revealing teeth filed to points.
"Come out, little mouse," the man called. "I smell your fear."
Aryan's hands shook so badly he could barely form fists. Every instinct screamed at him to run, but his legs felt like wet noodles. The cultivator took a step forward, and Aryan saw his eyes—completely black, reflecting nothing.
[Warning: Host Life Signs Critical]
[Activate Emergency Tutorial? Y/N]
"Yes! God, yes, anything!"
The world froze. The cultivator's foot hung mid-step. The blood dripping from the tree stopped in mid-air. Even the whispering leaves went silent.
A translucent screen appeared in front of Aryan, like a phone screen but made of light. It showed a simple stick figure labeled "Host" and three buttons: [Observe], [Hide], [Fight].
His finger—when had he raised his hand?—hovered over [Fight] for a second. The cultivator had teeth like a shark and probably ate people for breakfast. Then he moved to [Hide], but the rocks weren't that big. Finally, trembling, he pressed [Observe].
The screen shifted. Suddenly he could see heat signatures—the cultivators glowed red, but one had a darker spot on his left side. A wound, maybe. The corpse had something small and bright near its hand. A bag? The nearest tree had a hollow at its base, just big enough for...
"Think," Aryan muttered. "You read about this. What would the smart protagonist do?"
The cultivator's foot came down. Time resumed.
"Come out, come out..." The shark-toothed man was ten steps away now. "I'll make it quick. Promise."
Aryan pressed his back against the skull-shaped rock. The bag the corpse had dropped—it was close. Maybe three meters. If he could grab it and roll into that tree hollow...
His legs still felt like jelly, but his mind was oddly clear. This wasn't like Earth. Here, hesitation meant death. He'd seen it with his own eyes.
The cultivator took another step. Seven meters away.
Aryan took a deep breath, tasting dirt and blood. Then he moved—not running, not yet, but creeping like he'd seen in those nature documentaries. Low and quiet. The dirt was soft, muffling his steps. The bag was right there, its leather surface warm under his fingers.
The cultivator's head snapped toward the movement.
Time to run.
Aryan grabbed the bag and dove for the tree hollow, scraping his arms on bark that felt like sandpaper. Something sharp—maybe the tree's teeth?—tore his sleeve. Behind him, the cultivator laughed, a sound like breaking glass.
"Found you!"
But the hollow was deeper than it looked. Aryan tumbled down a slope he hadn't seen, rolling through spider webs and what felt like bones. He landed hard on stone, the impact driving air from his lungs.
Darkness. But not the peaceful kind from before—this was alive, watching. The bag in his hands pulsed with faint light. Aryan fumbled it open and found a smooth stone the size of his thumb, glowing soft blue. A book, thin as tissue paper but somehow solid. And something else—dried leaves that smelled like mint and copper.
[Sign-in Complete]
[Reward Acquired: Beginner's Qi Cultivation Manual]
[Reward Acquired: Low-Grade Spirit Stone (Water Attribute)]
[Warning: Pursuers Approaching (3)]
"Of course they are." Aryan clutched the items to his chest. His breathing was too loud, too fast. "Because this is my life now. Running from cannibal wizards in a bleeding forest."
But even as terror clawed at his throat, a small part of his mind—the part that had always watched, always calculated—started piecing things together. The cultivators moved in a pattern. The wounded one lagged behind. If he could find water, the spirit stone might...
"Stop thinking," he told himself. "Just survive the next five minutes. Then the next hour. Then..."
Then what? Become one of them? Learn to smile while killing?
Another scream echoed from above, closer this time. Aryan's fingers traced the edge of the spirit stone. It felt warm, almost alive. The manual's cover showed a simple diagram—stick figures sitting cross-legged, lines of light moving through their bodies.
Simple enough. Even for someone who'd never thrown a punch in his life.
"Okay," Aryan whispered to the darkness. "Okay. I don't want to die. Not again."
He pressed the spirit stone to his forehead like the diagram showed. The warmth spread through his skull, down his spine, pooling in his belly like hot tea. The screaming above grew louder, mixed with the wet sounds of more death.
But down here, in this hole that might become his grave, Aryan Patel closed his eyes and took his first real breath as someone new. Someone who might just survive this nightmare.
The manual's pages rustled open on their own, revealing words that burned themselves into his memory. Simple words. Painful words.
"Step One: Feel the Qi between life and death..."
Outside, the bleeding tree dripped onto the ground where he'd been hiding. But Aryan was already gone, learning to become something else entirely.