Pain was the first thing. Not physical, not a sharp sting, but the overwhelming emptiness that comes when you wake up in a place you don't recognize, in a body that isn't yours.
Li Wei's consciousness emerged like a haze between borrowed memories and tangible sensations. Distant voices, mocking laughter, the echo of a slap. His body burned, not with fever, but with the shame imprinted on the memory of the one who had inhabited this body before him.
"So this is reincarnation...?" he thought calmly, without surprise. He wasn't one to be easily surprised.
A trembling hand brushed his face. It was young—sixteen or seventeen, perhaps. His skin was thin, his muscles slack. Qi... almost nonexistent. A mediocre talent. A mere outer disciple of the Lotus Blossom Sect.
"Look at the trash!" a youth in blood-stained white robes yelled. "How dare you challenge me when you can't even channel Qi without spitting blood?!"
Laughter. A chorus of it. Harsh, cruel. The laughter of children with swords who believed they had honor just for being born into a clan. The kind of laughter he knew from his previous life.
Li Wei sat up, spat out blood, and looked at it. Red. Thick. Alive. Real.
He was alive again. But not as he was before.
In his past life, he was the mastermind of an international criminal organization. A diplomat on the surface, a strategist in the shadows. A master manipulator. He made politicians kneel and enemies eliminate each other, all without dirtying his own hands. His mind was a fortress, his tongue a blade. Not the strongest... but undoubtedly, the most dangerous.
And now... he had fallen into a world where power was measured in cultivation levels. Where martial arts were everything. Where a single punch could shatter mountains.
A world ruled by muscle, Qi... and arrogance.
"Interesting," he thought, as another slap threw him to the ground.
"No matter how many times this body is reincarnated," he murmured with a twisted smile, "I will always be above you."
"What did you say, trash?"
Li Wei lifted his gaze. His eyes were no longer those of a defeated disciple. They were cold. They measured. They calculated.
"Nothing your intellect could process," he replied with serenity.
The disciple raised his sword, but a voice stopped him.
"That's enough."
An elegant figure appeared among the onlookers. A girl in a sky-blue robe, with hair as long as the night and eyes as sharp as blades.
Xue Lan.
Daughter of the Sect Patriarch. Famous for her talent, her beauty... and her sharp tongue.
"Fighting trash, Bai Chong? Are you so desperate for recognition that you need to humiliate the weakest?"
The words were cold, but fair. Bai Chong lowered his sword with a frustrated scowl and left. The others followed, leaving Li Wei alone with his injured body and his new life.
Xue Lan approached and looked him up and down, with disgust... but also with curiosity.
"You won't die today. But if you make a fool of the sect again, I'll make sure you don't have any teeth left to beg for mercy with."
And she left, like an elegant storm.
Li Wei sighed, not out of fear, but because of how thrilling this new game was. This world... would be his.
Hours later, in the darkness of the Disciplined Pavilion—a decrepit house where the lowest-ranking disciples slept—Li Wei inspected his body.
Atrophied tendons, narrow Qi channels, blocked meridians. Normal for someone born without talent. But in his sea of consciousness... there was a light. A small thread of knowledge.
The memory of an incomplete technique.
It was a remnant left by the body's previous owner: a forgotten technique, despised by everyone because it didn't grant physical strength, but mental: "The Path of Mental Weaving."
Li Wei smiled. "Of course... this world doesn't appreciate true power, either."
While others trained their muscles, he would cultivate his mind. While others dedicated themselves to forming energy cores, he would weave invisible webs of influence. While others fought for resources... he would make them fight each other for a place in his shadow.
That night, seated in the lotus position among rats and leaks, Li Wei began to meditate with the technique.
The beats of his heart synchronized with his breath.
The energy of the world, faint, like invisible dust, barely stirred.
A clear idea emerged in his mind: I don't need talent. I just need time.
The next day, an announcement shook the sect.
The Hall of the Sleeping Flame would open.
A place where disciples could enter an "inner space"—a minor dimension with spiritual trials and fragments of lost knowledge. Few knew that this dimension also had... secret entrances.
Li Wei didn't know it yet, but that hall would be the start of the change. Not because he would overcome it with strength, but because he would discover a passage that only someone with his mind could decipher. A passage to a forgotten library. An arsenal of lost techniques. A forbidden knowledge that could change the balance of the world.
And it all began... with a feigned defeat, a despised technique, and a mind that never forgets.
Li Wei walked toward the Hall. He was limping. He coughed up blood. But he was smiling like a fox.
"Let them underestimate me. Let them insult me. Let them ignore me. It's the first step to victory."
"After all, no one fears the fox... until it's already too late."