**Chapter 1 : The Ruins of Jiangnan City**
The smell hit them first.
Not the rotting stench of death—Luo Yan and Luo Feng were used to that—but something sharper. Ozone mixed with rust and burning plastic. The acrid reminder that the outer districts didn't just contain ruins; they contained *living* danger.
Year 2056. Jiangnan City's outer perimeter.
Two teenagers sat on the crumbling edge of what had once been a six-story residential apartment. Now it was a skeletal monument to humanity's fragility. The concrete was cracked and pitted, the metal reinforcements corroded to rust-red streaks that looked like dried blood. The afternoon sky above shone with that peculiar quality unique to this era—filtered through layers of pollution and the residual electromagnetic anomalies left by the RR virus. It wasn't quite gray, not quite yellow. Just wrong in a way that had become normal.
Luo Yan sat slightly forward, his dark eyes scanning the desolate landscape below with the intensity of someone reading a map of destiny. His body language was composed, almost meditative. Beside him, Luo Feng stared out with the contemplative gaze of youth standing at an intersection that would determine the rest of his life.
They were eighteen. Twins, though Luo Yan had arrived five minutes earlier—a fact that still amused him in ways his brother would never understand.
Both wore identical combat vests, black fabric reinforced with gray plating that had been issued to warrior trainees two months ago. The vests were practical, functional, and marked them as people with ambition. The militaristic trousers and alloyed battle boots completed the uniform—standard equipment for those attempting to escape poverty through combat. On their backs hung hexagonal shields, and at their sides hung blood-shadow battle knives. These weren't toys or decorations. These were weapons that had tasted monster blood.
They'd both trained for this moment their entire lives.
"Do you think we'll pass the assessment?" Luo Feng asked quietly. His voice carried the careful tone of someone who'd learned long ago not to speak with certainty about the future. "Tomorrow changes everything. If we pass, we're warriors. If we don't..." He didn't finish the sentence. Both brothers knew what failure meant. Factory work. Laborer positions. A slow descent into the grinding poverty that had nearly killed their parents.
Luo Yan turned to study his twin. He knew that expression—the mix of determination and fear that characterized the ambitious poor. He'd read it in a thousand novels, seen it in a thousand characters who stood at the beginning of their legendary journeys. Luo Feng carried that expression naturally. It was his destiny, written into the narrative of the Swallowed Star universe before either of them was born.
"We will," Luo Yan replied, and it was the first truth he'd spoken since his rebirth into this world. A truth encoded in narrative destiny itself, backed by foreknowledge that transcended prophecy.
Luo Feng glanced at his brother with slight surprise. There was something absolute in that statement—not confidence, but certainty. The kind of certainty that came from knowing something others couldn't possibly know.
"How can you be so sure?"
Before Luo Yan could answer, something shifted in the air around them. The smell changed. The wind carried that particular warning scent that everyone in the outer districts learned to recognize instinctively—the musk of mutation, the primal stink of something that had once been animal and was now something else entirely.
Below them, the ruins stretched endlessly. This had once been a thriving residential district before the mutation age began. Before the RR virus infected animals and transformed them into monsters. Before humanity discovered what it meant to fight for survival against things that no longer followed any rules except hunger and reproduction.
Now, the city was divided with brutal efficiency: the outer districts—abandoned to the monsters, slowly being reclaimed by nature and evolution, where brave or desperate young people came to test themselves against creatures that could kill them with a single blow. The inner districts—fortified with walls forty meters high, protected by warrior brigades and military installations, where the survivors lived in carefully rationed safety.
Between them was a war that had been ongoing for decades. A war humanity was slowly, grudgingly, learning to fight back against.
As if responding to their presence, a distant howl cut through the afternoon air.
The sound made hearts skip beats—a primal warning that had been hardwired into humanity's DNA during the mutation age. That howl meant predator. That howl meant danger. That howl meant *run or prepare to die*.
Neither Luo Yan nor Luo Feng flinched. They'd heard that howl countless times, growing up in the outer residential zones. The rooftop of abandoned buildings was one of the few places where young trainees could safely observe the monsters from a distance, studying their behaviors, their patterns, their weaknesses.
"They're closer today," Luo Feng observed. His hand unconsciously moved to the blood-shadow knife at his side. "That's the third howl in ten minutes."
"They follow the prey," Luo Yan said, gesturing toward the eastern ruins. "There's probably a mutation beast feeding on something. Rats, maybe. Or a smaller creature trying to make a kill."
The ecology of the outer districts was brutal and efficient. Humans hunted monsters for points and advancement. Monsters hunted each other for food. Everything was predator, everything was prey. The strong survived. The weak fed the food chain.
It was a metaphor for the cultivation world that Luo Yan found both amusing and appropriate.
"Tomorrow," Luo Feng said quietly, returning his gaze to the ruins, "we either become warriors, or we find work in the factories."
The unspoken weight hung between them like a physical thing: *Or we starve like Mom and Dad nearly did.*
Their parents had tried the laborer route. Their father had worked in the outer districts, moving heavy construction materials, guarding supply convoys. That was before the mutation zone accident. Before a rogue monster had slipped through a barrier and attacked his work crew. Before a single claw had raked across his chest and left scars so severe he could barely move without pain. Now their father existed on government stipend and their mother's trading work, watching his sons with the desperate hope of someone who'd already failed to climb out and was terrified they'd follow the same path.
"We'll both pass," Luo Yan repeated. His certainty didn't waver. It couldn't waver. Because he carried something inside him that was far heavier and more significant than mere confidence.
He carried foreknowledge.
Luo Feng studied his brother's face for a long moment. There was something different about Luo Yan today. Something that went beyond the usual twin similarity. An intensity. A focus. Like something had fundamentally shifted inside him overnight.
"What happened to you?" Luo Feng asked directly. "You're different."
Before Luo Yan could respond, his body suddenly trembled. It started deep in his core—not the tremor of fear, but something else entirely. Something ancient and purposeful, like electricity dancing along his meridians in patterns that shouldn't exist.
The genetic heart method. They'd both been practicing it religiously for weeks now. The basic cultivation technique that all warrior trainees learned. Nothing revolutionary. Nothing that should produce this sensation.
But Luo Yan could feel something *awakening* inside him.
His breath caught. Luo Feng didn't notice immediately—he was distracted by another howl echoing from the ruins below. But when he turned back to his brother, he saw it: Luo Yan's hands beginning to glow faintly, just barely visible in the afternoon light. The energy coursing through his veins felt ancient, purposeful, like it had been waiting for exactly this moment to emerge.
"Luo Yan?" Luo Feng reached out, concerned. "Are you alright? Your face just went pale."
Luo Yan forced himself to breathe normally, to appear human. To appear unaware of the three translucent panels that had just materialized before his eyes, glowing with an otherworldly luminescence that no one else could perceive.
**[SUPREME HAREM SYSTEM INITIALIZATION COMPLETE]**
**[ALL HEAVEN CHAT GROUP ACCESS GRANTED]**
**[GROUP AUTHORITY: CONFIRMED - GROUP LEADER]**
His pupils dilated. His heart raced. The panels hung in the air before him, shimmering with infinite possibilities and incomprehensible power.
"I'm fine," he whispered, forcing calm into his voice despite the cosmic storm happening in his perception. "Just... processing something."
Below them, another howl echoed through the ruins. Closer this time. More aggressive. The monsters were definitely moving, drawn perhaps by the sound of human voices, or simply by the random hunger that drove them. It was time to descend, to return to the safety of the inner city walls, to their modest apartment where their mother waited with a meager dinner. And where their youngest brother, Luo Hai, was likely already causing trouble with his characteristic impatience and righteous fury.
"Come on," Luo Yan said, standing up and brushing dust from his combat vest. The gesture was completely normal. Completely human. Inside, he was screaming with barely contained excitement. "We should head back before dark. Luo Hai's probably worried Mom again by now."
As they climbed down from the rooftop—carefully navigating the broken stairs and unstable rubble—Luo Yan's consciousness was only partially present in the physical world. The rest of him was immersed in interfaces that shouldn't exist, reading notifications that defied reality itself.
The game had truly begun.
***
**The Walk Home**
The journey from the outer district ruins back to their apartment in the semi-safe zones took twenty minutes. They moved through streets that had seen better days—cracked pavement, boarded-up storefronts, military checkpoints every few blocks. This was the transition zone, where the wild outer districts gradually gave way to regulated inner city.
Warriors in uniform stood at corners, their expressions professionally bored as they monitored for escaped monsters or unauthorized zone crossings. Vendors huddled in semi-permanent stalls, selling everything from water purification tablets to salvaged mechanical parts. The smell of cooking grease mixed with ozone and industrial pollutants.
This was home.
"Did you practice the genetic heart method properly?" Luo Feng asked, reverting to their usual pre-assessment conversation. It was ritual at this point. Their mother asked the same question every evening.
"Yes," Luo Yan replied honestly. "Both of us. We're ready for tomorrow."
Luo Feng nodded, satisfied. He always was easier to convince than their mother. Perhaps because he believed in his own strength more absolutely.
When they arrived home, they were immediately assaulted by the smell of congee—simple, thin congee made from rationed rice and whatever vegetables their mother had managed to trade for at the markets. It was the scent of survival, not luxury. But beneath it was something else: the raised voice of their youngest brother.
"—completely unfair! They're charging triple the normal price just because people are desperate! That's exploitation!"
They pushed open the apartment door to find Luo Hai standing in the center of their small living room, gesticulating wildly with characteristic passion. At fifteen, he was already nearly as tall as Luo Feng, with the same sharp features but burning with an intensity that neither of his older brothers quite possessed. His combat trainee vest was disheveled, and there was a fresh bruise forming along his left cheekbone.
Their mother, Luo Hua, stood at the kitchen entrance with her hands on her hips. She was a thin woman, hardened by decades of struggle, her hair beginning to show threads of silver despite her relatively young age. Her expression was a mixture of exasperation and worry that had become her default since Luo Hai entered his teenage years.
Their father, Luo Xingbao, sat at the small dining table, methodically eating his bowl of congee without comment. He was a man who'd learned long ago that some battles weren't worth fighting. His scarred chest was visible where his shirt gaped open—a permanent reminder of the price of being ordinary in a world that demanded the extraordinary.
"Luo Hai, enough," their mother said tiredly. "You got into a fight with the market vendor again, didn't you?"
"He deserved it!" Luo Hai protested, his voice reaching that particular pitch that indicated he was about to launch into a passionate explanation of justice and fairness. "He was—"
"We don't care if he deserved it," Luo Feng said quietly, stepping past Luo Yan to place a hand on his youngest brother's shoulder. "You're going to get us in trouble with the neighborhood enforcement officers if you keep this up."
Luo Hai's shoulders sagged slightly at Luo Feng's touch. Of all three brothers, Luo Hai listened most closely to Luo Feng. There was something about their second brother's calm authority that even their passionate youngest couldn't fully resist.
Luo Yan closed the apartment door behind him, and at the sound, Luo Hai's face brightened considerably. "Big brother! You're back! Tell them I'm right—the market vendors are taking advantage of people, and someone needs to—"
"Someone being you?" Luo Yan asked, raising an eyebrow as he surveyed the bruise on Luo Hai's face. "How did the other guy look?"
Despite himself, Luo Hai grinned. "Worse."
"That's my boy," their father said quietly, finally looking up from his congee. There was pride in his voice, carefully hidden but present. Luo Xingbao had been a laborer before his injury—before the mutation zone accident that had left him too scarred to work in the outer districts. Now he existed on government stipend and his wife's trading work, watching his sons grow into the futures they'd earn or lose through tomorrow's assessment.
"Come eat," their mother commanded, already ladling congee into bowls. "Both of you. You'll need your strength for tomorrow."
The five of them—counting their father, who ate sparingly—sat around the small table crammed into their living room. The congee was thin, barely more than flavored water with occasional grains of rice visible, but they ate it with the gratitude of people who'd known true hunger. Their mother had managed to add some salvaged vegetables, bits of protein traded from somewhere. It was a feast by their standards.
As they ate, their mother asked the ritual question: "Did you practice the genetic heart method?"
"Yes," Luo Feng replied. "Both of us. We're ready for tomorrow."
Luo Yan nodded, his mind only partially on the conversation. The system interface was still hovering at the edge of his consciousness, waiting for him to engage with it fully. He could feel the All Heaven Chat Group out there, pulsing with activity. How many members had joined while he was climbing down from the rooftop? How many young cultivators from other universes were struggling with the same confusion and excitement he felt?
After dinner, their mother retired to her room where she'd spend the evening preparing goods for tomorrow's market trade. Their father followed, his movements careful and pained. Luo Feng began reviewing his notes for the warrior assessment one final time, sitting near the small window where the last light of day filtered through.
Luo Hai sprawled on his bed—the twins' bed was on the other side of the room—and pulled out a tattered magazine about famous warriors. His eyes were dreamy, imagining futures yet to be determined. "Do you think we'll all get into the Fire Hammer Brigade?" he asked, addressing the question to no one in particular. "I mean, you two are taking the assessment tomorrow, but I'm not eligible for two more years."
"You'll get in," Luo Yan said, settling onto his own bed. "You're already stronger than most trainees your age."
"Yeah, but I'm not *strong enough*," Luo Hai muttered, his characteristic impatience flaring. "Everyone says you need to reach a certain threshold just to qualify. What if I'm stuck in the outer districts for years before I can even try?"
It was a valid fear. The outer districts offered little future—factory work, merchant trading, laborer positions that paid barely enough to survive. The warrior brigades were the only path to real advancement, to status, to purpose. And Luo Hai burned with the need to matter.
"You will," Luo Yan said simply. He wasn't even lying. Luo Hai would become a warrior. The narrative demanded it. The system knew it. "Trust me."
Hours passed. Luo Feng eventually fell asleep at his desk, his head resting on his notes. Their mother's rhythmic movements in the other room eventually ceased. Even their father's occasional coughs from the master bedroom grew quieter, more infrequent.
But Luo Hai remained awake, quietly reading his warrior magazine, occasionally flipping pages with that restless energy that seemed to define him.
Luo Yan watched his youngest brother with the patience of someone who understood the weight of anticipation. When it finally became clear that Luo Hai was drifting off—his pages turning more slowly, his eyes growing heavier—Luo Yan carefully reached over and extinguished the small oil lamp that provided their meager lighting.
"Hey!" Luo Hai protested weakly. "I was reading..."
"Sleep," Luo Yan commanded gently. "Tomorrow's important. You need rest."
Luo Hai grumbled but didn't resist. Within minutes, his breathing evened out, and he was truly asleep, the magazine falling from his loose grip.
Luo Yan waited another thirty minutes, until the entire apartment had settled into the silence of deep night. Only then did he allow himself to fully acknowledge what was happening.
He closed his eyes and thought: *System interface.*
The translucent panels materialized before him instantly, glowing with ethereal blue light that existed only in his perception. They hovered in the darkness of his mind, waiting for his commands.
**[SUPREME HAREM SYSTEM ]**
**[HOST: LUO YAN]**
**[CULTIVATION BASE: 0%]**
**[STATUS: AWAKENING]**
His heart pounded silently. Everything was about to change.
To be continue.