The last time Ye Qiu looked at his watch, it was 10:03 p.m.
He was standing on the roof of an old gymnasium that was about to be demolished by controlled explosion, conducting the final inspection. The city beneath his feet was painted in a hazy purplish-red by neon lights. The late summer night wind carried both the restless heat of the season and the smell of industrial exhaust, brushing through his hair beneath the safety helmet. Through the intercom came confirmation from each team that they were ready—everything was in perfect order, just as he, the chief structural engineer of the project, had planned.
Precision, control, logic. These were the cornerstones of his world.
"Engineer Ye, all personnel have been evacuated. The demolition zone is clear. We're ready to begin."
"Received. Countdown—one minute." Ye Qiu's voice was calm and steady as his finger hovered above the remote control button.
Fifty seconds, forty, thirty… His eyes unconsciously drifted toward a corner of the gymnasium that had yet to be completely dismantled—a rust-covered section of the spectator stands. It was said to be built during some special period in the last century, with remnants of heavy cement ornamentation.
Twenty seconds.
A blinding flash of lightning suddenly tore through the dull night sky without warning, followed by a deafening clap of thunder that shook the floor beneath his feet. That wasn't supposed to happen—there had been no mention of storms in the weather forecast.
"Engineer Ye? The weather's changing, should we pause?" The intercom crackled with anxious voices.
Ye Qiu frowned slightly, staring at the old roof. A lightning strike? Extremely unlikely, but not impossible. His mind raced through risk calculations.
Ten seconds.
Another bolt of lightning struck—this time with clear intent, right at that section of the cement roof! The blinding white light swallowed his vision; the explosion of sound left him momentarily deaf. In the instant before consciousness was torn away, he thought he saw—through the corner of his eye—that as the lightning shattered the cement, it revealed something inside—a fragment, neither metal nor wood, covered in strange turquoise corrosion...
Five seconds.
No, there were no five seconds left. He could no longer feel the button beneath his fingers, the floor under his feet, or even his own body. Only a force—indescribable, violent, overwhelming—was tearing at his very consciousness, as though trying to wrench him out of some fixed mold.
Darkness. Boundless darkness, swirling with incomprehensible fragments of color. He felt as if he were traveling through a twisted tunnel with no end, where time and space lost all meaning.
...
Pain.
Agonizing pain, as though every muscle had been torn apart and then crudely stitched back together.
Ye Qiu's eyes flew open as he gasped and coughed violently, his lungs burning with fire. What entered his sight was not the white ceiling of a hospital room, but a gray, dull sky that seemed as if it would never brighten. Beneath him was cold, damp earth that reeked faintly of rot.
Where was he?
His memory was fragmented, stuck on the last image—the bizarre lightning, and that turquoise fragment.
He tried to sit up, but his body was so weak that even lifting an arm felt nearly impossible. His clothes were no longer the work uniform he remembered, but a coarse, ragged linen tunic stained with dirt. Beside him lay a worn wicker basket containing a few shriveled, unidentifiable weeds.
What… was happening?
Time travel? The word, which had only ever existed in web novels, now struck him with chilling reality. A wave of dizziness and nausea overwhelmed him; he collapsed forward, retching dryly, but nothing came out.
Calm down. He had to calm down.
He forced himself to stop panicking and began analyzing the situation as an engineer would.
Environment: unknown wilderness. Air composition… unusually fresh, containing some kind of active particles?Body: extremely weak, malnourished, possibly injured.Belongings: tattered clothing, basket, weeds (possible medicinal herbs?).
He took several deep breaths to steady his heartbeat, then began observing his surroundings. He seemed to be at the edge of a mountain path. The trees were unnaturally tall, and many of the plants were of types he had never seen before. Faintly, he could hear distant voices—and something like the growl of a wild beast?
Survival instincts took over. Gritting his teeth, he forced himself upright, slung the basket over his back, and staggered toward the direction of the human voices.
After barely walking a kilometer, he was drenched in sweat and dizzy with exhaustion. Just then, a nearby bush rustled, and a strong, broad-shouldered man dressed like an ancient hunter emerged, holding a freshly killed animal that resembled a roe deer.
The man froze when he saw Ye Qiu, then his face darkened with suspicion and a trace of disdain.
"Hey, scavenger! Get lost! This forest's mine!" the man barked in a rough accent that Ye Qiu could just barely understand.
Scavenger? Ye Qiu glanced at his filthy clothes and gave a bitter smile. He tried to keep his tone calm and weak. "Brother… may I ask where this place is? I… got lost."
"Lost?" The man looked him up and down, then snorted. "Judging by your sorry state, you must've escaped from those bastards at Blackwind Stronghold, eh? Hmph, lucky dog. Go five li further ahead, and you'll reach Qinglan City's territory. Once you get there, whether you live or die is up to fate."
Qinglan City? Blackwind Stronghold? Mining slaves?
Each unfamiliar word hit Ye Qiu like a hammer, but at least now he had a direction.
"Thank you—" He didn't finish his sentence before the hunter's eyes suddenly sharpened, fixed on the basket at Ye Qiu's side.
"Eh? You've got Blood-Clotting Grass in there?" Greed flickered in the man's tone. "Kid, hand that over and I'll tell you a shortcut into the city—no guards, no checks. Deal?"
Ye Qiu's mind stirred. Blood-Clotting Grass? So this useless-looking weed had value here. He weighed his options—he was in no shape to fight. Trading information for safety and reduced risk was the most logical choice.
"Alright." He handed the basket over without hesitation.
The hunter snatched the herbs, examined them, and nodded in satisfaction. He pointed to a narrow, thorn-choked path nearby. "Go through there, about three li ahead you'll see a broken section of the city wall. Crawl through the dog hole at the base and you'll end up in the outer city dump. Keep your mouth shut when you get inside!"
With that, the hunter turned and disappeared into the forest with his prey and herbs.
Ye Qiu wasted no time and followed the directions. The path was difficult; thorns tore at his skin, leaving tiny cuts that bled. Yet he felt strangely calmer. Information meant a basis for analysis.
After about half an hour, he finally saw the crumbling stone wall—massive, far taller than any ancient city wall he knew of. At its base was indeed a hole just large enough for a man to crawl through, from which came a foul stench.
A dump… He gave a wry smile. From a top-tier engineer to someone crawling through a garbage hole—what a fall.
But he had no choice. Steeling himself, he held his breath and crawled through.
On the other side, the sight that greeted him was overwhelming. It was a vast depression filled with mountains of garbage and discarded waste. The air was thick with the stench of decay, mixed with the residue of herbs and an unidentifiable metallic tang. Emaciated people in ragged clothes were digging through the piles in numb silence.
So this was Qinglan City's outer district—or rather, its lowest level.
As night fell, dim lights flickered on in the shabby huts scattered around the edges of the dump. Ye Qiu found a relatively clean, sheltered corner and sat down, exhaustion washing over him. Hunger, thirst, and pain gnawed at him together.
Leaning against the cold dirt wall, he gazed up at the alien night sky of this new world. The stars here did not match any constellation he knew.
Home… was he never going back?
That world of steel, concrete, and precise data already felt as distant as a past life.
Suddenly, a searing pain struck his head—worse than ever before. He clutched his skull, curling up as if it might split apart. Through the haze of pain, he once again saw that turquoise fragment from the lightning.
It was no longer vague—it now hovered within his consciousness, slowly rotating.
A faint, cold, yet ancient and boundless aura seeped out from the rotating image, silently merging into his near-exhausted body.
The pain faded.
Ye Qiu opened his eyes abruptly, uncertain and alert. His weakness and pain had lessened somewhat, but more astonishingly, his senses had sharpened. He could hear faint conversations from far-off huts, smell lingering traces of herbal energy within the garbage, and even feel countless tiny, colored motes of light floating in the air around him.
Most of these motes were pale white or cyan, lively and light. But a few were different—darker, nearly transparent gray motes that moved sluggishly, heavy and still, as if indifferent to everything.
There was no logical explanation for any of this. But deep inside, he somehow knew—it was connected to that mysterious fragment, and perhaps to this world's so-called "cultivation."
He tried to guide the pale motes with his mind—no response.
Then he turned his focus to the gray ones.
The moment his mind touched them, the fragment within his consciousness shuddered. Those silent gray motes, as if called by some supreme command, began to drift toward him—slowly, steadily—merging into his skin, his flesh, his bones.
A new sensation arose—not warmth, not comfort, but something deeper, like returning to the origin of existence itself. It was as though a crumbling rock within him was being reforged by the power of the earth.
This was… Chaos Qi?
The term appeared unbidden in his mind.
Night deepened. The dump quieted. Ye Qiu sat against the wall, instinctively absorbing what little Chaos Qi he could, while his mind raced to piece together everything he had learned today: Qinglan City, cultivation, sects, Blood-Clotting Grass, the hunter, the dump…
The path ahead was uncertain and perilous.
But Ye Qiu had never been one to await death passively.
He lifted his gaze toward the distant glow of pavilions and towers within the inner city. Somewhere there might be answers—power—and perhaps, a way home.
The soul of a modern man and the laws of a cultivation world had, in this moment, met within one frail body for the first time.
Unconsciously, his fingers traced a stress analysis diagram into the dirt—complex, precise—and then wiped it away.
A new chapter, from the lowest of places, had begun.