The sunset painted the sky in shades of gold and amber, casting a warm glow over the caravan as it trundled along the forest track. The horses' hooves kicked up lazy dust clouds, and the wheels creaked in rhythm with the fading light. Night was approaching, and with it, the promise of rest.
Lu Chen woke up slowly.
His consciousness drifted back like a leaf returning to a pond, and the first thing he registered was warmth. Soft warmth. Pressing against him from both sides.
His eyes remained closed. His breathing stayed steady. He did not move.
Because moving would mean acknowledging the situation. One of them had her head on his shoulder. The other had somehow draped an arm across his chest. He couldn't tell which was which without opening his eyes, and he wasn't about to ruin this by being conscious.
This, he decided, is why I keep living.
No, I'm not.
Let me have this.
<...Fine. But this supreme system is judging you. Silently.>
Good.
He lay there, pretending to be unconscious, and absorbed the moment like a sponge soaking up spilled wine. The caravan creaked. The horses snorted. Somewhere ahead, Old Guard Wei was muttering about reaching a certain place before dark. None of it mattered. What mattered was that for the first time in what felt like forever, he wasn't fighting, or running, or grinding, or being digested by a toad.
He was just resting.
Life is good, he thought.
Don't care.
"You could've given me a thirty-second warning," Lu Chen muttered, still not opening his eyes.
"Another time? You knocked me out without warning in the middle of a forest full of bandits and demonic cultivators, and your answer is maybe another time?"
"You—"
Lu Chen sighed internally. He'd been about to deliver a scathing rebuke — something about trust, betrayal, and the fundamental contract between a man and his system. But the word upgrade caught him.
He opened his mental eyes.
The System interface had changed.
Floating in the darkness behind his eyelids were the familiar icons — Status, Gacha, Notifications. But there was a new one now, sitting to the right like a freshly unwrapped gift.
{SHOP}
His heart did a little skip.
Finally.
He'd been waiting for this. A shop meant skills. Skills meant power. Power meant he could stop relying on the same handful of techniques and build a proper arsenal. He imagined shelves lined with glowing scrolls — Heaven-Splitting Sword, Dragon-Tamer Palm, Thousand-Li Kick — each one more devastating than the last.
He opened the shop.
His heart stopped skipping entirely.
The interface was divided into sections. Equipment. Pills. And then—
Books.
Not cultivation manuals. Not technique scrolls. Not secret family heirlooms passed down through generations of sword saints.
Books.
He stared at the list, his brain refusing to process what his eyes were seeing.
"Applied Physics" — 500,000 Soul Points
"Organic Chemistry: A Comprehensive Guide" — 500,000 Soul Points
"Principles of Psychology" — 500,000 Soul Points
"Robotics and Mechatronics" — 500,000 Soul Points
"Human Anatomy and Medicine" — 500,000 Soul Points
The list went on. Mathematics. Engineering. Biology. Thermodynamics. Every subject he'd avoided in his previous life, every textbook he'd skimmed just enough to pass, every lecture he'd slept through — all of them here. In a cultivation world. Behind a paywall made of Soul Points he'd nearly died to earn.
Lu Chen almost fainted.
"Five hundred thousand Soul Points?" His voice cracked. "Why don't you just pick up a sword and rob me? Even then you wouldn't get anything!"
"That's not the point!"
Lu Chen took a deep breath. Then another. Then a third, because the first two didn't help.
"I escaped this stuff in my former world," he said, his voice dangerously quiet. "I transmigrated to a fantasy cultivation world specifically to get away from textbooks. And now you're telling me—" he gestured vaguely at the interface, "—that my upgrade is homework?"
"Don't."
"Where are the cultivation techniques? The flashy moves? The something I can actually use tomorrow?"
Lu Chen's eye twitched. His jaw clenched. His entire body went rigid with the effort of not screaming into the void.
"You literally just repeated yourself."
"I want a refund."
"Compensation for emotional damage?"
Lu Chen closed the shop interface and stared at the inside of his own eyelids. He wanted to go back to the part where he'd been pretending to sleep. That had been nice. That had been peaceful.
"What do you mean?"
Lu Chen waited.
The caravan creaked. The horses snorted. And then—
"Oh no," came Lin Mei's voice, high and worried. "Brother Lu still hasn't woken up. And we're almost approaching his sect."
The words landed in Lu Chen's stomach like a stone dropped from height.
His sect.
Sky-Reaching Sect.
Where the Ascension Meet was happening.
Where Zhang Long was waiting.
Where Xu Rang's token was burning a hole in his storage pouch.
Three days, he thought. How long was I out?
System.
<...>
SYSTEM.
His breathing remained steady. His face didn't move. His eyes stayed closed. Inside, something was screaming, but he had years of practice keeping the inside from reaching the outside.
He could feel Lin Mei's worried gaze on him. He could feel Lin Xue's hand resting lightly on his chest, checking his heartbeat with the quiet efficiency of someone who'd decided it was her responsibility. He could feel Old Guard Wei's presence nearby, probably calculating the nearest healer.
He did not open his eyes.
Waking up now — right after Lin Mei mentioned the sect — would be the single dumbest thing he could do. They'd know he'd been listening. And then he'd have to explain why he'd spent the last however-many hours using their young mistresses as a pillow without apparent objection.
I'm going to kill you, he thought at the System.
This time I mean it.
"We should wake him," Lin Mei said. "He needs to know we're almost there."
"No." Lin Xue's voice was quiet. Certain. "Let him rest. He's been through enough. He'll wake when he's ready."
Her hand gave his chest a single, gentle pat.
Thank you, Lu Chen thought. You're my favorite.
I have two favorites.
None of them need answers.
The caravan creaked onward toward the sect.
Lu Chen lay still, buying himself whatever time remained, turning over the same quiet problem in his mind — the one with no clean solution, no System notification, no EXP reward waiting at the end.
How does a man wake up without looki
ng like he was never asleep?
He never got to answer.
Because the caravan stopped.
[TO BE CONTINUED...]