Clang! Clang! Clang!
Inside the dim, damp cave, the endless sound of blunt impacts echoed off the walls.
A skinny teenager swung his pickaxe into the stone with what little strength he had left. Every strike felt like a gamble between living and dying.
His body looked fragile, as though one small mistake would be enough to make him collapse and never get up again.
Yet the fire in his eyes hadn't gone out.
The pickaxe slammed into the wall again. Rock fragments flew everywhere; some rolled all the way to his feet.
After who knows how long, his steps faltered. He dragged himself to the corner of the tunnel and slowly sat down, as if even the slightest friction might shatter his bones.
His breathing came in ragged gasps. His lungs felt like they'd been stuffed with burning sand.
"Ah… damn it," he muttered weakly. "How the hell did I end up in a miserable place like this?"
His hands trembled as he opened his palms. The skin that used to be smooth was now covered in cuts, calluses, and cracks—like parched, barren earth.
Sharp, throbbing pain stabbed through him, forcing a grimace.
The boy's name was Lin Chen.
Old memories flooded in mercilessly. Once, he had just been an ordinary college student on a planet called Earth—living a mundane, unremarkable life, though never lacking anything. Now that felt like an unreachable luxury.
A week ago, he had woken up as an orphaned boy named Lin Chen in a completely foreign world.
A world filled with cultivators, mystical creatures, and the brutal law of the jungle—a world he had only ever known through xianxia stories.
In those first few days, Lin Chen had tried meditating, hoping for a miracle. He waited for a robotic System voice, an all-knowing old grandpa, or at least some unexpected help like in the novels he'd read.
What came instead was the whip of the mine overseer—because he failed to meet quota.
He wasn't a hidden genius. He wasn't blessed with some special power or insane luck. He was just a mine slave—a slave teetering on the edge of death.
His new body was almost broken. Severe malnutrition had withered his muscles and flesh, made worse by the Poisonous Qi particles that poisoned his organs with every breath.
Driven by unbearable hunger, he had even desperately swallowed toxic wild mushrooms, which only accelerated the destruction of his own body.
Yet on the very first day of his transmigration, something strange had happened.
A violent fever gripped him. He didn't know how high it spiked; he only remembered a green leaf he'd been clutching in his hand withering and burning to ash in an instant.
When the fever finally broke, his body did feel slightly better—though still terribly weak.
Lin Chen figured it was just his body's desperate attempt to purge the poison. Still, deep down, a tiny part of him hoped it was something else—something that hadn't fully awakened yet.
Unfortunately, that hope died quickly.
No System.
No ancient artifact.
No mysterious savior.
Just daily quotas and forced labor under air thick with toxic Qi.
His health started deteriorating again. If he used to be able to mine for hours at a stretch, now he had to stop every few minutes just to catch his breath.
Lin Chen stared at the broken rocks scattered around him and let out a long sigh.
"When is this ever going to end…?"
He forced himself back to his feet.
"If this were back then, I'd have already gone viral exposing the monster who's exploiting people like this—let him get canceled into oblivion!" he said with a bitter, self-mocking smile.
As a kidnapped and trafficked mining slave owned by cultivators, his only option was to keep working if he wanted to stay alive.
The pickaxe struck the wall again. Dust exploded outward. The ringing impacts echoed through the silent tunnel.
DONG… DONG… DONG…
After an unknowable stretch of time, an ancient bell rang out sharply.
Lin Chen jolted. "Time's up…?"
He turned and counted his haul. After a moment, he breathed a sigh of relief.
"Just enough…"
In front of him lay a pile of dull gray stones that looked completely worthless. Ironically, they were the razor-thin line between life and death.
His daily quota was one kilogram of black iron ore.
It sounded simple. In reality, only two to three percent of each rock actually contained the mineral. To meet quota, he had to dig through and sort more than forty kilograms of stone.
With trembling hands, Lin Chen loaded the rocks into two large baskets. He hoisted them onto his shoulders using a carrying pole.
"Ugh…!"
Nearly sixty kilograms pressed down on him. Veins bulged in his arms; his whole body shook violently. Logically, a body this emaciated shouldn't have been able to bear that weight.
But the terror of death forced his muscles to push far beyond their limits.
He staggered down the torch-lit tunnel. Halfway through, his mind drifted back to his first day in the mine.
Work started at eight in the morning and ended at five in the afternoon—sounded almost humane. But it wasn't out of kindness; it was because after those hours, the poisonous fog grew thicker and the mine monsters came out.
The overseers didn't care whether a slave lived or died—as long as they didn't die too quickly.
Lin Chen quickened his pace as he remembered the mangled corpses he'd seen—victims of the mine monsters.
Suddenly, a soft skittering sound.
His breath caught.
"Sssss…"
A low hiss echoed through the tunnel. The mist felt colder, pressing against his chest.
A shadow moved at the edge of his vision.
Not a hallucination.
A pair of glowing yellow eyes emerged from the darkness.
Lin Chen froze. His throat went dry. His heart hammered wildly.
Not now… his mind screamed.
From the shadows crawled a disgusting rat the size of a full-grown dog. Its front incisors dripped thick, foul-smelling liquid that hissed as it touched the cave floor.
Lin Chen's teeth chattered. His eyes darted frantically between the baskets and the monster.
Dropping the baskets meant execution. Keeping them meant getting eaten.
Before he could even finish the thought, the rat lunged.
In that instant, searing heat exploded from the base of Lin Chen's spine, surging through every blood vessel. The world seemed to slow. His vision sharpened, catching every filthy strand of fur on the creature.
But the awareness came too late.
The beast was already right in front of his face.
The last coherent thought that flashed through his mind was:
He was going to die in this mine—right now.