PHASE 1: THE GUTTER
Chapter 1: The Ledger Awakens
The last thing Ren saw was the stock ticker.
Not his life flashing before his eyes. Not his mother's face, or his first love, or any of the sentimental nonsense people claimed to experience at the end. Just numbers. Green and red. NASDAQ: -2.4%. S&P: -1.8%. His own portfolio: -47% and falling fast.
He'd been staring at them for fourteen hours straight, as he had for most of the past twenty years. The glow of three monitors illuminated his cramped Manhattan apartment, painting his face in sickly hues of market data. His coffee mug had gone cold hours ago. His back ached from the cheap office chair. His heart-overworked, under-rested, pushed past its limits by decades of eighty-hour weeks and stress-induced insomnia gave one final, protesting lurch.
Ren grabbed his chest.
The pain was immediate and catastrophic-a fist squeezing his heart, twisting, crushing. He tried to stand, to reach for his phone, to do something, but his legs buckled. He fell forward, face slamming into the keyboard. The last thing he saw, pressed against the keys, was the ticker still scrolling across the bottom monitor:
DOW JONES: -312.44 | APPLE: +0.3% | TESLA: -2.1% | REN: TERMINAL
Then nothing.
---
He woke to the smell of rot.
Not the antiseptic scent of a hospital, or even the musty odor of a morgue. This was active decay-sewage, garbage, something that had been dead for days in warm weather. The stench hit him like a physical blow, and he gagged, his stomach heaving empty air.
He couldn't move.
Not paralyzed-his limbs responded when he tried to shift-but his body felt wrong. Heavy. Weak. Like someone had replaced his muscles with wet sand and his bones with brittle twigs. He tried to open his eyes and found that one of them was crusted shut with something sticky.
What the hell?
Slowly, painfully, Ren forced himself to take stock.
He was lying in an alley. Narrow, brick walls on either side, a sliver of grey sky visible far above. The ground beneath him was wet and cold-not concrete, but packed earth mixed with garbage. Rotting vegetable matter. Something that might have been a rat. The source of the smell.
He was covered in it.
Refuse. Trash. Someone had dumped him here like garbage, or he'd crawled here himself, or-
Or I'm dead and this is hell.
The thought came with surprising calm. Ren had never believed in an afterlife. He'd believed in data, in patterns, in the cold mathematics of markets. But if there was an afterlife, this seemed exactly like the one he deserved. An eternity of lying in garbage, too weak to move, while the stench of decay filled his lungs.
Then the memories hit.
Not his own.
They crashed into him like a wave-a boy's life, compressed into a single devastating flood of sensation. A mother's face, gaunt and feverish. A father who'd never existed. Years of begging on these very streets. The constant hunger, the casual cruelty of strangers, the desperate scrabbling for scraps. A body with shattered meridians-whatever that meant-that could never cultivate, never rise, never be anything but prey. And finally, the guards. A stolen potato. A beating. The last sight of cobblestones rushing up to meet a broken skull.
The boy's name was Ren Gen.
The boy was fourteen years old.
The boy was dead.
And Ren-the other Ren, the thirty-four-year-old quantitative analyst who'd died at his desk-was now wearing his body like a borrowed coat that didn't quite fit.
Transmigration.
The word surfaced from somewhere. He'd read web novels, occasionally, during the rare moments when markets were closed and sleep wouldn't come. Trashy power fantasies about ordinary people dying and waking up in fantasy worlds with cheat abilities. He'd always dismissed them as escapist nonsense for people who couldn't handle reality.
Apparently, reality had a sense of humor.
Okay. Transmigration. New body. Dead original owner. Fantasy world. Assess the situation.
The analyst in him took over, shoving aside panic, grief, and the overwhelming urge to vomit. He'd survived market crashes, hostile takeovers, and the 2008 financial crisis. He could survive this.
Step one: physical condition.
Ren-he'd keep the name, it was simpler-took inventory. The boy's body was malnourished, obviously. Ribs visible through skin. Arms like twigs. One eye crusted shut with what felt like dried blood. Multiple bruises, some fresh, some healing. Possible broken ribs? Hard to tell through the general pain. Definitely dehydrated. Possibly starving.
But alive. Somehow, despite a cracked skull and a beating that should have killed him, the body was alive. The boy's soul had fled, but the flesh remained, and Ren's soul had found it.
Why?
Step two: environment.
The alley was narrow, maybe four feet across. Brick walls rose three stories on either side, windows shuttered or broken. The ground sloped slightly toward a central gutter where filth collected. At the far end, maybe fifty feet away, Ren could see a sliver of street-cobblestones, passing feet, the hem of a robe.
People. Civilization. Potential help or potential threat.
Step three: resources.
He had nothing. No money, no weapon, no food, no water. The clothes on his back-a tattered shirt and threadbare pants-were more holes than fabric. His shoes were mismatched and falling apart. In his pockets: absolutely nothing.
Survival probability: low.
Then the green light appeared.
---
It flickered in his vision like a afterimage, but Ren knew immediately it wasn't physical. This was in his mind, his soul, whatever made him him. A translucent interface, reminiscent of the stock terminals he'd spent his life staring at, but sleeker. More organic. Alive.
CELESTIAL LEDGER INITIALIZING...
The words scrolled across his vision, green text on a dark background.
SCANNING HOST...
HOST STATUS: ANOMALOUS
ORIGIN: TRANSMIGRATED SOUL
CURRENT VESSEL: HUMAN, MALE, AGE 14
CULTIVATION: NONE (MERIDIANS: DESTROYED)
LIFE EXPECTANCY: 3.7 DAYS (CURRENT CONDITIONS)
INITIALIZATION COMPLETE.
WELCOME, REN. THE LEDGER IS YOURS.
Ren stared at the words floating in the air before him. He blinked. They didn't go away. He tried to reach out and touch them-his hand moved, but passed through the interface like it wasn't there.
Of course. It's in my head. A system. The cheat ability.
He should have been shocked. Terrified. Overwhelmed. Instead, he felt something else entirely: interest.
This was data. Information. A tool. He didn't know what it did yet, but he knew how to use tools. He'd spent his life using tools to extract value from chaos.
Okay. How does this work?
He focused on the interface, willing it to respond. The text shifted, new options appearing.
LEDGER FUNCTIONS:
- VALUE ASSESSMENT (ACTIVE)
- DEBT VISUALIZATION (LOCKED)
- KARMA FUTURES (LOCKED)
- AUDIT (LOCKED)
ADDITIONAL FUNCTIONS UNLOCK WITH USE.
Value Assessment. That was active. That was something.
Ren focused on the first option, and the interface shifted again.
VALUE ASSESSMENT:
ASSESS VALUE OF TARGET OBJECT OR BEING.
COST: VARIABLE (HOST LIFE FORCE)
WARNING: EXCESSIVE USE WILL REDUCE LIFE EXPECTANCY.
Life force. His life. The 3.7 days he apparently had left.
Wonderful.
But information was power, and power was survival. If he was going to die in three days anyway, he might as well use the tool while he had it.
Ren looked around the alley. His eyes landed on the dead rat nearby-a mangled, rotting thing that had probably been there for days.
ASSESS.
The interface flickered, and new text appeared.
TARGET: DECEASED RAT (RATTUS NORVEGICUS)
CONDITION: ROTTING, 80% CONSUMED BY MAGGOTS
VALUE: 0.000 SPIRITUAL CREDITS
USES: NONE (TOXIC, DISEASED)
ASSESSMENT COST: 1 HOUR LIFE EXPECTANCY
Ren felt it—a subtle drain, like a clock inside him ticking slightly faster. One hour. Gone.
But he'd learned something. The system measured value in "Spiritual Credits." It could assess anything. And using it cost him time he didn't have.
Three point seven days. Eighty-eight point eight hours. If each assessment costs an hour, I can do maybe eighty-eight assessments before I drop dead. Less, because I need time to actually do things between assessments.
He needed to be strategic. Surgical. Use the Ledger only when absolutely necessary.
First priority: water. Second priority: food. Third priority: shelter. Fourth priority: information.
He couldn't do any of that lying in a gutter.
Ren tried to move-really move, not just twitch-and discovered just how weak this body was. His arms trembled when he tried to push himself up. His vision swam. His stomach cramped with what felt like advanced starvation.
Three point seven days. That's assuming I stay here and do nothing. If I try to move, I might burn through energy faster. If I find water, I might extend it. The estimate is just a baseline.
He forced himself up onto his elbows. Then, after a long rest, onto his hands and knees. The world spun around him, the alley walls tilting sickeningly. He vomited-nothing but bile, because there was nothing in his stomach.
Progress.
He crawled toward the street.
---
The alley opened onto a scene that could have been lifted from a thousand xianxia novels.
Cobblestone streets, wide enough for carts. Buildings of wood and stone, two or three stories tall, with tiled roofs and paper windows. People everywhere-merchants hawking goods, cultivators in flowing robes, servants carrying baskets, children running through the crowds. And above it all, floating on swords and platforms of light, figures in magnificent clothing soared through the air like it was nothing.
Cultivators.
Ren had read about this. A world where people could train to transcend mortality, gaining power over elements, over their bodies, over reality itself. Immortals who could live for millennia. Beings who could shatter mountains with a thought.
And here he was, a crippled beggar with destroyed meridians, unable to cultivate at all. Less than dirt to these flying gods.
Survival probability: dropping.
He needed to get off the street. Lying in the open was asking to be kicked, robbed, or killed. He needed to find somewhere to hide, to rest, to think.
His borrowed memories provided the answer.
The boy Ren Gen had lived in the slums, on the western edge of the city. He'd had a spot-a hollow under a collapsed building where he'd slept when he could claim it. Other beggars fought over it, but the boy had been fast, small, and desperate. He'd held it for nearly a month before his final, fatal trip to steal a potato.
Ren oriented himself using the memories. The sun-a single, yellow star, like Earth's-was overhead, so midday. The alley faced north. The slums were west.
He started walking.
Or shuffling, more accurately. Every step was agony. His bare feet-he'd lost the mismatched shoes somewhere in the alley-cringed from the cold cobblestones. People shoved past him without a glance, beggars being as invisible here as they were anywhere. A merchant's cart splashed muddy water across his legs. No one apologized.
Good. Invisible is safe. Invisible means I can observe.
He observed everything. The guards at the city gate, their armor marked with a symbol he didn't recognize. The merchants' stalls, what they sold and for what price (copper coins, mostly). The flow of traffic, the patterns of movement, the way people's eyes slid past him like he wasn't there.
Data. All data. Build the map. Understand the system.
It took him two hours to reach the slums. Two hours of shuffling, collapsing, resting, and shuffling again. By the time he found the collapsed building-a half-destroyed structure leaning against its neighbor like a drunkard-he was running on fumes.
The hollow was still there. A gap between fallen beams and crumbling wall, just big enough for a small person to crawl into. Fresh footprints in the mud nearby-someone else had been using it. But they weren't here now.
Ren crawled inside.
The space was maybe four feet long, two feet wide, three feet high. Damp, dark, and cold. But sheltered from wind and rain, hidden from casual view, and his for the moment.
He lay in the darkness, shivering, starving, and thought.
I have a system that lets me assess value at the cost of my life. I have a body that's literally dying. I have memories of this city, this world, this society. I have nothing else.
What would I tell a client in this situation?
The answer came immediately: Assess your assets. Identify your leverage. Find the smallest possible transaction that generates positive return.
His only asset was information. The Ledger could give him information that others didn't have. If he could trade that information for food, water, shelter-for the basic necessities of survival-he could extend his life. And if he could extend his life, he could gather more information. A positive feedback loop.
Step one: find someone with a problem I can solve.
He needed a target. Someone nearby, with a secret or a need, who would trade something of value for a solution. Someone who wouldn't just kill him and take the information. Someone...
Ren reached out with the Ledger, focusing on the street outside. He didn't have a specific target, just a direction. A hope.
ASSESS NEARBY HUMAN WITH HIGHEST SOLVABLE PROBLEM VALUE.
The interface flickered, calculating.
ASSESSMENT COST: 2 HOURS LIFE EXPECTANCY.
Two hours. A gamble. But if it pays off...
CONFIRM.
The drain hit him-stronger this time, two hours of life bleeding away. He felt it in his bones, his teeth, his hollow stomach.
Then the text appeared.
TARGET: MERCHANT ZHANG WEI
LOCATION: 200 METERS EAST, THIRD STALL ON LEFT
PROBLEM: RECENT THEFT OF GOODS. BELIEVES EMPLOYEE RESPONSIBLE. HAS NO PROOF. LACK OF PROOF COSTING HIM 50 SPIRITUAL CREDITS MONTHLY IN CONTINUED LOSSES.
SOLVABLE: YES
REQUIRED INFORMATION: LOCATION OF STOLEN GOODS, IDENTITY OF THIEF (ACTUAL THIEF IS RIVAL MERCHANT, NOT EMPLOYEE)
POTENTIAL REWARD: 5-10 SPIRITUAL CREDITS
RISK: LOW-MODERATE (MERCHANT ZHANG IS NON-COMBATIVE, WILL NOT KILL INFORMANT)
Ren stared at the text, a smile spreading across his filthy face for the first time since waking in the alley.
There. That's the play.
He had a target. He had information. He had leverage.
Now he just needed to survive long enough to use it.
The sun was setting outside his hollow. The temperature was dropping. His body was shaking with cold and hunger and the aftereffects of the Ledger's drain.
Rest first. Move at dawn. One transaction at a time.
Ren curled into the smallest possible ball, pulling his tattered clothes tight around himself, and closed his eyes.
Behind them, the Ledger glowed faintly, displaying one final message:
LIFE EXPECTANCY REMAINING: 3.1 DAYS
SUGGESTED ACTION: ACQUIRE SUSTENANCE WITHIN 24 HOURS
GOOD NIGHT, REN.
He slept.
---
END OF CHAPTER 1