Lin Chen stared at the paper in his hands.
Three words. Neatly stamped in red ink.
**EXPULSION NOTICE**
He read them again. Same three words. Still there.
"Well. Shit."
He folded the notice carefully and tucked it into his worn outer disciple robes. The fabric was threadbare in places, patched in others. Three years of wear showed.
Three years of nothing to show for it.
Lin Chen walked across the outer courtyard, past groups of disciples chatting and laughing. Nobody looked his way. Why would they? He was invisible. Part of the furniture. The guy who'd been stuck at Qi Condensation Layer One since he arrived.
'Trash,' they called disciples like him. The ones with no talent. No spiritual roots worth mentioning. No future.
He couldn't even argue with the assessment.
A group of inner disciples passed by, their robes pristine and embroidered with azure clouds. One of them was eating a spirit beast skewer, the kind that cost a month's worth of contribution points.
Lin Chen's stomach growled.
He'd had plain rice for dinner. Again.
'Don't be bitter,' he told himself. 'Being bitter doesn't change anything.'
But damn if it didn't feel good to be bitter anyway.
---
The Azure Peak Sect operated on a simple hierarchy. Outer disciples at the bottom. Inner disciples in the middle. Core disciples at the top. Above them, the elders and sect master, untouchable as the heavens themselves.
Lin Chen had joined as an outer disciple three years ago. Orphan with nowhere else to go, barely tested at the entrance exam, squeaked through on the sect's charity quota.
They gave him a manual. A tiny room in the outer disciple dormitory. Access to the sect's basic cultivation resources.
Everything he needed to succeed.
Except talent.
Three years of meditation. Three years of circulating qi according to the manual. Three years of eating cheap food, sleeping on a thin mat, and waking up at dawn to cultivate with the others.
Result?
Still Layer One.
Most disciples reached Layer Two within a year. Layer Three within two years. The talented ones were Layer Five or higher by now, preparing for the inner sect selection exam.
Lin Chen was still at the starting line.
The expulsion notice gave him thirty days. One month to show "meaningful progress" or pack his things and leave.
'Meaningful progress.' What a joke.
He couldn't even sense qi properly. It felt like trying to grab smoke with his bare hands. Everyone else made it look easy. For him, it was like pushing a boulder uphill. Blindfolded. In the rain.
---
Lin Chen reached his room and shut the door.
The space was barely large enough for a sleeping mat, a small desk, and a wooden chest containing his few possessions. No windows. A single oil lamp for light. The walls were thin enough to hear his neighbors arguing about whose turn it was to clean.
Home sweet home.
He lit the lamp and sat cross-legged on the mat.
The cultivation manual lay on the desk. He'd read it so many times he could recite passages from memory.
'*To cultivate is to draw qi from the heavens and earth. Center your mind. Feel the flow. Guide it through your meridians. Condense it in your dantian.*'
Simple instructions. Easy for anyone with actual talent.
Lin Chen closed his eyes and tried to center his mind.
Immediately, his thoughts scattered. Worry about money. Hunger from another plain rice dinner. Embarrassment from being the oldest outer disciple still at Layer One. Anger at his own uselessness.
'Great start.'
He forced the thoughts down and focused on his breathing.
In. Out. In. Out.
Slowly, the noise in his head quieted.
He reached out with his senses, trying to feel the qi around him.
Nothing.
Well, not nothing. There was... something. A faint tingle in the air. Like static electricity before a storm. But when he tried to grasp it, it slipped away.
Hours passed.
Lin Chen sat in the dark, sweating with effort, accomplishing exactly nothing.
Finally, he opened his eyes.
The lamp had burned low. Nearly midnight.
"Three years," he said to the empty room. "Three years and I still can't do the basics."
'Maybe I should just leave. Save everyone the trouble.'
But where would he go? Back to the streets? He'd barely survived as an orphan before the sect. At least here he had a roof and regular meals. Even if the meals were terrible and the roof leaked.
'One month. Thirty days to show progress I couldn't make in three years.'
The math wasn't complicated.
He was screwed.
---
Lin Chen lay back on his sleeping mat.
The ceiling had a crack running across it. He'd memorized its shape months ago. Looked like a sword if you tilted your head.
'Ironic. The only sword I'll ever master.'
He laughed. It came out bitter.
Tomorrow, some genius outer disciple would probably break through to Layer Six. The elders would praise him. Other disciples would congratulate him. Resources would flow his way.
Meanwhile, Lin Chen would still be stuck at Layer One, counting down to expulsion.
'Not even worth being jealous of. What's the point?'
But if he was honest with himself—really honest—there was still a tiny spark of something in his chest.
Not hope. Hope was for people with talent.
Call it... stubbornness.
He'd survived three years of being the sect's punching bag. Three years of pitying looks and whispered insults. Three years of watching everyone else surpass him while he stayed frozen at the starting line.
'If I'm going down, might as well go down swinging.'
One last attempt. One more night of cultivation. What did he have to lose?
Nothing. He had nothing.
Which meant he had nothing to fear either.
Lin Chen sat up and crossed his legs again.
"Alright, universe," he muttered. "One more try. Give me literally anything. A sign. A breakthrough. Hell, I'd settle for reaching Layer One Point Five at this point."
Silence answered him.
'Of course.'
He closed his eyes and began to meditate.
Center the mind. Feel the qi. Guide it through the meridians.
Same routine as always. Same disappointing results expected.
But tonight felt different somehow.
The air was colder. The silence deeper.
Lin Chen focused harder than he ever had before. This was it. Last chance. No more tomorrows.
'Come on. Come on.'
The faint tingle of qi appeared at the edge of his senses.
He reached for it.
And this time—
Something reached back.
---
The room exploded with light.
Lin Chen's eyes snapped open.
A glowing symbol hung in the air before him. Complex geometric patterns, rotating slowly, pulsing with an otherworldly blue radiance.
"What the—"
The symbol rushed forward and slammed into his chest.
Pain. White-hot and all-consuming. Like his body was being torn apart and rebuilt simultaneously.
Lin Chen tried to scream but no sound came out.
The world dissolved into light.
And then, from somewhere far away—or maybe from inside his own head—a voice spoke.
Cold. Mechanical. Absolute.
**[SYSTEM INITIALIZATION COMPLETE]**
**[SCANNING HOST...]**
**[HOST COMPATIBILITY: 100%]**
**[BINDING INFINITE IDLE CULTIVATION ENGINE]**
**[WELCOME, LIN CHEN]**
The light faded.
Lin Chen collapsed onto his mat, gasping for breath.
His vision swam. His heart pounded.
And floating in the darkness behind his eyelids was something impossible.
A translucent blue screen. Like something out of a fever dream.
Words scrolled across it.
**[SYSTEM BINDING SUCCESSFUL]**
**[IDLE CULTIVATION: ACTIVE]**
**[BASE MULTIPLIER: 10,000X]**
**[TIME UNTIL FIRST NOTIFICATION: 8 HOURS]**
**[REST RECOMMENDED]**
Lin Chen stared at the message.
His exhausted brain tried to process what he was seeing.
A system. A cultivation cheat. The kind of thing that happened to protagonists in stories, not to trash disciples who couldn't even reach Layer Two.
'This has to be a hallucination. I finally snapped from the stress.'
But the screen remained. Solid. Real.
**[REST RECOMMENDED]**
"You're not real," Lin Chen whispered.
The system didn't respond.
He poked at the screen experimentally. His finger passed through it, but he felt a faint tingling sensation.
"Okay. Either I've gone insane, or something impossible just happened."
He waited for the system to vanish. It didn't.
"Right. So. Assuming this is real..." He laughed shakily. "What does 'base multiplier 10,000X' even mean?"
No answer.
**[REST RECOMMENDED]**
The same message. Patient. Waiting.
Lin Chen's exhaustion crashed over him like a wave. The adrenaline faded, leaving only bone-deep weariness.
'Maybe this is real. Maybe it's not. Either way, I'm too tired to figure it out tonight.'
He lay back on his mat.
The blue screen hovered at the edge of his vision. Steady. Unchanging.
**[IDLE CULTIVATION IN PROGRESS...]**
**[8 HOURS REMAINING]**
"Eight hours," Lin Chen murmured. "Guess I'll find out in the morning if this is a miracle or a mental breakdown."
He closed his eyes.
Sleep took him almost instantly.
And as consciousness faded, one final thought drifted through his mind.
'If this is real... everything changes.'
Everything.
---
**[IDLE CULTIVATION: 0h 0m 12s / 8h 0m 0s]**
**[QI ACCUMULATION IN PROGRESS...]**
**[MULTIPLIER ACTIVE: 10,000X]**
**[CURRENT PROGRESS: 0.02%]**