The first thing Wei Liang noticed about dying was how undignified it was.
Not the pain — though the pain was there, a hot and distant thing spreading from the gash across his ribs — but the way his knees had hit the mud before he'd even registered falling. The way his hands were splayed in the dirt like he was searching for something he'd dropped. The way the other disciples had formed a loose circle around him, not to help, but to watch. A few of them looked bored. One was picking at his fingernails.
"Pathetic," said the young man standing over him.
Zhao Renyi. Inner disciple. Third level of Qi Condensation, which in the Pale Mist Sect's brutally efficient social order placed him roughly two full tiers above garbage. He had the kind of handsome face that people in this world were born with as a consolation prize for having no personality, and he held his sword loosely, point still dripping.
Wei Liang looked up at him through strands of dark hair and thought: I know you. You're chapter three. You beat the original Wei Liang to death in the latrine yard over a misunderstanding about a senior sister's handkerchief, and six months from now you'll lose three fingers to Shen Ruoyue when she's in a bad mood. You'll become a recurring minor villain for about forty chapters before the author forgets you exist.
Zhao Renyi kicked him in the chest.
The world spun. Wei Liang's cheek found the mud and he lay there, listening to the wet sound of his own breathing and the distant sounds of the sect going about its business — bells from the scripture hall, a hammer from the forge, a woman laughing somewhere far away. Normal sounds. Life sounds. The kind of sounds that continued whether you were in them or not.
He had approximately thirty seconds before Zhao Renyi hit an artery.
He knew this because he'd read it. Three weeks ago, sitting in his apartment in Chengdu with a delivery container of mapo tofu and nothing on television, he had finished volume one of "Ten Thousand Swords Submit," a web novel with four thousand chapters, a passionate fanbase, and prose that could charitably be described as functional. The original Wei Liang appeared in chapter three as a minor obstacle for the male protagonist, was killed in chapter four, and was never mentioned again. Not even in the footnotes.
That had been three weeks ago. In objective time. In Wei Liang's experienced time, it had been six minutes, because he'd gone to sleep that night and woken up here, in this body, in this mud, under this sword.
The universe had a sense of humor. He'd always suspected.
"Get up," Zhao Renyi said. "I want you to get up so I can knock you down again."
Wei Liang did not get up. He pressed one hand into the mud and turned his head sideways, and he thought very carefully about what he was going to do next. He had maybe three weeks before the plot's main artery started pumping — before Shen Ruoyue arrived at the sect, before the secret realm opened, before every major event in the story began cascading toward its foreordained conclusion. Three weeks of buffer time in which he was just a nobody outer disciple bleeding in a yard.
He needed to not be dead for any of that to matter.
"Senior Brother Zhao." He made his voice small. Smaller than it wanted to be. In his previous life he'd argued contracts in front of corporate boards; he'd learned exactly how much a man's voice could become a tool, and right now the tool needed to be a nail, not a hammer. "I apologize. I think there has been a misunderstanding."
"There's no misunderstanding." Zhao Renyi crouched down, bringing his face close. He smelled like sect-issue spirit incense and entitlement. "You looked at Senior Sister Mei. You looked directly at her. Twice."
"I was watching a bird," Wei Liang said.
Silence.
"...A bird."
"It was an unusual bird. Brown with white markings. I believe it was a Mountain Thrush. They don't usually come down this far in the valley." He paused. "I apologize for failing to explain this at the time. I was startled."
Zhao Renyi stared at him. The disciples in the circle were exchanging glances. Someone snorted.
It was, Wei Liang knew, a deeply stupid defense. But it was also so specifically stupid, so oddly detailed, that it was very difficult to build anger around. Anger needed clean shapes. It needed contempt or defiance or something it could push against. The Mountain Thrush had no shape for anger to grab.
Zhao Renyi stood. He sheathed his sword. He looked down at Wei Liang for a long moment with the particular expression of a man who has encountered something beneath his ability to properly categorize.
"Stay out of my sight," he said, and walked away. The circle dissolved. The disciples went back to their lives. Nobody helped Wei Liang up.
He lay in the mud for another few seconds, staring at the gray afternoon sky, and then he got up.