The coffin-mound rolled forward like a black tide.

  Wooden wheels groaned. Ropes bit into palms. Mud swallowed footsteps.

  Ahead lay the Royal Necropolis of Wu.

  Low, stunted forests hunched beneath a sky the color of old ash. An ancestral temple squatted among the trees, half swallowed by moss. Beyond it, mausoleums dotted the land like scattered teeth. This was where the emperors of Wu slept, generation after generation, under stone and silence.

  Silence that didn’t last.

  Crying tore through the perpetual gloom, raw and ugly, like something clawing its way out of a throat. Li Lingrui was one of the voices.

  He could still remember dying.

  Not heroically. Not dramatically.

  Just… collapsing.

  A life spent under fluorescent lights, solder fumes, and assembly-line rhythm. The kind of existence people romanticized with bitter jokes: cold wind in the electronics factory, legends returning on the conveyor belt.

  Then the 996 schedule took what it always takes in the end.

  A sudden blackout.

  A final breath.

  And then this.

  According to the memories left in this body, the world was called the Fangze Realm, and this land was the Wu Kingdom.

  He hadn’t been chosen by fate.

  He’d been sold.

  Eight children. Two exhausted parents. A hungry year. And a government notice nailed to the village gate:

  Wu seeks offerings. Ten taels of silver per sacrifice.

  So Li Lingrui had become a blood-bag with a name.

  The storytellers called the destination the Abyss of Utter Ghosts, a demonic sect sunk into rot and superstition. Every year, Wu’s officials delivered “disciples” to it. Every year, none returned.

  As if the mountain swallowed people whole.

  Li Lingrui’s knees hit the wet stone. His mind emptied, a hollow shell filled with one thought:

  So this is it. I transmigrated just to die twice.

  Then something flickered before his eyes.

  A pinpoint of light.

  It widened, threads of radiance stretching into lines, lines into parchment, parchment into a floating wall of ancient scroll-light, unfurling like a decree from heaven.

  A status panel.

  【Name: Li Lingrui】

  【Lifespan: 18】

  【Cultivation: None】

  【Constitution: None】

  【Talent: None】

  【Techniques: None】

  【Treasures: None】

  For a heartbeat, the necropolis blurred. His vision swam with moisture.

  A cheat.

  A golden finger.

  Finally.

  His throat tightened with something dangerously close to hope.

  “System!”

  Nothing answered.

  The air stayed dead.

  He tried again, harsher. “System, don’t play with me!”

  Still nothing, except the sniffles of other sacrifices and the creak of ropes.

  Li Lingrui stared at the glowing scroll-wall.

  “…You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  He swallowed, jaw trembling.

  This realm is garbage. If I had a logout button, I’d smash it and reroll.

  Then the scroll-light shifted.

  New lines burned into existence, as if written by an unseen brush dipped in greed.

  【Greedhog’s Echo Ledger: a lambskin scroll left behind in the Nine Heavens】

  【Effect: Copies any complete technique or divine art fully demonstrated before you. Usable once.】

  【Note: Greedhog was on good terms with the Lord of the Underworld. Even in death, you may bribe Nether Court officials to return to life.】

  Li Lingrui’s breath hitched.

  Copy once.

  And death… negotiable.

  His pulse thundered.

  So that’s the “system.” Not a voice. Not a guide. Just a contract written on old skin.

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  His lips parted in a grin that felt too sharp to be sane.

  I’m immortal… and I can steal miracles.

  A cold voice sliced through the necropolis.

  “Those whose names are called, step forward.”

  A man in black stood before the sacrifices as if he had been born from the shadows. His robes drank the candlelight. His gaze was a knife dragged slowly across flesh.

  “Su Qi.”

  “To!”

  A pale, clean-faced boy rose. He walked with steady steps, shoulders straight, eyes calm. A cultivator’s seed, the kind that made elders’ hearts itch with desire.

  The black-robed man studied him, and his mouth curved.

  “A talent of rare purity.”

  Su Qi bowed deeply. “This junior is unworthy of praise, Immortal Master.”

  The man’s smile widened, bright as a butcher’s cleaver.

  “Good. You’re the kind who was born to be an offering.”

  He lifted a hand and pointed.

  Behind him, darkness peeled open.

  A colossal Heavenly Demon silhouette emerged, half-real, half nightmare. Its mouth split too wide. Its tongue flicked over fangs that belonged in a myth.

  In that instant, the world emptied.

  Dozens of boys stiffened.

  Their color drained.

  Their breath snapped like thread.

  They fell like cut wheat, bodies thudding against stone, eyes still open, still confused.

  Su Qi collapsed too, his lips parted as if he had one last word trapped behind his teeth.

  The demon licked the air, savoring what it had taken.

  A voice echoed from its fading form, thick with lazy disgust:

  “This child carried a decent spiritual resonance. The rest have no flavor. Eating them is beneath me.”

  The shadow dispersed.

  The black-robed man remained, amused, as if he’d just watched a street performance.

  “Next,” he said softly, savoring it. “Li Lingrui.”

  “To.”

  Li Lingrui stepped forward, head lowered, posture humble. There was no point showing fear. Fear didn’t buy mercy.

  The black-robed man’s eyes narrowed. For a breath, something like hunger flashed across his face.

  Then he reached out, fingers pressing Li Lingrui’s wrist, probing bone and tendon, reading his root like a ledger.

  His expression twisted into delight… and then into irritation.

  “What a pity.” He clicked his tongue. “You carry the posture of ascension. The bones are promising.”

  His hand released.

  “But you’re too old. No value as an infiltrator seed for an immortal sect.”

  Li Lingrui’s stomach sank.

  The man looked him over like livestock.

  “Still. The body is thick. Full. Yang unspent.”

  He smiled, teeth showing.

  “Send him to the Red-Dust Desire Branch.”

  “Yes, Immortal Master.”

  Li Lingrui received a wooden identity plaque.

  The characters were carved deep, as if to make sure the world never forgot what he had become.

  Puppet 3998.

  Along with it, they tossed him a thin scripture:

  《Red-Dust Duality Yin-Yang Scripture》

  Nothing else.

  Dozens of remaining sacrifices were herded together. An old servitor, spine bent like a question mark, shuffled ahead with a lantern that smoked greenish.

  “Once we arrive,” the old man rasped, “don’t speak. Don’t ask. Stay where you’re told.”

  His cataract eyes glittered with something he didn’t dare name.

  “If you can walk out again,” he added, voice almost reverent, “a fortune beyond measure awaits.”

  He didn’t say what he thought.

  Puppet numbers are nearing four thousand. No one walks out.

  They descended into the earth.

  Hours turned to more hours. Stone swallowed sound. The air grew damp, thick with the stale sweetness of old incense and old blood.

  At last, the passage opened into a grand tomb-hall.

  Candles flared by themselves, one after another, until the darkness retreated.

  In the shifting firelight, a red silhouette formed.

  A woman.

  She wore layered crimson silk like spilled wine. Skin pale as fresh snow. Eyes flushed like peach blossoms, too bright, too alive in a place meant for the dead.

  When she moved, the air seemed to follow.

  Several boys swallowed audibly.

  The woman didn’t scold them. She only smiled, slow and knowing, and her waist swayed as she reached for the hand of a pretty-faced youth near the front.

  Her gaze pinned him, predatory but soft.

  “What a handsome little thing,” she purred. “Come with Sister.”

  She led him toward the inner hall, speaking as if this were a welcoming ceremony and not a slaughterhouse.

  “This is a branch altar of the Red-Dust Desire Sect. I am your senior sister. Call me Yu Susu.”

  She tilted her head, eyes shining.

  “You’ve been assigned here, so your luck isn’t the worst. Other branches demand a lifetime of blood… or flesh.”

  Then she drew the pretty youth inside the main hall.

  The doors slammed shut.

  Muffled sounds drifted out. Pleas tangled with laughter. Breath turned sharp. The boys left outside shifted, faces burning, imagining what they shouldn’t.

  Then, too quickly, the hall went silent.

  Three minutes.

  Maybe less.

  When the doors opened again, Yu Susu emerged looking faintly pleased, like someone who had finished a meal and found the dessert acceptable.

  No one asked where the youth went.

  No one wanted to know.

  Li Lingrui moved while the others stared.

  The “tomb” was wrong. No coffins. No sarcophagi. Instead, there were shelves, screens, cushions, braziers, tools. A living place disguised as a grave.

  At the entrance they had come through, a formation barrier stood like a glass wall shimmering with murderous intent.

  No escape.

  Not unless something was “completed.”

  Li Lingrui sat down in a quiet corner, crossed his legs, and opened the scripture.

  The words swam for a moment, then settled.

  He followed the breathing method.

  Inhale.

  Gather.

  Exhale.

  Guide.

  A thin thread of warmth stirred in his dantian, circling like a timid creature waking in the dark.

  His eyes snapped open.

  “It works.”

  Shock sharpened into joy.

  He kept going.

  Minutes became hours. Hours became a day.

  When he finally opened his eyes again, the hall had thinned. The crowd from yesterday was gone.

  In the center of the hall stood several human-shaped figures.

  Mannequins.

  Or… once-human.

  Their faces were frozen in blissful rapture, mouths parted, eyes half-lidded, as if they had been caught at the peak of ecstasy and then sealed there forever.

  A chill crawled up Li Lingrui’s spine.

  Then Yu Susu’s voice drifted over like perfume.

  “Junior brother,” she said lazily. “Come.”

  He turned.

  She was looking at him.

  Not at the others.

  At him.

  His throat went dry. “Come… for what?”

  Her smile deepened. She stepped close, lips near his ear, and let out a breath that was warm and wrong.

  “Cultivation.”

  His limbs weakened instantly, as if his bones had been replaced with wax. His thoughts slowed. His body betrayed him with the obedience of an insect under a needle.

  When he was laid on a soft, fragrant bed, he realized with cold clarity that refusal wasn’t part of the ritual.

  Yu Susu leaned down.

  Her mouth met his.

  And the scripture in his mind began to run on its own.

  But it wasn’t gathering qi.

  It was draining it.

  The little thread of spiritual energy he had cultivated, along with something deeper, hotter, more essential, was pulled from him in a rushing tide.

  Yang essence.

  Life’s root heat.

  It streamed into Yu Susu like water into a bottomless well.

  Li Lingrui felt his body wither. His breath thinned. His heart stuttered.

  His voice scraped out like sandpaper. “What… is this?”

  Yu Susu’s expression turned flat.

  No warmth. No seduction.

  Only a calm, practiced hunger.

  “You’re cultivating a copy.” Her eyes were clear, almost bored. “A replica scripture.”

  She tapped his chest lightly, as if indicating where the truth was being taken from.

  “The complete version belongs to me. When dual cultivation begins, you become my furnace.”

  Understanding slammed into him.

  This place wasn’t a sect.

  It was a jar.

  And they were the insects fed inside it.

  From the moment they entered, the ending had already been written.

  【You have died. Yu Susu has devoured your origin qi.】

  【Greedhog’s Echo Ledger activated automatically.】

  【Complete technique copied: 《Red-Dust Duality Yin-Yang Scripture》】

  Darkness closed over him like a lid.

  And somewhere beyond death, in a bureaucracy older than empires, the Underworld began to count his bribes.