22nd Day of the Seventh Month — 572nd Year of the Skybreaker Thunder Era
Emberthorn Village, Ironwood Province, Skybreaker Thunder Empire
Darkness.
Sensory confusion. Pain.
Marretinha had tasted pain before. He knew the burn of hot lead tearing through muscle, the icy grip of fear in a knife fight, the suffocating pressure of betrayal. But this? This was different.
It was as if his nerves were alight with fire and ice all at once, every inch of his body screaming in protest. He tried to move, but his limbs felt foreign, frail — as though they no longer belonged to him.
'Where am I?' Carlos thought.
His mind clawed at the edges of consciousness, fighting the fog clouding his senses. Slowly, painfully, he peeled open his eyes.
The stench of smoke and blood filled his nostrils. His blurred vision caught glimpses of chaos: scorched earth, shattered wood, smoldering remnants of what once had been a humble village.
'What is this place?' Carlos thought, forcing his aching head to turn.
As he stirred in the darkness of the basement, the memories surged into him like a tidal wave crashing through a broken dam. They were not his own, yet they intertwined with his mind, drawing him deeper into the past of the man whose body he now inhabited. He — or rather, the man whose body he now inhabited — had been sent here on a mission by the sect. It had been no ordinary mission. Three teams had been dispatched to defend the village against a beast wave — a relentless assault of not just one, but dozens of savage beasts driven into a frenzy. Each team was composed of eighteen members: nine disciples and two servants for every disciple, totaling fifty-four.
Han Shan, a lowly servant, had been ordered to assist under the command of a sneering senior disciple named Zhao Wuying. Zhao Wuying, the most powerful member of the team, was the son of an external elder and had reached the eighth level of the Qi Refinement stage, nearing the ninth.
Despite Han Shan's modest cultivation, stuck at the third level of Qi Refinement, he had advanced further in formation mastery than most knew. Through sheer grit and relentless effort, he had secretly reached Level 4 within the Novice realm as a formation practitioner, hiding his true skill from others to avoid drawing envy or suspicion, giving him just enough edge to survive when others fell.
While others underestimated him, that slight proficiency had kept him alive as the beasts tore through the defense lines. He fought desperately, laying down basic formations to repel the savage assault, enduring wounds that would have ended lesser men.
During the chaos, Han Shan had saved Zhao Wuying's life by triggering a formation he had prepared beforehand, diverting a flood of rampaging beasts just as they were about to tear the senior disciple apart.
For a fleeting moment, hope had flickered among the ranks. But Zhao Wuying, seeing the tide of beasts still surging and sensing his own mortality, chose self-preservation.
"You useless trash hold them off! I'll bring reinforcements!" Zhao Wuying shouted, panic cracking through his usual arrogance.
"Senior Brother Zhao, you can't abandon us!" one of the disciples cried out, horror in his eyes.
"Senior Brother, please! Take us with you!" another servant begged, clinging to Zhao Wuying's robe.
With a sneer, Zhao Wuying kicked the servant away, pulling a gleaming artifact from his sleeve — a jade token that pulsed with spiritual light, unmistakably a treasure forged for Foundation Establishment cultivators. His eyes had caught the silhouette of a Foundation Establishment beast breaching the outer defenses, and fear overtook reason.
"Die if you must! My life is worth more than this village!" Zhao Wuying barked.
He crushed the artifact in his palm, and immediately, a golden shield of energy enveloped him. Empowered by the artifact, Zhao Wuying pushed through the chaos, carving a path through the swarm of beasts as they clawed and bit at the shimmering barrier.
"He's leaving us... he's really leaving us!" a disciple shouted in disbelief.
"Zhao Wuying, you bastard!" another cried, tears of rage and despair streaking his dirt-covered face.
"Coward! May the heavens strike you down!" a servant cursed, voice breaking under the weight of terror.
But Zhao Wuying didn't look back. With the shield's protection, he sprinted from the village ruins, disappearing into the distant forest, the sounds of slaughter fading behind him.
The formation lines flickered weakly, overrun by the beasts' relentless assault. Chaos erupted as panic overtook the remaining defenders.
Out of the fifty-four-man deployment, only Zhao Wuying and Han Shan had survived the slaughter.
As fragments of memory settled like ashes in his mind, Carlos couldn't help but reflect, his thoughts cutting through the pain like a razor.
'Hiding your true skill... clever move,' Carlos thought grimly. 'Han Shan, you played your cards right. On the streets, flashing your power too soon only paints a target on your back.'
There was a glimmer of admiration in his thoughts — a recognition of kindred instinct. He respected the cautious strategy; it had kept Han Shan alive, just as such cunning had once kept Carlos alive in a world just as brutal.
Han Shan, breathing raggedly, ran through the devastated remains of the village, each step driven by raw survival instinct. His battered body protested, but his senses, sharpened by his studies in formations, tingled with something unusual amid the ruins. His eyes caught faint, almost invisible traces of formation lines leading to a half-collapsed house at the village's edge.
Drawn by instinct and desperation, he forced his legs to carry him closer. Beneath the scorched doorway, partially hidden under debris, he discovered a basement hatch sealed tightly with a Level 1 defensive formation of an Apprentice. Even in his weakened state, Han Shan's innate gift with formations awakened like a dying ember catching flame. Despite the pain clouding his mind, the familiar patterns of energy called to him. Yet, as he examined the formation, a grim realization settled in his chest. This was not a simple task — the difference between a Novice Level 4 and the entry level of Apprentice was a chasm, far larger than most could appreciate. Every thread of energy felt heavier, more intricate, as if stepping from shallow waters into a roaring river. His mind strained under the complexity, and sweat poured from his brow as he fought to comprehend and unweave the defensive lines.
Laboriously, he traced the complex formation with trembling fingers, sweat and blood mixing on his skin. Bit by painstaking bit, he unraveled the defensive threads, his breathing ragged, vision blurring at times. Each correction, each pulse of his weak qi, demanded more than he thought he had left. But with sheer force of will, he dismantled the formation's weave until, with a final, trembling click, the lock disengaged.
Without hesitation, he pushed open the hatch and slipped down into the shadows of the basement, finding brief refuge from the nightmare consuming the village above.
But Han Shan's reprieve was short-lived.
His body, already battered, trembled violently as fresh blood poured from a deep gash across his side — a wound inflicted by a beast at the terrifying ninth level of the Qi Refinement stage, just before he had found the hidden formation. His vision swam, dark spots clouding his sight as the loss of blood sapped his strength.
Collapsing onto the cold, dusty floor, Han Shan's breath came in ragged gasps. Even as he clung to life, darkness crept in at the edges of his consciousness.
'I did... what I could...' his fading thoughts echoed, bitter and resigned.
Moments later, his chest stilled, and the spark of life flickered out.
It was then that Carlos fully awoke in the hollow shell of Han Shan's body, trapped in the blurred space between death and life.
For three days, he drifted between fevered consciousness and oblivion. Memories not his own surged like tides within his mind, colliding and merging with his own experiences. Each time he clawed toward awareness, waves of pain and disorientation dragged him back under.
On the third day, clarity began to return.
Carlos forced his swollen eyes open, the oppressive gloom of the basement surrounding him.
His throat burned with a savage dryness, each breath scraping like sandpaper against raw flesh. Hunger twisted his stomach into painful knots, and his muscles — no, Han Shan's muscles — screamed with fatigue. Every movement sent jagged lightning bolts of pain across his body, as if he were stitched together with barbed wire.
'Damn... this body's a wreck,' Carlos thought bitterly, gritting his teeth. But pain was an old companion, almost comforting in its familiarity. His limbs felt heavy, his muscles weak, but he endured. Slowly, painstakingly, he pushed himself up from the floor.
Carlos forced himself to steady his ragged breathing, straining his ears for any sound above — a scrape, a growl, even footsteps — but silence pressed down on him like a coffin lid. He caught the acrid scent of old smoke clinging to the damp air, mingling with something coppery and sharp: the unmistakable smell of blood. The faint stench of burnt flesh lingered, a grim reminder of the slaughter outside.
Around him, faint traces of survival emerged from the shadows. His eyes, adjusting to the dim light, caught sight of a set of books that had clearly seen regular use — spines worn, pages marked with notes and smudges of ink. These weren't treasures abandoned to dust; they were the everyday tools of someone who had worked here, perhaps only recently. Manuals on formation theory, cultivation insights, and even a modest alchemist's primer lay in a careful stack, as if waiting for their owner to return.
His gaze fell on the alchemist's furnace, and a flicker of his street instincts sparked to life. Back home, he had seen countless makeshift labs in cartel basements — and this setup wasn't so different. 'No different from a back-alley cook's kit,' Carlos thought, lips curling into a faint smirk. 'Tools are tools. In the right hands, they don't care who uses them.'
Beside the furnace, soot-stained and clearly used not long ago, traces of residue still clung inside its chamber. Its surface bore marks of practice, not neglect. And not far from it, a cultivation mat lay unrolled — worn, but not abandoned. The slight indentations in the fabric suggested someone had meditated here regularly.