I woke up with a jolt—eyes wide, chest heaving. The damp, dirty ceiling of the slums was gone. No faint scent of rot. No cold wind slipping through cracked boards.
Instead… I was in my room.
My bed. My desk. The dull whir of the ceiling fan. Familiar posters on the wall. The soft glow of the morning sun bleeding through my curtain.
I sat up slowly, blinking as reality settled around me like an old blanket.
I was back.
Back in the real world.
And I cried.
Tears slipped down my cheeks without warning. My breath hitched, and I clutched my sheets with trembling hands. For a moment, I couldn't believe it. I had given up on this. I had accepted that I'd be stuck in that other world—forever scraping by, starving, begging, sleeping on damp stone floors.
But now? This world—my world—smelled clean. Warm. Safe.
I ran to the kitchen, heart pounding, and opened the fridge.
Food.
Just… food.
Leftovers. Eggs. Milk. Bread. I didn't even hesitate. I sat on the floor and devoured everything I could grab—cold, stale, didn't matter. My hands moved faster than I could think. Living as a beggar had hollowed me out. Now, every bite felt like salvation. I didn't care if it made sense. I didn't care if I was dreaming. This was real.
I cried again, mouth full of rice.
But the joy didn't last.
It never does, does it?
After the fifth slice of toast and a near-empty jar of peanut butter, it hit me like a freight train:
Now what?
I stared at my trembling hands.
Yes, I had returned. But I hadn't moved. My body—my real body—had never left. Only my consciousness had crossed over.
And worse—I didn't even know how.
There was no magic circle. No ancient portal. No glowing artifact or thunderous decree. I just… slept. And woke up there. Then slept again… and returned here.
I was a passenger with no map, no steering wheel, and no idea where the road went.
The terrifying part?
I wasn't sure which world was the dream anymore.
I went to school like normal, backpack slung over my shoulder, shoes scraping pavement. But nothing felt right.
The hallways were too bright. Too clean. Too meaningless.
My friends talked, laughed, shoved each other, asked if I was sick—if I was okay—but I barely heard them. Their voices felt like echoes. My body was here, but my mind… it was back in the alleys. Back in the dirt. Back under starlight.
In that world, I had lived like a beggar. Like a ghost. But I had lived.
Sixty-five years. When you combined my two lives—mine and Yanjie's—I had experienced six decades of failure, trial, hunger, struggle. Sixty-five years of becoming someone else.
And now I was expected to sit here and take notes on algebra?
What was I supposed to do now? Live like nothing happened? Pretend it was a dream?
No. I couldn't go back to being just "Elric." That name felt shallow now. Like a shell.
But if I was honest with myself… I had no idea how to move forward either.
I walked home alone that evening, footsteps slow, head bowed. The sun was setting, the streets soaked in fading gold.
I didn't say much to my parents. Just the usual. "School was fine." "Yeah, I'm just tired." "No, I don't want dinner."
I locked myself in my room and sat on the floor.
Staring at nothing.
Just thinking.
I couldn't move items between the worlds. Only my mind transferred. That was both a curse and a miracle.
Which meant: if I wanted to survive over there, I had to plan here.
But I couldn't just invent modern tech and dump it into that world. I'd seen what happened to people like that in stories. You show up with a flamethrower, and the next thing you know, someone burns your soul out because "you're disrupting the heavenly balance."
That world was still dangerous, even if it looked primitive. Powers were real—even if most people didn't know how to use them. I'd felt it. The pressure. The silence that followed strange occurrences. That world may have been low-leveled, but it wasn't safe.
I needed an advantage.
Something subtle. Something invisible. Something no one would suspect.
And that's when it hit me.
The human body is the perfect machine.
Yanjie's memories—what few I could access—told me this.
Others chased external power—energy, artifacts, pills, bloodlines. But what if I reversed it? What if I didn't rely on spirit roots or meridians or any of that nonsense?
What if I reprogrammed my body manually?
I had already trained my mind to control my nerves, adjust my heartbeat, shift muscle tension. I could slow my breath to the point of stillness. I could detect the flow of blood in my fingertips. I was close.
So why not push it further?
Project: Bio-Overclock.
It sounded insane. But it made sense. Use the time here to develop micro-movements, neural commands, and precision that could simulate superhuman ability.
It wouldn't be elegant. It wouldn't be perfect. But I could iterate. Test. Fail. Repeat.
Build a path through trial and error.
For example:
Control my pupils and eye muscles to simulate night vision.
Learn to stimulate adrenaline release manually—like a berserk mode.
Train pain tolerance until it became almost non-existent.
Sharpen my fine motor skills so precisely I could grab a fly mid-air.
Compress my thoughts so decisions happened in microseconds.
No flashy auras. No spiritual explosions. Just pure human hacking.
And if I mastered it here, it would carry over there—because it was my consciousness doing the work.
I would become the silent monster they never saw coming.
Not a cultivator. Not a chosen one.
Just me.
I pulled out a notebook and began scribbling ideas.
Phase 1: Neural Calibration.
Train micro-muscle awareness. Internal map of nerves, organs, muscle fibers.
Phase 2: Chemical Control.
Learn how to release and regulate hormones at will—adrenaline, cortisol, dopamine.
Phase 3: Reflex Loop Overwrite.
Train reaction time until instinct becomes programmable.
Phase 4: Sleep Gate Key.
Track sleep patterns, EEG rhythms. Try to consciously trigger the "world transfer" while asleep.
Phase 5: Tactical Design.
Create tools and hidden equipment using materials from this world—then test how consciousness affects usage there.
My hands trembled as I closed the notebook.
No more waiting. No more begging. No more clinging to broken spirit roots and half-baked manuals.
If I couldn't be chosen by the heavens… I'd build a path they couldn't predict.
Elric—the beggar—was gone.
Now, it was just me.
And I was going to war.