When Yang woke the second time, the sun had shifted. The light coming through the window was warmer now, suggesting late morning or early afternoon. His head still ached, a dull throb behind his eyes, but the sharp pain was gone.

  He lay still on the floor where he'd fallen, staring up at the ceiling beams. Taking stock of himself. Of this situation. Of whatever had happened to him.

  The panic was still there, coiled in his chest like a snake. But it was quieter now. Manageable. Yang had survived worse than waking up in a strange body. He'd survived death itself. Twice now, apparently.

  But something was different. There was something else in his mind now. Something that hadn't been there before the headache.

  Memories.

  Not his memories. Foreign memories. But they were there, accessible, like looking at images through an old, grainy screen. Blurry and washed out. The details indistinct, the colors faded. Like watching a recording from an ancient television instead of the high-definition displays he remembered from his first life. He could see the shapes, understand the general content, but the clarity was poor. The sharpness missing.

  Yang carefully sat up, moving slowly. The lag between thought and action was still present but much less pronounced now. His mind was adapting to the foreign body, learning its rhythms and responses. The control was better now. Almost natural.

  He closed his eyes and focused on the new memories, trying to pull them into clearer focus.

  A name emerged first. Lucien Valemore. That was the name of the person whose body this had been. Not Yang or James. Lucien.

  Yang tested the name in his mind. Lucien Valemore. It felt foreign on his tongue, unfamiliar and strange. But it was important. This was who he would have to pretend to be.

  More memories surfaced as Yang concentrated. Fragmentary and unclear, but enough to piece together a basic picture.

  Lucien was eighteen years old. Older than Yang's physical age in the cultivation world by a few years. He'd grown up in poverty, the son of a seamstress who worked her fingers bloody to keep them fed. His father had died when Lucien was young. An accident in the factory. Crushed by machinery that should have been better maintained.

  Lucien had been trying to make his own way. His days spent working odd jobs. Delivering messages. Running errands. Whatever paid a few coins. The work was irregular, the pay meager. Barely enough to cover rent and food. But his passion lied elsewhere.

  The memories were frustratingly vague beyond the basic facts. Yang couldn't see clear images of Lucien's mother's face, though he knew she existed somewhere in the city. Couldn't recall specific conversations or events with any precision. Just the general sense of a life lived in hardship and struggle. Like trying to watch a film through thick fog.

  It was like trying to remember a dream hours after waking. The overall shape remained, but the details had faded into obscurity but he can see them getting clearer. He had a feeling he needed a bit more time to settle in before he could see these memories.

  Yang opened his eyes and looked around the small room with new understanding. This was Lucien's room. These were Lucien's possessions. This shabby, cramped space was what passed for home in this world, it certainly was better than anything he had in the initial years of his second life.

  But where was Lucien now? What had happened to the original soul that had inhabited this body?

  Yang had a sinking suspicion he knew the answer. He initially thought that when his soul had been pulled from his own body by that tendril of light, it must have displaced Lucien's soul. Pushed it out. Or perhaps absorbed it somehow. The fragmented memories suggested something else though, Yang thought as he looked at the empty glass vial lying on the bed still. Lucien's consciousness or rather his soul was gone. What remained and what Yang was accessing was just echoes and impressions left behind in the body's meat.

  The thought made Yang feel sick. He hadn't meant to steal someone's body. Hadn't chosen this. But the result was the same regardless of intention. Lucien Valemore was gone, and Yang was wearing his skin.

  Yang pushed the feeling aside. He couldn't afford to dwell on it. Not now. Survival came first. Understanding came second. Anything else could wait until he had the luxury of safety.

  Now that he had more control over the body, the lag almost completely gone as his consciousness settled more firmly into place, Yang decided to check something.

  He closed his eyes again and turned his attention inward. Not to Lucien's memories, but to himself.

  It took a moment to find the right mental state, the meditative focus he'd developed over months of practice. But once he found it, once he slipped into that observational awareness, the Inner Eye opened.

  His Sea of Consciousness appeared before his inner vision. The vast void. The swirling luminescence of his soul.

  But it wasn't the same as before.

  Yang's awareness recoiled in shock at what he saw.

  The tendril of light that had pulled him here hadn't disappeared. It had spread. Grown. Multiplied. What had been a single thread was now an entire web, like a spider's construction spanning across his Sea of Consciousness as far as Yang could perceive. Silver-white threads crisscrossed the void in complex patterns, occupying space that should have been empty.

  The web pulsed faintly with energy. Not hostile, but definitely foreign. Not part of Yang's natural soul structure.

  Yang's panic threatened to rise again. What was this? Some kind of parasitic technique? A curse? Had opening the Inner Eye left him vulnerable to spiritual attack?

  He forced himself to observe more carefully, pushing past the fear. The Heaven-Refining Soul Sutra had taught him to see his consciousness clearly. To analyze without judgment. He needed to understand this, not just react to it.

  The web didn't seem to be damaging anything if you forget about being yanked none too gently out of his own body.

  Yang's soul, the chaotic luminescence that represented his consciousness, still swirled and moved as before. Thoughts still arose as bubbles of light. Emotions still manifested as colored currents. The fundamental machinery of his mind appeared intact.

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  The web just occupied space. Stretched across the void like an additional structure laid over the existing chaos. Like scaffolding built around a building, or a network overlaid on existing infrastructure.

  And now that Yang looked more closely, he noticed something else. His soul had a different quality than before. A faint silver shine mixed into the pale luminescence. Subtle, barely visible unless he focused directly on it, but definitely there. The white light of his consciousness now had hints of silver threading through it, like moonlight on water.

  What did that mean? Had his soul been altered by whatever brought him here? Or was this just a side effect of being in a foreign body?

  Yang didn't know. The Heaven-Refining Soul Sutra hadn't covered anything like this. Soul cultivation was dangerous, yes, but the dangers described in the manual were things like deviation, damage from improper technique, or injury from soul attacks. Nothing about dimensional travel or body possession or mysterious webs appearing in the Sea of Consciousness.

  Yang was in completely unknown territory.

  He continued his observation, moving his awareness through his Sea of Consciousness with careful attention. Checking for damage. For anything obviously wrong beyond the presence of the web.

  Everything seemed intact. His memories from both previous lives were present and accessible. His thoughts formed normally. His emotions responded appropriately. The chaos of untrained consciousness looked exactly as the manual had described it should.

  Except for the web. And the silver shine. And the fact that he was observing all this from inside a stolen body in a foreign world.

  Minor details, really.

  Yang moved his awareness closer to one of the web's threads, examining it more carefully. The silver-white light was brighter up close, almost painful to observe with his Inner Eye. The thread itself seemed to be made of pure energy. Not qi, but something different. Something Yang had never encountered before in either of his lives or in the cultivation world.

  As he focused on the thread and, something shifted in his perception. The thread seemed to pulse in response to his attention, growing slightly brighter. And within that brightness, Yang saw something that made no sense.

  A reflection.

  Like looking into a mirror, but the mirror was the thread itself, and the reflection wasn't his face but something else entirely. Shapes and colors that formed patterns Yang couldn't quite interpret.

  Yang moved his awareness even closer, trying to see more clearly. Trying to understand what he was looking at.

  The reflection sharpened slightly. Still blurry, still indistinct like everything about Lucien's memories, but enough for Yang to make out general shapes.

  Yang's awareness froze. His mind racing to process what he was seeing.

  What the hell?

  A status bar.

  Simple. Clean. Just a thin rectangular outline with text beside it.

  [0.0001% Energy]

  Yang looked at it, bewildered. What kind of energy? Energy for what? The bar itself was essentially empty, just the barest sliver of progress visible at the very beginning.

  Did I transmigrate into a game world instead of a cultivation world this time?

  The thought struck him like a physical blow. A game world. With stats and systems and progression mechanics. Like the web novels he'd read in his first life about people transported to worlds that operated on video game logic.

  But Yang didn't want to be in a different world. He wanted to go back.

  The cultivation world was his home now. Not this shabby room in this gray city. Li San was there. What would Li San think when Yang just disappeared? Would the sect inform him? Would they even know to look for him?

  His life had been getting better. He'd had a path forward. White Cloud Sect had been everything he could have hoped for. Kind seniors, fair resource distribution, real progress in his cultivation. He'd finally opened his Inner Eye after three months of patient practice.

  And then fate screwed him over again and yeeted him into a new reality.

  Yang wanted to scream like a bratty toddler having a tantrum. Despite being mentally in his mid-thirties across three lifetimes, the urge to just give in to frustration was overwhelming.

  But he held himself back. Barely. Lucien's foreign hands clenched into fists.

  He was spiraling. Working himself up into misery and despair and hopelessness. That wouldn't help. That never helped.

  Yang forced himself to breathe. Seven counts in. Six counts out. The familiar rhythm from his soul cultivation calmed him slightly.

  He focused his Inner Eye back on the status bar.

  And was shocked as it had changed while his attention was away.

  [0.0002% Energy]

  The progress was so minuscule that the bar still looked empty. But something had increased the energy level. From 0.0001% to 0.0002%. Doubled, technically, though from such a small base that it meant almost nothing.

  But it had changed. Something was increasing it.

  The change helped ground Yang. This was a problem with observable parameters. A mystery with clues. He could work with this.

  He tried thinking other commands. Status. Inventory. Skills. Asking for a system menu. For an AI assistant. Even the old grandpa in the ring trope, calling out mentally for a hidden master.

  Nothing worked. No other screens appeared. No menus. No responses. Just the single status bar with its slowly accumulating energy percentage.

  Yang stared at it, wondering what energy it was measuring. What would happen when it filled completely.

  He released the Inner Eye and returned to normal awareness.

  Yang sat down on the floor, crossed his legs, and tried to cultivate even though he knew it was useless.

  The familiar posture. The breathing pattern. Reaching inward for the qi in the surrounding environment.

  Nothing.

  There was no qi in this world. After attaining the first stage of Qi Condensation, Yang had begun sensing qi passively. Always aware of its presence like a faint pressure or warmth.

  Here, there was nothing. The air was dead in a way that cultivation world's air never was since he learned to recognize and draw qi.

  Yang opened his eyes, frustration building. No qi meant he couldn't cultivate normally. Couldn't advance his realm. Couldn't even maintain his current stage properly.

  He closed his eyes and accessed his Inner Eye again. This time looking at a different part of the web. Another thread in a different location.

  The same status bar appeared when he peered deeper into the reflection.

  [0.0002% Energy]

  No increase since the last check. So the energy wasn't accumulating constantly. Either something specific had triggered that tiny increase, or the accumulation was so slow it took significant time to show progress.

  But what was it?

  Yang needed to figure out what energy this web needed. What would make that percentage climb.

  He didn't feel the web was harmful. Didn't sense malicious intent. But whatever it was, it had ripped him from his body and deposited him into a corpse in a foreign world. Intent didn't matter when the result was this catastrophic.

  Yang forced himself to think logically. What did he know?

  First, he had a status bar accumulating some kind of energy. Unknown what would happen when it filled, but hopefully something significant.

  Second, this world didn't have qi but must have some other form of power. Lucien's memories suggested a power system existed here, though the details were still frustratingly vague.

  Third, he might have a way back. His body should still be alive in the cultivation world. He hadn't died this time. His soul had been pulled out, not destroyed. The physical shell should still be sitting in meditation, waiting for his consciousness to return.

  Please be there, Yang desperately wished to whatever deity existed.

  The question was how to make that return happen.

  Yang believed this had something to do with his inner instincts. With whatever made him different. The mysterious bead that had reassembled his soul after his first death. The instincts that had guided him through impossible situations.

  At first he hadn't recognized it, but after seeing the same tendrils surrounding his Sea of Consciousness that had rebuilt him before, he knew what it was. The bead had saved him once. Now it had become this web. It had made this dimensional travel possible.

  If he could understand it, maybe he could control it. Maybe he could figure out how to travel back deliberately instead of being yanked around helplessly.

  Yang made a decision. He would investigate this world's power system. Learn what energies were available. How people here became powerful.

  He had survived worse. Survived being orphaned. Survived four years alone in a deadly forest. Survived crossing frozen mountains.

  He could survive this too.

  And if there were multiple worlds he could be pulled between, what was to say he couldn't figure out how to travel them deliberately? To choose his destination? To go back home when he wanted?

  Yang would find a way back. Whether it took a day or a millennium, he would return to White Cloud Sect. To his cultivation. To Li San and the life he'd been building.

  But first, he needed to understand where he was.

  Yang opened his eyes and stood slowly. His control over Lucien's body was much better now. Almost natural.

  He needed to understand this world. This city. This life he'd inherited.