His figure, the same height that he had been in his last life, around 5’9, was very thin. The face that he wore, adorned with mystical, purple irises, was gaunt and scarred, and his skin was a deathly pale, like over-chewed gum drained pallid of its colourant.

At first, he certainly wasn’t complaining because anything was better than what he had been condemned to.

However, that was until he looked down at his torso.

He was not wearing anything up there, just leaving his bare chest, marred with scars with his bones pressing through its thin flesh, out. And right there, to the left side of his chest where his heart should have been, there was a thick, pierced hole.

A breeze clawed through it, and he could see beyond the tattered curtains of that crude window.

The bright green, healthful trees swayed and a restless, orange bird stuffed itself into its nest.

The flesh within him was squirming, and his blood had waterfalled out of it to stain his torso and his white pants in its red fortune.

’Even when considering that I just transmigrated... How the hell am I breathing and alive?’

It was as if a thick spearhead or sword had been gored through his heart and a chunk of his lung.

The heart itself was hardly an outline of itself, with hanging ropes of its flesh, spilling more blood.

Right as he noticed this is when he finally realised something:

’I haven’t had a heartbeat this whole time...’

Not a single time since however much time had passed already had he felt the throb of it. Any blood that was left inside him had been as still as a tomb.

Suddenly, the squirming of his flesh was agitated.

One of the hanging tendrils sprung forth from his heart and it attached itself to another piece of flesh.

More followed, springing onto whatever was closest to it, as if spinning webs.

Then the flesh within his chest began to bubble, growing over and through itself, and his heart was the first to reform, closing off his sight of the orange bird’s nest.

His bone began to regrow. Then his muscles, as if manipulated by the delicate hands of a surgeon, stitched themselves back together, and the flesh of his torso was proper once more.

As proper as its scarred canvas could be, at least.

He grimaced when the first throb of his heart stuttered.

It burbled a jagged sensation through him that felt like the gurgle of a volcano right as it was moments from erupting.

Then the second and third came emanating the warmth of blood through him.

His veins briefly bulge as they were engorged with blood, and that persisting fog and headache were quickly relieved.

Finally feeling alive was an exhilarating sensation, to say the least, and the colour swiftly returned to his face.

There, abruptly breaking him out of his stupor, one of the voices of many beyond the small rooms roared deeper and louder than any of the others had:

"Ouyang Qianye, if there is anything left of you as a man, come stand before me this instant! Prove to us that you are neither a cultivator of the profane nor a spy of the Ashen Dusk Sect!"

And right there, the sediment of memory, both his own memory and foreign memories, was stirred.

’That name... Ouyang Qianye, where do I—’

His hand suddenly rose, clutching his head as his face grimaced deeply and he winced.

Ouyang Qianye staggered, catching himself with a back foot, his vision blinded and his mind spun by the kaleidoscope of memories shimmering and flashing through him.

The experiences of slaughter, combat, cultivation techniques, schemes, survival, arrogance, coercion, pride, and prejudice against him and much more, all the way back to when he was living in the streets, robbing stalls for bread to survive between the ages of nine and twelve, filled through his head.

’No, no, no, no, no—’ The rain of thoughts hurt like hail.

There were no memories of anything before that, and everything after was of him within the Clear Sky Lotus Sect, clawing his way up from being a sweeping servant to the status of being a Core Disciple.

Ouyang Qianye was only ever described as little more than a street urchin.

He had scrambled his way to success through overindulgence in resources to raise his cultivation quickly, and all of his significance came from the fact he was a villainous core disciple.

However, that changed two days ago.

’I’ve transmigrated into the body of an extra, fodder villain character meant to be used to gift the protagonist his boons?!’

He felt his reborn heart strain, sending a gut wrenching pain through him as it beat rapidly.

"Fuck me!!" Ouyang Qianye inadvertently shouted, mentally making the connections with what he knew from Earth as he stomped and his body flailed into wild movements, unable to release the deep frustration any way else, "Why!? WHY!? WHY!?"

In the original novel of Myriad Worlds Ascension: The Endless Dao, Ouyang Qianye was killed off after his defeat to the inner disciple, Chu Xuan.

The two hated each other and naturally the protagonist won the final battle.

After all, Ouyang Qianye had been plot-conveniently stupid, not taking action to deal with him before he was strong enough to touch him any sooner.

What was most damning was, he was not killed by Chu Xuan.

Ouyang Qianye’s eyes landed on the pool of blood that was right in the middle of the room.

He understood now that he had been lying right there, dead, and beside that pool of blood was a sword still slick with his blood.

"You have the energy to squeal like the injured dog you are! Ouyang Qianye, if you do not leave that shack within twenty breaths, I will break it down myself and drag your hideous self out!"

He heard that louder voice roar again, this time particularly enraged, and his mind whirled with urgency like the blades of a helicopter.

’That voice... It must be Meng Jue.’

His shoulders shook as his head hung.

"..."

Then his head flew back, glaring at the heavens with tears felling freely and his teeth bared in exacerbated, self-deprecating, broken laugher:

"Ha...Hahahaha—HAHAHAHA!"

It was too absurd not to both laugh and cry at!

The motherfucker out there, Meng Jue, rather than letting him rest after being defeated, crippled and publicly humiliated came to beat the dead dog to slither himself into Chu Xuan’s favour!

’How could life be so cruel to me? First I’m subjected to a crippling disease and next right when I think I’ve got some luck, I find out I’ve been transmigrated into will be dead man?! What more true wrong have I done to deserve all this?! What worse damned fucking thing have I done than shoplift once as an ignorant boy whose parents did not have money to buy what his wilful child-self wanted?!’

Ouyang Qianye soon lost the will to even laugh any more, sighing out whatever remained of his self-pity.

"...I’m going to die again."

After all, his cultivation had been crippled so regardless of having the memories of Qianye’s cultivation techniques and ability to fight, it was all meaningless.

The servant outside protecting him was not strong enough to protect him, so Meng Jue would soon break in after leaving her half dead.

He would then ensure that he had been sent to the afterlife, leaving him without a burial or cremation, protected by the accusations that:

’Ouyang Qianye was secretly a profane practitioner. I judged that I could not afford to risk waiting once I had these suspicions, fearing that he might escape. His cultivation was already crippled in the fight, so I believed—’ Blah, blah, FUCKING BLAH!

And the motherfucker would then worm his way into Chu Xuan’s cohort to mooch.

Even if he somehow survived, going against what the plot dictated should happen, Meng Jue would cripple him even worse than he already was now.

To live a life like that in a cultivation world, reduced to means barely better than what he lived on earth... he might as well not survive, knowing the terrible mystical creatures and horrors that lurked in the world.

’And this time... it would be for good. There won’t be any charm granting a third chance at life.’

Then, Ouyang Qianye heard a loud, sharp sound, like that of a tree branch snapping harshly, resound from outside.

Moments later, he heard the rupture of celebration from a crowd.

However, he disregarded it all.

What did it all matter when he was doomed to die so soon after transmigrating?

At that moment, he discovered his fortune and understood, perhaps, even despite who he had transmigrated into, that he might not be so helpless and there might be a future where he could finally live once more.

[ Laudations, Ouyang Qianye! You have awakened the Providence System! ]

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