The stench of rotting fish, stagnant river water, and cheap tobacco was exactly as Shen Jin rembered it.
He blinked against the stinging sweat pouring down his forehead, his breath coming in ragged, shallow gasps. His arms trembled violently under the crushing weight of a heavy cedar crate filled with iron rivets. Around him, the chaotic symphony of the Iron Whales Transit Convoy docks roared to life—the barking orders of overseers, the groaning of thick mooring ropes, and the rhythmic thud-thud of manual laborers marching up the wooden gangplanks.
I’m breathing, Shen Jin thought, his mind spinning into a vortex of sheer disbelief. I shouldn’t be breathing.
His last vivid mory was the sky turning the color of bleeding rust. He rembered the overwhelming, suffocating pressure of a High-Tier Cultivator’s casual sword strike—a stray wave of compressed Qi that had sheared the entire city of White Falls in half. Shen Jin had been nothing but a minor outer-disciple back then, an insignificant speck caught in the collateral damage of a war between titans. He had felt his bones liquefy, his ridians shatter, and the cold embrace of death taking him.
Yet here he was, staring down at his own hands. They weren't the callous-hardened hands of a rogue cultivator; they were the raw, blistered, and blood-streaked hands of a seventeen-year-old dockhand.
"Move it, useless brat! You’re lagging the line!"
A heavy, leather-bound crop slamd brutally across Shen Jin’s upper back. The sudden, biting pain exploded through his nervous system. His weak, uncultivated knees buckled instantly under the weight of the cedar crate.
With a loud crash, the crate slipped from his grip, splintering against the stone dock. Heavy iron rivets scattered in every direction like a tallic waterfall.
"Oh, look what the rat did," a mocking voice bood.
Overseer Deng swaggered forward, his bloated belly pushing against a stained silk tunic that ill-befitted his station. He chewed lazily on a bitter root, a malicious glint in his small, piggy eyes. Deng was a man who took imnse pleasure in the misery of those beneath him, and right now, Shen Jin was at the absolute bottom.
"That’s a week’s worth of wages in damages, Shen Jin," Deng sneered, tapping the leather crop against his muddy boot. "Actually, let's make it two weeks. If you want to keep your miserable spot sleeping on the warehouse floor, you’ll clean this up with your teeth."
The surrounding laborers quickly averted their eyes, marching faster to avoid becoming the next target. In his past life, this very mont had been a turning point of humiliation. Shen Jin had thrown a pathetic, angry punch at Deng, only to be beaten within an inch of his life, leaving him with a permanent limp that delayed his martial arts journey for years.
Shen Jin took a slow, deliberate breath, forcing his racing heart to calm. He wasn't that arrogant, foolish kid anymore. He had lived a lifeti of regrets. He knew the value of bidding one's ti.
Just endure it for now, Shen Jin thought, lowering his head to feign submission. I need to figure out how I returned to the past—
[PING.]
A sound like a crystal chi echoed directly inside his mind, freezing the blood in his veins.
[System Initialization Successful.]
[Host Identity Confird: Shen Jin (Regressor).]
[The Heavenly Guardian System has successfully synchronized with your soul.]
A semi-transparent, pale-blue screen materialized right in front of his eyes. It was completely translucent, unnoticeable to anyone else.
📊 HOST PROFILE
Na: Shen Jin
Realm: Mortal Layer (No Qi detected)
Title: None
Vanguard Points (VP): 0
⚔️ CURRENT PASSIVE SKILLS:
[Absolute Obscurity - Rank: Max]: Your true cultivation realm, physical strength, and soul fluctuations will always appear entirely ordinary, mundane, or slightly below average to any onlookers, regardless of their power.
[Danger Sense Radar - Rank: 1]: Evaluates imdiate environntal and physical threats within a 5-ter radius.
📜 CURRENT SYSTEM QUEST:
Objective: Survive the current confrontation with Overseer Deng without suffering permanent physical trauma or drawing public attention.
Reward: 10 Vanguard Points, Unlocking of the Flawless Simulation feature.
Shen Jin’s eyes widened slightly. A system. He had heard rumors in his past life of legendary figures—the Chosen Sons of Heaven—who possessed miraculous celestial artifacts or divine inheritances. But a system that favored obscurity and protection?
"Are you deaf, boy?!" Overseer Deng barked, irritated by Shen Jin’s sudden stillness. Deng raised the heavy leather crop high into the air, channeling a tiny, pathetic shred of rudintary Qi into it—just enough to break skin and crack bone. "I told you to get to your knees!"
[🚨 DANGER SENSE ACTIVATED!]
Incoming Strike: Overhead leather crop strike.
Trajectory: Left shoulder and neck.
Fatality Rate: 0%. Permanent Damage Rate: 15% (Fractured collarbone).
Optimal Counter-Path: Shift weight 3 inches to the right, pretend to slip on an iron rivet.
The system’s calculation happened in less than a millisecond. To Shen Jin, the descending crop seed to slow down just enough for his mind to process the movent.
He didn't fight back with force. Instead, he leaned into his current reality—a weak, clumsy laborer.
As the whip ca down, Shen Jin let out a panicked yelp, his foot intentionally "slipping" backward on one of the loose iron rivets he had dropped earlier. He fell backward, his arms flailing wildly.
Whoosh!
The leather crop missed his neck completely, slicing through the empty air where his shoulder had been an instant before.
But the montum of Overseer Deng's heavy strike, combined with the extra weight of his bloated body, carried the man forward. Deng hadn't expected to hit nothing but air.
"What the—!" Deng gasped.
Shen Jin’s flailing left hand, purely by "accident," struck the side of a nearby wooden wheelbarrow loaded with heavy iron girders. The wheelbarrow tilted sharply. At the exact sa ti, Shen Jin’s right foot kicked out blindly in his "panic," catching the edge of a heavy iron shovel resting against the crate.
The shovel slid directly under Overseer Deng's advancing boot.
It was a perfect storm of mundane physics. Deng stepped squarely onto the smooth iron face of the shovel. His foot shot forward like it was on ice. He lost his balance entirely, his arms windmilling frantically in the air.
CLANG!
Deng's forehead collided dead-center with the heavy iron fra of the tilting wheelbarrow. The sound was like a church bell ringing across the docks.
The overseer stiffened, his eyes rolling back into his head, before he crumpled face-first into the pile of scattered iron rivets, completely knocked out cold. The leather crop rolled uselessly into the dirty river water.
The entire imdiate area of the docks went dead silent.
The few laborers who had witnessed the scene gasped, their mouths wide open. To them, it looked like the most spectacular, clumsy tragedy they had ever seen. Shen Jin had panicked, slipped, and through sheer, absurdly terrible luck, the overseer had managed to knock himself out cold.
Shen Jin sat on the dirty stone floor, rubbing his backside and putting on an expression of absolute terror and confusion.
"O-Overseer?" Shen Jin called out in a trembling voice, scrambling backward away from the unconscious man. "I'm sorry! I didn't an to slip! Please don't fire !"
[PING.]
[Quest Completed: Survive the Confrontation.]
Assessnt: The host successfully neutralized the threat without unleashing explicit power or revealing any martial capabilities. Public perception remains completely unalard.
Rewards Distributed: 10 Vanguard Points (VP).
Feature Unlocked: [Flawless Simulation].
Shen Jin looked at the blue screen, a small, hidden spark igniting in the depths of his eyes.
The journey from a broken corpse in a ruined future back to the very beginning had just started. He was weak, his body was frail, and he had nothing to his na but a pile of spilled iron rivets and a system that rewarded the shadows.
But as he quietly stood up and began picking up the rivets, ensuring he looked as pitiful and shaken as possible, Shen Jin knew one thing for certain.
This ti, he would build a foundation so unbreakable that when the sky finally burned again, he wouldn't even blink.
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