Reborn As A Hero With An Infinite Cultivating System

"Hand over the vault key right now." A fist crashed into his jaw and snapped his neck sideways. The force tangled his legs together. He plummeted backward until the base of his skull cracked against a garden stone. Darkness swallowed his vision for a fraction of a second before a violent gasp tore through his throat. He rolled onto his side while his heart hammered a frantic rhythm against his ribcage. Bile surged up his throat and spilled onto the packed dirt. The memory of blinding headlights burned behind his eyelids. He remembered the exact moment a freight truck crossed the highway median to crush the hood of his sedan. Tearing metal shrieked in his ears as shattered glass exploded inward. His collarbone snapped against the steering wheel just hours after he compiled the final version of his custom game hack. He dragged a palm across his face and pulled it away slick with warm blood. He stared at his fingers in deep confusion. The hands in front of him were far too thin and lacked the thick calluses he built from years of relentless keyboard typing. These unfamiliar hands belonged to a stranger. "Get off the ground." A teenage boy glared down at him. "I do not care if you bleed out because you are not escaping this interrogation." A hand clamped onto his collar and hauled his body upward. He stumbled forward and struggled to find his footing on the uneven stones. His vision stabilized enough to focus on the teenager standing a few feet away. The boy wore rich blue silk and an intricate jade hairpin secured his topknot. "Where is the vault key?" The teenager shook him hard by the collar. "Your mother died yesterday and she cannot protect you anymore. Hand the deed over right now." "Who are you?" He forced the question through a throat that felt like dry sandpaper. "Stop playing dumb." The boy pulled a fist back. "Do not test my patience today." The fist flew toward his face. Instinct hijacked his nervous system. He raised his left arm to deflect the clumsy strike before pivoting his weight onto his back heel. He drove his right knuckles directly into the teenager's stomach. The impact jarred his wrist but the boy gasped and stumbled backward. The teenager clutched his stomach with wide eyes. Shock painted the boy's face as he struggled to draw a breath. He looked down at his own hands again to examine the coarse grey fabric covering his arms. He looked past the coughing teenager and scanned the sprawling courtyard. Curving tile roofs stretched toward a pale sky alongside ancient willow trees swaying in the wind. Memories cascaded into his mind like a ruptured dam. The information did not belong to him. The name Caspian Eastwood echoed in his thoughts alongside a vivid image of a frail woman coughing blood in a drafty pavilion. He remembered years of quiet suffering within this very compound. He was the eldest son of the Eastwood family but he possessed no talent for martial arts. He died in a violent car crash and reincarnated into the discarded body of a crippled heir. The original Caspian had just died from the blunt force trauma to the skull. "Draven." A woman's voice cut through the courtyard tension. He turned his head and watched a woman sweep into the garden. She wore extravagant crimson robes laced with gold thread. Four servants trailed a few steps behind her with their heads bowed in submission. Her face remained locked in a rigid scowl beneath layers of immaculate makeup. "Mother." Draven pointed a shaking finger at him. "He hit me. The trash actually fought back." Marcella rushed over to check her son and smooth the wrinkles from his blue silk robes. Her eyes hardened as she turned her gaze toward Caspian. She looked at him the way a merchant looks at a diseased rat in the gutter. "You dare strike your brother?" Marcella took a threatening step forward. "Your beggar of a mother died yesterday and you suddenly think you have grown a spine?" "He attacked me first." He kept his voice level to push down the panic bubbling in his chest. He needed to understand the rules of this new environment. "I defended myself against an unprovoked assault." Marcella scoffed loudly. "Defended yourself? You are a stain on the Eastwood family name. Your mother was a street commoner who tricked her way into this estate and now she is rotting in the dirt where she belongs." The borrowed memories flared with intense grief. The pain of a broken heart mixed with the throbbing ache in his fractured skull. The original Caspian loved that woman. She starved herself to ensure he received adequate portions of rice and sold her meager jewelry to purchase his basic medicine. The Eastwood family operated as a minor power within the local city district. The Patriarch married Marcella to secure a lucrative trade alliance with a neighboring merchant guild. Caspian's mother arrived a year later as a destitute refugee. The Patriarch took her in as a concubine to satisfy a momentary whim before discarding her to the outer courtyard. She spent the next decade scrubbing floors and mending clothes just to keep her son fed. Marcella ensured the concubine never received proper medical care when the lung rot set in. "Her body is still warm in the funeral hall." The words slipped out of his mouth before he could stop them. The residual emotions of the original soul hijacked his vocal cords. He stepped forward and clenched his fists at his sides. "She does not deserve a hall." Draven sneered and straightened his posture. "She deserves a shallow ditch. She coughed up her lungs for three years and we could hear her wheezing from the main compound. The noise ruined my daily meditation." "You denied her medicine." The tragic context poured from his lips as the borrowed memories supplied the facts. "You took the stipend meant for her healers to fund your own training." "I needed spirit pills to advance to the third stage of Qi Condensation." Draven puffed out his chest. "Resources belong to the strong. They are not meant to be wasted on dying strays." "Your existence is an insult to my marriage." Marcella stated with a cold edge. "The Patriarch took her in out of pity and gave you his surname out of obligation. You have no spiritual roots and you cannot cultivate." He processed the foreign terminology. Qi Condensation. Spiritual roots. Cultivation. The genre tropes clicked into place within his analytical mind. He existed in a brutal world where physical power dictated the law and he inhabited the body of a cripple. He finally understood the severity of his situation. He died and lost his entire life of coding and software development. The universe replaced his modern success with the pathetic existence of a degraded orphan. "Give me the pendant." Draven demanded while stepping closer. "The necklace she gave you holds the property rights to the northern apothecary. Hand it over and I will allow you to sleep in the servant quarters." "Go to hell." He spat a glob of blood onto the pristine paving stones. He locked eyes with the arrogant teenager. Draven pulled his shoulders back as his face twisted into a vicious snarl. "You worthless piece of garbage." The air around Draven rippled. A faint blue aura ignited around the boy's hands. The ambient temperature in the courtyard dropped several degrees as Draven took a specialized martial arts stance. He did not have time to process the glowing phenomenon. Draven closed the distance in a fraction of a second. The unnatural speed defied basic physics and he could not track the movement with his eyes. The boy thrust his palm forward to bypass his clumsy defensive guard. The glowing blue hand slammed directly into the center of his chest. The impact replicated the feeling of the freight truck collision. A massive shockwave ripped through his internal organs. His feet left the ground and he flew backward through the air. He crashed into the thick wooden pillar supporting the pavilion roof. Solid wood splintered behind his spine as he collapsed onto the flagstones. Blood erupted from his mouth and splashed across the front of his grey robes. He tried to draw a breath but his lungs refused to expand. Pure panic set in as he clawed at his own throat. He rolled onto his stomach and wheezed violently against the dirt. Oxygen finally pierced his airways but every breath felt like inhaling shards of broken glass. "Draven." Marcella spoke with mild amusement. "Do not kill him yet. We still need the property deed." Draven walked over and stood above his prone body. The teenager kicked him hard in the ribs. Bone fractured under the heavy force. He curled into a tight ball to protect his organs. He could not fight back against that level of unnatural strength. The glowing energy violated every physical law he understood. He was a modern programmer trapped in a reality populated by superhuman monsters. The residual pain from the car crash merged seamlessly with his newly broken bones. He tasted the iron tang of blood and the bitter dust of the paving stones. He analyzed the physical sensation of the glowing blue palm strike. The energy transfer did not make logical sense based on the teenager's muscle mass. The Qi acted as a localized kinetic amplifier. The boy manipulated a foreign energy source to artificially multiply the force of a standard punch. If physical laws could be bent by spiritual energy, then the universe operated on an exploitable logic system. Draven kicked him again. The heavy boot caught him right on the jawline. The courtyard faded to a blur of pain while a high pitched ringing deafened his ears. "He refuses to talk." Draven turned to Marcella. "Let me break his kneecaps. He will hand the pendant over then." "Leave him." Marcella adjusted her crimson sleeves. "He is bleeding out. Let him reflect on his position here. If he survives the night we will search his quarters." "You are lucky." Draven spat on his cheek. "Enjoy your final hours. Nobody will mourn you when you are gone." The mother and son turned away. Their silent servants followed them back toward the main estate buildings. They left him crumpled alone in an expanding pool of his own blood. He stared up at the sky while the pale sunlight felt cold against his skin. His peripheral vision tunneled into a narrow corridor of grey static. He tried to move his arm but his muscles refused to obey the command. His internal organs felt like ruptured water balloons leaking into his chest cavity. He was fading fast. The sheer injustice of the situation burned hotter than his physical wounds. They murdered the original Caspian Eastwood through years of neglect. Now they were murdering him on his first day in this world. He thought about his old life. He spent years writing complex code and building digital systems from scratch. He manipulated virtual worlds to his whim by breaking secure servers and rewriting fundamental digital laws. Now he lay bleeding as a powerless victim in a brutal physical reality. The original soul faded away leaving only his modern intellect trapped in a dying vessel. He closed his eyes. He waited for his heart to stop beating. A sharp chime echoed in his mind. The sound replicated his specific desktop notification bell. He snapped his eyes open. A translucent blue screen hovered three inches from his face. Lines of familiar green text scrolled rapidly across the digital window. [System Boot Sequence Initiated] [Host Vital Signs Critical.] [Deploying Emergency Protocols] He stared at the floating words. [Scanning biological vessel] [Meridian network shattered.] [Spiritual roots absent] [Bypassing local reality constraints.] [Initializing root access overwrite.] [Titan Engine Online. Welcome Administrator.]