Nobody alive in 2119 has ever seen the Earth that existed before the spatial rifts.
People talk about it sometimes—usually the older generation who grew up hearing stories from their grandparents. Blue oceans. Safe cities. Normal schools. A world where humanity didn’t have to hide behind giant steel walls just to survive another night.
Most younger people think those stories sound fake.
Now, the world belongs to beasts.
The spatial rifts appeared more than a century ago without warning, tearing open the sky and bringing monsters powerful enough to wipe entire cities off the map. Guns and missiles barely slowed them down. Governments collapsed. Countries disappeared. Humanity only survived because some people learned how to absorb the strange energy leaking from the rifts—Qi.
That was how martial warriors were born.
By 2119, survival depends on strength more than anything else. Cultivators stand above ordinary people, powerful factions control resources, and talent decides your future almost from birth. If you awaken with poor aptitude, life becomes painfully small before it even properly begins.
Ye Tian learns that reality immediately after waking up in a body that isn’t his.
The teenager whose body he inherited had already been struggling long before Ye Tian arrived. His parents died outside the walls hunting beasts, leaving behind a tiny house, mounting pressure, and a younger sister who still believes her brother can somehow keep everything together.
The problem is… he really can’t.
Not with this body.
Its cultivation talent is so low that even local academies barely consider it worth training. In Linhai Base, there are children younger than him already preparing to become official martial warriors while he struggles with the most basic cultivation requirements. Every path in front of him feels closed off before he even takes the first step.
Then something strange starts happening.
At first, Ye Tian thinks stress is making him hallucinate. Whenever he looks at someone, faint information appears in his vision—cultivation levels, hidden traits, natural talents. Things nobody should be able to see.
But the truly frightening discovery comes later.
Because somehow… those talents may not belong exclusively to their owners anymore.
That single secret changes everything.
Inside Linhai Base are countless geniuses raised by wealthy families and martial organizations. Some are born with terrifying elemental affinities. Others possess cultivation gifts so rare that entire factions protect them like treasures. Normally, someone like Ye Tian would never stand in the same world as those people.
Now, he quietly begins moving closer to them.
Carefully. Patiently.
Because in a society where talent decides human value, an ability capable of taking talent from others is not something people would celebrate. It’s the kind of secret that gets buried along with the person carrying it.
And somewhere beyond the city walls, inside the expanding rifts that humanity still doesn’t fully understand, something seems to be watching the world change.
