Forbidden Great Emperor | Xianxia, System, Fusion

Prologue — The Last Night on Earth

The light from three computer screens lit up the quiet room on the fourth floor of the Hengda Logistics building. It was late at night, and an audit sheet was open on the main screen.

Outside the big glass windows, the city skyline was slowly turning into a dark, foggy purple under the midnight sky. Inside the office, the only sounds were the soft hum of the air conditioner and the steady clicking of a computer mouse.

Lu Chen rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand. His skin felt dry and warm. He reached for his metal cup, lifted it up, and drank the last drop of cold black coffee. It tasted bitter, like ash.

"Line four is wrong by three percent again," he said quietly to himself.

He leaned forward, moving his glasses up his nose as he dragged a green line across the main screen.

At thirty-two years old, Lu Chen was a Senior Manager for risk and operations at Hengda. He was not a famous boss or a young genius. He was just a man whose job was to find small mistakes, wrong weights, or slow delivery plans before they cost the company money.

He understood how work moved and how systems worked. Where other people saw confusing delays, Lu Chen looked for the broken part. It was a simple, logical way to see life—a way that needed patience and clear thinking.

On his desk sat a white plastic bottle of pills. The label was faded from daily use: Amlo-5, a medicine for high blood pressure. Next to it lay an empty paper wrapper from a convenience store sandwich he had eaten five hours ago without even tasting it.

His phone vibrated next to a stack of paper reports.

Mother: Did you remember to take your pressure medicine today? Do not stay at the office past midnight. Your uncle said your face looked pale at dinner last Sunday.

Lu Chen looked at the phone screen. His fingers stayed over the keys. He started to type his normal answer—Just finishing the audit, coming home in ten minutes—but his fingers suddenly froze.

A heavy, thumping pain started behind his left ear. It beat slowly and hard.

"Ten minutes," he told the empty room. "I just need to fix this last number."

He moved the mouse across the screen.

Click.

A sudden, heavy weight crashed onto his left shoulder. Lu Chen stopped moving. His right hand stayed on the mouse, but his fingers turned white. He tried to take a deep breath, but his chest locked up tight. A sharp, metallic taste of blood spread on the back of his tongue.

His heart started beating wild and fast inside his chest.

He reached out with his left hand to grab his phone, but his fingers were weak and clumsy. He knocked the phone off the desk, and it hit the carpet with a soft thud.

When he tried to bend down, the whole room spun wildly. The three bright screens blurred into one long line of white light. A tight, painful pressure squeezed his chest, stopping his breath before he could make a sound.

His sight turned dark fast, like black shadows closing in from all sides. He fell forward, his head hitting the keyboard hard, typing a long line of random letters into the open document.

Then, everything went completely dark.

◆   ◆   ◆

There was no light. There was no pain.

For a long time, Lu Chen was just a tiny point of mind floating in a cold, empty dark space. The heavy pain behind his ear was gone. The tight pressure in his chest was gone.

He floated through the endless dark.

Then, something touched him softly.

It was an old, tired energy—a strange feeling that felt like an echo from a forgotten time. It was not a real voice or a living person, but a leftover power in the dark world.

The energy swept over Lu Chen’s floating mind. It did not check his family line, his money, or his strength. It reacted to something deep inside his spirit—a stubborn, practical mind that refused to give up even when dying.

Deep in the dark, a quiet vibration shook the empty space, sounding like a big bronze bell ringing far away at the edge of the world.

A thread of soft light came out of the dark and wrapped around Lu Chen’s mind. A clear system—a silent tool left behind by a power he did not know—joined with his soul.

It gave no orders. It explained nothing. It just attached its shape to his mind, bringing three clear, simple skills:

Martial Arts Deduction

Martial Arts Fusion

Martial Arts Upgrade

Before he could understand what was happening, the dark space broke apart, pulling him down into the heavy weight of a real body.

◆   ◆   ◆

"Gah—!"

Lu Chen’s eyes opened fast.

Cold air rushed into his throat, feeling sharp and smelling strongly of wet stone, old rot, and dirty rain. He coughed hard, feeling a sharp pain hit his left side. Blood and dirt were smeared on his lips.

He was lying on his side on cold stone ground, pressed against a wet brick wall.

Where... am I?

A wave of confusion hit his head. He remembered his bright office at Hengda. The three computer screens. The sudden, terrifying pain in his chest. He remembered dying at his desk.

Yet his heart was beating now—not the weak beat of a sick thirty-two-year-old manager, but the quick, small pulse of a hungry boy.

He raised his right hand. The fingers were small, thin, and scraped red, with dry mud on the skin. A cold shock of surprise went through him. This was not his body.

Pieces of new memories flooded into his mind, messy and mixed up, like scenes from a movie played out of order.

Azure Stone Town... Ghost Mist Ridge...Seventeen years old... An orphan with no family or clan...Stolen herbs... A heavy iron boot kicking hard into his ribs behind the grain warehouse... Left in the alley to freeze in the autumn cold...

These memories were not another person talking in his head; they were the cold remnants of a life that had ended an hour ago in this dark street. The real owner of this body was gone, leaving behind only broken bones and old memories.

Lu Chen lay still on the cold stones, slowly making his breath calm down. Every breath brought a sharp, burning pain to his chest. He could not tell if his ribs were broken or just badly bruised, but any fast move made his head spin.

Fear tried to take over his mind, but he pushed it down by habit. Being scared would not fix his bones or warm his cold skin. No matter how strange this was, the truth right now was hard: he was freezing, hurt, and lying alone in a dark alley.

As he focused on breathing slowly, a soft silver light showed up in front of his eyes.

SYSTEM INTERFACE

Martial Arts Deduction

Martial Arts Fusion

Martial Arts Upgrade

Lu Chen looked at the silver text floating against the dark, wet stone.

The text did not talk. It had no instructions, no health bar, no map, and no explanation. It just stayed there in the air, showing three clear tools whose full power was still unknown.

He blinked, testing his eyes. The text stayed steady, moving slightly as he moved his eyes. He did not know who made it or why it had joined his soul, but he could see its simple structure. It gave him options. It gave him a plan.

Cold wind blew down the narrow alley, carrying the distant smell of cooked meat and cheap wine from the main street. A paper lantern hung from a wooden roof down the road, its yellow light shaking weakly in the wind.

Lu Chen bit his teeth together. He pressed his sore hands against the cold stones and slowly, painfully, pulled his body up against the brick wall. Pain shot along his chest, but he kept his back straight.

Right now, trapped in this cold alley, he had no money, no strength, no home, and no friends to help him. The boy's body was beaten, and this world was completely new to him. Staying alive in this town would be a hard, slow battle.

He looked at the silent silver screen floating in the dark, and then looked out at the dim lantern light at the end of the alley.

He took a slow, deep breath, keeping his heart steady against the cold.