Chapter 1 Dead Man Breathing

The taste of copper and ash lingered on my tongue. 

That was the last thing I remembered. That, and the agonizing twist of Jang Mu-Rak’s jagged blade sinking into my chest. “Nothing personal, Seven. Just the old code,” he had whispered, his breath hot against my ear as my blood pooled on the wooden floorboards of the Shadow Pavilion. 

I should be dead. I was dead. I had felt my heart stop beating.

Yet, here I was, breathing. 

The air filling my lungs wasn't the crisp, pine-scented wind of the assassin’s mountain stronghold. It was thick, humid, and rancid. It smelled of rotting cabbage, wet straw, and stale urine. 

I snapped my eyes open, my body instantly tensing for an ambush. My hand reached instinctively to my waist for my poisoned daggers, but my fingers grasped nothing but rough, damp hemp cloth. 

I was lying in the mud of a narrow alleyway. Rain trickled down the sloping bamboo roofs of the dilapidated shacks around me, pooling in the muddy trench where I lay. I pushed myself up, my muscles screaming in protest. The familiar, deep-seated aches of a forty-year-old veteran were gone, replaced by the frail, hollow weakness of a young man who hadn't eaten a proper meal in days. 

I looked at my hands. They were thin. The thick, yellowed calluses on my index and middle fingers—the marks of decades spent gripping a killing blade—were gone. 

Regression. 

It was a myth whispered among drunken martial artists in cheap taverns. A bedtime story for fools who lived with regret. But I was Jin Mu-Kang. I didn't deal in myths. I dealt in the weight of a blade and the spray of blood. This body, this weakness, this putrid alley—it was real. I was twenty-five again, back in the squalor of the Beggar District. 

Before I could even process the reality of my second chance, a sudden, piercing chime echoed inside my skull. It wasn't a sound heard through the ears; it vibrated directly against my brain.

A translucent blue window materialized in the air before me, glowing faintly in the gloom of the alley.

[Karmic Balance System Initialized]

[Scanning Host's Soul...]

[Warning: Massive Karmic Debt Detected.]

[Past-Life Sin Resonance Activated.]

I blinked, rain dripping from my eyelashes. An illusion? A trick by a demonic cultivator? I focused my Qi to break the mind art, but my dantian was an empty, barren well. I hadn't even reached the Qi Condensation Stage yet.

The blue text shifted, scrolling upward.

[Sin Ledger Unlocked]

[Crime: Assassinated 87 innocents (Past Life)]

[Crime: 314 Murders for Hire (Past Life)]

[Karma Required: 10,000 to offset]

[Heavenly Tribunal Observing]

[Redemption Progress: 0%]

Karma? Redemption? A harsh, dry chuckle scraped its way out of my throat. If the Heavens had brought me back to make me repent, they had chosen the wrong bastard. I was an assassin of the Unorthodox Factions. My life belonged to the shadows, to the highest bidder, to the silent strike in the dark. I didn't know how to save people. I only knew how to make them stop breathing.

"Please! I don't have any more! The merchant caravan hasn't passed through in weeks!" 

The desperate plea cut through the sound of the rain. I turned my head. Down the alley, near the main thoroughfare of the district, three men had cornered a young girl. She couldn't have been older than twelve, dressed in rags that clung to her shivering frame. 

The men wore stained leather armor, the standard attire of the Black Dog Gang—low-level thugs who extorted the poorest of the poor. 

"Your grandfather borrowed three silver taels, Kang So-Mi," the leader said. He was a broad-shouldered man with a crude dao resting on his shoulder. He spat a wad of phlegm onto the mud. "Interest makes it ten. If you can't pay in silver, we'll take it in flesh. The brothels in the Red Lantern district pay well for fresh faces."

He reached out, grabbing the girl by her hair. She screamed, kicking her small feet against his shins, but it was like a mouse fighting a mastiff.

Old instincts kicked in. I calculated the distance. Twenty paces. Three targets. One armed with a dao, two with wooden clubs. Their stances were sloppy, their centers of gravity leaning too far forward. If I had a blade, I could pierce the leader's throat, use his falling body to trip the second, and shatter the third's windpipe before they even realized I was there.

But I didn't have a blade. And more importantly, I wasn't being paid. 

An assassin does not draw trouble without coin. It was the first rule of the Shadow Hall. 

I turned my back to the scene, pulling the collar of my damp hanbok up to shield my neck from the rain. I needed to find a weapon, find shelter, and begin cultivating my Qi.

The blue window flashed violently, turning a deep, angry crimson.

[Negative Karma Generated]

[Ignoring the helpless. Sin Added to Ledger]

[Karma -20]

[Balance Becoming Unstable]

[Warning: Disappearance Risk Increased]

A sudden, terrifying cold gripped my right hand. I looked down and my breath hitched. My fingers were turning translucent. The mud beneath my boots was visible through my own flesh. A phantom agony tore through my soul, a feeling of being unmade, erased from the very fabric of the world.

[Existence Stability: 82%]

[Warning: Failure to balance sins will erase host. Action Required.]

"You arrogant Heavenly bastards," I hissed through gritted teeth. 

They weren't asking me to change. They were holding a knife to my existence.