The night was deep in the most luxurious chambers of the Silver Cloud Sect, a mausoleum of ebony and silk where silence was an oppressive entity. Her back to the entrance, contemplating the full moon, stood Matriarch Feng.
"Inept," she said, her voice not a shout, but a block of ice shattering the silence. "You have turned your wife's legacy into a shameful farce."
She spoke to the figure seated in the gloom, the shadow of a man lost in a throne far too large for him.
"Golden Carp City pretends to sleep," the Matriarch continued, relentless, "but the Bloody Leaf Sect and the Valley of the Silent Echo are already sniffing the air. They await the scent of blood, of weakness. And you, drowning in your self-pity, have served them our clan's jugular on a silver platter."
The figure in the shadows did not move.
"The time has come," Feng declared, turning slowly, her eyes like embers in the darkness. "Are you going to continue rotting in her memory, or are you going to honor her by taking the reins of the clan she entrusted to you?"
She paused, her next words falling with the weight of history.
"Do not forget who ruled before you. Who forged this power with intelligence and will, not just with muscle. Your wife. My lady." A raw emotion, a fierce love, tinged her steel-like voice. "And we both know who she considered the embodiment of that will. I have not moved against Zian because he carries her blood. I will not start the civil war that would destroy everything she built." Feng's voice was now a dangerous whisper, more terrifying than any scream. "But my patience has run out. I am done allowing you and those blind Elders to anoint the wrong heir while the true heiress is treated like a pariah."
"So choose," she concluded, each syllable an ultimatum. "Emerge from this tomb and lead like the man you should be. Or fulfill the last wish of the woman we both loved: acknowledge Xiao Yue."
Without waiting for a response, the Matriarch withdrew with an imperious dignity, leaving the question hanging in the air, charged with the clan's destiny.
************************
The days following Kenji's collapse were governed not by the sun or the moon, but by a schedule of nourishing soups. Xiao Yue, the once-forgotten disciple, had become a tyrant of convalescence. Her authority was not based on Qi, but on a wooden spoon and a golden gaze that promised dire consequences if her patient even thought the word "optimization."
Kenji, for the first time in his two lives, found himself in the humiliating position of being a completely inoperative resource. Every attempt to stand was neutralized by a firm hand on his shoulder. Every mention of a report was silenced with a spoonful of Spiritual Beast Bone broth. It was torture, yes, but of a new and bewildering variety: one that didn't hurt, but... comforted. His mind, accustomed to the cold logic of systems, struggled to categorize the sensation.
Finally, on the fourth day, the physician gave his approval. Kenji, though still pale, had recovered enough physiological capacity to sit in a chair unassisted. His first act was not to stretch his legs, but to summon Xiao Yue to his room with the gravity of a CEO calling an emergency board meeting.
"Our joint project has entered a new phase," Kenji announced as soon as she entered. He was sitting with a perfectly straight back, an untouched cup of tea on the table, his face a mask of professional seriousness. "One that requires a full disclosure of the management team's assets and liabilities. Today... we are going to conduct an audit of my own operating system."
Xiao Yue crossed her arms, arching a red eyebrow.
"Another one of your audits, Kenji? Haven't you had enough? You nearly audited yourself into the grave with the last one."
"Your question is pertinent," he conceded, ignoring the sarcasm, "and it brings me directly to the main point. The anomaly you detected in my statement during my state of low operational efficiency... your question about my comment of 'dying twice.'"
Xiao Yue tensed. She remembered it but had attributed it to feverish delusions. Seeing him now, lucid and serious, sent a shiver down her spine.
"Withholding this information would be inefficient for our long-term alliance," Kenji continued, his dark eyes gauging her reaction to every word. "Trust is fundamental, and an incomplete database leads to poor decisions. Therefore, I will provide you with the data. However, what I am about to say is covered by the strictest confidentiality agreement you can imagine. Leaking this information would not compromise the project: it would annihilate it."
She nodded slowly; the solemnity of his tone erased any trace of mockery. The game was over. This was real.
"First, the basic facts," he began his briefing, not as a confession, but as a technical report. "My name is Kenji Tanaka. I was not born in this world. My previous life concluded several months ago in a place called Tokyo, due to a catastrophic biological failure induced by continuous overwork."
Xiao Yue's brain tried to process the sentence. Tokyo? Previous life? The words made no sense.
"In that world," Kenji continued, giving her no time to process the emotional impact, "I was the CEO of a multinational corporation. My sole function was the analysis and optimization of systems on a global scale. Project Odyssey, my masterpiece, was a logistics system so perfect it could run without human intervention. Ironically, upon its completion, I became obsolete to my own creation. The void of purpose, coupled with one hundred and fifty weeks of eighteen-hour workdays, caused the collapse of my physical hardware. I called it karoshi: death from overwork. That was the first time I died."
Xiao Yue stood gaping, speechless. The room seemed to shrink. The pieces of her mental puzzle of Kenji didn't just start to fit; they exploded and reconfigured into a terrifying and insane pattern.
"Following the cessation of my vital functions," Kenji explained, applying his own logic to a mystical event, "my consciousness... rebooted. The hardware was discarded, but the software—my mind—was transferred to a new system: this body. I woke up in an alley in this city, in a young, weak body, with no resources and in a completely inefficient operating environment."
He gestured around him, encompassing not just the room, but the entire world.
"Everything you've seen, Xiao Yue. My methods, my analyses, my obsession with efficiency, my diagrams... they are not cultivation techniques from this world. They are principles of business management, logistics, and systems optimization applied to a new market. To me, cultivation is not a sacred art; it's a machine that can be analyzed and improved. And you are my most important project. The startup in which I have invested all my intellectual capital. My recent collapse was an echo of the first. The same miscalculation. The same arrogance of the mind over the fragility of the body. The second time, the same planning failure nearly caused a total systemic collapse. That is the truth."
The silence that followed was so profound Xiao Yue could hear her own heartbeat, a frantic drum against the backdrop of a universe that had become infinitely larger and stranger. The idea was fantastic, preposterous. Her first instinct was to laugh, to dismiss it as the last remnant of the fever.
But then, logic took over. The same cold, crushing logic Kenji had taught her to use.
Suddenly, it all made sense.
Click.
His peculiar vocabulary: "asset," "ROI," "KPI," "hardware," "software." They weren't metaphors. They were literal.
Click.
His clinical, dispassionate approach to cultivation, like an engineer examining an engine rather than a mystic contemplating the Dao.
Click.
His complete lack of Qi or cultivation ability of his own, yet his absolute genius for analyzing it in others, like someone who has read every user manual without ever touching the machine.
Click.
His superhuman calm in the face of danger, his unshakable confidence in his plans, as if failure wasn't a possibility, but simply an inefficient outcome to be corrected.
The theory of reincarnation from another world, as absurd as it was, was the only hypothesis that explained all the anomalous data that made up Kenji Tanaka. It was the keystone that made the entire puzzle fit together with terrifying precision.
Shock transformed into awe, and awe into an understanding so profound it left her breathless. She wasn't being helped by a mysterious servant or a hidden genius. She was being advised by a being from another world, a prodigy of an unknown discipline who, for reasons she still couldn't fathom, had chosen her as his most important project.
A bubbling, incredulous, and wonderful laugh escaped her lips.
"So..." she finally said, once she could speak again, a slow, wonder-filled smile forming on her face, "...my Cultivation Optimization Consultant is, literally, from another dimension. That... that explains a lot."
Her trust in him didn't just strengthen; it became absolute, forged in the steel of an impossible truth. This was no longer an alliance of convenience. She was the guardian of his incredible secret.
But the revelation didn't frighten her. On the contrary, it awakened a new curiosity in her, a voracious flame.
"Do other worlds exist?" she asked, her golden eyes shining with an almost childlike curiosity. "Is reincarnation real? I've heard legends that at the peak of cultivation one can touch the edges of the universe, but this... this is proof!"
Contrary to what Kenji had anticipated in his risk analysis—a potential emotional breakdown from Xiao Yue—she was vibrating with excitement. Her world, which had always been a cage, suddenly had infinite horizons.
"My goal in this world is the same as in my last," Kenji declared, seeing that his 'investment' was not only stable but thriving on the new information. "To create the largest and most efficient company in the world. At least, in this world."
"I want to join!" Xiao Yue exclaimed, the idea seizing her like a hurricane. She leaned forward, grabbed Kenji by the shoulders, and shook him with an enthusiasm that nearly caused a second systemic collapse. "I can be your head of security! Or your marketing director! What's marketing?"
Kenji endured the shaking with stoicism.
"Your predefined role is that of sect leader. You could not hold a position in my company. It would be a conflict of interest."
The disappointment on Xiao Yue's face was as palpable as a slap. Her enthusiasm vanished. For an instant, silence returned to the room. But then, her eyes lit up with an idea so brilliant it seemed to absorb all the light in the room.
"Then don't build a company!" she said, her voice a whisper full of ingenuity. "Restructure one! Kenji, we can turn the Silver Cloud Sect into a company!"
Kenji froze. His brain, a supercomputer capable of processing thousands of variables, ground to a halt. That idea, that simple, revolutionary idea, had never once occurred to him. His plan had been to use Xiao Yue to gain power and influence, then establish his own organization. But Xiao Yue's proposal... was far more efficient. To take an existing, albeit decaying, infrastructure with assets, personnel, and an established brand, and to restructure it from within... The savings in startup capital and time would be astronomical.
"That..." Kenji said, and for the first time, Xiao Yue saw him genuinely impressed, "...is a merger and acquisition proposal of overwhelming efficiency."
"I know!" she replied, beaming. "But what about you? You're the CEO, but you don't even know how to lift a sword! In this world, a CEO with no strength is just a target."
"My weakness is a short-term disadvantage," Kenji stated, his mind returning to its usual rhythm. "The priority is to secure our power base and position you as the leader. Once we control the sect's resources, my cultivation deficiency can be addressed. Alchemy, for example. It's a science based on combining materials to obtain a desired result. It's a system I can learn and optimize. There could be an alchemical solution to my lack of spiritual meridians."
"An alchemy company!" Xiao Yue exclaimed, already visualizing the next step. "With your business knowledge and my power, we could dominate the market! We'd be unstoppable!"
The dynamic between them had changed forever. He was no longer the consultant and she the asset. They were partners. Founders of the strangest and most ambitious enterprise in the history of the nine heavens. He, the genius from another world; she, his anchor and his sword in this one.
He had rewritten her destiny. Now, together, they were about to rewrite the rules of their world.
Kenji watched her, his face, as always, a mask of neutrality. But deep in his dark eyes, a new calculation was taking shape. Project Phoenix had evolved. It was no longer about the simple optimization of an asset.
Now, it was the business plan for a corporate deity.
Just as the euphoria of their grand new plan began to settle in, a soft but firm knock echoed at the door.
A maiden entered, bowed deeply, and spoke in a voice devoid of emotion, a voice that was an echo of the Matriarch herself.
"Assistant Kenji," the maiden said. "Matriarch Feng requests your immediate presence in her private chambers. She says it's time to review the progress of your... audit."