2. Welcome to the Coiling Dragon Sect

I step out into the weak morning sunlight, and for a moment, I just stand there, breathing.

The air is crisp and clean in a way it never was back home. No car exhaust, no industrial smog, just mountain air tinged with the smell of pine and cooking fires. It’s peaceful. Calm.

The kind of quiet that makes you think everything might be okay.

Except everything is not okay. I’m not supposed to be here. This is supposed to be a dream, a very vivid, very elaborate dream that I’m going to wake up from any minute now. I’ll be back in my cramped apartment with my gaming laptop and my collection of empty energy drink cans, and this will all be just another weird story to tell my friends.

Any minute now.

Any minute.

I pinch my arm. It hurts. I’ve been pinching my arm for the past ten minutes, and it keeps hurting, and I keep not waking up.

The training yard stretches out before me; packed earth worn smooth by decades of feet, wooden training dummies at the edges with their straw stuffing peeking through cracks. Real in a way that makes my stomach clench.

I need to test this. This… ability. This thing I saw in the mirror. If I’m going to be stuck in this nightmare, I need to understand what I’m working with.

I turn and walk back inside, to the small desk where the previous sect leader—no, my predecessor, I have to start thinking of him that way—used to handle sect business. There’s a teacup there, chipped ceramic with a faded dragon motif that’s been here since before I took over. I pick it up, turning it in my hands.

The text appears instantly, hovering in my vision like a tooltip from a video game:

I snort. “Right. Objects are just objects. Good to know.”

But my mind is already racing. If it works on objects, it works on people. If it works on people, it works on cultivators. If it works on cultivators, I can see exactly what I’m dealing with: strengths, weaknesses, potential, secrets. This changes everything.

The morning light filters through the paper windows, soft and diffuse, casting gentle shadows across the worn wooden floor. Through the thin walls, I can hear the sounds of my domain: the distant chanting of disciples practicing basic breathing techniques, the argument between two servants about whose turn it is to haul water from the stream, the clang of a pot from the kitchen. The sect has never been powerful: we’re one of seventeen minor sects in this prefecture, and we rank somewhere around fourteenth by any meaningful metric. Maybe fifteenth, if the Verdant Willow Sect has finally gotten their act together.

Twelve disciples. Fourteen mortal servants and laborers. One aging sect leader with a bad back, a head full of conflicting memories, and a new ability I don’t fully understand.

And a plan forming in the back of my mind.

‘If this is a dream, fine. I’ll play along until I wake up. If it’s not…’

If it’s not, then I’m stuck here. And if I’m stuck here, I need to win. That’s what I do. That’s what I’ve always done. Strategy games, competitive rankings, min-maxing every character build until I hit the top. I don’t know how to do anything except try to win. And in this world, in this body, winning means building a successful sect. I step back outside, my bare feet cold against the packed earth of the training yard. The first disciple I see is a boy named Liang, maybe sixteen, sweeping leaves with more enthusiasm than skill. He’s got a thin face and earnest eyes, and he’s been here for two years without making any noticeable progress.

I open my mouth. Close it. Think. If I’m going to do this, I need to do it right. I need data. I need to see everyone, everything, every resource I have to work with.

“Gather everyone,” I say. My voice comes out steady, commanding. The voice of a sect leader. Not a confused twenty-year-old from another world. “All disciples, all servants, everyone affiliated with the sect. In the training yard. Now.”

Liang blinks, his broom pausing mid-sweep. “Everyone, Sect Leader?”

“Everyone.”

He hesitates for just a moment, then nods and scurries off, dropping his broom in his haste. I watch him go, then walk to the center of the training yard and wait. They come slowly. The disciples arrive first, trickling in from the practice halls and their quarters with confused expressions. Eleven of them, ranging from fourteen to nineteen, all at various stages of Qi Condensation. They form a loose cluster near the front, glancing at each other with raised eyebrows.

My eldest disciple, Feng, arrives last. He’s twenty-two, broad-shouldered and intense, with a permanent furrow between his brows that’s only deepened over the three years he’s been stuck at the peak of Qi Condensation. He nods to me curtly and takes his place at the front of the group.

I focus on him.

I keep my face perfectly neutral. Inside, something twists. Feng has been my best disciple for years. I’d hoped… well. The Gaze doesn’t lie. If it says he needs external assistance, then that’s what I’ll have to find him.

I move to the next disciple, a sharp-eyed girl of nineteen with her hair pulled back in a severe bun.

I frown at that one. Liu Yang is seventeen, quiet, keeps to himself. This body never thought much about him either way, but the Gaze is… harsh. Brutally honest in a way that makes me uncomfortable.

On and on they go. D-tier. F-tier. D-tier.

The servants arrive next, shuffling and uncertain. Fourteen of them, ranging from a bent old man with gnarled hands to a girl who can’t be more than twelve, carrying a basket of vegetables she probably grabbed on her way from the garden. Mortals don’t often get called to meetings with the sect leader. They’re cooks, cleaners, gardeners, laborers; the invisible foundation that keeps the sect running while cultivators cultivate.

I turn my attention to the old man first.

I blink. That’s… more personal. More specific. The Gaze isn’t just giving me dry statistics,it’s giving me information. Useful information.

I move to the woman next to him, middle-aged with tired eyes and calloused hands.

I file that away. Li Hua. Laundry. Grieving mother.

The Gaze continues, faster now as I scan across the gathered servants:

I almost laugh at that one. The Gaze is definitely getting more… colorful.

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