When Wang Ren opened his eyes, it was to the smell of ink and incense, and the faint chirping of spirit cranes in the distance. He was lying on a bamboo bed, staring at the curved rafters of an ancestral hall. But he knew, with that strange clarity only the dead and the transmigrated are granted, that this was not his world.
He sat up with a start. His limbs felt soft, untrained, young.
A small bronze mirror on the floor caught his eye. He shuffled over, knelt before it, and stared. The face that stared back was pale, cherubic, and unmistakably twelve years old.
"…Wang Ren?" he muttered.
The name surfaced from the depths of his new memories. So that's who he was now. The third son of the outer branch of the Wang clan, a middling cultivation family in Green Forest City of the Azure Heaven Empire. His father was a local administrator, and his mother—well, she was kind. That was all he could recall. Too along ago she had passed.
In his past life, he had been a devout proponent of the Free Software movement. A GNU-fearing, GPL-venerating digital monk. A hacker and a rebel. He believed that all knowledge wanted to be free, that code was speech, and that DRM was a sin punishable by digital damnation.
And yet, here he was—in a world where literal knowledge, especially cultivation techniques and spiritual sutras, were hoarded like treasure. Secrets were passed from master to disciple through blood oaths and soul-binding contracts. Even something as basic as "Opening the Twelve Meridians: A Beginner's Guide" was considered a clan-internal document, punishable by death if leaked.
His eye twitched.
So this was hell.
The memories of his host body trickled in. A talentless boy with little spiritual sense, born into a family that expected too much and gave too little. In three weeks, the Sect Recruitment Trials would begin, and if Wang Ren didn't get into at least one of the top five sects—Immortal Sword Clan, Eternal Flaming Valley, Divine Dragon Palace, Heaven Storming Tower—his family would lose face. And he? Likely disowned, maybe worse.
Of course he cannot join the Frozen Yin Mountain, that place is solely reserved for women.
Wang Ren clenched his tiny fists.
"Freedom is not given; it is taken," he muttered, quoting a bearded Stallman-like monk from his past life who had once ranted about compiler chains and corporate mind prisons outside a McDonald's.
"I won't be a cog in this world's immortal bureaucracy. I won't be part of some Qi-capitalist machine where spiritual enlightenment is a premium subscription service. I will—"
A servant knocked on the paper door. "Young master, the elders request your presence. Daoist Gu Ren Zhen has arrived to inspect your meridian and qi channels."
Wang Ren took a deep breath.
Yes. This world might be ruled by immortal tyrants hoarding ancient knowledge. But even in this hell, he would preach the gospel of freedom.
Let the scriptures be free. Let the sutras be shared. Let no technique be hidden behind a paywall or bloodline.
He would become the Prophet of Open Cultivation.
And it would all begin with getting into a sect without selling his soul. Or if he has to, he would give it some thought.
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Thus begins the tale of Wang Ren: Cultivator, Revolutionary, and the man who tried to fork the Dao.