Reincarnated with a lucky draw system-Chapter 498: REBORN

"Well, well, well. If it isn’t the failed prodigy."

The sneer cut through the stale air like a dull blade.

A tall cultivator in crisp outer-sect robes stood looming over the broken figure sprawled across the cold stone floor.

Chen Mo lay there, little more than a heap of filthy rags and bruised flesh.

His once-proud body was gaunt, ribs pressing sharply against sallow skin. 𝐟𝚛𝕖𝚎𝕨𝗲𝐛𝚗𝐨𝐯𝐞𝕝.𝐜𝗼𝗺

Days, perhaps weeks of starvation had hollowed his cheeks and dulled his once-bright eyes.

They stared upward, unfocused, glassy with exhaustion and the slow creep of death.

Dust clung to the dried blood on his lips. Every shallow breath rattled in his chest.

"There was a time I envied you," the cultivator continued, voice thick with venom.

"You—the perfect prodigy. Talent dripping from your fingertips, love falling at your feet, recognition wherever you walked. A bastard from some filthy lower world like you never deserved any of it."

He spat. The glob landed on Chen Mo’s cheek and slid slowly downward, mixing with grime and old tears.

Chen Mo stirred. With agonizing effort, he lifted his head just enough to bring the mocker’s face into focus.

Recognition flickered through the haze of pain.

"You..." His voice was a cracked whisper, raw from disuse. "I knew you were many things. Greedy. Ambitious. Cruel, even. But ungrateful? That’s a new low, even for you."

The cultivator’s smirk faltered for half a heartbeat, then hardened.

Long ago, this same man had been an awkward outer disciple, trailing after Chen Mo like a shadow, begging for pointers on sword forms and qi circulation.

Chen Mo, young and generous then, had given what he could.

A few extra minutes after training. A quiet word of correction.

Small kindnesses that had once meant everything to a struggling junior.

Now that same junior stood above him, laughing.

"Say whatever you want," the cultivator snapped.

"I’m not the one lying here crippled and useless."

"Indeed." Chen Mo’s lips curved in the ghost of a smile.

He forced his trembling arms beneath him and, inch by painful inch, pushed himself up until he sat upright against the wall.

The movement tore fresh pain through his cracked ribs, but he refused to let it show.

He lifted his gaze and met the cultivator’s eyes without blinking.

There was no fear in that stare, only a deep, quiet contempt that somehow made the stronger man feel small.

"Even like this," Chen Mo said slowly, each word deliberate, "I still carry more weight than you ever will. It’s almost funny. A dead lion is still worth more than a living dog."

"You bastard!" Rage twisted the cultivator’s face into something ugly. He lunged forward and drove a brutal kick into Chen Mo’s midsection.

The impact was sickening. Chen Mo’s body folded around the blow and flew backward, crashing against the far wall with a wet thud.

Fresh blood trickled from the corner of his mouth. He slid down the stone, leaving a dark smear behind him.

"Senior Brother!" one of the junior disciples trailing behind cried out, voice high with alarm.

"He’s mortal now, no cultivation left at all. You might actually kill him!"

The cultivator laughed, a harsh, barking sound. "No one cares whether this trash lives or dies."

He stepped forward again, boots crunching on scattered pebbles. With deliberate slowness he drew the sword at his hip.

The blade hissed free of its sheath, catching the dim torchlight in a cold silver line.

"It’s funny, really," he said, savoring each word. "Because now the living dog gets to feast on the dead lion’s carcass."

He raised the sword high, point aimed downward, and brought it slashing toward Chen Mo’s heart.

Chen Mo did not flinch. His eyes stayed wide open, clear and unflinching.

If anything, a strange calm settled over his battered features.

Perhaps, in that final moment, death felt like mercy.

A clean end to endless days of clinging to a revenge that grew more distant with every sunrise.

Yet even as the blade descended, something deep inside him refused to surrender.

"Hah," he rasped to himself, voice barely audible. "I was never one to give up."

In the space between one heartbeat and the next, his entire life flickered before him, bright, vivid, merciless.

He saw a small boy shivering in a rundown shack on a nameless lower-world street.

Saw the wrinkled, calloused hands of an old man pressing a chipped bowl of thin porridge into his palms.

Heard the rough, warm voice that had carried him through the darkest nights.

"Little Chen... life won’t be easy for you. You’ll suffer more than most. But as long as you never give up, you’ll overcome it all. After all... you have quite the special arms."

Those words, spoken so long ago, struck like lightning through the fog of despair.

Chen Mo’s dulled eyes suddenly blazed.

Hunger, for food, yes, but also for power, for vengeance, reawakened in his chest like a furnace long thought cold.

Fury surged through veins that had gone numb days earlier.

And then—

Time itself seemed to pause.

The sword hung motionless in midair, inches from his chest.

Dust motes froze in slanted beams of torchlight.

The cultivators’ mocking faces locked in grotesque expressions.

The wind that had tugged at their robes stilled completely.

Everything stopped.

Except for the faint, almost imperceptible tremor that began deep within Chen Mo’s core.

Chen Mo watched in stunned silence as the cultivator froze mid-swing.

The sword hovered inches from his chest, its edge gleaming coldly in the torchlight, completely motionless.

Not just the cultivator. Every living thing in the dim chamber had stopped.

The junior disciples’ mouths hung open in mid-shout.

Dust particles hung suspended in the stale air like tiny frozen stars.

Even the faint draft that had tugged at their robes vanished entirely.

The world had paused. Only Chen Mo remained aware.

Then the pain hit.

"Urghhh!!!!!!!!!"

It erupted from deep within his arms, fiercer than anything he had ever endured.

His hands felt plunged into eternal flames, not ordinary fire, but something ancient and merciless, flames that burned without consuming, flames that promised to sear forever.

The agony raced along his nerves like molten iron poured directly into his veins.

His vision blurred with white-hot flashes.

He opened his mouth to scream, but the sound died in his throat, no one could hear him. No one could move to help.

Not that anyone would have.

Sweat poured down his face, mixing with dried blood and grime.

His body convulsed against the cold stone wall, every muscle locking in torment.

Then, slowly, the flames began to take shape.

Golden lines erupted across his forearms like veins forged from living lightning.

They pulsed with raw, electric light, branching and twisting in intricate, ancient patterns.

At the backs of his palms, perfect circles formed, dense rings of glowing inscriptions that rotated faintly, as though alive with forgotten secrets.

The marks sank into his skin, branding themselves deep, fusing with flesh and bone.

Power followed the pain.

A tremendous surge roared through his crippled legs first.

Shattered bones knit together with audible cracks.

Torn muscles wove themselves whole. The constant, grinding ache that had defined his every movement vanished in an instant.

His cultivation root, once severed and ruined, ignited anew, stronger, purer, radiating potential that made his old foundation seem like child’s play.

The energy didn’t stop at healing.

It swept outward in waves, scouring his meridians clean of years of accumulated impurities and blockages.

Each channel widened and reinforced itself, gleaming like polished jade under his skin.

His dantian core swelled and densified, compressing into something far more resilient, able to hold oceans of qi where only trickles had remained.

Every cell in his body seemed to awaken, reborn, humming with vitality.

The torture that had felt endless finally ebbed.

What remained was renewal.

Chen Mo rose slowly to his feet.

His rags hung in tatters around a body that no longer looked starved or broken.

Strength flooded his limbs, clean, boundless, intoxicating.

He flexed his fingers, feeling the golden inscriptions pulse once more before fading to a subtle, dormant glow beneath his skin.

He was no longer the crippled wretch they had mocked.

He was something far greater.