Cultivation Through Artifacts - Chapter 289 - Challenged By A... Weapon?

The most vulnerable time in a tennis game is when you are leading; even if there is a match point, the game is still possible.

Football is round, tennis is also round.

- Description from novelbuddy

Renji Takeda didn’t expect to die from drinking too much sake. He also didn’t expect to wake up as Leif Thorenvald, the second male lead in a romance novel.But wait—shouldn’t he have transmigrated as a villainess? Or maybe an omega in some steamy Omegaverse? Nope. Fate clearly enjoys a joke.Now he’s trapped in a story where the heroine wields divine powers, the villainess plots in silk gowns, and the dashing Grand Duke is destined to win the girl. And Renji? He’s the poor sap who gets rejected with a smile.There’s just one tiny issue.Renji is gay.So instead of sulking and chasing after a woman he has zero interest in, he tosses the author’s script into the chamber fireplace, packs his bags, and flees to the cold, quiet North to enjoy his second life in peace.Everything’s going perfectly... Until the Grand Duke, Alvar Ragnulfsson, shows up. The supposedly straight male lead is suddenly far too close—lingering stares, casual touches, and an interest that’s definitely crossing the “just friends” line.Suddenly, the overlooked second lead might be headlining a very different story.Between politics, divine powers, and a dangerously attentive Grand Duke, Renji has only one question:Is he rewriting the script... or is the script rewriting him?

In the beginning, he said, “A lowly commoner from Jiangning County? What a disgraceful status, I won't marry her!”After meeting her, he clicked his tongue, “So frail and delicate, she can't stand a blow, too weak, I refuse!”When she approached him alone, carrying the marriage book, he stood leaning on the door, grinning insolently, “Are you here to make me marry you? But this young master doesn’t want to marry young!”Upon learning she was there to annul their marriage, his face turned dark as a thunderstorm, emanating a murderous aura, “Who gave you the guts to revoke the marriage with this young master?”...Su Rong felt, Duanhua Princess must be blind, this man was so pampered and spoiled, how was he worth dying or living for?If she had known earlier, she would have thrown the divorce letter at his face the first time she saw him.—————————————The tender signs of spring on the delicate Hibiscus pillow, amidst the drunken flowers filling the room, unnoticed. — Su Rong.A gallant young man in fine clothes and on a steed, a single glance causes a lifetime of confusion. — Zhou GuYour wish is my wish. I wish to have known you earlier, protect you among the aromatic chambers strewn with brocades. Tear through the illusions, cut down the thorns, with hands unstained by blood, just as pure as you were when we first met, the young and soft little girl.Your wish is my wish. I wish I had known you sooner when you were like a refreshing breeze near the moon. I dared not approach for fear of disturbing the phoenix and mandarin ducks. Praying to be the moon in the sky to cast a reflection on you, accompany you while you watch the flowers bloom in the spring and gaze at the snow in winter, each and every year at Chang'an.

He wasn’t some chosen hero.Not the golden boy in prophecy.He was just Kieran Marcoth—a boy born on the wrong side of fate,A mistake, a misfit.Not blessed by heaven.Too stubborn for hell.And now…Thrown onto a battlefield meant for gods.The world had already been broken long before he came into it.People sinned, as they always do—And one day, the sky finally answered.The day God turned away,Everything fell.Cities burned.Families vanished.The silence afterward was louder than any explosion.But even in wrath, the Divine left something behind.A final olive branch—if you could call it that.A way to survive what came crawling out of the darkness.Talents.Powers.Strange, unique abilities passed down like gifts from a god who no longer cared.And on the day Kieran stood in line—quiet, hopeful, a little scared—Waiting to receive his talent,He dared to believe his life might finally start to make sense.Instead…He awakened something different.A hidden SSS-ranked talent.The kind with a condition attached.A catch.And just like that, everything went wrong.Laughter.Whispers.Stares like knives.He became a joke.A disappointment.Even the instructors didn’t bother to hide their sneers.Then the bullying started.The beating.The betrayal.And one day, it nearly killed him.He lay there, bleeding.Angry.Humiliated.A part of him still hoping this was some twisted mistake.But it wasn’t.And then—A sound.> [Ding! Conditions have been met][Host has been successfully selected as a God Candidate][Defeat the other candidates! Become the next God of this ruined world]Kieran stared at the message blinking in front of him.He didn’t smile.Didn’t cry.Didn’t feel triumphant.He just felt tired.And then, something in him shifted.One thought, sharp and cold, rose to the surface:“I’m going to fucking kill those bastards.”Not for power.Not for glory.But because he was done being the punchline.That’s how his journey began.Not as a hero.Not yet a monster.Just a boy who had lost too much—And found something worth fighting for in the wreckage.The question now is:Will the world break him again?Or will he become the god who remakes it?