1.5 years ago,
My guttural shrieks reverberated throughout the forbidden forest of Jianzhou. Wild animals tucked their tails in fear and abandoned their territory without a second thought.
To them, it felt like a sudden assault. A predator they had never seen before. One who possessed enough strength to make the forest rumble in fear. A killer as such, had awakened in the heart of the same forest they once claimed as their own.
For a continuous cycle of 6 days and 6 nights, not once had my painful groans subsided.
As the 7th day's sun rose, something peculiar happened.
The loud nightmares came to a halt. The forest, for once, took a breath of comfort. Although, it did not last for long.
Only minutes after the silence, all that existed within the forest began to emanate a soft glow. Flora and fauna alike shed their glow and let it evaporate in the air. As soon as the light severed contact with their surface, plants paled and animals collapsed to the ground.
In an instant, the forest that once seethed like a green hell turned black. While the life it shed in the form of pure, clustered energy hovered in the air—forming into the shape of a sphere.
Atop a small crevice, the rough rhythmic sounds of someone's breath wailed.
*Huff... Huff...*
Inside, the murky stench of rotting flesh and the metallic taste of blood made it impossible for one to breathe. However, a victor who—even if by pure luck—defeated his death.
The one who successfully changed his fate.
I inhaled the same air as if it were an elixir of nature. A reward granted to me for having broken through the chains of the world.
Sitting atop the small hill of bones, my body hunched forward. My face was veiled behind the curtain of my long hair.
Throughout the days, my body had metamorphosed. The long, wiry skin had been replaced with young skin. My hair was painted black, striking and lustrous.
In common sense, it looked like I had undergone the age reversal state. Where one's physique connects to nature, letting it rejuvenate to its prime state.
However, the reality spat out the total opposite. Rather than something as comfortable as that, I had endured a hell for days.
A hell that ripped my body to pieces, destroyed it, and reduced it into ashes while continuously healing my wounds.
My arm burst into splinters of bone—before stitching back together as torn muscle squirmed into place. Even as it healed, my other arm unraveled, tendon by tendon.
I could see my demise, feel my body being shredded to pieces, and sense a dark hand approaching me. A hand that promised to take away all of my pain.
It was a sweet offer, almost too good for me to refuse.
But it was something I had seen before. In my last life, as I drifted towards the gates of death, it was this same dark hand that pulled me inside those gates.
Thus, to me, the hands felt like a representation of death. A guide that guided the dead souls to the world of the afterlife.
Something I had to absolutely avoid.
Getting revenge for myself and my dead son—it was the sole purpose I had pushed myself so hard for. But if I were to truly accept it. Then my revenge would be out of reach, and my accursed fate may be restored.
'I... can't...' In a desperate struggle to stay alive, I made sure not to fall unconscious. Even if it meant a pain far worse than death.
For days, I endured. Each time my body cracked, one question ravaged my mind like thunder.
"Was it really worth it?"
However, each time, an image came to my mind like an indisputable answer. An image consisting of three. A female resting on a bed, looking exhausted as if she had been struggling with something for a long time.
Yet she displayed a soft, gentle smile as her eyes were fixated on a man sitting next to her. Tears traced his face like two rivers as he proudly looked downwards.
His body seemed to be shaking, yet the sound of a heartbeat soothed his soul like the greatest melody of the divine musician of the Heavenly Court. No, it was far better than that.
It wasn't my heartbeat, yet it felt like mine. A heart that pumped the same blood, yet for a different soul. Someone I had happily decided to sacrifice all my life, wealth, power, and all I owned. Just to ensure his safety.
In my arms, swaddled in soft cloth, was the smiling face of a newborn.
"Wu...Sheng..." A name escaped from my collapsing lungs. It echoed in the small cave and entered my ears, filling me with a resolution.
It reminded me of my goal and made the pain vanish in an instant. My mind cleared, and my body relaxed. I wanted to smile, but my facial muscles had already been disintegrated.
On the 7th day, the pain was gone. My body had changed. It had renewed into its prime state. But something seemed amiss.
While I took the chance to stabilize my breath. I opened my eyes, revealing my void-like eyes. Through the gaps of my hair, I saw a system window floating up front.
---
[Your body has been successfully rejuvenated to its prime state to ensure better chances of survival in the process.]
[As of now, the chances of survival have been determined to be 0.062%.]
[The system strongly recommends that you change your decision.]
---
"Continue with it."
---
[...]
[Understood.]
[Initiating the process to recreate your destroyed Qi Paths.]
---
The system window disappeared. The soft churn of wind whistled throughout the small cave in silence.
My breath had stabilized, my complexion improving with each passing second.
While outside, a black plague had already taken over the forest grounds. It had eradicated all life, letting everything rot in minutes.
The spherical orb of condensed life energy slowly began to descend. Fine threads of materializing energy extended from the orb, drifting weightlessly.
As it descended, the ground below healed. Soil gained its rich earthy aroma, and grass blades were painted bright green. New flowers bloomed, their appearance far better than their peers.
Slowly, the threads converged, wrapping around one another to form a rope-like shape.
Then, it stretched forward and entered the small opening of the cave. Reaching out to my resting body, its end began to sparkle in a bright shimmer of golden light.
Sensing a bright light approaching my face, I instinctively opened my eyes.
'Huh? Wait, this looks like...' My eyes slightly widened. With a glance, I recognized the slowly approaching threads, condensed with concentrated life energy.
After all, it was something I had spent both of my lives cultivating. The brightest energy that represented life and warmth.
Though this energy felt a bit different, I figured that both this and the one bestowed upon him by the goddess Aria in his past life were innately similar.
Appearance may have been different, but their fundamentals remained the same.
It wasn't really hard to guess, not to someone who had once pioneered both such energies.
But, at the same time, despite being almost one with the light, I seemed utterly distant.
Maybe it was because of the distrust that had hardened in my mind since the same light abandoned me in my past life.
Maybe it was the resentment of how the same light could not give me enough strength when it came to saving my son.
Or perhaps, it was just being treated as a target for my pent-up emotions. Who knew?
However, despite seeing it up close, I did not flinch. Why?
Simply because I thought it was the system's doing.
'This amount of life energy, and that too, of such purity. It can only be handled by a Peak Void Amalgamation.' I closed my eyes and simply surrendered my body to the system.
Not out of trust, but a simple thought—'If it really is a cultivator of that high realm, then there's no hope for my survival.'
The threads eventually reached me and gently touched my forehead. Although, it did not stop there. The threads kept pushing through, as if trying to pierce through my body. It was painful, but not as much as the one I had suffered recently.
I frowned, but that was the extent of it.
Moments later, the real pain, once again, kicked in. The threads were slowly drilling into my skull, trying to push through my physical body to access my spiritual one.
It was still tolerable.
But then, as it successfully entered my body, the orb trembled slightly. With a single beat, all of the concentrated energy condensed within the orb pumped itself into my body.
In an instant, my body was overwhelmed. Inside a broken bowl, it felt as though someone had forcefully poured the water of an entire lake.
A fraction of a second. That's all it took for my newly hardened body to break down again.
It felt as though my progress had turned to dust.
Within my body, the energy went rampant. It enwrapped every muscle and tendon in my body and convulsed violently. Blood surged and poured through every opening in my body. My blood vessels shrank, causing my mind to grow blurry.
Then, after several moments of plain violence, it independently began to grow sharper, steadier. Concentrating around my body, it began to take the shape of new vessels.
Around my limbs, there lay points where the vessels connected.
Meridians. The Dams used to control the strength and the power of the river of energy that flowed through the qi paths. And at the center of my abdomen, slightly below my belly button, the energy collected the most.
There, it burnt like a ravaging fire. Almost as if trying to reforge the remnants of the past.