Darkness.
Then, a pinprick of light, blinding and overwhelming.
'What's happening?'
The thought was a formless echo in a mind that had no voice.
'I was... I was just crossing the street. The damn car...'
A cacophony of sounds assaulted him. A woman's pained cry, a man's urgent shouts, the frantic beat of hearts not his own. He felt a sensation of being squeezed, pushed, and then a sudden, shocking cold followed by a wave of warmth as he was wrapped in something soft.
A man's voice, thick with emotion, spoke in a language he had never heard, yet somehow, he understood its essence. "A boy! Feng Tian, we have a son!"
A weaker, but joyful, female voice replied, "Let me see him... my little Jiuge."
'Jiuge? Feng Jiuge?'
The name felt alien, yet it was now his. The world swam into a blurry, incomprehensible mess of shapes and colors. He tried to speak, to ask where he was, who these people were, but all that came out was a gurgling cry.
He was a baby.
He, a nineteen-year-old engineering student of a renowned university from Earth, was now a helpless, drooling infant. The absurdity of it was so immense it bordered on madness. Panic, cold and sharp, tried to claw its way up his new, tiny throat, but it was drowned out by the sheer exhaustion of being born. Sleep claimed him like a tidal wave.
The first year was a blur of eating, sleeping, and crying. He was a prisoner in his own infantile body, his mind a raging storm of confusion and frustration trapped within a vessel that couldn't even control its own limbs.
He listened. He watched.
The language that was once alien slowly began to form coherent patterns in his mind. He learned the names of his new parents: Feng Tian, his father, and Liu Mei, his mother. They were simple people, their love for him a palpable, warming presence in the small, sparsely furnished house.
He learned the name of his new home: Wu Tan City.
The name tickled a distant memory, something filed away in the vast library of his mind. He'd been an avid reader, his photographic memory being a blessing and a curse. Novels, textbooks, articles... he remembered them all.
By his third month, he could crawl. He explored every nook and cranny of their small house, his mind piecing together the world. He learned about 'Dou Qi', a mystical energy that seemed to be the foundation of this world. He would watch his father sit cross-legged, a faint green light enveloping him, and his mother practicing simple forms in the courtyard, her movements imbued with a gentle strength.
By his eighth month, he could walk and speak in short, clipped sentences. His parents were overjoyed, calling him a genius, a prodigy. They didn't understand that his mind was not that of a child.
"Jiuge is so smart!" his mother would coo, ruffling his hair. "He'll be a great Dou Master one day!"
His father would laugh, a deep, rumbling sound. "Of course! He's my son!"
They were proud. And he... he felt a pang of guilt, deceiving these kind people who had given him nothing but affection.
It was during his third year that the final piece of the puzzle clicked into place. His father was telling him stories, a common pastime. He spoke of the three great families of Wu Tan City.
"...and the strongest of them all, my son, is the Xiao Family. Their Clan Head, Xiao Zhan, is a Da Dou Shi! A true powerhouse!"
'Xiao Family... Xiao Zhan...'
The names resonated like a thunderclap in the archives of his memory.
'Wait a minute. Wu Tan City... Xiao Family... Xiao Zhan...'
His mental library, once a chaotic mess, began to organize itself. He pulled a specific file from the depths of his recall. A web novel he had binged during his exams.
'Battle Through The Heavens.'
The realization hit him with the force of a physical blow. He wasn't just in another world. He was in a story. A world where a young man named Xiao Yan, from this very city, this very clan, would rise against all odds to become the legendary Flame Emperor.
'My god. It's real. All of it.'
Every plot point, every character, every hidden treasure, every future event... it was all there, stored in his mind with perfect clarity. He was living in the prologue of an epic.
His initial shock gave way to a surge of excitement. Fortuitous opportunities! Legendary techniques! Heavenly Flames! He knew where they all were! He could become powerful, truly powerful!
But then, a cold dose of reality washed over him. He was Feng Jiuge, not Xiao Yan. He was the son of Feng Tian, a 7-star Dou Practitioner, and Liu Mei, a 4-star Dou Practitioner. They were kind, loving, but in the grand scheme of this world, they were nothing. They were cannon fodder.
He looked at his own small hands. He had no golden finger, no mysterious ring with an ancient soul dwelling inside. His parents had started teaching him their family's cultivation technique, a low-level Yellow Class method called the "Verdant Sapling Art." It was a wood-attribute technique, slow and steady, with no remarkable features.
He had tested his own affinities. He could feel a weak connection to the wood-attribute Dou Qi in the air, but also to the fire and lightning elements. Three attributes. In this world, that didn't mean he was a versatile genius; it meant his talent was diluted, mediocre and could even be considered ordinary.
The grand destiny belonged to Xiao Yan. He was just a background character.
The years that followed were a strange dichotomy. To his parents, he was a quiet, unusually intelligent child. He learned to read and write with astonishing speed, devouring any book his parents could afford. He asked pointed, insightful questions about Dou Qi, about the city, about the world, his maturity a constant source of wonder for them.
"Our little boy's intelligence... it's not like a child's," Liu Mei would say to her husband in hushed tones at night, a mixture of pride and worry in her voice.
"It's a gift from the heavens," Feng Tian would reply, his chest swelling. "He will bring honor to our Feng name."
Feng Jiuge would lie in his bed, feigning sleep, his heart heavy with the truth. He was using his future knowledge, his adult mind, to seem like a prodigy. He was slowly, painstakingly, analyzing the "Verdant Sapling Art."
He used principles of physics and biology from his past life to understand how Dou Qi flowed through the meridians, how it nourished the body. He found tiny inefficiencies, small ways to optimize the flow, to coax a little more energy with each cycle.
His progress was still slow.
At seven years old, he was only a 3-star Dou Disciple.
In the Xiao Family, Xiao Yan who was at the same age and slightly older than him was already famous, a 6-star Dou Disciple, a true genius lauded by the entire city.
Feng Jiuge felt no jealousy. Only a deep, gnawing caution. He was a bug next to an elephant. His knowledge was his only advantage, and it was a dangerous one. If anyone knew what he knew, he wouldn't live to see the next day. He had to be careful, to be patient.
His life, though simple, was happy. His father would return from his guard duty, tired but always with a smile for him. His mother would prepare their meals, her gentle presence a constant comfort. They would sit in the small courtyard in the evenings, watching the stars, a family.
He started to forget the man he used to be. The memories of Earth, of cars and smartphones, felt like a distant dream. This was his reality now. These were his parents. He loved them.
And then, one sunny afternoon, his world shattered.
He was eight years old. He had just reached the 4-star Dou Disciple level. His parents, in a rare moment of indulgence, had taken him to the city's most popular teahouse to celebrate.
"One day, son," his father said, sipping his tea, "I hope you will be the one taking me to the finest restaurants in the capital!"
"Stop putting pressure on him, Tian," his mother chided gently, placing a sweet cake on Jiuge's plate. "Let him enjoy being a child."
Feng Jiuge smiled, a genuine, happy smile. "I will. I'll become a strong cultivator and buy you both a big house."
It was a perfect moment. A fragile, beautiful bubble of peace.
Then it popped.
A roar of fury echoed from the street outside. "Jia Lie Ao! You dare lay a hand on my Xiao Family's business!"
The voice was powerful, laced with Dou Qi. The teahouse patrons froze. Feng Jiuge's blood ran cold. He recognized the name. The Jia Lie Clan was one of the other major families in Wu Tan City, rivals of the Xiao Family.
Another furious voice shot back. "Your Xiao Family is too arrogant! This market is not yours to command!"
The air crackled with power. Two immense pressures slammed into the teahouse. One was a fiery red, the other a watery blue. Dou Qi clashed in the street, a violent, untamed storm.
"Everyone, get down!" someone screamed.
Feng Tian reacted instantly. He grabbed Feng Jiuge and his wife, pulling them under the sturdy wooden table. "Mei'er, Jiuge, stay down! Don't move!"
The world outside became a blur of destructive energy. The walls of the teahouse groaned. A stray blast of red Dou Qi, wild and uncontrolled, ripped through the wooden wall like it was paper. It wasn't aimed at them. It wasn't aimed at anyone. It was just a byproduct of a battle between powerful men who saw the street, the buildings, and the people within them as nothing more than an arena.
The blast scythed through the space where they had been sitting just seconds before.
Feng Jiuge, tucked under the table, saw it all. He saw the wave of fiery energy. He saw it hit his father's back as he shielded them. He saw his mother, half-turned, her eyes wide with terror, as a splintered beam from the ceiling, dislodged by the impact, fell towards her.
He heard his father's choked gasp.
He heard his mother's scream cut short.
The world went red.
When the chaos subsided, when the powerful elders of the clans had retreated, leaving destruction in their wake, Feng Jiuge crawled out from under the table.
His hands were sticky.
His father lay motionless, a massive, horrific burn covering his entire back. His eyes were open, staring at the ceiling, the life gone from them.
His mother was crushed beneath the heavy beam, her body twisted at an unnatural angle.
They were gone.
Just like that.
Killed not by a targeted attack, but by the careless arrogance of the powerful. They were collateral damage in a squabble that had nothing to do with them.
A crowd gathered. People whispered. "The Xiao Family and the Jia Lie Clan..."
"So many dead..."
"Their elders are too reckless!"
Feng Jiuge heard none of it. He just knelt in the pool of his parents' blood, his small body trembling uncontrollably. His mind, the mind of a grown man, couldn't process the totality of his loss.
'Xiao Family...'
The name was no longer just a piece of information from a novel. It was a brand seared into his soul. A brand of hate.
He saw Xiao Family members arriving, their faces grim, assessing the damage. They didn't look at the bodies. They looked at the broken buildings, calculating the cost of repairs.
His parents were part of that cost. An insignificant entry in a ledger.
He wanted to scream at them, to rage, to attack. But he looked at his hands that belonged to a mere 3-Star Dou Disciple. He looked at the powerful auras of the men in the Xiao Family robes. He was an ant. They could crush him without a second thought, without even noticing.
He didn't scream. He didn't cry. Not then.
He walked home, his feet moving on their own, his mind a hollow, echoing void. He entered the small, empty house. He sat in the courtyard where they had watched the stars.
And then, the tears came. He cried for hours, for days. He cried until his throat was raw and his eyes were swollen shut. He cried for the kind man who always had a smile for him, and for the gentle woman who made him sweet cakes. He cried for the loss of his second chance, for the destruction of the only home he had truly known in this world.
In the crucible of that grief, his hate for the Xiao Family was forged. It was not a fiery, impulsive rage. It was cold, hard, and patient. A diamond of pure loathing that settled deep within his heart.
He knew he couldn't have his revenge now. Maybe not for a long, long time. But he would. One day, the Xiao Family would pay for the lives they had so carelessly discarded. He swore it on the graves of his parents.
Life became a solitary struggle. The small house, the "Verdant Sapling Art," and a few simple Yellow Class Dou Skills—a basic "Wood Vine Bind" and a defensive "Bark Shield"—were all he had left. He was an orphan in a world governed by strength.
His cultivation became his only solace, his only path forward. But it was agonizingly slow. His mediocre talent was a constant, frustrating bottleneck. The wood-attribute technique was stable but lacked any offensive power. The fire and lightning elements within him were like dormant sparks, with no method to ignite them.
He couldn't afford to buy better techniques. He was too weak to venture into the Monster Mountain Range to hunt for treasures or ingredients. Leaving the relative safety of Wu Tan City was a death sentence for a lone, low-level cultivator.
So he turned to his other strength: his mind.
He couldn't outfight his enemies, so he would outthink them. He started spending his days in the marketplace, not as a buyer, but as an observer, a listener. He watched the merchants, the caravans, the flow of goods and money.
He saw a fabric merchant struggling to sell his wares. Feng Jiuge, remembering some simple marketing tactics from Earth, approached him.
"Uncle," he said, his voice that of a polite, intelligent boy. "Your silks are beautiful. But you only show the finished ones."
The merchant grunted. "How else would I show them?"
"What if," Feng Jiuge suggested, "you took a small piece and dyed it in vibrant patterns? Hang it up, let the wind catch it. Show people not what the dress is but in how many colors it could be? Let them make the choice by choosing the colors and giving you an advance so that you can expand the business and make specialized dresses without wasting any of your money on the colors that do not sell at all. "
The merchant was skeptical, but he had nothing to lose. He tried it. Sales tripled in a week.
Feng Jiuge didn't ask for money. He asked for a favor. "Uncle, if you ever hear of anyone selling old books or scrolls, no matter how damaged, please let me know."
He did this again and again. He advised a restaurant owner on a "dish of the day" to reduce food waste and attract repeat customers while subtly ensuring that the customers choose the dishes through which they get to eat tasty food while the restaurant owner can make the greatest profit. His solutions were simple, logical, but completely alien to the people of this world.
He didn't accumulate a great amount of wealth. Instead, he focused on building a web of favors and goodwill. Merchants who once saw him as a little kid now greeted him with respect.
They brought him what he asked for: old, forgotten books. Books on history, on geography, on different monster types. And most importantly, fragmented descriptions of Dou Qi cultivation from different elemental schools.
He was a scholar of scraps. At night, in his empty house, he would pore over these texts. He read about the ferocity of fire, the speed of lightning, the solidity of earth. He couldn't get his hands on actual techniques, but he could get the theory.
He began a painstaking process of reverse-engineering. He used the "Verdant Sapling Art" as his base, his control group. He analyzed its core principles—the gentle, nurturing flow. Then, he tried to incorporate the concepts he read about. He tried to make the Dou Qi, which as a Dou Disciple was not a lot but enough, in his meridians not just flow, but burn. He tried to make it crackle.
It was dangerous. More than once, a failed experiment sent a searing pain through his body, leaving him breathless and convulsing on the floor. But slowly, painstakingly, he made progress. He wasn't creating a new technique, not yet. He was just learning to understand the different elements within him.
His cultivation speed remained slow compared to the true geniuses, but it was faster than it should have been for someone with his resources and talent. After all, while others were only focusing on some rather ancient and outdated methods to advance in the Dou Disciple, he was trying to create a new training method for himself. Well, it was pretty dangerous but still good.
By the time he was eleven, he had reached the 7th star of the Dou Disciple realm. A respectable achievement for an orphan, but nothing special in a city that had once hosted the prodigy Xiao Yan.
Xiao Yan. The name was a constant, bitter reminder. The boy was now a Dou Practitioner, a full realm ahead of Feng Jiuge. His talent was a blazing sun, while Feng Jiuge's was a guttering candle.
It was on a busy market day, the sun high in the sky, that their paths finally crossed.
Feng Jiuge was browsing a stall selling miscellaneous junk scavenged from the Monster Mountain Range. His eyes, honed by years of careful observation, and his soul, sharpened by his unique mental state, were his greatest assets. He scanned the pile of rusty metal, broken pottery, and dried herbs.
And then he saw it.
It was a small, palm-sized object made of a dull, unremarkable bronze. It looked like a fragment of a larger piece, covered in grime. To anyone else, it was worthless. But Feng Jiuge felt a faint, almost imperceptible pulse coming from it. A thrum of ancient, dormant energy. His soul sense which he attributed it to a special feeling or sixth sense, a primitive version of the Spiritual Perception of alchemists, tingled.
'This... this is not simple.'
He kept his face carefully neutral. He picked up a few other worthless items, haggling over them with the stall owner before casually pointing at the bronze piece.
"And this piece of scrap? I could use it to patch a hole in my pot. I'll give you five copper coins for the lot."
The stall owner glanced at the bronze fragment and shrugged. "Fine, fine, take it, boy."
Feng Jiuge paid the man, his heart beating a little faster. He had no idea what it was, but he knew it was a treasure. He carefully wrapped it in a cloth and turned to leave.
"Hold on."
The voice was young, but laced with an undeniable arrogance. It was a voice he had heard in his memories of the novel, a voice he despised.
Feng Jiuge turned slowly.
Standing before him was a boy about his age, perhaps a few months older. He was handsome, dressed in the fine silks of the Xiao Family. His expression was one of innate superiority, his eyes scanning Jiuge with casual dismissal before landing on the cloth-wrapped object in his hand.
It was Xiao Yan.
"What do you have there?" Xiao Yan asked, not as a question, but as a demand.
"Nothing of importance," Feng Jiuge replied, his voice even. He clutched the object tighter.
Xiao Yan's eyes narrowed. He, too, possessed an exceptional soul perception. Though he couldn't identify the object, he could sense the same faint pulse that Feng Jiuge had.
"Let me see it." He stepped forward, his hand outstretched. He was already a 1-star Dou Practitioner. The pressure of his Dou Qi, though not fully released, was palpable.
'He's already this arrogant,' Feng Jiuge thought, his own anger a cold knot in his stomach. 'The peak of his talent, before the fall. He thinks the world belongs to him.'
"It's mine. I just bought it," Feng Jiuge stated, standing his ground.
A flicker of annoyance crossed Xiao Yan's face. He was not used to being denied. "I said, let me see it."
He didn't wait for a reply. His hand shot out, faster than Feng Jiuge could react. He snatched the wrapped object from Feng Jiuge's grasp. The difference between a 7-star Dou Disciple and a 1-star Dou Practitioner was a chasm he could not cross.
Xiao Yan unwrapped the bronze fragment. He frowned, turning it over in his hand. He could feel its uniqueness but couldn't decipher its secrets. Still, his instincts told him it was valuable.
"You are an unruly one," he mused, before pocketing it without a second glance at Feng Jiuge. He tossed a few silver coins at Feng Jiuge's feet. They clattered on the dusty ground. "Here. That should be more than what a beggar like you paid for it. Consider it your lucky day."
He turned to walk away, a smug smirk on his face. Behind him, a pretty girl in a lavender dress, Xiao Xun'er (real name Gu Xun'er), watched the exchange with a detached, almost ethereal calm, her loyalty clearly with Xiao Yan.
The insult, the arrogance, the casual theft... it was the teahouse all over again. The same dismissal of his existence, the same assumption that the strong could take whatever they wanted from the weak.
Feng Jiuge's fists clenched so tightly his knuckles turned white. Every fiber of his being screamed at him to fight back, to throw the coins in Xiao Yan's smug face.
But he didn't.
'Patience,' a cold voice in his mind whispered. 'He is a Dou Practitioner. You are not. He has the Xiao Family behind him. You have nothing. An open confrontation is suicide.'
He swallowed the rage. He forced his body to relax. He bent down and picked up the silver coins. It was a humiliating act, but survival was more important than pride.
But as he watched Xiao Yan walk away, laughing with Gu Xun'er, something inside him snapped. The cold, patient hatred he had nurtured for three years was ignited by the spark of this personal humiliation.
'It's not enough. Being cautious is not enough. Waiting is not enough.'
He had been playing the long game, slowly building his foundation. But Xiao Yan's arrogance showed him the flaw in his plan. While he was being cautious, the gap between them was only growing. The world would not wait for him to be ready.
'No more.'
He walked away from the market, the silver coins feeling like burning coals in his hand. He went not to his home, but to a small, dusty tavern frequented by mercenaries and adventurers. He sat in a dark corner and ordered a cheap drink.
He didn't drink it. He just stared at the map of the region around Wu Tan City that was pinned to the wall.
For years, there had been rumors. A Dou King, a powerful expert, had fled to this region after being grievously injured in a battle. He had died somewhere in the wilderness, his storage ring and legacy lost. The Xiao Family, the Jia Clan, and other clans had all searched for it, scouring the Monster Mountain Range for months before finally giving up. The search area had been vast, the terrain treacherous. They had found nothing.
Feng Jiuge had known about this, of course. It was a minor event in the grand scale of the novel, never fully resolved. He had always considered it too risky. The major families had failed; what chance did a lone Dou Disciple have?
But now, risk was something he could no longer afford to avoid.
Xiao Yan had taken a trinket from him. A trinket that might have been his first real opportunity. He would not let it happen again. He needed power, and he wanted it now.
He spent the rest of the day and all of the next calling in his favors. He went to the fabric merchant, the weaponsmith, the restaurateur, and a dozen others. He didn't ask for books this time.
He asked for information.
"Can you please tell me the stories of what happened during the search for the Dou King's legacy. Every rumor, every mercenary's tale, every location the big families searched."
He cross-referenced the stories, filtering out the blatant lies and exaggerations. He then went to the city's cartographer and used his remaining money and favors to buy the most detailed maps of the searched regions.
He laid them all out on the floor of his house. For two days, he didn't sleep. He just stared at the maps, his mind a whirlwind of calculation and logic.
The principle was simple, something he had learned from a detective story in his past life.
'When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.'
The major families had searched the most likely places: deep caves, hidden valleys, areas with high energy concentrations. They had used their manpower to brute-force the search. They had searched the difficult terrain.
'So, where didn't they search?' Feng Jiuge asked himself. 'What was so improbable, so obvious, that they overlooked it?'
He traced the routes on the map. They had covered the mountains, the forests, the canyons. His eyes kept being drawn to one feature they had largely ignored: the Rushing Serpent River. It was a wide, fast-flowing river that snaked its way down from the mountains.
Searching a river like that was impractical. Anything that fell in would be washed miles downstream in hours.
But there was one spot. A large waterfall known as the "Stone Gorge Falls," about fifty miles from the city. The waterfall was massive, the roar of the water deafening. The pool at its base was deep and turbulent.
The clans had searched the area around the falls, but not the falls themselves.
'Too simple,' Feng Jiuge thought. 'Too obvious. Who would hide a treasure inside a waterfall? It's a cliché.'
But that was just it. It was so cliché, so simple, that the powerful, proud cultivators of the clans, looking for a grand, hidden tomb, would have dismissed it instantly. They were looking for a challenge worthy of a Dou King. They wouldn't have considered a hiding place from a children's adventure story.
'Whatever remains, however improbable...'
The Dou King was injured, fleeing for his life. He wouldn't have had the time or energy to create an elaborate tomb. He would have needed a place to hide and die quickly. A cave behind a massive, impassable waterfall was the perfect spot. Easy to find if you knew where to look, but impossible to stumble upon by accident.
It was a gamble. A massive, life-threatening gamble for someone at his level of power. But it was a calculated one.
He gathered his meager belongings. He sold the furniture in his house for a pittance. He used the silver coins Xiao Yan had thrown at him to buy climbing gear, waterproof oilskin bags, and enough rations for a week.
He stood at the door of his empty house, taking one last look at the place where he had known both love and loss.
He was no longer just a transmigrator trying to survive. He was no longer just an orphan nursing a grudge.
He was a hunter. And his first prey was the legacy of a dead king. With it, he would forge the weapons of his own destiny.
He closed the door and didn't look back.
~~
[
A/N: I hope you all like it. It won't have any cheats other than mc's foresight as he knows the story or his comprehension to create his own techniques.
]