When Ye Shen woke, he did not open his eyes immediately.
He lay still beneath the thin blanket, listening to the small sounds within the wooden house while his thoughts moved one after another with calm precision. The quiet breathing beside him belonged to Ye Zhentian. Outside, the village had not fully awakened yet, but faint noises had already begun to rise from beyond the walls.
His mind came to the conclusion it had circled ever since he first arrived in this body.
He had died.
Not nearly died, not dreamed of death, and not fallen into some strange illusion. He had truly died on that mountain. He still remembered the coldness spreading through his chest, remembered Li Yue's voice breaking as she ran toward him, remembered the shattered pendant and the endless light that had swallowed everything. Then came the palace, the strange people, the words they had spoken, and finally this village.
Rebirth.
Even if he did not like using such a dramatic word, no other explanation fit the facts before him.
He had not only entered another body, but another world entirely. The sky, the air, the people, even the invisible weight hanging over everything felt different from Earth. The family in that palace clearly held power beyond anything he had seen before, and from the little he had heard, they had sent him and Ye Zhentian here for a reason tied to this place.
Taixuan, that was the name he remembered.
Ye Shen slowly opened his eyes and turned them toward the sleeping figure beside him. Ye Zhentian still had one arm loosely wrapped around him, as if even in sleep he was afraid something might happen to his younger brother. The gesture was simple, instinctive, and entirely unforced.
Ye Shen watched him for a moment in silence.
In his previous life, sincerity had always been difficult to measure. People lied, hid their intentions, smiled while sharpening blades behind their backs. Ye Shen had grown used to observing first and trusting last. Yet this child—this older brother of his new life—had done nothing except protect him from the moment he opened his eyes in that palace.
The thought passed quietly through his mind and then settled. Ye Zhentian could be trusted, at least for now.
That was enough.
A short while later, Ye Zhentian stirred awake. He blinked twice, rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand, then looked down and smiled faintly when he saw Ye Shen already watching him.
"You're awake again," Ye Zhentian murmured. His voice still carried the softness of a child, but there was already a habit of responsibility in the way he moved. He sat up, stretched, and quickly climbed off the bed. "Stay put. I'll come back soon."
Ye Shen only watched him.
Ye Zhentian washed his face using the basin near the wall, changed into a faded set of work clothes, then returned to the bedside. He checked the blanket, looked around the room once as if making sure nothing was missing, and then lightly patted Ye Shen's head.
"Auntie Lin might come by later," Ye Zhentian said. "Don't make trouble."
Then, after a moment's pause, he added more softly, "I'll be back before dark."
He picked up a small wooden-handled tool from near the doorway and left the house.
As the sound of his footsteps faded into the morning, Ye Shen remained where he was, continuing to piece together his situation. This world was clearly not ordinary. The people from the palace had spoken of galaxies and worlds the way people on Earth spoke of cities and borders. That alone told him enough. This place was clearly far beyond anything Earth could compare to.
Still, thinking alone would only take him so far.
He needed something concrete.
That thought had barely formed when a strange sensation stirred deep within him. It was faint at first, like something forgotten trying to rise through layers of memory. Ye Shen's focus sharpened immediately. The sensation did not come from outside, but from somewhere deeper, buried within his own consciousness.
He instinctively turned his attention inward.
Darkness met him first, vast and silent. Then, slowly, ancient characters began to appear within that darkness one by one.
They were purple.
Not the ordinary purple of cloth or dye, but the same deep, ancient shade he remembered from the pendant. The color itself seemed to carry weight, as though those characters were not merely written, but condensed from something older and denser than ink. Ye Shen could not read them in the normal sense. Their form was foreign, their shape strange, and yet as he focused, the meaning rose naturally within him.
Primordial Qi Scripture.
The name settled into his mind first, followed by several lines beneath it. Their language was ancient, but their meaning came not through study, but through instinct, as if the scripture itself allowed only the smallest fraction of understanding to pass through.
In the beginning, the universe was formless, filled only with boundless qi.
This was Primordial Qi, the origin of all existence.
From the origin came the cosmos, and from the cosmos came life.
One begets two, two begets three, three begets all things.
The origin exists within the universe, and within oneself.
Ye Shen remained still for a long time.
The words were grand, almost absurdly so, yet they did not feel false. More importantly, they did not read like a method for immediate use. There were no instructions for breathing, no diagrams of circulation, no command to absorb or gather anything. It was more like a principle. A foundation.
The more Ye Shen focused, the more he realized the first step was not action, but perception.
If this scripture was to be believed, it was the origin of everything else, hidden both within the universe and within oneself.
Ye Shen closed his eyes again and let his awareness stretch outward as far as his current body would allow. His infant form was weak, his concentration limited, but his mind remained calm. He observed carefully, not forcing anything, only paying attention to what was already there. The air in the room was not empty. It held a faint, subtle presence, like invisible threads woven through space itself. Outside, that presence seemed stronger where sunlight touched the ground and softer where shadows gathered beneath the eaves.
It did not take long before he sensed something clearly.
There was energy in the world around him.
It drifted through the room, through the village, through the earth and air alike. Even with no experience, Ye Shen could brush against it after only a short time. At first, the ease of it almost made him pause. If the first step was this simple, then perhaps—
No.
That thought stopped on its own.
Ye Shen focused more carefully on what he had found. The feeling was real, but shallow. It was thin, widespread, and present everywhere in a way that contradicted the scripture's tone. The purple lines had spoken of origin, of the beginning from which all else came. What he had sensed felt nothing like that. It was too light. Too dispersed. Too ordinary.
More importantly, it was too easy.
Ye Shen opened his eyes.
He had gone the wrong direction.
The realization did not frustrate him. If anything, it confirmed that the scripture's path was not something that could be stumbled into by accident. Whatever this common energy was, it might be useful to others in this world, but it was not what the scripture had described.
Ye Shen lay there silently, thinking.
The words remained clear in his mind.
The origin exists within the universe, and within oneself.
That meant the answer was not simply outside him. Nor was it something waiting carelessly in the open air for anyone to seize. If this thing truly stood at the root of all existence, then sensing it would require more than just touching the first layer of energy spread across the world.
It would require patience.
The day passed slowly after that.
An older village woman came by around midday, carrying warm food and muttering to herself about how calm Ye Zhentian's little brother always was. Ye Shen let her carry him, feed him, and fuss over him without resistance. The less attention he drew, the better. By the time she left, the light outside had shifted, and the quiet murmur of village life had settled into its usual rhythm.
When Ye Zhentian returned, there was dirt on his clothes and faint exhaustion on his face, but he still checked on Ye Shen before doing anything else. He washed quickly, then sat beside the bed and lifted Ye Shen into his arms with surprising care.
"You behaved?" Ye Zhentian asked.
Ye Shen blinked once.
Ye Zhentian smiled. "Good."
He started talking about helping in the fields, carrying bundles that were almost too big for him, and one of the village uncles who had promised to fix the loose leg on their table. The words themselves were ordinary, but Ye Shen listened carefully to the tone beneath them. Ye Zhentian did not complain. He spoke as if this life had always been his.
Yet once or twice, there were very small pauses.
Not enough to mean anything on their own. Just moments where his expression went still for the briefest instant before returning to normal. If Ye Shen had been less observant, he might not have noticed at all.
The seal had altered Ye Zhentian's memories well, but not perfectly. No method was flawless.
That night, after Ye Zhentian fell asleep, Ye Shen tried again.
This time he did not chase the obvious presence spread through the air. He treated it as background and moved past it in his awareness, searching for something deeper, something closer to what the scripture implied. Again and again he stretched his focus inward and outward, testing the stillness within himself and the silence within the room.
He found nothing.
His mind grew tired long before dawn, and eventually he stopped.
The first attempt had told him what not to trust. That alone was progress. If the path was difficult, then it simply meant others would give up sooner.
Ye Shen stared quietly into the darkness above.
He had died once already. He had awakened in a world whose rules he did not yet know, carrying a scripture he did not yet understand.