5000 years earlier...
The rain fell like stones, pounding the mountainside like
like iron nails hammered from the sky.
A cold wind howled through the sect compound, sharp enough to slice through bone. The skies above were iron-gray, and the mountain wind carried a chill that seeped into the soul.
On the roof of a dilapidated outbuilding, a small figure crouched—no older than thirteen. He slammed nails into rotting wood, soaked to the bone.
His breath came in bursts of white fog. His clothes were soaked, patched too many times to count, and clung to his shivering body like a second skin. One hand gripped a rusted hammer, the other held warped nails, trembling.
No one could hear the sound.
The night was a storm of knives and whips
To the rest of Emerald Jade Valley, it was just another night.
His back burned.
Every gust of wind felt like a whip slashing across his spine. Old welts stung anew. The wounds had barely closed from morning practice
Each time the hammer struck, droplets flew from his sleeves, soaking through his thin linen robe. His breath came out in sharp puffs of white fog, each exhale like smoke from a dying flame.
This was Li Qiong—the eldest of the so-called "Triple Young Masters" of the Li Clan.
The sect handyman.
The lowest of the low.
He drove rusted nails into rotting wood with a worn hammer, hands red from the cold, bleeding where splinters had sliced him raw.
Crack.
A slip.
The hammer tore open the palm of his hand, and in the blink of an eye, he lost his balance.
His body pitched forward—
—and the world slowed.
Raindrops froze mid-air like shards of glass. The hammer float weightlessly through the storm.
Flash—
A memory surged forward
His mother.
A beauty once praised across the empire. Delicate like spring, proud like frost.
She had fled to the capital in youth fallen for the wrong man—a golden-robed cultivator from the Imperial Dao Court, a man who spoke like a gentleman but vanished like a shadow. She returned home weeping, belly swollen with shame a bastard child. She never named the father. Rumors of a playboy noble ran rampant, and scandal clung to her like shadow.
And then... she gave birth to three sons.
From the moment they took their first breath, the triplets were a stain on the legacy of the sect.
An insult to the bloodline. An unspeakable disgrace.
The Patriarch's eyes had never softened.
"The triplets will live. But they will bear the shame."
He would tolerate the other two—brilliant, sharp, gifted from an early age. Talents that redeemed the shame.
But the eldest?
Li Qiong... stayed the same.
And Li Qiong... remained ordinary.
He was too quiet.
Too slow and untalented.
His brothers earned spirit stones and technique scrolls. He earned beatings and blame.
His mother stopped calling his name by the time he turned six.
His siblings used him as a servant.
The sect used him as a joke.
The elders ignored him.
"A servant born of a whore's regret."
"Trash lives on. Talent dies young—how unfair."
His brothers ascended.
He was cast aside.
His mother came to resent him the most—blaming him for her fall, her regret and the blame fell on his name.
"You'll never become a cultivator. You're filth."
A voice he couldn't place. One of hundreds. One of thousands.
He clenched his small fists.
A practice dummy.
and the black sheep among the triplets.
But with the faint curve of someone who knew how all of this would end.
"Let's start again."
And yet, none knew the truth:
Li Qiong was a transmigrator.
His soul had come from another world. One filled with steel cities and infinte dreams.
And in that world, he was just a pebble in the sea.
And suddenly—
Li Qiong remembered everything.
The betrayal.
The mockery.
The Slaughter.
Burned beneath a thousand spears in the name of righteousness.
He had defied heaven once.
He would do it again.
The final laugh that shook the nine heavens.
He opened his eyes—not as a boy—but as a man who had lived 5000 years, returned to the flesh of a twelve-year-old.
Thud.
His body crashed into the ground. Stone met spine. Shoulder twisted. Head split open.
Blood leaked into the cracks of the courtyard stone, vanishing in the flood.
No footsteps rushed to help.
No voice called his name.
No elder descended from the clouds.
Only rain.
Only wind.
Only silence.
The heavens raged, but none beneath them cared.
His eyes fluttered.
His lips trembled.
The world turned distant, dull...
And then—
"So I really did come back."
"To The sect that mocked me..."
"To The brothers that hated me..."
"To The mother who couldn't look me in the eye..."
He smiled.
He once stood alone at the top of the world. A million cultivators dead behind him. Gods buried beneath his feet. Ancestors torn from the cycle of reincarnation.
"Heaven may sever my path... but it cannot sever my will."
He pressed a hand to his chest. Beneath the skin, a weak pulse with faint warmth—the soul mark of another era.
He laughed.
it was a laugh that shook the heavens thunder painted everything black and white.