Soul Land. The southwest of the Tian Dou Empire. Fasnuo Province.
Sacred Soul Village—its name alone sounded quite impressive, but in reality, it was nothing more than a small hamlet of just over three hundred households, located south of Nuoding City in Fasnuo Province. It had earned the name "Sacred Soul" because legend held that a century ago, a Soul Master of the Soul Saint rank had once emerged from there. That was Sacred Soul Village's eternal pride.
Beyond the village, vast stretches of farmland spread in every direction. The grain and vegetables produced here were all shipped to Nuoding City. Nuoding City couldn't be considered a major city within Fasnuo Province, but it sat close to the border with the neighboring empire, making it one of the natural starting points for trade between merchants of both empires. That was what gave Nuoding City its prosperity, and by extension, the common folk in the surrounding villages lived considerably better lives than those elsewhere.
Dawn was just breaking. A faint band of fish-belly white had risen along the eastern horizon. Atop a small hill barely a hundred meters tall near Sacred Soul Village, a thin, slight silhouette had already appeared.
It was a child of only five or six years old. He clearly spent a great deal of time in the sun; his skin had taken on a healthy wheat-brown tone. His short black hair looked neat and tidy, and though his clothes were plain, they were clean.
For a child his age, climbing a hill of this height was no easy feat. Yet strangely, when he reached the summit, not a trace of redness or heavy breathing showed on his face. He looked perfectly at ease.
The boy sat down on the mountaintop. His eyes locked onto the gradually brightening band of white along the eastern horizon. He drew air slowly in through his nose and exhaled gently through his mouth—steady inhalation, faint exhalation—forming a smooth, beautiful cycle.
Just then, his eyes suddenly widened. In that brightening strip of white along the distant sky, a faint wisp of purple qi seemed to flash by. Without extraordinary eyesight and absolute focus, no one would have noticed it at all.
The appearance of the purple qi brought the boy's mind into complete focus. He stopped exhaling entirely, drawing in air in only the slightest, most leisurely breaths, while his eyes stayed fixed on that flickering, vanishing purple light.
The purple qi did not linger long. As the fish-belly white along the horizon was gradually overtaken by the warm hues of the rising sun, it vanished completely.
Only then did the boy slowly close his eyes. He exhaled a long, turbid breath from deep within his body. A stream of white vapor flowed from his mouth like a bolt of silk before gradually dissipating.
After sitting in stillness for a while, the boy opened his eyes once more. Perhaps influenced by that trace of purple qi at the horizon, a faint purple sheen shimmered in his irises. Though the purple faded quietly after only a brief moment, while it lasted, it was strikingly vivid.
With a frustrated sigh, the boy wore an expression of helpless resignation that should never have appeared on a face so young. He shook his head and muttered to himself, "It's still no good. My Mysterious Heaven Skill still can't break through the bottleneck of the first stage. It's been a full three months now—why? At least the Purple Extreme Demon Eye, which can only be practiced at dawn by absorbing the purple qi from the east, keeps improving. But if the Mysterious Heaven Skill can't break through its bottleneck, my Mysterious Jade Hand won't improve either. When I was training back then, I don't recall running into any trouble like this between the first and second stages. The Mysterious Heaven Skill has nine stages in total—why is the first one giving me so much trouble? Could it be because this world is different from my original one?"
He had been in this world for over five years now. The boy before us was none other than Tang San—the same Tang San who had once leapt from a cliff at the Tang Sect to prove his resolve. When he had regained consciousness after that fall, all he could feel was warmth; he could do nothing else. But death, as he had expected, never came. Before long, he had been compressed through some unknown process and transported to this world.
It was a long time before Tang San understood what had happened. He hadn't died—but he was no longer the Tang San he had once been.
After being born, it had taken Tang San close to a year to learn the language of this world. He still remembered: at the moment of his birth, though he couldn't yet open his eyes to see, he had heard a deep, powerful male voice crying out in anguish that tore at the heart. When he finally learned the language of this world and combed through his memories with that extraordinary recall of his, all he could make out was that the man seemed to be shouting, "San'er, don't leave me!" That man was his father, Tang Hao. His mother in this world had already died in childbirth.
Whether by some grand design of fate or by mere coincidence, Tang Hao had named his son in memory of his deceased wife—and the name, astonishingly, was still Tang San.
The children in the village his age often teased him about it, but in his heart, Tang San was quite content. After all, it was the same name he had used for nearly thirty years in another world. The sheer familiarity of those two characters had long since won his affection.
Coming to this world and passing through the initial shock and fear, then the excitement, and now the calm—he had fully accepted reality. In his eyes, Heaven had given him another chance. Perhaps the greatest wish of his previous life could be fulfilled in this one.
He had arrived in this world with nothing, yet Tang San possessed the greatest treasure of all: his memory. As the most brilliant prodigy of the Tang Sect's outer disciples, the manufacturing methods for every single mechanism-type Hidden Weapon of the Tang Sect were branded into his mind. And after he had secretly obtained the secret manuals of the inner sect—fulfilling a years-long desire—the highest scripture of the inner sect, the Mysterious Heaven Treasure Record, had likewise been committed to memory during his studies. Tang San hoped to recreate the glory of the Tang Sect in this world.
"Time to head back." Tang San glanced at the sky, and his slender body sprang to life, bounding down the hillside. Had anyone been watching, they would have gaped in astonishment. Each stride he took carried him nearly three meters, and the rough, uneven terrain of the mountain path posed no obstacle at all—he dodged and wove through it effortlessly, moving at a speed that surpassed even an adult's.
What was the essence of the Tang Sect? Hidden Weapons, poison, and lightness skill. The greatest distinction between the Tang Sect's inner and outer disciples lay in how Hidden Weapons were employed. The outer sect focused on mechanism-based designs, while the inner sect trained in true manual technique. Poison was generally reserved for the outer sect. Inner sect direct-line disciples rarely used poison with their Hidden Weapons—because they simply didn't need to.
(End of Chapter)