Jiang Chen felt like his brain was a jumbled mess. The sensation was like dreaming, yet far more real than any dream. Every inch of skin, every bone in his body ached with unbearable pain.
"Am I dead? Am I suffering the torments of hell?"
His first instinct was that he was already dead. Yet the faint trace of life pulsing through his body seemed to remind him that he was still alive.
He had no idea how long this limbo lasted before he suddenly forced his eyes open—only to find himself lying inside a coffin.
A coffin? So he really was dead? Jiang Chen's heart sank with despair.
"How laughable and tragic. I, Jiang Chen, was the son of the Heavenly Emperor, yet I was born with the Yin Constitution and could never cultivate the martial path. Even though my father refined the Sun and Moon Elixir for me so my lifespan would rival the heavens, when the Heavenly Tribulation arrived, I became nothing but a burden to him—unable to escape the fate of death…"
"Huh? What's going on with my meridians? There's actual true qi flowing through them! It's incredibly weak, though… Wait—this… this isn't my body! This is definitely not my original flesh! I was born with the Yin Constitution—how could true qi possibly circulate inside me?"
"And if I'm really dead, how could there be any true qi flowing at all?"
Lying in the coffin, Jiang Chen felt as though a bolt of lightning had jolted through his mind. At the same time, he realized that the body he now occupied was not his own.
"What… what exactly happened? Whose body is this?" This startling discovery filled him with both shock and excitement.
Before long, he began piecing together residual memories embedded in this body.
"The previous owner of this body was also named Jiang Chen? The son of a feudal lord in Jianghan Prefecture, Eastern Kingdom? Same name, perhaps—but this clearly isn't me! How did I, the son of the Heavenly Emperor, become the son of some mortal kingdom's petty lord?"
Questions swirled through Jiang Chen's mind.
"Did I really die in the Tribulation of the Myriad Realms? Is this what they call transmigrating into a host? The realms shattered, the cycle of reincarnation collapsed—in theory, if I perished in the tribulation, I should never have been able to enter the cycle at all. So I really have been reborn?"
After sifting through the fragmented consciousness of the previous Jiang Chen, he finally confirmed the truth.
"I never imagined—in my past life I was the esteemed son of the Heavenly Emperor, yet my Yin Constitution made cultivation impossible. Now, after rebirth, I've become the son of a minor feudal lord in a mortal kingdom, and for the first time I actually have the aptitude for cultivation. The irony is almost too much to bear!"
"The realms shattered, the natural order collapsed… In my past life I wasted a million years. Though my lifespan rivaled the sun and moon, when the tribulation came I couldn't do a single thing to help. The Yin Constitution robbed me of cultivation, and with it, any mastery over life and death. My fate was nothing but dust in the wind—scattered at the slightest gust."
Thinking back on all that had happened in his previous life—thinking of his father, the Heavenly Emperor, who had spared no divine essence to refine the Sun and Moon Elixir, granting a mortal body the lifespan of the heavens—Jiang Chen felt a wave of sorrow wash over him.
He knew that this parting between life and death, between past and present, might truly be an eternal farewell.
Even though he had lived for a million years, even though he possessed great wisdom, the memory of his father's tender, all-encompassing care brought tears to his eyes.
He knew that with the realms shattered, even the Heavenly Emperor himself could hardly have survived the tribulation.
At the thought, a deep melancholy settled over him.
But the moment his soul brushed against the meridians, it was as though a bolt of lightning had pierced into the deepest reaches of his consciousness—like a parched man stumbling upon a sip of cool spring water.
The true qi trickling slowly through his meridians was weak—so weak it might have dried up at any moment. Yet it was precisely this feeble stream that became the spark igniting the light of his life, sweeping away all the gloom and despair.
"Cultivation… Heh, cultivation! What a luxury that word once was for someone with the Yin Constitution! In my past life I could never cultivate, yet I never bowed to fate. Now, after rebirth, I've been given cultivation aptitude—isn't this a crack in the door that fate has opened for me?"
"I am the son of the Heavenly Emperor. I presided over the Celestial Library for a million years—every scripture in the myriad realms, I have read them all; every technique, I know them by heart. My mastery of alchemy was renowned across the heavens. What a waste it was—to have all that knowledge and no way to put it into practice. Now, given this gift of rebirth, with real aptitude for cultivation, what do I have to fear? What reason do I have to bow my head and surrender?"
At the thought, Jiang Chen felt the fog in his mind suddenly clear.
The heaviness in his heart began to lift, little by little. He realized that this rebirth might be fate's turning point—a tremendous stroke of fortune!
Yes—the so-called "son of a feudal lord" that the original Jiang Chen held was, from the perspective of his past life's status, laughably insignificant.
But no matter how lowly and powerless this identity might be, it possessed something his previous life never had: the qualification to cultivate!
Cultivation aptitude was like a starting line.
In his past life, his status had been noble as a dragon soaring through the ninth heaven—yet all he could do was stand before the starting line and watch others run.
In this life, his status might be lowly, perhaps no more than an ant—yet he had every right to step onto that line and begin.
The path of cultivation stretched on without end. Given the right opportunity, even a golden carp could become a dragon in the storm; even an ant with wings could soar above the nine heavens!
And now, that opportunity had arrived.
The son of the Heavenly Emperor, custodian of the Celestial Library—nearly a million years of life spent poring over texts. To say he was brimming with knowledge and braced with understanding was no exaggeration at all.
His mind was a treasury of theories, from the highest heavens down to the humblest mortal realm—there was virtually no field that Jiang Chen had not mastered.
During those endless, idle million years, unable to cultivate himself, he had found joy in taking on disciples—using them as subjects to test and apply his vast theoretical knowledge in practice.
Over the course of a million years, who could say how many prodigies he had forged?