By the summer of Lin Xuan’s tenth year, his rapid growth had turned into complete, unshakeable confidence.
Holding a firm foundation at Level 1, Sub-Level 3 of Qi Gathering, he spent his days revising the clan's martial manuals, scrawling corrections in the margins of texts revered for centuries. When elder instructors questioned his methods, he dismantled their logic with cold calculations of force loss and meridian friction. The Lin Clan tolerated his pride because his talent was undeniable—he was their golden ticket to provincial power.
Yet, in his quietest moments—far from the eyes of the elders and the reverence of his cousins—Lin Xuan was haunted by a fundamental void in his own existence.
Sitting cross-legged on the cold stone of his meditation chamber, he closed his eyes and looked inward, trying to trace the very beginning of his consciousness. New chapters come out on novelping.com first.
He possessed full, crystalline memories of his past life. He remembered the razor-sharp logic of his previous world, the cold glow of screens, the architecture of complex systems, and the absolute predictability of cause and effect. He knew the precise rules by which that world operated, down to the smallest detail.
Yet, when he tried to recall how that life ended, his mind hit a smooth, impenetrable black wall.
He had no memory of dying.
There was no fading heartbeat, no sudden impact, no illness, and no final hospital breath. There was no transition sequence or lingering fade to dark. His memory simply cut off—an abrupt, unexplained truncation, like a log file that suddenly ceased recording mid-sentence. One moment his mind was functioning in that previous world; the next, he was an infant suffocating in a dark, cold cradle in Stonebrook.
For years, Lin Xuan had buried that terrifying gap beneath layers of arrogance. He had convinced himself that his rebirth was a natural promotion, a divine assignment to conquer a world of crude, primitive cultivators with his superior intellect. He had treated his rapid ascent as proof that he was fundamentally different, a higher existence destined to rewrite the laws of cultivation.
Why can't I remember the end? Lin Xuan thought, his small hands tightening on his knees as cold sweat broke across his forehead. Did my past life just cease to exist? Was I deleted? Or did something pull me here against my will? The source of this chapter is novelping . com.
The lack of an answer chilled him to his core.
Despite all his theoretical mastery, all his calculated breath cycles, and his Dual Fire-Water Spirit Roots, he was building his entire identity upon a foundation of total darkness. He could analyze kinetic friction and meridian efficiency down to the percentage point, yet he could not solve the single most important variable of his own life: how he had died, and why he was here.
He took a slow, deep breath, forcing the sensation of helplessness back into the depths of his mind. He opened his eyes, staring out the window at the peaceful rooflines of the Lin Clan estate.
He didn't know how his first life had ended, but he was determined that in this world, he would grow powerful enough to never have to face the unknown again. He would optimize every channel, push past every bottleneck, and reach the very summit of existence—if only to ensure that his fate remained entirely in his own hands.