“Mr. Lu Yang, there’s an old saying in Great Xia: ‘Those who understand the times are true heroes.’”
“Think of Teacher Fukada. Think of Teacher Arina... You don’t want to leave this world with regrets, do you?”
“As long as you hand over the forging blueprint for the Sect Token and work for Sakura Country alongside me, I guarantee the Great Sakura Empire will meet any condition you put forward!”
Prison Abyss Cliff.
Lu Yang was surrounded by five people. As they closed in on him, he retreated to the edge of the cliff.
Behind him lay an abyss whose bottom was nowhere in sight.
Every escape route had been cut off. He had no chance of getting out alive.
Looking at the narrow-eyed man across from him, grinning arrogantly, Lu Yang fell silent for a long moment, then suddenly laughed.
He should have realized it sooner.
Could anyone named Wang Jingwei possibly be a decent person?
“Fuck you, you dog of a traitor! I’d rather jump off this cliff and die than hand anything over to you!”
............
Great Xia, Jiangcheng, First National Defense University.
In his dormitory, Lu Yang suddenly sat upright. At some point, sweat had soaked through his shirt.
He stared at the familiar bunk beds, his roommate playing a game, and the mottled, yellowing walls, his mind briefly blank.
What the hell? Where have I ended up?
He remembered being hunted just moments ago. To keep the Sakura people from taking the forging blueprint for the Sect Token, he had leapt off a cliff.
How had he wound up in a university dorm in the blink of an eye?!
He checked the time on his phone.
【Xia Calendar, 2026, May 20】
“If I remember correctly, this should be ten days before I transmigrated...”
“So... did I come back to life?!”
Lu Yang’s breathing quickened. He still found it hard to believe that he had been reborn.
But as the clock struck noon, a black countdown appeared in front of his retinas without warning.
【Transmigration Countdown: 240 hours, 00 minutes, 00 seconds】
It all matched. Every last bit of it!
To confirm his suspicions, Lu Yang opened his phone and browsed the latest news.
【Recently, the United States suddenly raised tariffs on Great Xia and halted chip exports to the country. We strongly condemn this move!】
【Sakura Country’s newly appointed prime minister, Yoshitaka Wan Miao, stated before parliament that Sakura Country had never waged a war of aggression against Great Xia. The actions of their forebears had merely been intended to liberate Great Xia, and historical misunderstandings should not be allowed to persist to this day.】
【Shocking! Korea has beaten everyone to the punch by applying to have chopsticks recognized as its cultural heritage, claiming it was the first country in history to use them. The proposal has now entered review by the United Nations!】
【Yesterday morning, a manure truck exploded on Workers’ Street in Jiangcheng. The scene was filled with a foul stench, and many commuters passing by were caught in the blast—literally “shit hit them right in the face.” Fortunately, no one was injured...】
The ten-day countdown and all the news stories matched his previous life exactly.
In other words, he really had been reborn ten days before transmigrating!
Lu Yang trembled with excitement, his fists clenching unconsciously.
In his previous life, at that same time,
a countdown had appeared out of thin air before his eyes.
Worried something was wrong with his body, Lu Yang had gone to two top-tier hospitals in the province. They had concluded that extreme stress was causing visual hallucinations.
Then came the day the countdown ended.
Without warning, he was teleported to a mountain forest. When he saw Immortals flying on swords and enormous Variant Beasts, he realized he had transmigrated to the legendary Cultivation World!
Of course, he wasn’t the only one who had transmigrated.
According to the information he gathered later, people from every country—though in varying numbers—had transmigrated to the Cultivation World when the ten-day countdown ended.
As a ten-year reader of Xihongshi novels, Lu Yang had assumed that after transmigrating, he’d soar to success and become powerful enough to move mountains and seas.
But reality had slapped him hard across the face.
Even in the Cultivation World, connections and backing mattered. In that respect, it wasn’t all that different from the real world.
Those with connections could bribe their way into a sect with spirit stones and start out as Outer Court Disciples.
Those with backing could use their influence to mine mountains or run other businesses. Getting resources was as easy for them as reaching into a pocket.
Lu Yang had neither connections nor backing. He was a penniless nobody who had just transmigrated.
In his previous life, it took him an entire week to make his way out of the perilous mountain forest.
After finally learning the location of the nearest sect from the local villagers, he hurried there only to discover it was a Black Mine. They had spread rumors to lure displaced people into forced labor.
As expected, Lu Yang was captured and sent to the Black Mine.
Fortunately, his aptitude was decent, and he was good with words. After getting on friendly terms with the head Mine Overseer, he spent half a year’s wages—painfully saved—and bought the lowest-grade Mortal Breathing Art.
He was forced to mine at high intensity, day and night.
Even so, Lu Yang squeezed in time to cultivate every day. Three months later, he broke through to Qi Refining, First Layer, and escaped the Black Mine under cover of darkness.
Using the information he had gathered over the next six months, Lu Yang finally managed to join the Clearwind Sect after many twists and turns.
Although his constitution was decent enough for him to start directly as an Outer Court Disciple,
he was short on money and couldn’t pay the bribe the administrator demanded. On top of that, the Clearwind Sect only admitted a limited number of Outer Court Disciples each year, so he could only become a servant disciple.
Only then did he learn that if he had joined the Clearwind Sect, he could have received a Mortal Breathing Art for free—the very technique he had spent half a year’s wages buying.
It was also around that time that he met another Great Xia transmigrator, Wang Jingwei.
After becoming a servant disciple,
Lu Yang cultivated diligently every day. By the following year, he had reached Qi Refining, Third Layer, and become an ordinary disciple at the Scripture Pavilion.
Disciples like him had no access to the ancient tomes and scriptures that recorded cultivation techniques. They could only handle intelligence letters sent in by Outer Court Disciples returning from their field assignments, or help with odds and ends between the Inner Court and Outer Court.
Still, this gave him the chance to learn quite a few of the Clearwind Sect’s secrets.
For example, the Sixth Elder of the Clear Wind Sect had mysteriously disappeared while traveling through the mortal world three years ago. Before disappearing, he had bestowed a Sect Token on someone in the mortal world and taken them as his personal disciple. To this day, however, no one had seen what that personal disciple looked like.
Or take the Senior Brother surnamed Shen from the Inner Court, who had repeatedly spied on female disciples while they bathed. A female Elder eventually caught him in the act, but he managed to escape and had been on the run ever since.
Then, by chance,
Lu Yang stumbled upon a loose page inside a scripture. It recorded the method for forging the Sect Token, along with all the Materials required.
Because they were all compatriots from Great Xia, with the Bloodline of Yan and Huang running through their veins,
Lu Yang had never kept the information he gathered from Wang Jingwei. He also spent every day wondering how to send cultivation techniques back to Great Xia.
Who could have guessed Wang Jingwei was a damn traitor? He had ambushed Lu Yang with four Outer Court Disciples, intending to steal the method for forging the Sect Token and help the Sakura transmigrator forge a false identity as the personal disciple!
What’s more, while trying to persuade Lu Yang to surrender, Wang Jingwei had said the Sakura transmigrator had already figured out how to contact their country. In the future, they would surely dominate the entire Blue Star and trample all other countries beneath their feet.
“So absorbing high-energy substance makes a long-distance call to one’s country possible. I really should thank you for telling me that...”
Remembering the look on Wang Jingwei’s face, Lu Yang’s lips curled into a mocking sneer.
If the other man hadn’t been certain he was going to die and wanted to win his trust with that information,
then even after being reborn before transmigrating, it might have taken him a long time to figure out how to contact Great Xia.
“But since heaven has given me another chance, I won’t make the same mistakes again!”
After composing himself, Lu Yang decided to report the transmigration ten days from now to Great Xia at once.
In his previous life, he had memorized the method for forging the Sect Token while examining the loose page.
Although the forging process was complicated,
with the resources of the entire country behind it, it was entirely possible to get it done in ten days!
“The Sixth Elder has been missing for three years, and they say his soul lamp has gone out. So everyone in the Clearwind Sect only knows he took a personal disciple in the mortal world, but no one has seen what that disciple looks like.”
“If the entire nation of Great Xia helps me forge a Sect Token, I can pass myself off as the Sixth Elder's personal disciple and slip straight into the Inner Court. Then there’ll be no evidence to contradict me!”
“With that identity, I can rapidly develop my strength in the early stages. Then I can send all kinds of cultivation techniques back to Great Xia, allowing it to rise in secret without being held back by other countries...”
“Maybe even reach the pinnacle of Blue Star!”