The first breath burned.
Not from pain. From memory.
Lin Feng sat still in the dim light of the outer courtyard room, his back against the wall, eyes half-closed. It had taken hours—maybe more—just to understand that this body wasn't his. Not exactly. But it was his now.
The pulse in his veins was weak. The spiritual meridians, brittle like dry twigs. This body had been abandoned even by its own potential.
Yet.
He flexed his fingers. One by one.
Slow, deliberate.
There was no power surging. No dramatic return of essence. But he felt something deeper: a stillness. A silence he remembered from before — from that place between life and death, where only those who refused to disappear stayed conscious.
He had refused.
---
The door creaked open without a knock.
"Lin Feng," a voice sneered, sharp as a chipped blade.
Lin Tian.
Always Lin Tian.
The kind of cousin who smiled when you bled, who stepped over you rather than around. He hadn't changed in this lifetime either.
"You didn't die? Damn," Tian said, his lips twisting. "That's disappointing."
Lin Feng stood. Not fast. Not slow.
No dramatic posture. No threats. Just standing.
"I forgot how ugly your voice was," Lin Feng said, tone dry as ash.
Tian blinked.
"You—what?"
"You talk too much. Still."
It wasn't a threat, but Tian flinched.
"You think you've got something now?" Tian said louder, voice trying to grow bigger to fill the space. "You couldn't even pass the second test. You're nothing but failed trash."
Lin Feng stepped forward.
One step.
Tian stepped back. Barely.
And Lin Feng smiled — not wide, not cruel, just knowing.
"You're still scared. That's good. Means you remember me."
He walked past.
Tian didn't stop him.
---
Later that night, Lin Feng sat beneath the withered plum tree at the edge of the courtyard. The sky above was clean, sharp with stars. Cold air wrapped around him, but he didn't move.
Inside his body, the spiritual sea was a shattered puddle. Barely functional.
But when he closed his eyes and reached inward, something stirred.
Not power.
Not yet.
Memory.
The Heaven-Slaughter Sutra. The technique no one alive knew he had mastered.
It was still there — scratched into the walls of his soul like fire refusing to go out.
He began.
Slow breath in.
Hold.
Slow breath out.
Again.
And again.
Each breath carved space.
Each silence between them became a chisel.
There would be no overnight transformation. He wouldn't wake up a monster of power. That wasn't how he had become emperor before.
He had bled for every inch of his ascent.
And now?
He would bleed again.
But this time, he knew exactly how high the sky was — and exactly what it would take to tear it down.
---
Far away, under a lantern-lit rooftop, a girl stared into the night sky.
Yue Qingxue.
She felt something stir.
She didn't know what it was. Not yet.
But soon, the world would remember his name.
Not because he shouted it.
But because he wouldn't let them forget.
---
[End of Chapter 2]