The winds atop Azure Peak were colder that morning.
Jiang Chen stood alone on the training grounds behind the servant quarters, the first light of dawn casting long shadows behind his still figure. Sweat clung to his brow, but his breathing remained calm. His body was aching, not from wounds, but from the ceaseless repetition of form, motion, and flow.
He had reached [Great Achievement] in the Stone-Crushing Fist.
He felt it in the way his strikes no longer fought against his body's natural rhythm. He moved like a flowing stream, yet struck with the weight of mountains.
"Another week or two… and I can reach Perfection."
The thought stirred something within him—not excitement, but a quiet fire. That fire had grown steadily since the duel. Every day since, Jiang Chen had trained with singular focus, waking before the sun and practicing until his limbs trembled. He had found an old copy of the sect's "Silent Thunder Steps", a movement technique once meant for outer disciples. It was incomplete, but that mattered little to Jiang Chen.
[Silent Thunder Steps – Entry]
Each practice session, he stepped closer toward mastery. Each moment of fatigue and frustration was a stepping stone. Slowly, painfully, he advanced. In the eyes of others, he was still a servant, a mere shadow. But Jiang Chen knew—power did not come from being noticed, it came from earning it.
...
It was nearly noon when Elder Lin summoned him.
Jiang Chen had expected punishment. The rumors from his duel with Yao Fei still hadn't died. Some said he used a forbidden art. Others whispered he was possessed.
But the old elder did not speak of punishments. Instead, he handed Jiang Chen a sealed letter.
"This was delivered from the inner sect archives," Elder Lin said. "They've finally responded… to your petition."
Jiang Chen blinked. "Petition?"
Elder Lin looked surprised. "You didn't submit a request to research in the outer sect's martial repository?"
Jiang Chen slowly shook his head. He hadn't dared.
The elder frowned and passed the scroll anyway. "Strange… someone filed it in your name, but it was approved. You are to report tomorrow at dawn. Three hours of supervised reading in the outer vaults."
Who…?
He opened the scroll. It was a standard sect writ. But in small ink at the bottom was a mark—a crimson petal.
Jiang Chen's eyes narrowed.
"Mu Yilan."
He hadn't seen her since the duel. She had helped him once, unexpectedly. Now, it seemed, she had helped him again, quietly.
...
That night, Jiang Chen returned to the small shrine in the forest clearing.
It was where he trained when others slept, where his hands bled and his soul quieted. He brought no torch, only the faint light of the moon, and the presence of old stone beneath his feet.
He sat cross-legged in silence.
The wind whispered through the trees. Crickets sang.
And in that stillness, he remembered.
...
A flash—
The image of an ancient battlefield, wrapped in purple flame.
A voice—low and sorrowful—calling his name.
Chains. A shattered pillar. A sword stabbed through the heavens.
His own reflection in the blood-soaked river.
A whisper:
"You abandoned the Ninefold Path… Why?"
Jiang Chen gasped and jolted awake.
Sweat drenched his body, yet his hands were trembling—not from fear, but recognition.
He had seen that place before. Not in this life.
"My soul… it really is from somewhere else…"
It wasn't just the system, or the Proficiency Panel. There was a deeper thread at work—memories lost to time, fragments surfacing like bubbles in deep water.
He clenched his fists.
"If my soul is truly from another world… then this life is my second chance."
...
The moon hung overhead like a silver eye, watching the lone figure seated in silence beneath the trees. His silhouette was small—but growing, like a seed pushing through stone.
And somewhere deep within the Azure Peak Sect… a pair of eyes opened in the dark.
A voice, ancient and weary, murmured:
"He walks again."