4: Who I am?(1)
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Douglas did not understand what was happening. A few moments ago, he had been on his deathbed, waiting for the brother of sleep to take him away. Surrounded by children, retainers, and the echoes of a glorious past, he had coughed out his final breath. His body had withered but his pride had not. Douglas Verrina Varkierd III, the strongest Swordmaster and Aura user of his world, had passed in arrogance and certainty. Yet here he was, opening his eyes to a world that was not his own, a body that was not his own, and a fate he could not yet grasp.
Ho Xing, the stern man who claimed to be his father, exhaled deeply before turning on his heel. His robe swayed sharply with the movement, the dragon emblem stitched in golden threads glinting in the candlelight. Shí Xing, the towering man who had shouted earlier, and Namda Ku, the young-old physician, followed him out. In the silence that followed, Douglas—no, Guye Zu Feng—was left alone in the strange room.
He looked down at his hands. They were all bones, thin and trembling, the skin stretched pale and unhealthy. This body was weak—too weak to belong to the heir of any great sect. He pressed his fingertips together, then against the sheets, and felt no strength, no power. The memory of his once indomitable body mocked him cruelly.
With great effort, he pushed himself upright. His legs trembled like a newborn fawn's, but he staggered toward the far right of the chamber where a tall bronze mirror stood. Every step made his lungs rattle, and his chest ached as if a knife were lodged inside. When he reached the mirror, he braced himself against its cold frame, and finally looked.
The face that stared back at him was strange, alien, and yet familiar in a way that chilled him. His jawline was sharp, too sharp for someone so frail, with a thin and narrow face that carried the look of someone who had long been deprived of sustenance. His cheekbones jutted slightly, giving him a gaunt appearance, while his skin was pale as if sunlight had long forgotten him. His lips were thin and colorless, contrasting the thick strands of long black hair that framed his face and spilled past his shoulders. But it was his eyes that unsettled him most—the pupils were too large, as though they drank in more light than they should, and deep within them was a strange emptiness, an abyss that threatened to consume whoever looked too long. They were the eyes of someone who had once carried weight beyond his years, eyes that belonged to someone who had suffered more than his body revealed.
Douglas—Zu Feng—stumbled back. His pupils shrank violently, his body gave out, and he collapsed to the floor. Cold sweat poured down his temples, soaking his thin robes, until he looked like someone who had just crawled out of water. His breaths came ragged, uneven. His mind screamed at him: This cannot be real.
He lifted his hands again, turning them in the dim light. The long, bony fingers trembled as he clenched them. No matter how he willed it, there was no power behind them, no strength, no aura, no familiar warmth of his former sword calluses.
"This… This is not a dream. Not an illusion," he whispered hoarsely. "I, Douglas Verrina Varkierd III… am now this long-haired, malnourished boy?"
As though answering him, a voice struck the air.
"Why are you thinking so much?"
It was neither male nor female, neither cold nor warm. It carried no emotion, yet every word sank into him like a blade. He recognized it instantly. The same voice he had heard in the void—the Entity.
Zu Feng froze. His body stirred as if electricity coursed through it, his hands shaking violently. Slowly, he turned.
There, just behind him, floated something he could hardly comprehend. A being the size of a child, its body shimmered with faint light, wings both small and vast sprouting from its back. It was a fairy, or perhaps something far older than such myths. Its face shifted constantly, as though it had no single form, and its eyes were blank white.
Zu Feng exhaled sharply, but before he could utter a word, pain erupted. His body convulsed. His mouth opened, but no scream came out—only blood. Crimson streamed from his eyes, his nose, his lips. His vision blurred, and in that haze, the Entity's form twisted.
"You are fragile in this body," the Entity said calmly, its tone unchanged. "This is the reason I first cast you into your Graveyard of Memories. You were too proud to lie still in it, yet too bound to escape. A prison fit for one such as you."
Zu Feng clawed at the ground, desperate to resist the agony that wracked him. He tried to glare at the Entity, but his vision swam. Blood seeped into his robes, staining the black cloth even darker.
"Why… why bring me here?" he managed to choke out between fits of pain. "Why not let me die?!"
The Entity tilted its head, like a curious child. "Because you wished it. Did you not beg, in your last moments, for rebirth? Did you not curse the stillness of the void? Your arrogance demanded a second life. And so… you were given one."
Zu Feng's heart thundered. The memory resurfaced—his final moments on the bed, his whispered words: If I could make one wish for being the strongest… I would like to be reborn.
He coughed again, spitting another mouthful of blood onto the floor. His body trembled violently, but his pride burned hotter than the pain. "This body… this world… you expect me to crawl through it as a cripple?"
The Entity's lips curved into something that might have been a smile, though it was too inhuman to be sure. "You misunderstand. This body is weak, yes. Its meridians are shattered, its dantian fractured, its past pitiful. But this… is precisely your trial. You lived once as a prodigy, careless, cocky, unchallenged. You squandered your talent on arrogance. Now, reborn as Guye Zu Feng, you will walk the path of weakness. From nothing, you must rise. Only then will you understand what it truly means to stand at the peak."
Zu Feng's vision flickered, but he forced his eyes open. His pride refused to collapse under the Entity's words. He rasped, "If this is another mockery from the heavens… I will carve my revenge on this wretched body."
The Entity's form began to dissolve, its wings folding inward until only a faint shimmer of light remained.
"Good," it whispered. "Hate the heavens. Hate the fate you cursed. From hatred, you may find strength. But remember, child of two lives… weakness is a gift. Do not waste it."
Then, as suddenly as it appeared, it was gone.
Silence consumed the room once more. The only sounds were Zu Feng's ragged breaths and the faint drip of his blood staining the wooden floor. His body slumped, his hands shaking, but his eyes—those abyssal pupils—burned with a fire that had not been there moments before.
Douglas Verrina Varkierd III had died. Guye Zu Feng had awakened.
And though his body was frail, his meridians shattered, and his future uncertain, one truth settled into his chest: he would not remain weak. Not forever.
Somewhere outside the room, the faint call of a bell echoed through the sect grounds, mingling with the distant chants of disciples in training. Zu Feng clenched his trembling fist, his knuckles white, and whispered to himself with a bitter smile—
"A new name, a new life… very well. Let us see how far weakness can take me."
But Suddenly, his heart throbbed, his hands trembled, he gritted his teeths, and suddenly, A throbbing pain in his mind. And in few moments, he lost his consciousness, laying on the ground he passes out. His mind now forging into different Realm, a different space.