Death, frankly, wasn't all that terrifying. The light simply went out. That was it.
My first death, however, had been rather loud. It was somewhere in the forests of Dacia, AD 117. My name was Marcus. A glorious legionary centurion of the Roman Empire, nicknamed "Iron Hand." It was raining buckets that day, and the mud reached up to my knees. Just as I severed the head of a damned barbarian, a javelin pierced my lung from behind. As my breath hitched and my blood mingled with the muck, my final thought was: "Finally, I can rest. By Jupiter, this armor was too heavy."
But where was the rest?
When I opened my eyes, I wasn't in hell or the Elysium Fields. I was staring up at a ceiling. The ceiling was wooden, but not Roman. The scent filling my nostrils wasn't blood and sweat, but some strange herbs and tea. I tried to stand up, but my body went slack, like jelly. I looked at my hands.
Small. Soft. Callus-free.
These hands were made for braiding girls' hair, not wielding a gladius (short sword).
"Are you awake, Li Fen?" someone asked.
Seeing the man standing in the doorway, the Roman soldier in my mind almost burst into laughter. He was wearing a long robe, and his hair was tied up like a woman's. His beard... ah, in Rome, they would have called him a clown with that beard.
"Water..." I squeaked. Damned voice. I was a six-year-old boy when I woke up.
Two years have passed since that day. I am eight years old now. My name is supposedly Li Fen. Our location is the Middle Plains, belonging to some "Heavenly Sword" Sect. Everything here is strange. In Rome, everything was clear: order, discipline, raise the shield, stab, kill. But here...
"Pay attention to your breath, Fen!" my father (my father in this life, of course) shouted. He was considered the strongest master in the village. "You must feel the 'Qi' energy beneath your navel!"
I twirled the wooden sword in my hand and gave him a strange look. "Qi"? What is this "Qi"? I've tried to understand it for two years. They say it's an invisible force. I think they just eat too much and mistake their bloated stomachs for "energy."
"Father," I said, resting my tiny wooden sword on my shoulder. "If an enemy attacks, won't he cleave my skull in two while I'm contemplating my navel? Can't I just thrust my sword into his throat?"
My father's face flushed. He sighed deeply.
"You don't understand the martial way, son. We are not butchers. We are seekers of the Dao. Strength is not merely muscle, but flow."
Nonsense, I thought. If I had spoken of 'flow' to the Dacians, they would have roasted and eaten me alive.
But one aspect of this world had me truly intrigued. Yesterday, I watched my father train. He placed his palm on an ordinary stone, and the stone... shattered. Without a hammer. Without using brute force. He simply placed his palm and the stone crumbled into dust.
At that moment, a lamp lit up in my pragmatic Roman mind.
This isn't magic. This is some new technology that scoffs at the laws of physics. What if I, the former Centurion Marcus, mastered this "Qi" and combined it with Rome's brutal fighting tactics?
They fight as if dancing: jumping, spinning, giving things beautiful names—"Crane's Flight," "Sleeping Tiger." I, however... I only know how to kill efficiently.
"Very well, Father," I said with a serious expression, although I was laughing inside. "Teach me this navel energy. But I warn you: if it doesn't work, I'll still throw sand in my opponent's eyes and kick him in the leg first."
My father shook his head and smiled. Poor man. He didn't know that an eight-year-old boy's body housed a fifty-year-old veteran whose hands were still stained with dried blood.
This is my second life. China. And the age of the Legions is over.