Deep in the mountain woods, the scholar's legs pumped furiously against the uneven slope, jagged rocks cutting into his palms as he scrambled for balance. Blood from his torn clothes and mangled skin left a sinister trail behind him, staining the moss and leaves crimson. The forest was a symphony of night sounds—rustling leaves, snapping twigs—but his ragged breaths and the pounding of his heart were the only rhythms he heard.
"HUFF… HUFF… HUFF…" he panted, every inhale a burning effort, every exhale a struggle to keep consciousness, he thought. His body trembled violently, drained from near-fatal blood loss.
Tears of pain blurred his vision, and every muscle screamed from exertion and injury. His long black hair, half concealing the nasty burn scar along his face, stuck to his sweat-drenched skin, swaying with each desperate stride. Cuts and bruises crisscrossed his body, each one a painful reminder of the vile torture he had endured before managing to flee.
Swossh!
A masked figure appeared behind him like a shadow detached from the night itself, dark clothing clinging to his lean, deadly frame. A strange emblem marked his back, twisting in the pale moonlight, and his movements were silent, predatory.
'There… he's closing in… faster than I can go,' the scholar thought, panic prickling down his spine.
Swoossh!
The masked man accelerated, wind whipping against his cloak as he followed the trail of blood like a hunter closing on prey. The scholar's legs ached, muscles trembling violently, nearly buckling under the strain.
"Huff… dammit!" he cursed, voice raw and broken, he thought, noticing faint footprints among the foliage—confirmation that his pursuer was relentless. 'If they catch me… it's over… but I have to try something.'
His mind raced, calculating, evaluating every jagged rock, every tree, every shadow that could provide concealment. Yet his condition left him severely handicapped: each step was agony, his body a failing machine, fatigue dragging him down like a lead weight.
'If I don't find cover… I'll die in the open…' he thought, heart hammering, vision flickering at the edges.
A dense, gnarled bush rose ahead, thick enough to hide him completely. Its dark leaves swayed slightly in the night breeze, creating a natural veil.
'There… that could be it… I can hide… and maybe strike…' he thought, forcing himself forward despite burning lungs and weakening legs.
He leaped into the bush, thorns scratching and tearing at his already battered skin. Fingers fumbled at his back, gripping the hilt of a small knife, muscles tensing in anticipation.
'This knife… it won't be enough to defeat him… but it's all I have…' he thought. He steadied his breathing, focusing on the faint rustle of approaching footsteps.
'Come, bastards! I'll show you why a cornered scholar can be deadlier than you expect,' he thought, a flicker of defiance igniting in the midst of desperation.
The masked man reached the final point of the blood trail, eyes scanning the ground, but found nothing. Frustration coiled around him like a living thing, his body stiff with impatience and fury.
'Only one? At least I won't face a whole squad… maybe I have a chance,' the scholar thought, relief tinged with anxiety. Even one martial artist would require every ounce of strength he could muster—and he had very little.
"Where is that damn scholar!?" the masked man roared, voice slicing through the night, he thought.
In his fury, he unknowingly turned his back to the bush where the scholar waited, tense, ready.
'This is it! My only chance!' he thought, adrenaline flooding his veins as he launched from the bush, knife raised high in both hands, aimed at the man's upper back.
"DIE!!" he shouted, every scream a release of pent-up desperation and defiance, he thought, muscles coiled like springs ready to snap.
The masked man tensed, but the knife was already descending. Time seemed to stretch, each second a suspended heartbeat of imminent collision.
Swoossh!
Stab!
Blood spurted… but not from the masked man. The scholar choked violently, blood filling his throat, searing and burning with each rasping breath. Pain erupted across his back, his body freezing in sheer shock.
'What the hell—?!' he thought, panic snapping through him. His knife hovered mere millimeters from the masked man's back, useless as his body betrayed him, paralyzed, locked by a sudden, agonizing pain.
He turned, struggling to comprehend, and saw the arrow protruding from his flesh. Reality slammed into him with the force of a mountain, registering the full extent of the injury.
'An arrow… how…?' he thought, eyes widening in disbelief.
Tracing the trajectory, he saw another masked figure perched high in a tree, bow at the ready, eyes cold and calculating.
'There's another… of course…' he thought, blood and shock stealing the last of his strength. His fingers loosened their grip, and the knife clattered to the forest floor.
Clank!
The first masked man seized the opportunity. With lethal precision, he kicked the scholar sideways, sending him crashing against a tree.
"ARGH!!" he groaned, each movement sending fresh waves of pain through every battered nerve. The arrow embedded deeper with the impact, organs jolting under the force, lungs filling with the metallic tang of his own blood.
He slid down the tree trunk, leaving a streak of crimson in his wake.
"COUGH!... COUGH!..." he coughed, each attempt to breathe a burning, ragged agony.
'Damn it… every injury… worse than before…' he thought, muscles trembling as the cold of night seeped into his broken body. He was acutely aware that untreated, death would come slowly, painfully.
Above, a bamboo flare exploded, red smoke curling into the night sky—a signal. More masked figures appeared, a tide of identical shapes advancing.
'Shit… now all of them are coming…' he thought, despair coiling around his heart.
He could barely move, barely think. Escape was no longer an option; overwhelming odds had sealed his fate.
The scholar lay on the forest floor, blood-soaked, muscles screaming, body trembling from shock and fatigue. Each shallow breath sent burning agony through his chest, his vision blurred into crimson haze. He could barely lift his head, yet his green eyes burned with defiance, spite, and desperation.
'Fuck… with this many… I have no chance… even if I could move…' he thought, rage and helplessness mingling in his mind.
From the dark shadows of the trees, more masked figures emerged, identical in appearance, silent, precise. Their presence pressed down on him like an iron vice, leaving no room for escape, no glimmer of hope. The night air was heavy with tension, the faint smell of blood mingling with the earthy scent of the forest floor.
One figure stepped forward, taller, broader, emanating authority. The others instinctively bowed, a subtle but palpable shift in the atmosphere. The scholar's pulse raced, dread coiling in his chest like a live thing.
'That must be their leader… the one who orchestrated all this…' he thought, wincing as pain wracked his body.
"You brought me quite the headache, Head Scholar of the Xuanwu Dynasty's History Division," the leader said, voice calm yet dripping with menace, he thought. The words sent icy shivers down his spine, a voice familiar from days of captivity, of torture, of relentless questioning over the Scroll of Reminiscence.
"W-What? You went all t-the way to catch me for that wo-orthless scroll? Why wou-uld you want such a use-eless thin-ng?" he said with a rasping cough, blood choking his voice, he thought, the bitter irony of the situation fueling his mockery despite his weakness.
The scroll in question—the Scroll of Reminiscence—was said to hold historical insight, a relic passed down to the Head Scholar. Yet here, in the midst of his dying moments, it seemed almost laughably mundane, a mere object of obsession for these killers.
'All they wanted was this damn scroll… then why go this far? Even burning down the entire dynasty?' he thought, his mind racing through memories of recent devastation.
This secret organization had risen from the shadows, ruthless and precise. Within months, they had waged war, obliterated the Xuanwu Dynasty, and overthrown factions across the eastern continent, leaving nations trembling in their wake. In under a year, their dominion stretched wide, and yet… all for a seemingly useless scroll.
'To think… all this… for a scroll that's no more than parchment…' he thought, bitter and incredulous. The founder of the Heaven's Death Religious Order, once worshiped as a living deity, had passed the scroll down through the dynasty. Rumors spoke of miraculous power within, yet when he had opened it, he found nothing but blank pages.
"Scholar, I'll tell you again—give us the scroll, or die an even more painful death than your fate dictates," the leader said, feigning mercy while signaling his men, he thought, the gleam of their drawn swords catching the dim moonlight.
"Ha—and it ov-ver? HA-AHAHAHA! Ove-er my dea-ad bod-dy!" he shouted through a blood-choked throat, laughter breaking free despite the agony, he thought, mocking the foolishness of threats against a man already at death's door.
"Then so be it, men! Kill him as painfully as you can! Be careful not to damage the scroll!" the leader commanded, and the masked figures surged forward.
Swords plunged into his body, cutting deep, tearing flesh and muscle, carving channels for blood to pour freely. Pain exploded through him, sharper than any he had endured, yet his body remained weak, paralyzed in part by shock and blood loss.
'Dammit… to think I'm dying like this… a pathetic way to die…' he thought, wincing at the agony and humiliation, each strike a reminder of the cruel finality of his situation.
The masked men withdrew momentarily, letting him bleed freely. The pool beneath him deepened, a mirror of his own mortality, while his mind numbed from the unrelenting torture. Only a divine doctor could hope to save him now, he knew, if one even existed in this reality.
"Search for the scroll! We must deliver it to the head immediately!" one of them barked, and like hyenas they tore through his bloodstained clothing.
Finally, one masked man found the scroll tucked away in his chest pocket, its surface slick with his own blood. Relief and triumph flickered among the attackers as they paused their assault.
"Here it is, Squad Leader," the man said, handing the scroll forward, he thought.
The squad leader, revealed to be merely a rank-and-file officer rather than an executive, took it, a greedy smile spreading across his masked face.
'So… he was only a squad leader… not even a true executive… pathetic,' the scholar thought, bitterness flooding his consciousness even in this state of near death.
"HAHAHA! With this, I can now obtain a seat of an executive once I present this scroll!" the squad leader exclaimed, delight twining with ambition, he thought.
But joy soured instantly as he noticed the scroll was soaked in the scholar's blood, the parchment glistening and sticky.
"Damn Scholar! Can't just die without troubling us till the end, you pathetic insect!" the squad leader spat, enraged, he thought.
Another masked figure stepped forward—familiar to the scholar as the one who had signaled the bamboo flare.
"Sir, perhaps we should first check if this is the real scroll. That scholar is crafty… he might have hidden the real one elsewhere," he said, caution underlying his words, he thought.
"Good point… he could have been bait. We need to ensure this is the genuine scroll before celebrating," the squad leader said, unrolling the parchment.
Blood-stained, the scroll revealed only blank pages.
"DAMN SCHOLAR! WHERE IS THE REAL SCROLL?!" he roared, fury erupting as he hurled the parchment aside, storming toward the scholar.
Before anyone could intervene, the squad leader gripped the scholar by the neck, lifting him slightly as blood poured down in torrents.
"WHERE IS IT?!" he shouted, strength and anger constricting the scholar's throat further.
'Heh… that's the real scroll, you idiots… you won't get a thing from me,' the scholar thought, lips curling in a weak, mocking grin.
As if responding to his defiance, the scholar's own blood soaked fully into the scroll, activating an unknown, radiant power. The parchment lifted, glowing with strange, ethereal script, and moved to his side, repelling the squad leader with a shockwave of light.
"ARGH!"
"Sir!?"
"S-Sir!? The scroll!?"
The masked men scrambled, some offering aid, others frozen in stunned disbelief. Through the blurred haze of pain and near-death delirium, the scholar only saw the intense, blinding glow surrounding him.
'So bright… am I… finally seeing the afterlife?' he thought, eyes watering against the light. Memories, dreams, failures, and fleeting joys of his life surged like a torrent, each a bittersweet flicker before death's embrace.
'Ah… Mother,' he whispered, longing for the comfort of the one who had passed long ago, he thought, his voice fragile yet desperate.
The scroll's light lifted him, carrying him beyond the reach of his enemies as the masked squad leader's scream tore through the night air.
"MEN! GET HIM…! DON'T LET HIM USE THE SCROLL!"
"NOOOO!"
The brilliance of the scroll expanded into a dome, illuminating the forest like a miniature sun, swallowing all in its radiance.
The forest, bloodied and chaotic moments ago, vanished in an instant. The scholar felt his body lifted, weightless, yet every fiber of his being trembled as if exposed to a force beyond comprehension. The light of the scroll enveloped him, warm yet blinding, pulsating with a strange rhythm that seemed to synchronize with his very heartbeat.
Then, darkness swallowed him.
He fell into a boundless abyss, an infinite void shrouded in thick, rolling fog. The air was heavy, intangible, carrying a chill that seeped into his bones and whispered of eternity. He opened his eyes, or thought he did, and realized his body had changed. His wounds, his blood, his battered flesh—all were gone. Yet his form shimmered like transparent glass, ethereal, a spirit tethered to the world of the living by mere consciousness.
"Where am I? What is this place?" he said, voice echoing faintly, carried by the void, he thought, every sound strangely hollow.
Alone, surrounded by fog that seemed to stretch infinitely in all directions, he felt something unfamiliar—fear. But it was not the sharp, panicked fear of being hunted or hurt; it was a deep, contemplative dread, as if staring into the infinite unknown.
Yet beneath it all, a peculiar comfort seeped into him, a warmth almost maternal in nature, wrapping around his transparent form.
'Somehow… I feel at home… Is this what a Heaven's Death follower should feel after death?' he thought, awe and confusion mingling, his consciousness straining to understand.
His body, or what remained of it, began to shift, eroding like fine sand caught in a relentless wind. The edges of his form blurred, dissolving into the very fabric of the void, fusing with the fog, becoming indistinguishable from the surrounding nothingness.
He felt an intangible pull, a sensation unlike anything mortal. It was as though the concept of death itself was drawing him in, not with malice, but with inevitability. Every atom of his being quivered as if being rewritten, remolded for something beyond life.
'So this is how death leads a person to their next life…' he thought, a mixture of resignation and curiosity tightening in his chest.
As he dissolved into the void, flashes of memory surged: his earliest moments of life, the warmth of his mother's embrace, the first joy of learning, the crushing despair of failure, the countless nights of exhaustion, pain, and regret. Each memory struck him like lightning, illuminating the vast darkness for brief, brilliant instants.
The torrent of recollections ignited something primal within him—a vehement refusal, a desperate rebellion against the fate imposed upon him.
"No! It can't end like this! It can't!" he shouted, his ethereal voice scattering through the fog, he thought, limbs trembling even as they no longer existed in flesh.
The futility of his life, the mistakes, the missed opportunities, the agony of a death that seemed both cruel and mundane—it all coalesced into a furious, defiant will to survive.
"Oh, Heaven's Death, Oh Black Tortoise, please… just anyone… give me another chance! I will live my life the best I can if you just give me a chance!" he cried, desperation coloring every syllable, he thought, even as he understood the absurdity of bargaining with death itself.
For mortals, defiance against the inevitable is meaningless. Yet, somewhere in the deep void, a spark responded.
A radiant light emerged from within him, not blinding but enveloping, expanding outward and illuminating the abyss in shimmering gold and white. The fog itself seemed to recoil, forming currents of energy around him.
Before he could comprehend it, before fear or understanding could take hold, he felt himself lifted, ripped from the realm of death, carried along the current of light. The void, the fog, and the looming hollow eyes that had sensed his presence all fell away, leaving him weightless in the brilliance.
'So bright… so warm… could this… be my salvation?' he thought, tears he no longer had physical form for streaming like starlight in the radiant flow.
Memories continued to cascade—life's joys and failures, love and pain, regrets and fleeting triumphs—all surged into his consciousness with overwhelming intensity.
'Ah… Mother,' he whispered, the memory of her comforting embrace flooding his mind, he thought, a child again, seeking solace as death's embrace loosened its grip.
The scroll's miraculous power wrapped around him, lifting him entirely above the reach of his enemies, his killers, the forest, and even the earthly plane he had left behind.
"MEN! GET HIM…! DON'T LET HIM USE THE SCROLL!" the squad leader's screams echoed faintly in his mind, swallowed by the brilliance, distorted by the power that shielded him.
"NOOOO!"
The light expanded into a dome, a miniature sun in the dark void of the forest, illuminating every shadow, consuming the fear and chaos below. For a brief, timeless moment, the scholar existed as pure consciousness, free, yet tethered by one overwhelming desire: life.
The brilliance of the scroll faded gradually, leaving only a soft glow that seemed to pulse like a heartbeat in the scholar's chest. Slowly, consciousness returned to a physical form, but it was not the battered, bloodied body he had left behind. Instead, his limbs felt smaller, lighter, unscarred—a body unmarked by pain, unbroken by exhaustion.
"HAAAAAH!" he cried out, voice hoarse, trembling, yet sharper than the dying whispers of his old self, he thought, jolting awake as sweat poured down his brow.
He scrambled, limbs flailing, searching the unfamiliar surroundings, and found himself in a small, confined room. A narrow bed sat against the wall, a few cabinets lined the far side, bookshelves crammed with volumes of all sizes, a small mirror framed in polished wood, and a tiny window letting in the first hints of dawn.
"What happened? Where am I?" he said aloud, he thought, panic lacing his voice, his mind racing to piece together the impossible.
He attempted to rise, but the unfamiliar weight—or rather, lightness—of his limbs betrayed him. He stumbled, arms and legs flailing, before hitting the floor with a soft thud.
"Ow! Huh? Why are my hands and feet so small?" he exclaimed, he thought, fear and astonishment clashing in his voice as he stared at his shrinking, delicate limbs that moved under his control yet felt unfamiliar.
Frantically, he steadied himself and approached the mirror. His reflection froze him in place: a boy no older than fifteen, green eyes wide with disbelief, long black hair unscarred, his once burnt and battle-worn visage replaced by smooth, youthful skin.
He touched his face with trembling fingers, feeling the unbroken, unblemished flesh.
"This… this is… impossible…" he whispered, he thought, disbelief gnawing at him as his mind raced to comprehend what had happened.
The realization struck him like a bolt of lightning, both terrifying and strangely exhilarating: he had regressed to his youth. Every scar, every wound, every trace of his brutal ordeal was gone, leaving behind the body of his fifteen-year-old self—but with all his memories, all his experiences, and the profound weight of what he had just survived intact.
"HUUUUUUH!?"
****