First Steps into Reincarnation

Chenping Continent, Falling Sword Mountain Range.

A white-haired old man walked alone through the forest in the mountain range, his steps unsteady and weak.

His name was Chen Yan, and he was a transmigrator.

This was his hundredth year since arriving in this world.

In this life, Chen Yan had been born into an ordinary merchant household on Chenping Continent.

When he was seven, he happened upon a fortuitous opportunity: an immortal master traveling down from the mountains took him back there to cultivate.

From then on, Chen Yan became an outer court disciple of the Empty Mountain Sect.

And he remained an outer court disciple for more than ninety years.

As for why he had never advanced, there was no other reason—his aptitude was simply insufficient. It could only carry his cultivation as far as the second of the lower three realms.

Chen Yan had once refused to accept this, but by now, he had made his peace with it.

Whatever else might be said, a hundred years of carefree life as an immortal cultivator was a hundred times better than being worked like a beast of burden in his previous life, with nothing but overtime and compensatory days off.

Now, Chen Yan could clearly feel that his allotted span was nearing its end.

Three months ago, he had left the sect's outer court and ventured alone into the Falling Sword Mountain Range.

It was all because, during a scripture lecture, he had once heard an elder mention that the Falling Sword Mountain Range was where Su Hongzhen, Chenping Continent's foremost sword cultivator seven thousand years ago, had fallen.

Su Hongzhen's legacy and the opportunities he had left behind might well lie somewhere in these mountains, their whereabouts lost forever.

Though Chen Yan knew his chances were slim, he was a dying man anyway. In the end, he had to take his shot.

"Cough, cough..."

Chen Yan coughed a few times.

His steps grew heavier and heavier.

Over these three months, Chen Yan had found nothing.

Instead, he had suffered serious injuries from an attack by the mountains' demonic beasts.

So tired.

Chen Yan knew what this exhaustion meant.

Death.

He found a large tree and sat down with his back against its trunk, then tilted his head to gaze at the sky.

Clear skies stretched for ten thousand miles.

Was this where it all ended?

To leave quietly on such a warm, gentle day was a dignified enough end.

Chen Yan slowly closed his eyes.

Everything from his past flashed through his mind, one scene after another, like a revolving lantern.

Then everything sank into darkness.

[Reincarnation ended.]

[This reincarnation evaluation: D (Accomplished nothing. All those years were wasted on a dog.)]

[Accumulated cultivation: Qi Condensation Realm mid-stage]

[Reincarnation reward: None]

[Reincarnation settlement complete. The host will return to the previous reincarnation record point, inherit the cultivation accumulated during this reincarnation, and restart life.]

"Senior Brother Chen."

"..."

"Senior Brother Chen?"

A light, lively voice sounded beside his ear. Chen Yan's eyelids fluttered a few times before slowly opening.

What greeted him was the delicate, pretty face of a girl who had not yet shed her childish air.

Her brows were slightly furrowed, and she looked rather anxious, as though something urgent awaited her.

"Senior Brother Chen, Instructor Lu Li's scripture lecture is about to start. Hurry! If we don't go now, there won't be any seats left!"

The girl spoke, then stood and jogged away.

"I'm going ahead to hear the Dao. You'll have to fend for yourself, Senior Brother Chen!"

Chen Yan froze where he sat, unable to make any sense of what had just happened.

He was still sitting on the ground with his back against a tree.

Only this was not a tree in the Falling Sword Mountain Range. It was a tree in the Empty Mountain Sect's outer court.

"Lu Li?"

Chen Yan searched his memories for that name and soon recalled who the man was.

He was Qingchan Peak's Martial Suppression Elder. More than eighty years ago, he had served as an instructor in the outer court, where his clear, accessible lectures on scripture and the Dao had made him beloved among the outer court disciples.

Wait...

Chen Yan's eyes widened, and he stared at the backs of his hands in disbelief.

His skin was firm, fair, and soft.

The current Lu Li was not Qingchan Peak's Martial Suppression Elder. He was still an instructor in the outer court.

And the girl just now was Junior Sister Cheng. She should have perished in the great calamity eighty-five years ago.

"Reincarnation, reincarnation record point..."

Chen Yan muttered the words he seemed to have glimpsed in the darkness as his consciousness faded.

Though he still had many questions, Chen Yan had clearly realized what had happened.

He had been reborn, and the point in time he had returned to was the year he turned fifteen!

Chen Yan clenched his fists, feeling the surging power of his blood and vitality, as well as the true qi circulating within him.

Qi Condensation Realm mid-stage.

This was the cultivation Chen Yan had attained at the age of one hundred in his previous life.

He remembered that when he was fifteen in his previous life, he had still been at the Body Tempering Realm early stage. He had not broken through to the mid-stage until he was nineteen.

In other words, his current cultivation was a whole major realm ahead of where he had been even at nineteen in his previous life.

Setting aside the Three Mountains Four Peaks of the Empty Mountain Sect's inner sect, anyone in the outer court who reached the Qi Condensation Realm mid-stage at fifteen was as rare as phoenix feathers and qilin horns.

After savoring the joy of his rebirth, Chen Yan regained his composure.

Now that he had returned to the age of fifteen, he could not take all the same winding detours as in his previous life, only to end up with an evaluation of "accomplished nothing."

Chen Yan decided to attend Lu Li's lecture.

This instructor, who would one day become Qingchan Peak's Martial Suppression Elder, was among the very best teachers in the entire Empty Mountain Sect.

Chen Yan remembered that, around the year he turned seventeen, Lu Li had earned the admiration of Qingchan Peak's Elder Zhengfa during a discussion of the Dao within the sect.

He was subsequently transferred to Qingchan Peak's Scripture Hall, rising from instructor to Scripture Hall steward, then to cultivation-transmission guardian, then Scripture Hall elder, and finally Martial Suppression Elder.

It could truly be called a soaring rise into the clouds.

Often, cultivation required a little guidance.

Even a single simple sentence could clear away the tangled weeds and open one's mind.

Especially when one encountered a bottleneck.

An immortal cultivator's daily cultivation was like a slowly flowing river.

Encountering a bottleneck was like having that river blocked by silt.

At such times, a few words of guidance from a powerful senior could often clear the obstructed riverbed.

And thus allow the immortal cultivator's daily cultivation to flow freely once more.

Heads filled the Scripture Hall. At least three or four hundred people had squeezed inside to listen to the Dao.

That was because today's scripture lecture was being given by Instructor Lu Li.

Despite the crowd, the Scripture Hall was unusually quiet. There was only the sound of breathing and the lecturer's voice drifting from the Lecture Stage, gentle as a fine rain.

The lean-faced young man sitting upright on a cushion atop the Lecture Stage, dressed in a pale white Daoist robe, was Lu Li.

Chen Yan could only find a spot in a corner of the Scripture Hall and squeeze himself into a seat.

The Empty Mountain Sect's outer court was the area where its outer court disciples lived and cultivated.

The outer court had more than twenty-five thousand disciples in total, six times the combined number of disciples in the inner sect's Three Mountains Four Peaks.

Today, Instructor Lu Li was teaching the Empty Mountain Art, the Empty Mountain Sect's foundational cultivation method.

Though quite basic, it was also extremely important, forming the foundation of every Empty Mountain Sect disciple's future cultivation.

Not only inner sect disciples, but even core disciples and the chief true disciple had to practice this method.

"Behold the colors of emptiness, hear the sounds of emptiness, sense the rhythms of emptiness, comprehend the Dao of emptiness, ceaseless as mountains and rivers."

"Temper the body to gather qi; when qi flows freely, a spring forms; when the spring surges, it gathers into a sea."

The Body Tempering Realm, Qi Condensation Realm, and Martial Spring Realm constituted the lower three realms of seeking immortality and the Dao in this world.

After the Martial Spring Realm came the Qi Sea Realm, the first of the middle three realms.

As the Empty Mountain Sect's foundational cultivation method, the Empty Mountain Art could only support disciples through their breakthrough from the Martial Spring Realm to the Qi Sea Realm. To advance any further, they had to practice a higher-level cultivation method.

Listening to Instructor Lu Li's scripture lecture, Chen Yan slowly closed his eyes.

"Qi is a blazing fire, the empty mountain murmurs with flowing water, heaven and earth grow clear and still..."

Suddenly, Chen Yan's heart trembled.

The bottleneck that had kept his cultivation stuck at the Qi Condensation Realm mid-stage had actually begun to loosen.