Rebirth

Gray mist hung in the sky above the desolate, dilapidated town, whose vaguely medieval streets gave off a suffocating feeling. Faint, eerie sighs seemed to drift through it.

In a corner of the town, Feng Buzhi opened his eyes.

A jumble of memories flooded his mind.

According to his memories, he should have died at the Lorenz Psychiatric Hospital in Lorenz Town, from ruptured internal organs and excessive blood loss. He could even recall the sensation of his consciousness leaving his body as he died.

He had made countless efforts to find a path to immortality ever since he was five.

Later, he had received "treatment" at the Lorenz Psychiatric Hospital in Lorenz Town.

At the Lorenz Psychiatric Hospital, aside from the occasional conversation with a doctor, he had plenty of free time to conduct research, and few people ever interrupted him because of it.

Even when he occasionally left the hospital to venture into the Wilderness and experience the natural world, the doctors never said much as long as he wasn't gone for too long.

So he had settled in comfortably at the hospital, making it his home.

After more than a decade of relentless study, he had finally taken the first step and found a way to break the shackles that bound humanity.

Unfortunately, he had misjudged his own body. Breaking the shackles had left his body and mind excessively agitated, and before he could take another step down the path to immortality, he had died.

In the end, Earth Star in his previous life had been a Dharma-ending World. He had been too eager for quick results.

Feng Buzhi stood up. The sky over the town was shrouded in gloom, and the air was somewhat cold.

He was wearing the blue-and-white striped patient uniform of the Lorenz Psychiatric Hospital in Lorenz Town. It was rather thin.

His uniform was as good as new, without a trace of the bloodstains left behind when he died.

Feng Buzhi surveyed his surroundings. Many people lay on the ground nearby.

Like him, their clothes were all as good as new.

"It looks like they may have come to this world with me. Their clothes and belongings are all as good as new. I just woke up a little earlier."

"I wonder if they came here after dying, like I did, or if there's some other reason."

Muttering to himself, Feng Buzhi pulled a cleaver out from beneath a bearded man. The cleaver, too, was as good as new.

After inspecting it for a moment, Feng Buzhi put it back and continued looking over the others nearby.

Like the bearded man, they all had steady heartbeats and pulses. They seemed to be unconscious, or perhaps simply asleep.

He didn't investigate any further.

Looking down at his own patient's uniform, Feng Buzhi muttered to himself, "I don't really care what I wear, but it's obviously not very appropriate to keep wearing this psychiatric patient's outfit."

People were always prejudiced against psychiatric patients' clothing, so it would be best to change into something more ordinary.

Soon, Feng Buzhi picked someone who was fast asleep and stripped off his clothes.

A few minutes later, Feng Buzhi had changed into a completely new outfit.

He wore a blue tracksuit, with white headphones around his neck and a music player in his pocket. With his handsome, dashing looks and a smile on his face, he looked like a fresh-faced, carefree young man.

After straightening his clothes, Feng Buzhi scrolled through the music player's playlist a few times, then settled on "I Really Want to Live for Another Five Hundred Years" and put it on repeat...

"Without immortality, you'll end up as a handful of dirt sooner or later. Five hundred years is still too short."

Listening to the music, Feng Buzhi sighed, then began assessing his body.

Since he hadn't paid much attention to physical training, he wasn't in particularly good shape. He was only somewhat stronger than an average adult man. (P.S. That's the protagonist's own claim—you can take "somewhat stronger" to mean much stronger.)

As for jumping, at 1.85 meters tall he could just barely grab a basketball hoop with both hands, but couldn't dunk. His endurance was good enough to barely manage a thousand push-ups in a row and finish a marathon. As for speed, he could just about run a hundred meters in eleven seconds.

However, before he died in his previous life, he had already found a way to break through the shackles of the human body. If he were to do it now, he could even jump above the rim, and easily break the world record in the hundred-meter dash. His endurance, on the other hand, might still be lacking.

In certain moments of crisis, people could unleash strength they normally couldn't attain.

For example, when a child was trapped beneath a car, a mother might lift the vehicle. A frail drunk might wrestle with a brown bear and drive it back. And in the midst of a life-or-death battle, some soldiers might feel time slow to a crawl.

Feng Buzhi had mastered this kind of power. He could unleash the strength hidden within the human body.

If an average adult man's strength was 10, his was around 12. After breaking the shackles, he could instantly unleash three times that strength, reaching around 36, perhaps even more.

And that was only strength.

Strength, speed, the five senses, reflexes... Once all the shackles were broken, he would experience something like being superhuman.

In his previous life, he had been so immersed in that wonderful, superhuman feeling that he had mistakenly thought himself invincible. He had ignored his fragile body, and in the end, he had died.

In fact, even if he hadn't done anything so dangerous at the time, breaking the shackles would still have caused his body to suffer the backlash. He would likely have needed several months to recover.

Soon, under Feng Buzhi's control, his right arm began to tremble violently. His muscles and blood vessels bulged, and with them came an unbearable pain, as if tens of thousands of needles were stabbing into his arm.

Faced with agony that an ordinary person couldn't endure, Feng Buzhi wore a sunny smile, as if basking in a spring breeze.

Even if the pain were several times worse, he could bear it without a problem.

In a Dharma-ending World, almost no cultivation was possible. The only thing he could cultivate was his own mind, and after all his training, his will had become incredibly resilient.

In short, after a simple test, he had already broken the shackles that limited the human body.

For Feng Buzhi, breaking the shackles wasn't difficult.

The truly difficult part was finding a way to break them.

It was like how some people could wiggle their ears, while others could never learn how, no matter what they tried.

Once you learned the technique for breaking the shackles, you could break them whenever and wherever you wanted through sheer will.

More specifically, you directed your will toward your flesh, nerves, and blood, causing a kind of resonance. It was somewhat like hypnosis, but you had to keep your mind clear, or all your efforts would come to nothing.

To master the method of breaking the shackles, he had pushed himself to the brink of death countless times.

For example, he had done pull-ups on the wall at the edge of the hospital rooftop until he was physically spent. He had also built crude bow-and-arrow traps and shot himself with sharpened rebar to break through the limits of his reflexes. And, for instance, he had taken large quantities of other patients' medication to test his drug resistance by putting his life on the line...

During his more than ten years at the Lorenz Psychiatric Hospital, he had done things like that thousands of times.

Feng Buzhi soon stopped trying to break the shackles.

In just a few breaths, his right arm had already suffered severe damage. It was swollen and red all over, and the muscles around his wrist and elbow trembled uncontrollably. His arm also felt weak, as if it had no strength left.

Ultimately, his method of breaking the shackles was still too crude.

He could choose where to break them—for example, as he had just done, he could break the shackles on his right arm alone. He could break them anywhere in his body, but he couldn't control how strongly they broke. Once he activated them, they always went to full power, placing a tremendous burden on his body.

"Looks like I still need my Reincarnated Memories to awaken as soon as possible."

Feng Buzhi murmured softly...