Chen Cang

The sunset was a sight of boundless beauty.

The huffs and shouts of training still echoed through a secluded estate on the outskirts of the city. A glance revealed a group of tiny four- and five-year-olds earnestly going through their childish moves.

There were some forty or fifty children, boys and girls alike, all sallow, scrawny, and thinly dressed. Every one of them was a pitiable soul.

In contrast to these striving children, a boy sat slumped in a corner as though he had no bones, his gaze unfocused. He seemed utterly out of place.

Have I transmigrated to the Dou Qi Continent? No, reincarnated would be more accurate, Chen Cang muttered inwardly.

He remembered the car accident four years ago very clearly. There was no way a body of flesh and blood could have survived.

So he really had died.

Only, after being born into this world, he had lived in a daze for four years before finally awakening his memories of his previous life.

Having "grown up" in an instant, Chen Cang was overwhelmed by a jumble of emotions.

The past...

It had all passed into history.

As for his current situation...

Well, there was little he could piece together from his limited memories. But he had heard terms like "Dou Qi," "Dou Zhe," "Dou Shi," and "the northwest" more than once. Together with that strange stuff inside his body, they made him fairly certain this was the Dou Qi Continent.

Beyond that, he knew nothing.

As for why Chen Cang had ended up on this estate, the story was not complicated.

His parents had both been mercenaries, and an accident had sent them both to the grave. The young boy had been forced to wander in search of survival. Fortunately, shortly after leaving home, he had met a kindhearted city lord, who took pity on him and brought him back to raise.

Of course, this had not been a leap straight into the heavens.

The situation before him made it clear that this city lord had something of Ji Chang, the Earl of the West, about him.

In Chen Cang's memories, the city lord sent his subordinates to deliver food and water every day. The meals were not lavish, but there was enough to fill their stomachs.

Besides that, he also sent someone once a month to instruct them as a group in cultivation and sensing Dou Qi.

That was a kindness Chen Cang owed him.

Chen Cang was now four and a half years old. He had been at the estate for three months, less one day, and had already reached second-stage Dou Qi.

The first through third stages of Dou Qi were low-level, hardly fit to be shown in respectable company.

Here on the estate, however, his progress was quite fast.

The instructor who came last month seemed to say that anyone who broke through to Dou Zhe would receive a personal audience with the city lord. That would be a shortcut to quickly breaking out of this little circle, but condensing a Dou Qi vortex is no easy feat.

As he recalled, even that Flame Emperor had apparently taken six or seven years to accomplish it.

With no benchmark to compare against, and with the resources available to these adopted children being so limited that they mostly had to grope their way forward blindly, Chen Cang had no idea how talented he was, much less how long it would take him to break through to Dou Zhe.

Even transmigrators were not all created equal!

Just as Chen Cang was sighing over this, the estate suddenly fell quiet. Soon, a flurry of lively discussion broke out.

"Is that an instructor's uniform?"

"This gentleman is dressed just like the previous instructor. He must be our instructor this time."

"But that's not right. The end of the month isn't until tomorrow."

"..."

The murmuring reached Chen Cang's ears. By the time he rose to look, everyone in the courtyard had already gathered together of their own accord.

Following their gazes, he saw a burly man in silver-white armor stride into the estate. His dark skin paired with that armor gave off the same incongruous feeling as seeing farming implements in the East.

Brushing aside his stray thoughts, Chen Cang quietly walked over to stand behind the others.

Under everyone's gaze, the man held himself rigidly upright. From his stiff, overly proper manner, he also seemed a little...

Nervous?

Or perhaps simply unaccustomed to this.

At last, the man reached the center of the estate's open ground. He cleared his throat, then raised a hand to signal for everyone to sit on the ground.

"My name is Yang... never mind. There's no need, since I'm only teaching you this once anyway. All you need to know is that I'm this month's instructor. I was supposed to come tomorrow, but I have something to do then, so I came early to finish the assignment."

After this simple introduction, the man casually sat down as well and went straight to the point.

"Cultivating Dou Qi is a matter of accumulation, day after day, month after month. From the Dou Qi stages to Dou Zhe, you're laying your foundations. This is also the most important phase. Only after condensing a Dou Qi vortex can you begin rapidly increasing your strength. So how do you condense a Dou Qi vortex both quickly and steadily? Hmm, that question sounds difficult, and in fact, it isn't simple at all..."

Blah, blah, blah~

The man spoke for a solid ten minutes or so, all about the same old topics, little different from what the previous instructors had taught.

Chen Cang stared straight at the man before him, eager to know whether he was a Dou Zhe or a Dou Shi.

Or perhaps something even higher.

His attention gradually sharpened. Unconsciously, he sank deeper and deeper into his focus, automatically shutting out every other sound.

Slowly, something bizarre happened.

Chen Cang's vision went dark, and then he found himself inside a dim room.

"Waaah, waaah."

The piercing cries brought him back to his senses. Only after his eyes adjusted to the light did he make out the scene inside: a woman who looked like a midwife held a swaddled infant, bending slightly to let the sweat-drenched woman on the bed look at and stroke the baby.

"Congratulations, congratulations! It's a big, healthy boy. A hefty little fellow, too-feels like six or seven jin. He does look a little dark, though..."

"Thank you, Granny Wang. It's all right. His father and I ran into danger on Blackcry Mountain before, and I was poisoned by accident. I survived, but it did affect me somewhat."

"Husband, give our son a name."

"This little fellow is like a bear. Let's call him Yang Xiong."

"My father is really strong."

"My father is even stronger."

"My father dares to kill people."

"My father dares to kill people while holding someone up."

"My father dares to..."

"There are no shortcuts to cultivating through the Dou Qi stages. You can only build a solid foundation step by step, bit by bit. They say some imperial palaces have a set of precious formulas to aid cultivation. Our family doesn't have the means for that, so there's nothing we can do. But don't feel you're missing out. Even those precious formulas are merely aids. The person is what truly matters!"

"There's only so much your father can give you. All I can do is tell you how I cultivated back then and offer you some guidance from experience."

Scene after scene, conversation after conversation, appeared in Chen Cang's mind like a revolving lantern.

He had no idea how much time passed. Only when the central figure in those scenes finally broke through to Dou Zhe, and Chen Cang felt as though his head would split from the pain, did he suddenly snap awake.

The sky had gone dark. The man directly ahead was still sitting there, droning on, though he had already reached the end of his lesson.

Looking at that dark, rugged face, Chen Cang felt it gradually merge with the newborn he had just seen in his mind.

He's Yang Xiong?

As though confirming Chen Cang's suspicion, the man finished speaking and stood. Brushing off the dust, he smiled and said, "All right, assignment complete. Old Xiong's heading back now. I hope a few more Dou Zhe and Dou Shi emerge from among you. Haha, goodbye."

With that, he strode away, ten or a hundred times more at ease than when he had arrived.

Chen Cang had been a teacher before, so he understood the pride and satisfaction the man now felt.

More than that, however, Chen Cang was concerned about the strange thing that had happened to him.

This man really is Yang Xiong!

Then doesn't that mean what I saw was Yang Xiong's experiences and memories?!