Qin Lian

Outside Taibai City, on Dragon Abyss Mountain, tiled eaves and sweeping roofs rose one after another, dimly visible amid the green shade.

The Longyuan Qin Clan.

Taibai's foremost martial lineage.

At that moment, outside the rear courtyard's arched gateway, crowned with flying eaves and stone carvings.

Six people stood solemnly.

Among them, a young man in his early twenties knelt and bowed, pressing his forehead and all four limbs to the ground.

Bow after bow.

His obeisance was solemn and devout.

"Daozhi, the clan head exhausted his last wisp of spiritual intent to help you comprehend true qi. I'm afraid... he won't make it. On this final stretch, I hope we won't disturb him..."

A middle-aged man in his forties urged the kneeling man.

Hearing his father Qin An's words, Qin Daozhi paused slightly, then slowly rose and straightened his back.

He looked at the tightly shut courtyard gates and made a solemn promise. "Clan Head, rest easy. From today onward, we will protect this lineage. No one will easily shake the Qin family's interests or standing in Taibai."

Having spoken, he stood up, his entire spirit and bearing seemingly undergoing some transformation.

The courtyard was silent.

No response came.

Only a young girl stood quietly beside the gate.

Seeing this, the two Qin family elders, Qin Ping and Qin An, drew deep breaths.

"Lingzhi, take good care of the clan head."

Qin An gave the girl this instruction.

Then they glanced into the courtyard once more, as though seeking to engrave deep in their hearts the man who had led the entire Qin family to Taibai's summit.

Because they knew that turning away this time...

Meant parting forever.

Inside the courtyard, a gaunt man lay quietly, his spirit dimmed and his face haggard from a severe loss of vital blood.

However sumptuous his clothing, it could not conceal the air of someone with one foot in the grave.

The Qin Family head, Qin Lian.

Invincible Qin, who had roamed the world unchallenged for ten years and held Taibai beneath his sword, had reached the final moments of his life.

His breath seemed to grow weaker and weaker...

Finally, at some point the following afternoon, his breath vanished completely.

Qin Lingzhi, the girl who was bringing a blanket out of the room to cover him, keenly sensed something and froze.

Without a sound, the blanket fell to the ground.

Her eyes swiftly reddened, mist gathering in them.

"Clan Head!"

With a grief-stricken cry, she rushed to the man's side and sank to one knee.

"Waaah..."

Her anguished sobs spread an atmosphere of sorrow that soon filled the entire courtyard.

The autumn wind rustled, sweeping up a withered yellow leaf, as though it too lamented the closing of an era belonging to a Heaven Ranking Grandmaster.

Yet just then, the breath of the man who seemed to have breathed his last suddenly returned a little.

His eyelids trembled slightly.

Then, as though awakened by the crying, he opened his eyes.

Somewhat dazed, he turned his head slightly and looked at the weeping girl beside him. "Who are you?"

"!?"

The crying stopped abruptly.

Qin Lingzhi looked up at the Qin family legend whose eyes had opened, her expression full of astonishment and delight.

"Clan Head?"

"Hmm?"

He was about to say something when a stretch of memories clearly not his own flashed through his mind like flowers viewed from horseback.

In a daze, he seemed to become a young man living in ancient times.

He studied to enlighten his mind, practiced martial arts to strengthen his body, and took a master at Chunyang. After ten years, he achieved mastery, riding a spirited steed in splendid robes and roaming the martial world with sword in hand.

At thirty-three, he refined qi into astral force. With unstoppable momentum, he subdued Taibai with his sword and earned the name "Qin Wudi," single-handedly raising the Qin Family from a powerful county family into Taibai's foremost martial clan.

A month earlier, Blood Demon Zuo Qiudao, a grandmaster of the Black Ranking, had wreaked havoc outside Taibai City, slaughtering villages to sacrifice to his weapon. The two encountered each other by chance and fought fiercely.

Though Qin Wudi slew the Blood Demon, his own vitality was grievously damaged, leaving his life hanging by a thread.

After struggling bitterly for a month, he could not turn back the heavens and departed this mortal world.

And then...

"Sword Presses Taibai Qin Lian" became Qin Lian, whose dreams for his life had been buried beneath work.

Qin Lian froze.

Only after a long while did he finally realize what had happened to him.

Transmigration and rebirth?

This really was...

Something I wasn't prepared for at all.

He only remembered working for three days and nights to rush out a proposal. In the early hours one morning, a sudden pain struck his chest, and his vision went black...

Family, friends...

His reluctance to part with everything from his previous life welled up, filling his heart with a bitter ache.

After a long while, Qin Lian sighed.

"Ah."

A thousand words were consigned to flowing water.

What was gone was gone.

Being alive was better than being dead.

Just then, a tentative voice came from beside him. "Clan Head..."

Qin Lian turned his head and glanced at Qin Lingzhi beside him.

A girl of fifteen or sixteen.

A child of a wealthy household, clothed in silk and fed on fine food, with fair skin, a pretty face, and an exceptional air. She was pleasing to look at.

But his thoughts were in turmoil. His predecessor's memories were like a film he was forced to watch, interfering with his thinking. He needed to digest them before things could settle.

"I'd like to rest."

"Then..."

Qin Lingzhi hesitated for a moment before saying, "Clan Head, I'll be right outside the courtyard. If you need anything, just call me."

With that, she carefully covered him with the blanket and withdrew.

Qin Lian closed his eyes and digested his predecessor's memories.

Gradually...

An unusual gleam entered his eyes.

"Martial arts? Cultivation?"

Who had never dreamed of becoming a martial arts master?

Before his transmigration, the world he lived in had martial arts and traditional fighting arts, but...

Enlightened True Persons suffered rheumatism and aching joints every day, martial grandmasters shouted "Awesome, bros!" in livestreams, and traditional martial arts masters knocked down with a single punch refused to get up without thirty thousand yuan.

But this world...

Body-refining martial generals donned sturdy armor and wielded keen weapons, one rider holding off a thousand.

Qi-refining grandmasters roamed the world unchallenged and killed with an exhaled breath.

Spirit-refining True Persons united with the Dao and summoned wind and rain.

"My predecessor was a grandmaster! A martial grandmaster who achieved Qi Refining into Gang and stood invincible in Taibai!"

As Qin Lian digested his predecessor's memories, his thoughts could not help gradually boiling over.

Strong!

Qin Lian was so strong!

The scene of his predecessor Qin Lian's battle with the Blood Demon flashed through his mind!

Blood Demon Zuo Qiudao!

A grandmaster of the Black Ranking!

His predecessor had led people back to his hometown to honor their ancestors, only to encounter the Blood Demon wreaking havoc, slaughtering the villagers and offering their blood to a demonic weapon.

At the time, cowed by the Blood Demon's reputation, Qin Lian had intended to turn around and leave. But Zuo Qiudao was mentally unstable and charged straight at their party, intending to sacrifice them as well.

Qin Lian's sword held Taibai in submission. Though his renown fell short of that grandmaster's, those around him were his closest family. How could he abandon them to save his own skin?

Meeting on a narrow path, one either advanced or retreated.

Once the intent to kill arose, the seas and skies opened wide.

Buoyed by that resolve, the two supreme fighters battled to the death.

In the end, Qin Lian slew Blood Demon Zuo Qiudao in the Taibai Wilds, shocking the world.

But only the Qin family members who hurried him home knew that Qin Lian had unleashed thirty-three consecutive sword strikes with the Blood-Burning Sword Art, which severely damaged his foundations. His lamp had run dry, and he was barely breathing.

Yet now...

"I don't seem to be barely breathing."

Qin Lian sensed his own condition.

He was a little weak.

But calling him barely alive would be an exaggeration.

Qin Lian pondered briefly but could find no answer.

Soon, however, he suppressed these stray thoughts.

If transmigration and rebirth could happen, why worry about something as trivial as his injuries healing?

He rose from the reclining chair.

He looked at the stone table before him, then at his fist of flesh and blood...

With a thought, a surge of energy within him followed his will and gushed forth, then erupted through his descending fist.

Thud!

Force exploded outward.

Stone chips flew everywhere.

The stone table, a meter square and over ten centimeters thick, instantly shattered beneath his punch, breaking into more than a dozen pieces that scattered across the ground.

"Who could withstand this punch with twenty years of cultivation behind it?"

They would explode on the spot!

Then Qin Lian bent his knees, unleashed his strength, and shot forward like an arrow loosed from its bow. His body, weighing over seventy kilograms, instantly swept across half the courtyard...

Was that a jujube tree ahead?

Another jujube tree on the left, too!?

He punched!

Bang!

Wood chips flew.

The jujube tree, so thick an adult could barely encircle it with both arms, snapped and shattered beneath a single punch.

His movement did not stop. He tapped his right foot against the ground, a surge of force passing through his toes and propelling his entire body upward. He leaped over ten meters, easily landing atop the high wall, traversing walls and eaves.

"This jumping ability, this sense of power... agile as a hunting leopard, swift as a galloping horse, tearing bears and tigers apart alive as though it were nothing."

Qin Lian twisted and darted, leaping back and forth, throwing punches and kicks in the courtyard.

In his twenty-five years of life, he had never experienced this feeling of being able to unleash surging strength with every movement.

"That mysterious energy inside me... is true qi!"

Understanding dawned in Qin Lian's heart.

A body with true qi was practically like having a nuclear generator installed inside it, granting inexhaustible stamina.

He reached out and clenched his hand hard.

Bang!

The air in his palm seemed to be crushed until it burst.

"What kind of monster is this!"

Qin Lian's eyes were filled with shock.

There was excitement, and there was bewilderment.

There was anticipation, and there was fear.

Excitement that cultivation was possible in this world, that one could transcend the ordinary and enter the realm of the divine.

Bewilderment over how to adapt to such an age.

Anticipation of just how far his future could take him.

Fear...

He had merely subdued a single commandery with his sword, yet possessed such power. How powerful, then, were those who swept across a province or stood guard over a nation!?

Before such mighty figures...

Would he likewise be no different from an ant, his life and death decided on a whim, just as ordinary people were before him?

Deep within Qin Lian's heart, all manner of emotions churned for a long time.

Finally...

He calmed down.

The advantages and disadvantages balanced out.

The disadvantage: his once-peaceful life was gone for good, and from now on, the threat of death would always hang over him.

The advantage...

He had once dreamed of roaming the world with a sword in hand.

That old wish...

Perhaps it could now come true.

"Besides..."

Qin Lian focused his mind in meditation.

A glow of golden light manifested in his mental world.

Between the moment his vision went black and the moment he awoke as "Qin Lian," he seemed to have passed through a golden river.

This cluster of golden light was what he had grabbed blindly at the time.

Heaven Rewards Diligence, picking up what was lost and making up for what was lacking.

Whenever he cultivated a sword art, an unarmed fighting art, or a cultivation method with an extraordinary "underlying concept" to perfection, the golden light would respond according to the type of art he had cultivated, bestowing all manner of wonders: reshaping his innate constitution, awakening special traits, and even granting inspiration and sudden enlightenment.

The deeper the underlying concept and the more profound the method, the richer the rewards he received upon perfecting it.

A cheat?

"With martial cultivation, and supernatural gifts besides... I should go and see the view from the pinnacle of cultivation."

Only then would he not have lived this life in vain.

He focused on the golden light.

"Perfection..."

Qin Lian recalled the sword arts, fist techniques, and movement arts he had mastered...

Just then, from the foot of Dragon Abyss Mountain, voices rolled in like thunder, shaking the land for ten li.

"Wu Li, elder of the Canglang Sword Sect! Having heard that the Qin Family head was injured slaying a demon, I have come to pay a visit, bringing a Good Fortune Treasure Pill from the Heavenly Medicine Sect!"

"Xie Yushi of the Taibai Xie Family! In gratitude to the Qin Family head for ridding our Jiangzhou of a great scourge, I have come expressly to present the Qin Family head with a commemorative archway!"

"Wang Gang, deputy leader of the Dragon River Gang! I have specially invited a renowned physician of Jiangzhou and come on behalf of the entire gang to visit the Qin Family head!"