Rebirth

[This story has two male leads. If you wandered in without reading the synopsis, you can use the back button in the upper-left corner. If you like it, you can leave your brain here.]

It never snowed in the Central Continent, yet Feng Zhuo died in a bone-deep chill.

Atop Heavenly Pillar Mountain, clouds gathered in layers.

Suddenly, the toll of a bronze bell pierced the sea of clouds.

"Lin Yiyi, bone age thirteen, dual fire and wood Spirit Roots, fire sixty-five, wood seventy, upper-middle-grade aptitude. Next!"

Call after call rang out, each person's fate decided in a matter of breaths.

Pushed by the person behind him, Feng Zhuo involuntarily opened his eyes.

The pain of his flesh and Root Bone being burned to ashes by the purifying fire had been all too real. The vaguely familiar scene before him left Feng Zhuo in a daze.

When no one stepped forward for a long while, the solemn voice of the senior brother in charge rang out again.

"The next person to have their Root Bone tested, step forward!"

Feng Zhuo had no time to think it through. Covered in cold sweat, he stepped forward.

"Name?"

"Feng Zhuo."

The senior brother in charge made a couple of quick strokes with his brush. He paused briefly as he wrote the character for "Feng," then looked up at the red-robed youth before him, whose face was as white as paper. "Calm your mind and concentrate. Place your hand on the Spirit Testing Stone."

Feng Zhuo did as instructed.

His fair, delicate hand rested on the Spirit Testing Stone, which gleamed white as jade. This was the scene of his Root Bone test when he entered the Supreme One Divine Sect at twelve.

Looking at the familiar scene before him, Feng Zhuo understood that, for some unknown reason, he had returned to the past.

Green as dark as ink instantly filled the Spirit Testing Stone, and the phantom image of a divine tree blotted out the sky and sun.

"...A green as deep as ink, a naturally occurring phenomenon! Feng Zhuo, bone age twelve, Heavenly Wood Spirit Root, Wood Spirit Body, aptitude-highest grade!"

The area before the testing platform erupted.

"What?! A Heavenly Wood Spirit Root?!"

"Did I hear that right? A Wood Spirit Body?!"

"Highest-grade aptitude?!"

Hundreds of gazes fixed on the front, everyone craning their necks to see.

An elderly cultivator in the seats above even knocked over his teacup. Piping-hot spirit tea spilled all over him, but he didn't notice at all.

"Silence!"

The senior brother in charge adopted a much more respectful manner. "Junior Brother Feng, please take this jade token. The master selection ceremony will be in roughly two hours. You may follow the attendant and rest first."

"Thank you, Senior Brother."

Feng Zhuo nodded his thanks, accepted the jade token, and followed the attendant boy to the resting area.

"Wang Hu, bone age fourteen, triple fire, wood, and earth Spirit Roots..."

The testing continued, but the waves surging in Feng Zhuo's heart were hard to calm.

Twelve years old, twelve years old!

Feng Zhuo had returned to the age of twelve, before any of it had happened!

He hadn't taken Primordial Lord Chixiao as his master! He hadn't contracted the Glazed Purifying Fire!

There was still time! Leave! He had to leave!

Feng Zhuo had barely risen when his legs gave way, and he fell heavily to the ground.

The fall brought his dazed mind completely back to its senses.

Memories of his previous life surged in like a tide.

He had been Primordial Lord Chixiao's fourth disciple and Su Ruanruan's senior brother.

Although he had contracted the Glazed Purifying Fire, the pills he refined had always been a grade below his little junior sister's, and his three senior brothers had repeatedly ostracized him.

He had been too naive back then.

Even when he felt indignant, he had remained faithful to the bonds between fellow disciples.

Whenever Su Ruanruan came to borrow the Divergent Flame to refine pills, he had readily agreed.

Until, after his Golden Core lightning tribulation, at his weakest moment...

"Ah!"

Feng Zhuo suddenly clutched his chest. It was as though the searing agony of the purifying fire burning his body still lingered there.

He would never forget that moment. The Glazed Purifying Fire had forcibly torn apart their contract, and its icy flames had swallowed him from the inside out.

More ironically still, after his death, his soul had not entered the cycle of reincarnation. Instead, he had seen a storybook titled Cultivation Group Favorite Little Junior Sister.

In the book, Su Ruanruan was a favored daughter of heaven, surrounded by admirers like stars around the moon, while he, Feng Zhuo, was nothing more than a tool to deliver a Divergent Flame to her!

"So that's how it was..."

Feng Zhuo gave a low laugh, his nails digging deep into his palm.

The book had stated it plainly: Su Ruanruan had used blood from her heart to nourish the purifying fire for seven times seven, forty-nine days, and had repeatedly hinted to her master, Chixiao, how important the Divergent Flame was to her.

That "kind master" had then secretly worn away at his contract with the purifying fire...

Spasms of pain gripped his chest, but Feng Zhuo's gaze grew ever clearer.

Chixiao! Su Ruanruan!

One was sanctimonious, the other false and affected!

Since a twist of fate had let him live another life, he would collect this blood debt with interest!

For now, though, the most pressing matter was to figure out how to avoid the fate of his previous life and not become Chixiao's disciple.

What was more, later in the storybook, the Peak Masters of all six of the Supreme One Divine Sect's main peaks had doted on Su Ruanruan to the utmost. Joining any of the main peaks would be to Feng Zhuo's disadvantage.

Then should he leave the Supreme One Divine Sect now?

Feng Zhuo shook his head. It was completely out of the question.

His name had already been recorded on the Supreme One Divine Sect's list of accepted disciples. Leaving now would be no different from betraying the sect.

Even if he escaped the gruesome death of his previous life, he would only meet a similar end.

Feng Zhuo rapidly considered ways to break out of this predicament.

The storybook said that Little Junior Sister Su Ruanruan was the whole sect's darling, doted on by the Peak Masters of the six main peaks and the leaders of the various branch peaks.

She was also adored by a host of genius disciples.

Only one peak was an exception: Carefree Peak.

Its Peak Master, Yunxiaozi, had died and his Dao had vanished while defending the sect against Su Ruanruan's devil venerable dao companion;

Eldest Senior Brother Ye Wuhen had been exposed in public as a human-yao hybrid by Su Ruanruan's yao king dao companion, and everyone in the sect had denounced him as a traitor to the human race;

Second Senior Sister Ling Shuanghua's Pure Yin Physique had been revealed by Su Ruanruan in "a slip of the tongue." Great experts had fought over her, and, unable to bear the humiliation, she had blown herself up;

Little Junior Brother Cang Wuya had been born with a Sword Bone coveted by Su Ruanruan. In the Sword Tomb Secret Realm, Su Ruanruan's followers had carved the bone out of him while he was still alive, killing him...

At the end of the story, of the four people on that peak, some had died, some had died, and some had died...

It was the only peak in the Supreme One Divine Sect that did not fawn over Su Ruanruan, and the peak with the most tragic end in the entire storybook.

Master and disciples, all four of them had died directly or indirectly at Su Ruanruan's hands.

Yet now it was the most advantageous place for Feng Zhuo to take a master.

While he was thinking, more people were brought here by attendant boys, one after another.

No one dared approach Feng Zhuo, who sat on the ground, to strike up a conversation.

The red-robed youth had delicate features, piercing phoenix eyes, and stunning looks. Beautiful as he was, his beauty was rather aggressive.

Though his pale face softened that aggressiveness somewhat, his tightly furrowed brows spoke of nothing but haughty arrogance.

It was not until a young girl arrived that the impasse was broken.

As soon as Su Ruanruan entered the room, she swept her gaze around as if by chance. Seeing that nearly all her peers were in pairs, she frowned slightly.

Only when she saw Feng Zhuo sitting alone on the ground did her heart leap with joy.

Su Ruanruan walked over.

"Senior Brother? Senior Brother?"

Hearing the familiar voice beside him, Feng Zhuo froze for a moment, his thoughts returning to the present.

Seeing the youth come back to his senses, Su Ruanruan grew even happier and gave a shy smile.

"Senior Brother, I see your face is pale and you're covered in cold sweat. Are you feeling unwell? I know a little about alchemy, though I'm no expert, and I happen to have a spare Rejuvenation Pill. Do you need it?"

Feng Zhuo tilted his head up slightly and focused his gaze on the oval-faced girl. The pain of the purifying fire burning his body grew even worse.

A memory from his previous life hazily resurfaced.

"Little Senior Brother, what does it feel like to refine pills with a Divergent Flame?"

The girl had smiled sweetly, radiant and dazzling, and Feng Zhuo had heard his own voice say, "Would you like to try it, Junior Sister? It's just that the Glazed Purifying Fire isn't very obedient. If you can find a way to command it, what harm is there in lending it to you to refine pills?"

"No need."

Feng Zhuo swallowed the blood that had risen to his throat, took a few supreme-grade Rejuvenation Pills from his storage ring, and swallowed them.

Once the pills reached his stomach, the Qi and Blood churning within him immediately settled, and the bone-deep hatred was temporarily pressed back into the depths of his heart along with it.

The most important thing now was to become a disciple of Carefree Peak without a hitch.

As for Su Ruanruan... there would be plenty of time in the future!

But Su Ruanruan clearly didn't think so.

The hand holding out the pill froze in midair, and her eyes quickly filled with tears. "Senior Brother, are you deliberately trying to humiliate me?"

Feng Zhuo frowned slightly. "What?"

"You clearly had supreme-grade Rejuvenation Pills, yet you insisted on waiting until I offered you a pill before taking them..."

Her voice trembled, and her knuckles whitened around the porcelain bottle. "If you look down on the low-grade pills I refined, you could have just said so. Why treat me so cruelly?"

As she spoke, she actually made as if to throw the pill bottle to the ground!

"I've only just begun learning the Dao of Alchemy. I can't compare to your wealthy family, Senior Brother."

Su Ruanruan bit her lip, tears on the verge of falling. "But for you to humiliate me like this is going too far!"

With just a few words, she had made it seem as though Feng Zhuo were deliberately making things difficult for her.

Hearing this, the surrounding disciples looked at Feng Zhuo with a hint of something different in their eyes.

A few hotheaded young disciples were about to step forward, but their companions held them back. Was someone who could casually produce supreme-grade pills a person they could afford to provoke?

Feng Zhuo watched the farce with a cold gaze.

Su Ruanruan's ability to turn black into white was exactly the same as in his previous life.

If Feng Zhuo let this go unchecked, then after he entered the sect, his ill reputation for using his position to bully others would likely spread throughout it.