Chapter 1: The start of everything.

Chapter 1: Chapter 1: The start of everything.

The first thing he noticed was the heavy smell of incense in the air. It was faint, almost completely drowned out by the scent of old wood and dust that clung to his nose.

It was enough to make him open his eyes, and a sluggish view entered his vision.

Above him was a ceiling he had never seen before.

Dark wooden beams crossed over one another overhead, their smooth surfaces bearing the marks of years of age. Around the sides, several strips of faded red cloth hung between them, their edges frayed and curling inward.

He remained still, and for several seconds, he simply stared into the empty air motionlessly.

"Where... is this?"

His head hurt as he tried standing up. Not enough to make him cry out, but it was more than enough that every movement felt as if something was pulling at the back of his eyes.

He placed one hand against the floor and slowly pushed himself upright. The movement took more effort than he anticipated.

He looked down. His clothes were unfamiliar.

A loose gray robe, a pair of hands that were noticeably older than his own, and rough skin covering his face.

They were old.

He flexed his fingers. Once, twice, too many times.

Then he touched his face. The skin beneath his fingers was rough and loose, a lifetime of wrinkles covering his cheeks and forehead.

His hand stopped, and for a long moment, he didn’t dare to move.

He slowly turned his head toward the bronze mirror standing against the wall on the side. The surface was old and slightly clouded, but clear enough to reflect the figure standing before it.

A majestic old man with a confused look.

White hair, a weathered face, and deep wrinkles around the eyes.

He stared at the reflection, and the old man within the mirror stared back. He didn’t recognize him, yet somehow, the body felt oddly familiar.

His breathing slowed considerably, and he reached for the mirror, wiping the thin layer of dust away from its surface.

The reflection then became clearer.

Ninety years old.

The thought appeared in his mind without warning.

He froze.

"Ninety years old?"

Another memory followed.

Third Elder of the Chen Family.

His eyes narrowed, and without him noticing, the memories came rushing in like a tidal wave.

His name, familiar faces, and places.

A lifetime of memories that totally did not belong to him. But everything felt familiar, strangely too familiar.

The memories were varied. He saw himself as a young man back then, standing within the same ancestral hall to worship. In another memory, he saw an elderly man placing a hand upon his shoulder.

And another, where he saw the faces of children who had long since grown old.

He saw himself sitting in the courtyard, teaching the younger members of the family how to circulate their spiritual energy.

He saw himself arguing with the family patriarch over the distribution of spiritual stones.

And in one scene, he saw himself standing outside the family gate. Year after year, watching the younger generations leave one after another in search of great opportunities.

"Who... am I?"

Then came the memories of cultivation.

Qi Condensation at the age of 18.

The first breakthrough at 20.

The second, the third, the fourth, and all the way up to the seventh. Decades passed within the span of several breaths. He experienced them all, but not as random stories. They were memories that belonged to him.

His breathing became uneven, and he gripped the edge of the table next to him.

The wooden surface creaked under his fingers, and another memory surfaced in his mind.

"Chen Family..."

"My name is... Chen Yuan?"

His fingers slowly loosened, and the memories continued to settle inside his mind until they finally stopped. Silence returned to the ancestral hall as he remained standing there before the bronze mirror.

His reflection hadn’t changed, not even slightly. It was still the same old man who was staring back at him cluelessly.

The oldest living member of the clan.

He remained silent for several breaths, taking everything in with confusion and strange stillness. Then, he slowly raised his hand to touch his own face again.

"Chen Yuan..."

The name felt strangely natural coming from this foreign body.

He lowered his hand, and his expression was complicated.

"What is happening?"

He had memories that weren’t his, and yet they felt strange, as though they had always been there.

He knew the family, he knew the people living within it, and he knew which elder preferred tea over wine.

He even remembered the names of several children that he had watched being born decades ago. It was an unfamiliar life.

But it was also real.

He closed his eyes, perplexed, as another surge of memory emerged. This one had nothing to do with Chen Yuan, but it still carried the same name and age.

A different life in a different world.

A world without cultivation, where ordinary people lived beneath towers of glass and steel.

And within that world, he had once read countless novels.

His eyes opened, and the confusion that had remained on his face slowly disappeared.

He slowly opened his eyes again, and his gaze fell upon the old man’s face in the bronze mirror.

Two lives, two sets of memories that amounted to close to 200 years.

And currently, the two memories resided inside a single body.

"Reincarnation?"

His lips parted slightly.

The word came out quietly, but he had no way of knowing whether what truly happened was the truth. Perhaps there were other explanations.

Perhaps this was a dream and he had simply gone mad.

But no matter how many possibilities there were, none of them could explain what he was experiencing. He lowered his gaze toward his wrinkled hands.

"So... I really became someone else with the same name?"

His voice was barely audible within the empty ancestral hall.

"So that means I died in the original world."

There was no answer, and only the faint scent of incense remained in the air. He stood there for a while, trying to organize the mess inside his head.

If this truly was reincarnation, then there was one thing he needed to determine first.

My name is Chen Yuan, the Third Elder of the Chen Family in Blue Cloud Mist City.

I am at the Seventh Layer of the Qi Condensation Realm, and I am currently 90 years old.

"Ninety..." He repeated the number quietly, and there was still something strange about saying it. Not because he found the age unbelievable. Rather, because the age of his original self and this one now almost pushed his experience close to 200 years.

And that was a very large amount of experience for him.

"I am too calm despite the strangeness of everything surrounding me."

He narrowed his eyes.

"180 years of experience teaches me to be rather... calm, huh."

His previous life had given him the knowledge and common sense of an ordinary man who had lived through decades of modern society.

This body, on the other hand, had taught him almost a century of life within a cultivation world.

Two completely different lives and two completely different sets of experiences.

Chen Yuan lowered his head and examined his hands once more. He slowly circulated the spiritual energy from within his body, and almost immediately,

"I feel it."

A thin stream of energy moved through his meridians. It was weak, far weaker than what he imagined a cultivator should possess.

"Now that’s strange..."

His eyes flashed with a strange light.

"I might be the oldest member of the Chen Family, but I still have another century to live."

After all, a Qi Condensation Realm cultivator could live up to 200 years old.

The Seventh Layer of Qi Condensation wasn’t particularly powerful, but after several decades of cultivation, his spiritual energy should have been stable and abundant.

He closed his eyes and focused entirely on the spiritual energy within his body. Slowly, he guided it from his dantian and moved it through his body.

At first, everything seemed normal, but when the spiritual energy reached deeper into his body, Chen Yuan’s expression gradually changed.

Cold...

Deadly...

"So I’ve been poisoned to death?"

Chen Yuan spoke, his eyes narrowing at this thought.

"That means both me and him died at the same time, and I reincarnated into his body?"

That was the truth, and nothing else appeared to be a viable explanation.

Then, unexpectedly, the corner of his lips curled upward.

"So that’s what happened..."

He wasn’t particularly surprised. The poison wasn’t uncommon among cultivators, and it wasn’t particularly potent.

But it was insidious. Rather than directly damaging his body, it slowly interfered with the circulation of spiritual energy, causing the victim to encounter setbacks and suffer hidden injuries during meditation.

Worst-case scenario, one wrong mishap while circulating the inner energy could lead to fatality, which was what the original owner had encountered.

"But since it has been discovered, the result would naturally be different."

Chen Yuan’s expression remained calm. There was no need to sit cross-legged or spend hours refining the poison away. His cultivation might only be at the Seventh Layer of Qi Condensation, but the poison itself wasn’t strong enough to pose any threat to him during normal times.

He simply circulated his inner energy, and the spiritual energy within his dantian surged outward.

It moved through his meridians like a tidal wave, quickly reaching where the poison was. The moment contact was made, the inner energy directly crushed the poison to pieces.

The cold sensation that had been lingering within his body vanished, and a trace of black residue seeped through his pores.

Chen Yuan glanced down at it, then casually brushed it away.

He circulated his inner energy once more.

This time, there was no obstruction.

The spiritual energy flowed smoothly through his meridians before returning to his dantian.

Chen Yuan could immediately feel the difference.

"So this is how it should feel."

"It seems the original owner failed to sense the poison in time? That’s odd."

Chen Yuan muttered and turned to look toward the ancestral tablets one final time.

"There could be more that he and I were unaware of. But I doubt it was the family’s doing. Rather..."

"External factors."

The faint smell of incense still lingered throughout the hall, and everything remained exactly as it had always been. Chen Yuan turned around, and his footsteps echoed inside the hall as he walked toward the entrance.

His hand reached for the wooden door.

"It’s a new life. I can’t really let it go to waste, can I?"

A faint smile appeared on his weathered face.