Chapter 1: Rebirth in Blood and Fire
Southwest of the Yue Kingdom, in Fuyu Village. Sixteen-year-old Joey Fang had been in this world for a full eight years.
The sun was about to set. Joey trudged back from the fields with a hoe over his shoulder, the skin there flushed red from the brutal heat. The evening breeze from the hills carried the mellow scent of ripening rice; it brushed his sweat-damp face with the weary ache of a day’s labor—and the warm, familiar taste of home.
“Brother!” A familiar voice rang out behind him.
Joey turned. His little sister Mia Fang was running toward him like a happy fawn, a small bamboo basket in hand. Inside, several sticky-rice cakes still steamed faintly. A dusting of white flour had smeared into playful patches across her cheeks, turning into a few adorable spots.
She was a bit out of breath, chest rising and falling, big eyes blinking; when she saw her brother, her smile bloomed bright.
“Mia, did you sneak out the cakes Mother made again?” Joey put on a stern face for show, but his steps had already softened as he walked over, and his hand naturally reached into the basket to break off a piece.
“I did not! Mother said so this time—Brother worked all day in the fields. You should have a bite first.” Mia pursed her lips, stuffed a cake into Joey’s hand, and then did her best to look serious.
“You eat first.” Joey grinned and passed it back.
They pushed it back and forth, and in the end each took a small bite. The soft, sticky rice cake clung to their teeth, fragrance lingering in their cheeks; that gentle sweetness was simple, yet tasted like the most luxurious flavor in the world. Watching Mia squint happily, cheeks puffed as she chewed with grave focus, a warm current welled up slowly from the depths of Joey’s heart.
In that moment, he was no longer a “transmigrant” flung about by fate, no longer a “failure” struggling in a city, no longer a man with nothing in a foreign land.
Eight years ago, an accident hurled him into this strange world. The despair and helplessness of those first days had been diluted and melted away, bit by bit, by Mia’s clear laughter and their parents’ gentle eyes.
At home, the oil lamp glowed dim and warm. Mother bent her back over the stove, busy with supper. Father sat on the threshold, rough hands working a whetstone, slowly, steadily honing a sickle. On the simple kang table, several bowls of lightly fried seasonal greens were already set out; in pride of place sat a small, carefully cured chicken, gleaming with oil.
It was Mia’s birthday. For the day, Mother had risen before dawn to make sweet fermented rice. Looking at his daughter, Father’s usually stern features softened; a smile rippled across his face furrowed with years.
Dinner was lively and warm. In the middle of eating, Mia suddenly hopped off the bench, and—like a magician—pulled a paper flower from her bosom, folded with care from rough, colored paper. Rising on tiptoe, a little bashful, she solemnly tucked the flower behind Joey’s ear. “Brother, I think you’re the big hero of our family—so mighty and grand. This flower is for you!” Her clear, ringing words set everyone roaring with laughter.
Mother’s eyes shone with indulgence as she reached out and gently scraped Mia’s little nose. Father couldn’t help laughing along. Joey’s chest swelled with a full, glowing warmth, a feeling that soothed him from within. The warmth of this tiny room was the most precious treasure he had after putting down roots in this other world.
In this land, he had woven countless small, tender rituals: the secret slices of cake Mia hid away on her birthday; the ancestor rites after the autumn harvest; the crack and clack of chess pieces on winter nights, playing with Father on the warm kang. Every seemingly trivial thing worked like a magical glue, binding him tightly to this home and this soil.
Night deepened. Only scattered lamps and the cool moonlight kept the village’s outlines and order from dissolving. Joey helped Mia wrap the leftover sticky-rice cakes with care, and the two of them tiptoed to hide them in the corner of the woodshed. Eight years had slipped by; he was no longer a newcomer. He had learned to light fires and cook; learned to identify wild greens; learned to massage a cramping old ox’s leg tendons; learned to climb onto the roof and patch weather-worn tiles with mixed clay. More importantly, he had learned how to guard this small, personal home—awkwardly perhaps, but with steadfast resolve.
Around midnight, a nightmare clamped down on Joey without warning. In the dream, he was thrown back into that burning city bus! Scorching flames licked his skin; the reek of char and smoke mixed with the crack of shattering glass and the hopeless screams of people—it stabbed into his eardrums like needles. Joey jolted upright on the kang, forehead beaded with icy sweat. His thin shirt was soaked through; his heart thrashed in his chest like a startled bird battering its cage.
Outside, heavy, chaotic footsteps and terrified shouts erupted!
Joey threw on a coat. Mia was already awake, clinging to Mother like a frightened little animal.
He pushed open the window—and his pupils tightened to pinpoints. The distant sky was washed blood-red by a strange, ominous glow! The fearsome roar splitting the night was no thunder. It was clear, human: shrieks of agony and the shrill clash of weapons striking metal on metal!
“Hey! Folks of the Old Fang house! Bandits—bandits are here! Heaven help us! Run!” Old Li next door pounded their door like a madman, voice trembling so hard the words fell apart—each syllable dripping with pure terror.
Joey’s heart sank. Mother crushed Mia to her chest, voice sharpened thin by the effort of suppressing fear. “Sheng-er! Don’t you go out! Listen to me! Listen to your mother!” Her words quivered, almost pleading.
But Joey didn’t hesitate. Faced with a bandit slaughter, waiting quietly only led to a single road: death.
“Father! Mother! Get dressed, quick! I’m going to look outside. I’ll be right back!” His voice was low and urgent, taut as a drumskin stretched to breaking.
He yanked on his outer jacket, eyes sweeping the corner. He snatched up the sickle leaning against the wall, its edge winking coldly—and without another beat, sprinted for the gate.
The moment he burst into the yard, he shot off like an arrow loosed from the bow, racing toward the pillar of fire clawing at the sky. He cut through several bends of the village path. Cresting a dirt rise, he nearly crashed into Er-Gouzi, who was fleeing from the village entrance like a hunted animal. The boy’s face was chalk white, steps stumbling. His voice had been shredded by too much screaming. “Hua-zi! Run! Run! Bandits! Lots of them! I saw them with my own eyes—they’re heading for your house!”
“Damn!” Joey’s gut clenched.
“Er-Gou, go! Find somewhere safe! My father and mother—and Mia—are still in the yard. I have to get them out!” Joey’s voice rasped, each word dragged up from his throat with effort, quivering like a tight wire plucked by fate. Brow knotted, he shoved the panicking boy off to the side of the path and, without a flicker of doubt, wheeled around and tore back toward his home.
The instant he rushed through the gate, the sight before him made his eyes go blood-red. The yard was a wreck—chickens squawking, dogs scattering. Two burly bandits were bellowing as they kicked over tables and stools, smashing whatever they could, howling and laughing like beasts toward the inner room.
The door to the inner room stood wide open. Through the smoke, Joey saw Mia pinned hard against the dining kang table by a man with a hideous face and leering eyes. The brute’s filthy hands were yanking at her collar; the upper half of her clothes had been torn away, exposing a stretch of pale skin. A nauseating grin twisted his face, excitement warping his features into something monstrous.
“Mother—!” Rage ignited in Joey, blasting through the last dregs of reason. He charged the inner room like a maddened bull, sickle raised high, throwing everything he had behind a killing stroke aimed squarely at the man’s back.
The brute flinched at Joey’s sudden rush—but his reaction was lightning fast. Instead of fear, cold contempt slid across his face. At the instant the blade fell, his thick arm flashed out; an iron vise of a hand clamped down on Joey’s wrist. With a vicious yank, he twisted—swift as a snake. Agony ripped through Joey’s wrist. The sickle shuddered, its trajectory wrenched off line. With a sick, muffled thunk, the gleaming point—slammed back by brute force—drove deep into Joey’s own chest.
Indescribable pain drowned him in an instant. Air vanished from his lungs. Suffocation and tearing agony dragged darkness over his eyes. Warm blood burst like a broken levee from the wound, soaking his clothes red in a heartbeat. Strength poured out of him with the blood. His knees buckled; he crumpled to the floor like a puppet with its strings cut, unable to move at all. Through the blur, he saw Mother hurl herself at him, sobbing, arms shaking violently as she gathered his head to her. Her voice broke into a wail, words tumbling out, raw and hoarse as she cried his childhood name: “Sheng-er! My Sheng-er!” Off to the side, a bandit hoisted Mia like a chick; her shrieks keened out—hysterical, beyond human.
“Brother! Brother!” Mia’s scream, brimming with despair and helplessness, stabbed Joey’s pierced heart like a white-hot needle, a pain deeper than any in his flesh.
He opened his mouth—to comfort his sister, to tell Mother not to cry, to curse those damned bandits—but his cracked lips only trembled. What came out was faint as the last whine of a snapped string: muddled throat-sounds, blood bubbling into a useless gurgle.
Above him, rafters aflame threw a warped, spinning light across his failing vision, turning into a round, devouring disc. Boundless darkness surged in like a tide; his consciousness rocked and slipped.
At the razor edge where life was about to gutter out—
A cold voice stabbed into the deepest part of his mind.
【Detected: host entering near-death state…】
【Core protocol activating…】
【Binding Life-from-Death System…】
【Talent module loading: Life-from-Death】
Joey’s awareness caught for a beat. That voice… unfamiliar, and yet uncannily, eerily familiar—as if it drifted from some hazy, long-buried corner of his previous life, sounding with crystalline clarity right here, in the blood-churned cage of his chest.
Next, a tingling—like a weak current—sprouted from the depths of the mortal wound in his chest and spread inward at speed.
It was strange—not quite pain. It carried the illusion of flesh knitting by force, of bones clicking back into place deep inside, as though the wound were being repaired by some incomprehensible power. The suffocating torment of breathing eased a hair beneath the bizarre sensation; the heart-rending pain seemed split and pressed down by an unseen force, turning dull and numb—and yet stamped more clearly along the ends of his nerves.
At the same time, lines of characters glowing with a faint, ghostly blue flared across the dark of his mind like cold data-streams:
【Loading host information…】
【Name: Joey】
【Host ID: 17989 】
【Physiological age: 16 (complete retention of original-world memory)】
【Core talent: Life-from-Death】
The icy voice never paused, continuing in an utterly flat tone: “First near-death event detected. Triggering talent safeguard mechanism. Calibrating fate parameters… re-anchoring life coordinates…”
In the yard, fire still raged unchecked. The pop and crackle of burning wood, the bandits’ wild laughter, the villagers’ distant wails, the wrenching groan of collapsing beams—all wove together into a symphony from hell. Mother’s scalding tears fell like snapped pearls, sliding down her despairing face, one after another, splashing onto Joey’s cold hand; yet each drop seared his senses like flame. Clutched in a bandit’s rough fist, Mia still kicked and writhed, howling with everything she had, calling her brother’s name again and again until her voice was shredded. That raw, piercing cry was the last echo of the human world Joey heard as he sank into the abyss of dark.
