The mountain range stretched endlessly across the world, spanning thousands upon thousands of miles. Towering peaks rose sharply against the sky, some cloaked in thick mist, others dressed in ancient forests that seemed to glow with faint spiritual light. Crystal-clear rivers wound through deep valleys below, their waters shimmering like liquid jade as they sang gentle melodies through the stone canyons. Rare flowers bloomed on the mountainsides, their petals shining in colors that did not exist in ordinary lands. The very air itself felt alive, charged with energy and possibility. This was a cultivation world where the earth breathed with power, where mountains held secrets of immortality, and where every stone and tree carried the weight of ancient magic.
At the foot of one such mountain, three young men walked along a narrow forest path. The sun was high above, casting dappled shadows across the ground through the thick canopy. Two of the youths were no older than twenty, and their voices rang out with laughter and life. They chatted happily, their faces bright with youth and confidence. The third figure was very different. His body slumped limply across the broad shoulder of the taller youth, completely limp and unconscious. Blood dripped slowly from his wounds, staining his torn robes. His skin was pale, and his breathing shallow.
"Senior brother," the shorter youth said with a cruel smile, "that fellow was really bold, wasn't he? Thinking he could ever marry senior sister Su."
The tall youth carrying the injured boy nodded slowly. "Who else but our senior brother Chu Feng could deserve someone as beautiful as lady Su? No one in the entire sect can match him."
The first youth laughed, a sharp sound that echoed through the trees. "That cripple tried so hard to stand in brother Chu Feng's way. Look where it got him now — completely crippled for life. He'll rot here in these mountains until some hungry beast finds him and eats him. What a fitting end."
The second youth grinned widely. "Chu Feng's cultivation speed is terrifying, senior brother. Just three years ago, he was nothing. A talentless nobody. Now look at him — he has already broken through to the Foundation Establishment realm. The Yu family was so smart to abandon that fool and support Chu Feng instead. That boy is going to rise to great heights."
Their words carried the weight of truth. The injured youth they carried was Yu Xuan, once a proud disciple of the Heavenly Gate Sect. Though his talent was low, his family was powerful, and he had grown arrogant because of it. Three years ago, everything changed when Chu Feng appeared — a boy who was just as talentless initially, but who had somehow awakened to incredible potential. Chu Feng rose through the ranks at an impossible speed. Within months, he was chosen as a master's direct disciple — the highest honor a young cultivator could receive.
The Yu family saw opportunity in this. They began to distance themselves from Yu Xuan and moved closer to Chu Feng, hoping to benefit from his rising power. When Yu Xuan tried to challenge Chu Feng to maintain his status, he was soundly defeated. In that fight, Chu Feng had been ruthless. He destroyed five of Yu Xuan's meridians, crippling him permanently. The sect proctor watched it happen and did nothing, even warning Yu Xuan's father not to interfere.
That was when the Yu family made their final decision. They officially abandoned their son.
After walking for what seemed like hours, the two youths finally reached a particularly remote area of the forest. They stopped and unceremoniously dropped Yu Xuan's body onto the ground like he was a sack of vegetables or waste to be discarded.
"Senior brother, let me check what valuables this cripple has," one of the youths said, kneeling beside the unconscious form. He reached for the small storage pouch tied at Yu Xuan's waist. The pouch was no larger than a fist, but when the youth flipped it upside down, an incredible amount of items spilled out onto the forest floor.
Hundreds of small blue crystals tumbled out with a soft tinkling sound. Spirit stones — valuable currency and energy sources for all cultivators. Along with the stones were two books, old but well-preserved, their leather covers worn from use.
"Senior brother," the youth said with genuine surprise in his voice, "look at all these spirit stones! There must be hundreds here!"
The tall youth bent down to examine the scattered items. He picked through them carefully, his expression thoughtful. "Not unexpected," he said slowly. "Until a few hours ago, he was still the son of a major family. Though honestly, this amount is low compared to what he should have had. The family probably cleaned out his storage before they threw him away."
He picked up one of the two books and opened it carefully, scanning the pages. "Oh? What unexpected fortune. Look at this — this technique is an intermediate level martial technique. This is actually worth quite a bit." He showed the pages to his companion, excitement flashing in his eyes.
Then he picked up the second book and opened it. His face immediately twisted in disgust. "And this one is just an unranked Qi molding technique. How worthless. This is barely worth the paper it's written on."
With a sneer of contempt, he tossed the second book carelessly back onto Yu Xuan's unconscious body.
The two youths quickly gathered all the scattered spirit stones, stuffing them into their own storage pouches. They worked efficiently, not wasting any time. When they finished collecting everything of value, they stood and prepared to leave.
As they turned to go, one of them glanced back at the broken figure lying on the cold ground. "This guy's as good as dead," he said casually. "But I'm still wondering — why did senior brother Chu Feng insist on dumping him so far away? We could have just killed him back at the sect."
The taller youth began walking, and his companion followed beside him. "Senior brother Chu Feng wanted him to feel true despair," he explained. "When this cripple wakes up — if he wakes up — he won't know where he is. He'll have no clue which direction to go. He'll try to find his way back to his family, only to discover that they've completely abandoned him. Let him spend his last days struggling to survive in this wilderness, lost and alone. That's a more fitting punishment than a quick death."
The first youth's eyes widened with realization. "Senior brother Chu Feng is really ruthless. I didn't think he would be so cruel."
"That's why he's going to become powerful," the taller one replied simply.
Both youths reached into their storage pouches and pulled out paper talismans. They spoke words of power under their breath, and the talismans burst into brilliant light. In an instant, they vanished, teleported away using a transportation formation. Only the faint scent of burned paper remained.
The forest fell silent. No sound but the wind through the leaves and the distant calls of birds.
Yu Xuan's body lay motionless on the ground. Hours passed. The sun moved across the sky. No one came. No rescue appeared. To any outside observer, it looked like the end of a young life.
But inside that broken body, something was happening.
A consciousness stirred. A soul that did not belong to this world was slowly waking up.
This soul was Rehan Blake. On Earth, Rehan had been an engineer working for a large corporation. He was an orphan who had lost his parents ten years ago. The only family he had left was his younger sister, who was nineteen years old. He worked hard every day to provide for her, to give her a better life than he had experienced.
Then one day, while walking home from work, his heart simply stopped. He felt no pain, no warning. One moment he was alive, and the next he was not. He never even knew what killed him.
Now his consciousness was trapped in this alien body, in this strange world. And his memories were a complete mess.
One moment, Rehan remembered his life on Earth — the hardship, the struggle to raise his sister, the long nights studying engineering to get a better job. The next moment, memories that were not his own flooded his mind. Memories of Yu Xuan's life — a life of privilege but also loneliness, of arrogance but also fear, of power that was now lost forever.
The two sets of memories clashed and merged. Engineering knowledge mixed with cultivation techniques. Earth's streets mixed with fantasy mountain ranges. His sister's face mixed with the faces of sect disciples he had never met. His own death mixed with Yu Xuan's defeat.
For what felt like an eternity, the two souls wrestled inside the body, trying to integrate, trying to make sense of each other.
Finally, after nearly an hour of internal chaos, Yu Xuan's eyes began to flutter open.
His vision was blurry and distorted. The world looked like it was moving underwater, everything soft and unclear. He tried to move his arms, but they felt heavy, so heavy, as if they were made of stone.
He tried to speak, but the words that came out were strange and unfamiliar. Sounds that resembled hissing more than human speech. He blinked, confused by the noise that came from his own mouth.
Then a clear thought formed: "Ah... now I am a Chinese cultivator."
He accepted this with a tired sigh, as if he had already lived through this transition mentally. Inside his mind, he now possessed all of Yu Xuan's memories and knowledge. He understood what he was, where he was, and what had happened to him.
This body belonged to Yu Xuan, a young man from the powerful Yu family. He had been born with low cultivation talent, but his family's wealth and status had made him arrogant anyway. He believed that no one could touch him, that his background made him untouchable.
But three years ago, everything changed.
A boy named Chu Feng, who had been even less talented than Yu Xuan, suddenly awakened to incredible potential. Chu Feng's cultivation speed was impossible to explain. He advanced through the ranks at a pace that defied all logic and reason. Within a short time, he was chosen as a master's direct disciple.
Seeing Chu Feng's rise, Yu Xuan became jealous and angry. He picked fights with Chu Feng, challenged him repeatedly, always expecting to win. But each time, he lost. And each time, Chu Feng's superiority became more obvious.
Then came the final fight. Chu Feng defeated Yu Xuan completely and destroyed five of his meridians. The damage was permanent. Yu Xuan's cultivation path was blocked. He could never advance past a certain level now.
When Yu Xuan's father tried to demand justice, the sect proctor refused to help. The proctor warned him that interfering would only make things worse. Faced with this reality, the Yu family abandoned their son. They decided that Chu Feng was the future, not Yu Xuan. They cut off all support and resources.
Then they threw Yu Xuan away, using a teleportation formation to dump him on the opposite side of the continent. He was so far from home that even a healthy cultivator would take months to travel back. A crippled one like him could never make the journey.
After struggling for about ten minutes, Yu Xuan managed to move himself enough to lean against a nearby tree for support.
He looked out at the forest around him. The sun was beginning its slow descent toward the western horizon. Sunlight filtered through the leaves in beautiful patterns. A gentle wind blew, rustling the branches softly. Birds chirped in the distance. Somewhere, a stream babbled over smooth rocks. It was beautiful and peaceful and utterly indifferent to his suffering.
Yu Xuan sat there quietly for a long time, thinking about everything. His mind was full of conflicting thoughts and memories.
He thought about his sister on Earth. He would never see her again. She did not know what happened to him. To her, he had simply vanished one day. That thought brought a sharp pain to his chest, worse than any physical wound.
But then he thought about the hardships he had overcome on Earth. He had been poor. He had worked terrible jobs. He had gone hungry many times. He had fought hard every single day to make sure his sister had food and shelter. He had done impossible things just to survive.
This situation was no different, he thought. It was just another impossible challenge.
He looked down at his broken hands. The injuries were still there, still painful. His meridians were still damaged, still blocked. He was still crippled, still abandoned, still lost in a wild forest thousands of miles from help.
But he was still alive.
"I don't know if I can get back to my family," he said quietly to himself, his voice hoarse and weak from disuse. "I don't even know if they would want me back anyway."
He paused, taking a shaky breath.
"But I won't die here," he continued, speaking each word slowly and carefully. "Not today. Not tomorrow. Not until I understand what I'm supposed to do next. I'll survive long enough to figure that out."
It was not a grand declaration of future power or revenge. It was not a confident promise that he would become strong again. It was simply a quiet statement of fact — a decision to live, one day at a time, one moment at a time.
With great difficulty, he patted his torn robes, searching for something. Yu Xuan had always been careful about keeping healing pills separate from his main storage pouch. If he was lucky, there might still be some left.
His fingers found a small jade vial tucked into an inner pocket. He pulled it out carefully and held it up to the fading sunlight.
Inside the vial were three white pills. Each one was valuable enough to purchase a small house in an ordinary town. Each one could heal moderate injuries and restore energy.
With trembling fingers, he opened the vial and swallowed one of the pills. The taste was bitter and slightly sweet at the same time. It faded quickly, but the warmth that spread through his body was immediate and noticeable.
His breathing steadied. The sharp pain in his chest dulled to a dull ache. His racing heartbeat slowed to normal. The pill was working.
He sat back against the tree and closed his eyes, letting the medicine do its work. The forest sounds continued around him — birds, wind, water. The natural world, uncaring and eternal.
Yu Xuan did not know what tomorrow would bring. He did not know if he would survive the night. He did not know if he would ever heal, ever become strong again, or ever find his way home.
But he knew one thing with absolute certainty: he would not give up. Not today. Not while he still had breath in his body and life in his soul.
That was enough for now.
That would have to be enough.