Chapter One: The Fall from the Cliff

Evening lights began to bloom over the city.

Though it was already March and the end of the workday, the streets were crowded with people shrouded in bulky winter jackets. The clamor of car horns and hurried voices merged into a great river of humanity, all rushing toward their destinations. Towering, glaring streetlights illuminated the vapor of hurried breaths, which, together with the remnant, biting northern wind, cast a chill and indifference over Wennan, a city in the north—cold and aloof, just like the rows of withered trees lining the streets.

Slightly tipsy, Shen Junhuai once again climbed to the top of Mount Wanfo, to Xingguo Zen Temple, for this was the place where he and Lü Na had pledged themselves to each other as students. From the highest blue stone platform, he could see the building where Lü Na lived at the foot of the mountain; with a high-powered telescope, he could even make out the pink curtains in her ninth-floor room.

Shen Junhuai had served in the military for five years, nearly three of them in a special forces unit. Half a year ago, he received Lü Na’s letter of separation; just a few days ago, news of her impending marriage. He thought that time would dull the pain that tore at his heart, but when he received the call from a friend, the old wound bled anew.

So Shen Junhuai returned—not for revenge, but only to see whether she, dressed in a wedding gown, was truly happy.

He was not a model soldier. The year he failed his university entrance exams, he found his way into the army through his uncle, a captain, and was accepted into the special forces, thanks to good connections and a sturdy frame. Even then, he was a second-rate soldier in his unit, but his tolerance for alcohol and a certain boldness let him muddle through. He had told his girlfriend that, after earning a couple more medals, he’d apply for the military academy and then return to marry her. How fickle fate is! His girlfriend left with another man, and Shen Junhuai had, at one point, schemed up at least ten ways to get back at them. Of course, it was all empty talk; sometimes he thought that a harmonious society had saved that pair of traitors.

The second bottle of cheap liquor in his bag was nearly finished. As he stared at the pink curtain on the ninth floor below, lost in melancholy, the sound of footsteps rustled behind him. Turning, he saw an old monk standing before him, staring straight into his eyes, murmuring under his breath.

“Master, is there something you need?” Shen Junhuai thought to himself, is this monk deranged?

“Peace be with you! Young man, there is trouble in your heart. Would you speak of it?” The old monk’s eyes flashed strangely, then returned to serenity.

“Yes, you can see that too?” Shen Junhuai replied. But he found it odd—the monk had called him “young man,” not “benefactor” as monks usually did. “Thank you, Master, but I’d like to be alone for a while.”

“All beings are pure in heart; from the start, there is neither birth nor death. This body is but an illusion; in the midst of illusion, there is neither guilt nor virtue. Young man, go down the mountain.” The old monk’s lips curled into a slight smile, his palms came together, and he nodded slightly before turning away, still chanting softly, “All beings, in their myriad illusions, possess the wondrous enlightened heart…”

Damn, he really is a crazy monk. How baffling. Shen Junhuai’s head swam with confusion, and his unease only grew. He sat down, trying to recall the old monk’s words, but his mind was a fog. He sensed something was amiss. After a long time, he sighed deeply. The world is vast, but at this moment, there is no one he can confide in. Six years of love had come to an end. Today, seeing Lü Na’s face radiant with happiness as she stepped from the wedding car, he knew it was all over.

The bottle was empty, and so was his pack of cigarettes. Shen Junhuai staggered to his feet, shook his aching head, and decided it was time to go home.

He looked around—the place where he used to skip class to meet her. How many memories remained for him here? Was that tree still there? The tree where, all those years ago, they had carved their names inside a heart.

It was a cypress on the edge of a cliff. To reach it, he had to jump down to a broken stone ledge about a meter below the edge.

It was already dark. He crouched, feeling his way down with his feet. Stroking the smooth scar of memory on the trunk, he wept silently for a long time.

He didn’t know how much time had passed before cold crept through him. Strangely, his heart felt lighter. Bending down, Shen Junhuai moved aside a blue stone slab, revealing a hole beneath. Inside was a cord braided from red silk, threaded through two brass locks fastened together—their “locks of devotion,” buried here long ago. Looking at the locks wrapped in a handkerchief, he felt a bittersweet grief.

He gently wiped the rust from the locks, tore the red cord, and tied it around his own left wrist. The two locks he buried again beneath the stone. The handkerchief he set alight with his lighter and tossed over the cliff.

Time to go. Perhaps this was a new beginning. Shen Junhuai muttered as he felt for the stone steps with his right foot, preparing to climb up. But as his left foot left the ground, the stone under his right foot suddenly gave way. His cry of alarm barely escaped his lips before his face and chest scraped against the cliff, and he tumbled down. Before consciousness faded, he glimpsed the burning handkerchief, sparks flying.

At the same moment, a window in Xingguo Zen Temple overlooking the cliff snapped open. A visible beam of reddish-brown light shot out, seeming almost alive as it chased after Shen Junhuai’s falling body and pierced into his forehead.

Boom—boom. The pounding of his heart echoed in his ears. In some shadowy corner at the foot of the mountain, Shen Junhuai became faintly aware, though his eyes and limbs felt pinned under a thousand-ton weight, unable to move. Pain wracked his body. Chaotic colors and images flashed through his mind, each heartbeat a new wave of agony. At one moment, his body burned as though in fire; the next, it was frozen solid.

As his finger spasmed, fragmented memories and half-familiar faces began to flicker through his mind. Gradually, light crept into his eyes. “Where am I?” At last, he could see, and his thoughts stirred to life. “Still alive?” His body couldn’t yet move, but he could recall what had happened. Overhead were dense treetops, patches of blue sky visible through the leaves, and rocky slopes on both sides.

Suddenly, as Shen Junhuai struggled to breathe, terror seized him, for his memory now contained things that weren’t his own. It was as if he now inhabited the body of a twelve-year-old, in a place called Pingdu City, Fengling Kingdom, on the Xing Tian Continent.

“What in the world…” Shen Junhuai forced his eyes open, still dazed. Hadn’t he just fallen off a cliff? Thunder seemed to explode in his mind as he realized—was this the legendary transmigration and rebirth? His fear slowly gave way to excitement. He was alive! To live a new life was a kind of fortune. The past was gone; this life would be lived for himself.

His consciousness roared with confusion as feeling slowly returned to his body, though the pain persisted. He managed to sit up and, feeling no injuries, supposed it was because he’d just taken over this new body. His head still spun, but it was improving.

He re-examined his new identity: the boy in this body was also named Shen Junhuai, seventh son of the Shen family in Pingdu City. The Shen family was of middling status, one of many martial families on the martial continent of Xing Tian. The family head, Shen Aotian, was a low-level martial artist and deputy city lord. His own father, Shen Ao’s fourth son, had died in an accident, and his mother, Lady Liu, was frail and sickly. Perhaps he’d inherited these weaknesses, for at twelve, his martial cultivation was only at the first stage, while most of his peers had reached the fifth. He was thus bullied by other family members.

He’d come up the mountain with Uncle Huan, the family physician, to gather herbs for his mother, and had fallen off the cliff—whereupon he was possessed by Shen Junhuai’s soul. This realization was deeply frustrating. Others who transmigrated always seemed to get some special advantage, yet he’d landed in the body of a weakling. No use dwelling on it; he needed to find a way home.

Looking around, he found himself at the bottom of a bowl-shaped valley. He stood and found he could walk. His clothes were rough, like those of a Han peasant from the Han Dynasty—already torn and tattered.

His legs gradually recovered, and he walked through a forest of towering camphor trees, flipping through a herbal manual in his pocket and searching for the herbs his mother needed. Deep in the boy’s mind was a fierce conviction: only a mother truly loves her son, and he must provide for her. Mother and son depended on each other, ignoring the family’s scorn. All of his mother’s hopes were pinned on him. Relieving her suffering was, perhaps, this twelve-year-old’s dearest dream.

After a long search, Shen Junhuai found a tall cardamom tree on a hillside, its green, round fruits hanging like inverted bells—just as Uncle Huan had described, and the main ingredient for the herbal decoction. As he reached out, a fierce cold wind bristled his hair, and he instinctively dove aside. Two hairy claws slashed his shoulder.

“A second-tier Red-Furred Ape!” Shen Junhuai recalled Uncle Huan’s warning: these apes, companions of cardamom trees for over a century, had fur as tough as iron, sharp, venomous claws, and the uncanny movement common to spirit beasts. Their strength matched a second-rank human martial artist.

Panicked, he drew his iron sword and swung wildly, his stance unsteady. He was, after all, only twelve. As the ape spun and lunged again, Shen Junhuai took a heavy blow to the chest, muscles torn, his sternum caving in. The pain was excruciating, but at that moment, nearly thirty years of past-life memory flashed through the boy’s mind. Panic gave way to clarity. He reversed his grip on the sword, holding it above his head, and slid rapidly down the slope.

The beast leapt after him, but the thick brush on the hillside disrupted its aim, and several attacks missed their mark.

He slid nearly a hundred yards before tumbling into a pit beside a stream, landing on something soft and cold. In the sudden darkness, he looked up to see the Red-Furred Ape shriek and turn away. Relief was short-lived; something coiled tightly around his chest and throat, nearly suffocating him. In terror, his hands met something icy—it was a huge, flower-patterned python as thick as his thigh, constricting him. Breathless, his limbs grew numb, and his mind began to fade. Within a few heartbeats, Shen Junhuai was powerless, his gaze growing vacant. In the extremity of crisis, the python turned its head, its tongue flicking across Shen Junhuai’s cheek, the stench nearly making his eyes bulge. Instinctively, he bit down on the snake’s neck, and a foul liquid flooded his mouth.

Startled, the snake tightened its grip, and Shen Junhuai’s consciousness slipped away, his jaws locked by reflex. Unaware, he passed into darkness.