001 – Reborn

It is said that when people face death, they will recall everything that has happened in their life, especially their mistakes, regrets, what left them the most unreconciled. Yang Chen was experiencing this right now.

The first thing to flash through his mind was, after he had been framed, desperate, wanting to explain but having no way to speak, the main perpetrator loudly hooted right in front of Yang Chen, and Yang Chen, seriously injured, had no way to resist.

“I’m the killer, I did it, and so what? Who will believe you now? You’re the murderer!” Yang Xi’s malicious smile was exceptionally clear to Yang Chen’s eyes: “I’ll tell you, I leaked the information, I invited the Greatest Heaven Sect’s young master, I killed him, I framed you, and so what?”

“You bastard!” The seriously injured Yang Chen was basically unable to confront Yang Xi head on, and could only rail at him.

“What manner of creature are you? Are you suited to have the Ten Thousand Year Vermillion Fruit? Don’t you see your reflection in a puddle of piss?” Yang Xi laughed coldly: “I accused you before the Greatest Heaven Sect, said you coveted the young master’s Vermillion Fruit, and assassinated him. The Greatest Heaven Sect rewarded me with the Vermillion Fruit, and chased you to kill you. If you want to blame someone, you can only blame yourself for not understanding the world, and not obediently handing over the Vermillion Fruit to me back then, wouldn’t everything have been fine if you did? A lowly type born from my family’s tenant farmers, how are you suited to possess the Vermillion Fruit? How do you dare refuse my requests?”

……

The second to appear was the scene of Yang Chen’s beautiful master, forced by the Greatest Heaven Sect master to be used as his practitioner stove, vowing to die rather than obey, committing suicide.

“Yang Chen, go, go far, far away, don’t think about avenging me in ten million years, survive, go!” The look of farewell in his beautiful master’s eyes was so clear in Yang Chen’s mind, even when facing death, Yang Chen could feel such heart rending pain.

“Master, blame me for everything! Blame me for implicating you!” Yang Chen knelt before his master, crying bitterly.

For the sake of one Vermillion Fruit, Yang Chen had been framed by Yang Xi and had now even implicated his sect. The Greatest Heaven Sect master had unexpectedly discovered that Yang Chen’s beautiful master actually had a rare postnatal full spiritual root, and had immediately decided to turn her into his practitioner stove. Four yuanying cultivators from the Greatest Heaven Sect had surrounded the Pure Yang Palace, now leaving no road in the sky nor door into the earth through which to escape.

“Yang Chen, go!” His beautiful master’s eyes were firm, without the slightest ripple. With a Greater Blood Escape Technique, Yang Chen was sent outside the encirclement, and with his final glance at his master, he saw the scene of her detonating her yuanying.

“Master!” Yang Chen’s miserable howl reached dozens of li.

……

The third scene that appeared was just after Yang Chen had ascended. Before painstakingly cultivating until he could finally ascend, Yang Chen had thought he could finally take revenge, but he hadn’t expected that, in the end, he would only be by himself, and confronting a great sect like the Greatest Heaven Sect, he was still without means, and, in the end, could only ascend. However, after ascending, he had still encountered the Greatest Heaven Sect’s sponsor in the spiritual world and immortal world.

“You ascending is still too much of a waste, I’ll let you stay as an example to others, to let them see the conclusion to offending me!” The former Greatest Heaven Sect master, now the Profound Heaven Sect vice master, sneered as he looked at Yang Chen, and placed him under a restriction.

Everyone could see Yang Chen’s miserable fate after they ascended, but the Profound Heaven Sect’s influence was great, and nobody dared object. Besides, the one suffering was Yang Chen, everyone only learned from his example. And Yang Chen suffered in this way for thousands of years.

……

But very soon, Yang Chen’s memories turned to his happiest scene, that moment he received his first flying sword from his beautiful master.

“Yang Chen, I’ve specially refined this Bright Light Sword for you, take it properly, and cultivate diligently!” His master’s slender jade fingers held that Bright Light Sword and handed it to Yang Chen. That instant was the happiest moment in Yang Chen’s road of cultivation.

The scene froze, and Yang Chen couldn’t help screaming miserably with the burst of heart rending, lung tearing pain in his body.

“Aaaa……”

A long, miserable shriek echoed from Yang Chen’s throat, filled with strong unwillingness, scaring everyone around him to jump.

“What person dares make a racket here?” A furious shout resounded, soon followed by the lazy appearance of a human silhouette, who immediately looked at the bewildered Yang Chen in the crowd.

“Causing such a racket before the monastery gate without reason, and being so rude before even entering, there’s no need for you to participate in the spiritual root test today!” Yang Chen didn’t even have time to clearly see what the person who appeared looked like before he swung a wide sleeve, sending Yang Chen soaring uncontrollably high into the air, hands and feet swinging, flying far away.

Yang Chen fell heavily to the ground with a loud thump, unable to get up for a long time. But this pain also let Yang Chen understand that he was still alive.

He had survived old devil Yi’s Greater Demonic Body Explosion Technique? What was a little bit of pain to a pleasant surprise like that? When, ecstatic, Yang Chen was just about to circulate his profound power to heal the pain, he discovered that there was unexpectedly not a shred of magic power within him.

With great alarm, practically not daring to believe it, Yang Chen mobilized it once again, but there was still no trace of activity. Could he have lost all his magic power? In great trouble, heart racing, Yang Chen recalled the overlooked circumstances of the scene just now. Monastery gate? Spiritual root test? What was that?

Yang Chen now discovered that he was no longer at the devil punishing battlefield in the immortal world, but rather in an extremely unfamiliar place. His surroundings was verdant hills and limpid water, mist rising in spirals, seemingly a good place to cultivate.

Struggling to his feet, Yang Chen discovered that he was dressed in rough plain clothes, something bulging painfully at his waist. Touching it, he discovered a sharpened wood cutting blade.

Boom, Yang Chen’s mind exploded like a thunderclap, coming to a realization in a flash: these were the circumstances of when he participated in the Greatest Heaven Sect’s spiritual root test. Unexpectedly, when he was struck by the Greater Demonic Body Exploding Technique, he had not only not died, but even returned to his childhood.

“This is outside the Greater Heaven Sect’s gate in the mundane world!” Seeing those distant once familiar people with all kinds of expressions, Yang Chen was certain, he had been reborn. The reason those people looked both familiar and not, was because enough time had passed to forget them, a full ten thousand years.

However, however much time passed, it still wasn’t enough to eliminate Yang Chen’s hatred for the Greatest Heaven Sect. Yang Xi had entered the Greatest Heaven Sect, and later killed the Greatest Heaven Sect’s young master, but blamed it on him. And all his later suffering, everything that happened later, was all related to this sect.

Having gone from a great principal golden immortal back to a mundane mortal, Yang Chen didn’t know how to describe his feelings besides hatred. He could only be certain of one thing, no matter how he put it, he was still alive. A hundred thousand celestial troops and generals had fallen and disappeared, but at least he was still alive, and also alive at the moment he most looked forward to.

The person who punched him was very skilled at hitting ordinary people, at least Yang Chen could only stay seated, unable to stand for a very long time, as if something was tying him down. Only when the first batch of several dozen the people he had come with walked out of that decorated gate arch did Yang Chen feel his body relax, finally able to stand up.

“Really unfortunate!”

“Failed this year again, ai!”

……

A series of sighing voices came from the crowd. When a few of the same generation from the same village as Yang Chen saw him struggling to get up, they ran over to help.

“Right, at least we still had the chance to try. Chen’zi was out of luck today, he didn’t even get a chance!” One young man seemed rather warm hearted, dusting of Yang Chen as he spoke.

“Fine, let’s go, we’ll go back!” Basically nobody had any chance today, and everyone naturally followed when someone took the lead: “We still have a month on the road, let’s go! Maybe there’s a chance next year!”

“Forget about it, an immortal destiny spiritual root is Heaven’s destiny, if it didn’t work this year, next year probably won’t work either.” On the road down the mountain, someone sighed.

“Don’t say that, spiritual roots will be obtained at a certain auspicious time. As the body grows, root bones will appear at some time, perhaps my time of growth will come this year, then I’ll have an immortal destiny spiritual root next year!” The speaker was naturally a person filled with hope for his own body.

“Yang Xi and Yang Lan were lucky this year, old master Yang will become even more dominant now. His grandson and granddaughter both have cultivation spiritual roots, he will walk even straighter in the village!” Along with disappointment, there was naturally also pride. Everyone also spoke with envious tones.

Yang Xi and Yang Lan. When Yang Chen heard these two names, dusty memories seemed to irresistibly re-emerge from the depths of his mind. Especially Yang Xi, who Yang Chen hated to the bone. If not for him, his master wouldn’t have been implicated. If not for him, Yang Chen wouldn’t have had to live a humiliating life of hiding his identity and relying on the charity of others, dodging west and hiding in the east. It might be said that at least fifty percent of Yang Chen’s misfortunes could be blamed on Yang Xi.

Fortunately Yang Chen had been reborn now, and also been reborn before he had began to cultivate. That meant that Yang Chen had countless opportunities. Walking behind everyone on the road back home, Yang Chen secretly made plans.

Yang Chen actually felt he was lucky to have been driven away outside the monastery gate because of his scream. Yang Chen didn’t know if he could have held back his anger if he really had confronted the people of the Greatest Heaven Sect. He didn’t have any magic power at the moment, and he wasn’t the opponent for even the lowest level disciple.

Yang Chen cared even less about not being chosen. With the memories and more than ten thousand years of cultivation experience in his mind, entering some sect or not was completely meaningless to him.

Even if Yang Chen was good for nothing in his last life, and even good-for-nothing when he had reached the world of immortals, in the end he had once been a great primary golden immortal. Of the sects in this mundane world, besides the Pure Yang Palace of his sect, how could any of them enter Yang Chen’s sight? How would Yang Chen be unable to step into the world of immortals by relying on the cultivation experience from his last life? At worst, even walking the same road as before, he could still become a great primary golden immortal again.

However, did he really want to walk the same old road as before? Framed by Yang Xi, hunted by the Greatest Heaven Sect, humiliated by the Profound Heaven Sect’s restriction? When this though scuttled through his mind, an extremely enticing idea appeared immediately afterward. Before old devil Yi exploded his body, he had told a lot of things to the equally dying Yang Chen, even including some devil methods old devil Yi had used to improve his spiritual roots before cultivating.

Old devil Yi had been on a rampage in the immortal world for centuries, tens of thousands of celestial troops and generals unable to do anything against him. Finally a traitor had sold him out, trapped in a net laid out by a hundred thousand celestial soldiers, then surrounded and stopped. But even then, old devil Yi had still massacred in all directions, creating rivers of blood. In the end, succumbing from his serious injuries, he had used the Greater Demonic Body Exploding Technique to take the hundred thousand celestial soldiers down with him.

The reason why old devil Yi could move so unhindered in the immortal world was that one of his five phases, the flame spiritual root, was a complete spiritual root. Luckily, Yang Chen knew this spiritual root upgrading method, he also had a flame spiritual root, and right now he still hadn’t begun to cultivate. Wasn’t this a heaven sent opportunity?

With the appearance of this idea, Yang Chen’s heart immediately began to race. Even back when he had ascended to the spiritual world, and then again ascended to the immortal world, he still hadn’t forgot himself in excitement like this. However, at the same time as excitement, there was also an awkward feeling of being unable to either advance nor retreat.

That was a devil method that relied on murdering people and absorbing their life essence to supplement his spiritual roots. He was a reborn great primary golden immortal, did he really need to cultivate devil methods? Back then old devil Yi had killed tens of thousands of people, did he really have to go kill tens of thousands to cultivate? With his ten thousand years of cultivation experience, it was impossible for his cultivation to be lacking. Killing people to feed his spiritual roots on one side, regular cultivation on the other, the two ideas turned round and round in Yang Chen’s mind, for the moment he was unable to decide.

“Have you forgotten? Yang Chen!” In his mind, a strict voice berated him: “Have you forgotten how your master was humiliated, how she committed suicide holding hatred? Have you forgotten how you were framed by Yang Xi, never able to clear your name? Have you forgotten how you were humiliated and treated like a slave by that arrogant Profound Sect fellow after ascending? Have you forgotten it all? You’ve already spent a life a loser, will you spend this life as a loser as well?”

“No!” Yang Chen gave a low shout, those bitter memories he had thought forgotten rushing into his heart in an instant. His master’s sad and beautiful expression when she faced death, Yang Xi’s pride after framing him, the contemptuous gaze of that lord in the immortal realm looking at him as if he was even lower than a dog, all appeared frantically before his eyes. Finally, he again remembered the moment his master gave him the Bright Light Sword.

“No!” Nothing was allowed to break the beauty of this moment. Unprecedented resolve was expressed in Yang Chen’s gaze: “Even if I have to carry the burden of even greater massacres, even if I become a unique monster, I will still protect you, I will still keep you happy and safe from now on.”

Having patiently endured for ten thousand years in his previous life, Yang Chen’s character was incomparably tenacious. After making his decision now, Yang Chen instantly calmed down. Looking at the tall Greatest Heaven Sect gate, he gave a cold laugh, then turned and left.

“Master, wait for me, wait for me to enter your sect again. The tragedies of my last life will not happen again.” Yang Chen shouted inwardly, like a vow: “In my last life you helped raise everything I had, in this life, let me help raise you to Heaven!”