Xun woke up cold. A wet morning chill had seeped deep into his body, leaving everything miserable before Xun opened his eyes. It was an absolutely rotten way to wake up, and the last time he had felt this way was when he had been a mortal, three hundred years ago.

He kept his breathing even, pushing back the anger that rose within him. He wouldn’t let his tormentors gain the satisfaction of seeing him in agony. At this point, it was no longer about pride. It was pure spite. Xun would die with a smile on his face, no matter what his disciples threw at him. Once called the genius North Mountain Sword, Xun never expected to spend his last days in such a sorry state. But when he failed to go beyond the Consecration Realm, his disciples had turned on him, crippling him and taking everything from him, his spirit swords, his storage ring, and even his sect.

Truth be told, Xun was disappointed to wake up this morning. When he closed his eyes the night before, he had embraced the darkness. Sought it out even. His disciples had taken everything of value from Xun, but they left behind a couple of ordinary trinkets. One of them was a regular jade dagger from Xun’s own master that held no zhen. But zhen-filled or not, it was enough for Xun’s purposes. He was sure that he had stopped his heart using the dagger.

But here he was. Alive and miserable.

“To cultivate is to have courage. To spill blood. To venture above the skies or below the eighteen floors of hell. But courage without awareness is a recipe for disaster.”

“Pidao, you think words like that absolves you from what happened here? You let the most promising student of the entire year attempt the Lightning Path when there was a High Foundation zhen elemental in the path.”

“I understand your feelings, Senior He. But we can’t always be there to guide the choices of our disciples. More cultivators die from blind courage than all the other causes combined. In some ways, Xun’s misfortunes are a warning to the rest of the students, many of whom showed rather impressive talents.”

“You just traded a talent that could have grown to the Consecration Realm for… mere Foundation disciples. You know as well as I do that a single Consecration Realm cultivator can devastate armies of Foundation Realms cultivators.”

“Senior He, I’m sorry to put things so blunt but I don’t believe checking the cultivation level of the zhen elementals was one of my assigned responsibilities.”

“The sect just lost a future elder, and all that you want to do is talk to me about responsibilities? Have you no shame?”

“Senior He, all that I want to say is that traditionally, the most senior member of the entrance exam is responsible for the maintenance of exam equipment.”

“Are you saying that this is my fault?”

“Of course not. But perhaps we could chalk this unfortunate occurrence up to happenstance…”

“Elder Pidao. I’ve heard enough. I’ll report this matter to the sect leader. He’ll mete out the corresponding punishments. In the meantime, I will be at the top of the paths, welcoming those who successfully passed and ensuring that such an incident doesn’t happen again.”

Xun tried to make sense of the ridiculous conversation. And he might have made some headway if not for the pain that came with the cold. His head felt like it was being sawed in half. Every time he breathed, tiny needles of agony sprouted in his chest.

Instinctively, Xun tried to draw a couple units of zhen from his aperture to alleviate the pain. A second later, his expression turned to utter confusion.

Somehow, all of Xun’s cultivation was gone. Not just gone, his aperture was now a solid rock. There wasn’t a single unit of zhen left in his entire body. He was no better than a mortal who had never cultivated.

None of that made any sense.

Xun slid his hand against the ground. Instead of soft fabric, rough stone scraped against his skin. Wherever he was, it wasn’t the bed he was expecting. He cracked open his eyes just enough and found a blue sky above him. A couple more glances revealed that he was lying on a stone path.

They dumped me at the side of a mountain?

For a second, the absurdity of the situation overwhelmed Xun. His own disciples had decided to no longer even make the pretense of caring for him. They had thrown him out like he was some kind of animal, to live and die by the whims of nature.

Before Xun could lose himself in the fury, a small crack sounded from somewhere behind him. A moment later, he felt a stinging pain hit his leg. He flipped to his side to see what was attacking him.

A cloud?

For a second, Xun failed to recognize what he was seeing. There was a white blob, well-defined and heavy at the bottom, bobbing up and down behind him. The edges of the thing were a darker gray while the middle was a soft white.

After a moment that felt like an eternity, Xun’s mind finally began working, piecing together the clues from the previous conversation he had heard. The cloud looked similar to a zhen elemental, a type of zhen being that very rarely appeared in the Northern Continent.

They moved me to a mountain and sent a zhen elemental to assassinate me?

As Xun stared at the cloud and tried to work his tired brain into trying to understand what his disciples had planned, a new conversation found its way to his ear.

“Disciple Zeran, did you see what that old dog just tried to do?” Xun recognized this as one of the two voices from the earlier exchange.

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“I’m sorry, Elder Pidao, I didn’t.” Xun heard a new voice, this one female.

“That’s okay. You’ve been relatively sheltered as an alchemist and haven’t had to deal with the politics of the sect. Hetain rushed down the mountain and faked his anger in hopes of cowing me into taking the fall for what just happened on the Lightning Path.”

“I see.”

“But I caught on to his tricks. He failed the sect by forgetting to check the paths. That’s not my responsibility.”

“I agree.”

“See? I knew you’d understand, Zeran. When the sect leader asks you about what happened, I’d appreciate it if you could repeat what we just talked about.”

“Of course.”

“Good, good. We smiths and alchemists need to stick together. The meatheads that only know how to fight don’t understand our struggles. Hetain thinks that because he has the backing of the sect leader, he can do whatever he wants. But the sect leader isn’t an emperor. Even he can’t go against hard evidence or popular opinion. We’ll show him the truth.”

“We will.”

I’m not dead. If the conversations weren’t enough of a clue for Xun, then the pain was pretty good evidence. There’s no way that the afterlife is this painful.

A wild joy ran through Xun as he realized that fact. On his deathbed, Xun realized that his spirit weapons, the sect he founded, and the spirit stones he hoarded meant little. In life, they were useful, shiny, and beautiful, but they meant nothing to someone on death’s door. The eternal darkness had a funny way of making most things seem unimportant.

All that mattered was life. He would have given all that he had to be healthy and attempt the Lord Realm again. The only thing he wanted to do was to take one more step closer to eternity, to see the view from a higher height.

I reincarnated, Xun concluded. Keeping an eye on the zhen elemental, he folded his feet underneath himself and pushed. His vision almost went black as he fought through the ice in his joints to stand up. A gust blew into Xun and his shredded clothes fluttered in the wind. There was a giant hole on his chest where the cotton robe had burned away.

Slowly, Xun made a stance, crossing his arms in front of his chest. Dead or alive, cultivator or not, he was going to fight to his last breath.

But before Xun could charge forward, a wave of memories slammed into him. For a second, it was all he could to just breathe and clutch the core parts of himself. It was like he was being bombarded with a spirit attack, except instead of needles of pain, he was getting giant boulders of random memories.

“Elder Pidao, did you see that? Xun is still alive!” The female voice sounded again, and the hope in her voice kindled something within Xun’s chest.

“Well, I guess his life vitality is a bit stiffer than most people’s. But it doesn’t matter.” The aged voice plunged Xun back into the bitter cold. “His spirit channels are likely damaged. I’m not sure if it’s luck or misfortune that he’s still with us.”

“Could we help him?”

“And risk the wrath of the lightning zhen elemental? There’s no point. The kid’s spirit channels are already broken. If he’s truly that tough, let him climb out of there himself.”

“Xun’s the first student to attempt the Lightning Path in four years. That must mean something.”

“Yes, it does mean something. Did you hear what I said to Hetain? To have courage without awareness is a fool’s errand. Cultivation is not child’s play. The path to eternity is not meant to be taken lightly. Greed, the act of trying beyond one’s abilities, has slain more cultivators than every other sin combined. It’s better he learns his lesson here than later when he’s already consumed the sect’s resources.”

“But –”

“Zeran, you might be on the verge of becoming an elder. But there are some things that comes with experience.”

“What if Xun reaches the top of the path? Do we still accept him as an Inner Disciple?”

“Hah Zeran, you’re still too kindhearted…”

Amidst the barrage of memories, Xun strung together a couple of memory snippets that explained his situation. He had indeed reincarnated, taking the body of a mortal who was also named Xun. The previous owner of the body was trying to enter a cultivation sect called the Nine Thunders Sect. After passing the first two tests with flying colors, he had fallen victim to the third and final stage, the elemental paths. All Xun needed to do was reach the top of the mountain and he would become an official disciple of the sect.

Reincarnation wasn’t a far-fetched idea in the cultivation world. Plenty of cultivators, especially demonic ones, would steal their disciple’s bodies to extend their lifespan. Usually, these plans took years or even decades to execute. Xun had never heard of someone accidentally reincarnating like he somehow had.

Before Xun could figure out his strange situation, the lightning elemental got tired of waiting. A blue lightning bolt arced out of the bottom of the cloud and splashed against Xun’s arms in the blink of an eye. The robe’s cotton sleeves instantly burned away, leaving only skin to weather the rest of the attack. Xun curled his hands into tight fists as the electricity found a way to deepen his pain, his fingernails dug so deep into his palm that blood began to trickle down his arms.

As Xun stared at the zhen elemental in front of him, his hand itched for a sword. Even though he had abandoned the sword path later in his cultivation, his old habit of using a sword to solve problems stayed behind.

On a narrow path, the courageous one emerges victorious. Xun pulled his thoughts together and shoved the previous owner’s memories into a corner of his mind. Before he could regret the decision, he charged forward.

The elemental seemed almost stunned by the audacity of the mortal. It stood in place as Xun closed the distance. Even Xun himself was stunned by how easily his body moved. There was none of the joint aches or muscle softness that he had grown accustomed to in his previous life. Despite the pain, he could feel that his body underneath was strong, powerful, and solid.

Accelerating the last few steps, Xun tore into the cloud with his fists flailing. If he remembered the texts correctly, zhen elementals were the classic example of heavy offense, weak defense. The only question was whether Xun’s non-zhen enhanced attacks were going to be enough.

They were.

Each punch he threw tore a tiny fragment away from the cloud. The zhen elemental launched a couple of feeble counterattacks, cracking arcs of lightning against Xun and burning away yet more of his robe. But nothing could stop Xun from finishing his victory. It wasn’t long before the zhen elemental was nothing more than a light fog.

Xun stopped for a moment to savor the feeling of victory and turned to head up the mountain path. The end of the stairs was in sight, only had a minute or so worth of climbing left. His legs were strong, and his breathing was even. The gift of youth.

As Xun rose higher, a new cloud began to form in the mist behind him. Unlike the previous lightning elemental, this new elemental was jet black with sparks of purple flittering across its firm surface.

A hidden sixth sense within Xun screamed before the attack came. He spun around, arms up. But it was too little too late. A crash of thunder resonated across the mountain as a thick purple bolt snapped out of the lightning elemental and slammed into Xun’s chest.

The strike seemed to take everything out of the cloud. Wisps of smoke escaped from its sides as it grew smaller, and even the purple sparks were gone.

But it had accomplished its goal. Xun tumbled down the stairs. Each time his body hit the ground, a new splotch of red was added to the steps. When he finally came to a stop a dozen steps away from the path’s entrance, he finally understood what the first conversation was about.

Why in the nine-skies is there a High Foundation zhen elemental on a sect entrance exam for mortal?