Xun wasn’t dead. Even if the rest of his body thought so.

The pain was worse than anything he had experienced before. Not even the agony of the Thunder Tribulation could compare. It was like getting bitten by a thousand Lava Ants from the inside. Although Xun kept his eyes open, the world had gone black on him. All he could do was focus on his breathing.

If he took any more of those lightning bolts, he was going to die. Again.

Xun pulled his knees as close to his chest as he could and crawled forward. His body was numb from the pain and electricity, but he still felt a brief moment of free fall. His heart dropped. Then, he heard a thump as his body hit solid ground.

The zhen elemental followed. Although it was now a full size smaller than before, it was still happy to shoot lightning bolts at its prey. Taking aim at the stationary human on the ground, it tossed a light blue bolt.

Xun took the pain with his jaws clenched shut, waited a few seconds, and pushed his failing body forward, tumbling down another step. There was no way that he could possibly climb to the top of the mountain. His best hope of escaping the zhen elemental was getting to the bottom and praying that the cultivators would stop the elemental from leaving the mountain path.

While waiting for the shock to subside, Xun looked inside his body. His spirit channels were ravaged, a mess of gaping holes and twisting paths. Not a huge surprise given how much pain he was in.

He focused his attention on the silver hue of the channels’ walls and the fact that his aperture, sitting right below his stomach and connected to the spirit channels, was unopened. Once an aperture was opened, nothing short of total destruction could close one again.

Without cycling zhen, Xun had no way of knowing how severe the damage to his spirit channels was. His best-case scenario at this point would be falling a single level to Shale tier spirit channels.

Spirit channels was everything for a cultivator. It determined how much zhen they could retain after each cycle of the cultivation scriptures. Those with Chalk tier spirit channels were doomed to be a mortal for the rest of their lives. No sect would accept them as anything but laborers who would be forced to work for meager cultivation resources.

Another lightning bolt came and Xun threw away those thoughts. There would be a time and place to think about his spirit channels later. Right now, if he didn’t escape, those bolts would fry his body.

Xun waited until his muscles thawed and shifted forward. He felt himself fall before landing on yet another large stone slab.

How many of these steps are there?

Tilting his head forward, Xun saw that there were seven more steps between him and a patch of grass that he hoped was the outside of the thunder soul’s activity range. It was such a small distance but it felt like a impossible gulf. Xun had to fight back the darkness and desperation creeping in at the edge of his vision as he forced himself forward.

You can do this. Xun clawed forward with his left arm, grabbed onto the nosing of the stone step, and pulled himself onward.

Six steps left.

As if sensing Xun’s resolve, the lightning elemental dropped another bolt. Xun tasted metal in his mouth. Something, somewhere, was bleeding.

Patience. I need to be patient.

Xun closed his eyes, trying to preserve every ounce of energy he had. Trying to distract himself from the pain, he began to think back to his past life. After a promising start, he had wasted his potential, only reaching the Consecration Realm. He should have been able to get to the Lord Realm, and perhaps even further than that.

I failed because I was arrogant. Because I was a sword cultivator, I beat everyone at the same cultivation level as me and began to challenge cultivators who were one to two stages above me. After each fight, as I savored the glory bestowed upon the victor, I ignored the wounds and scars in my body. When I faced the second Thunder Tribulations, those wounds reopened. My arrogance cost me dearly.

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Xun dropped another step and weathered another attack from the zhen elemental. His body felt heavy, and his heart itself was tired from fighting all of the shocks.

Five more steps.

“Xun? Are you okay?” A new voice sounded. Xun opened his eyes and looked in the direction of the voice.

His sight had returned and he found the vague outline of a person two hundred steps away, half obscured by the red flames dancing around the mountain path. If it weren’t for her voice, Xun would have never guessed that the figure was a girl. She yelled again, “I believe in you!”

“Xun’s alive? Please let that be true.” Xun looked beyond the girl to find a young boy on a path full of green shrubs and giant plants. The boy had a slender physique. “Xun, I promise I’ll come help you.”

As the other students realized that their friend was still alive, they also shouted out words of encouragement.

Xun didn’t respond to any of them and closed his eyes.

Fights weren’t the only reason I failed. I was distracted. I started a family, I founded a sect, and I spent time enjoying the finer parts of life that were unrelated to cultivation. All for nothing. I thought that helping others would build a legacy. But the moment I stopped being the all-powerful cultivator and became another old man on the verge of death, they all turned on me.

The thoughts left a bitter bile in his mouth, washing out the taste of iron. With a renewed vigor, he heaved forward.

Four steps.

Another lightning bolt splashed against Xun’s back. All he wanted to do was to curl up into a ball and sleep, letting the sweet darkness take him. Before the defeatism could seep any further into his thoughts, he bit down on his tongue. The new pain cleared his mind and gave him energy to drop another step.

Three steps.

It didn’t even feel like he was moving his own limbs anymore. His mind was sending signals that his body sometimes didn’t obey. In his past life, age had robbed control over Xun’s own body. He had worked around that. He could work around this, too.

After two centuries at the peak of the Consecration Realm, Xun had reached the end of his life. He had only a few months left to live. The only two ways to extend his life were to either consume a lifespan pill or to finally advance to the Lord Realm.

He couldn’t afford the pill, especially when he was supporting his entire family and sect’s cultivation. So he chose the riskier path of undergoing the second Thunder Tribulations.

At that point, he no longer cared about the power or fame that would come to those in the Lord Realm. All he wanted was to live longer, to watch more sunrises, and to inch further along the path to eternity.

More than the fights and the distractions, the reason why I failed was because I didn’t have enough time. I could have succeeded if I had more time to gather spirit stones, formations, runes, and more. In the end, I was pushed to the tribulations because I ran out of time.

That thought was enough to breathe new life into Xun. He counted to five and mustered all of his strength into a backward punch.

The zhen elemental had flown lower and lower, thinking that Xun wasn’t a threat. Xun’s punch caught it right in the center. Pushing off the soft elemental, Xun tumbled down another step.

Two steps.

All Xun needed was to keep his momentum. He was close enough to the end that it would have only taken a few seconds to get to that patch of grass. His legs made a valiant effort to push his body forward. But before he could drop down another step, Xun felt every hair on his body stand up.

A moment later, Xun was crushed into the ground by a violet lightning bolt. Every organ in his body simultaneously gave up under the immense pressure and stopped functioning.

Xun’s arms fell limply by his side. He knew that they were damaged in some way but didn’t have the energy nor the desire to understand how they were hurt. He couldn’t even feel his legs. The only part of his body that was even remotely close to operational was his mind.

I reincarnated to die to a zhen elemental? What was the point of all this? Are the skies playing a game on me?

Against the onslaught of negative emotions that threatened to overwhelm him, Xun found a glimmer of his past self. The person that he had been before the years washed away his edges and made him dull.

I’m Xun. The sword prodigy of the Northern Continent. I’m not going to fail here. My life is not in the hands of skies. I will choose my own fate.

Xun tapped the anger within the thought to crawl forward and dropped down another step.

One step.

He could see the grass in front of him, so close that he could smell the sweet and sharp scent. Xun called upon every bit of energy to keep moving, creeping his hand to the end of the path.

Another lightning strike landed on Xun. The attack was far weaker than the earlier ones, but it was the final nail in the coffin. Xun’s outstretched hand dropped to the stone. It was the end, he had nothing left.

A bitter smile formed around Xun’s lips as he opened his eyes for one last look at the world. His second death place was a pretty one. It wasn’t stuffy or cramped. There were endless blue skies, graceful green grass, and murderous white clouds.

The last thing Xun saw before darkness took him was a slim, pale hand reaching for him.