I felt a cold shiver tear through my spine as soft flecks of snow fell softly onto my face. I opened my eyes to see an endless night sky and bare tree branches reaching over me like a woodland coffin.

Suddenly, I became acutely aware of a noise behind me. I turned around to see a pair of eyes on the same level as my own despite laying down, he was standing inside a deep hole with a shovel in hand.

Before I was able to comprehend the current situation, the man dropped the shovel in shock and scampered out of the hole, losing his footing several times in his attempt.

I shook my head, what kind of situation have I brought about? Usually the recently dead bodies I occupied in my reincarnations were lying in a comfortable bed with a worried somebody looking melancholically out a window or crying at my feet.

I forced my legs to bend and pushed myself up. The snow crunched as I shuffled towards a tree. It groaned in protest as I trusted my weight to its frosty trunk.

My head span as my newly acquired body regained bodily function. Immediately I noticed that I was severely wounded. There were several bruises all over my body and a couple of lacerations that worsened with my abrupt movement.

My eyes drifted to the indent I had left in the snow and noticed the deep red colour that stained the crystal white snow. “Fuck…” I muttered uncontrollably.

First I tore threads out of my tattered clothing and then imbued it with what little qi this body possessed. I pierced a flap of skin with the thread end and began to sew the wound together.

I continued to stitch my two wounds without worrying about the man trying to bury me coming back. If he came back, then so be it. If I did not stitch this wound now I would surely die again anyway.

With hope in my heart and pain invading my mind, I finally pulled the last stitches closed. Slumped against a tree, I waited as long as I dared for some energy to return to my body and then began to crawl in the opposite direction of my gravedigger.

I realised all too quickly that a trail of disturbed snow and leaking blood was not going to do me any favours, but, without any other choice I continued.

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I crawled until my knees and elbows bled. I tried my hardest to keep my wounds closed but I could feel the stitches straining with every movement. My ragged steamy breath was becoming weaker and weaker as I finally gave up on the prospect of finding help.

I forced myself up against a tree again as I began to prepare for my last option for survival. A breakthrough in my cultivation. I began to cultivate, circulating the stagnant qi within my body.

My body was still in the first stage of cultivation. This was a given as it was a requirement in the reincarnation procedure. After all, once the body entered the second realm, they began to cultivate soul-qi unique to them.

I had neither the time nor the presence of mind to look through this body’s memories so I could only wonder how the boy was still in the base realm. I began my desperate cultivation, hungrily consuming qi from my surroundings and refining it within my dantian.

A few times my body would start to wilt and my consciousness would drift away only for me to frantically regain control and continue my endeavour.

I was relatively close to a breakthrough when I began and I could feel that the body had been struggling with a bottleneck. I burst straight through it as if it was not there to begin with and began the breakthrough.

I could feel death’s fingers emerge from the icy ground. With one last push I felt my body explode with soul-qi. Suddenly light flashed through my dantian and I tensed my body in anticipation.

The pain roared forward unceasingly. The two wounds that were openly leaking large quantities of blood were forcefully closed and the vast amounts of internal bleeding was finally quelled.

I bit down on a small branch I had snapped off the nearby tree to stop from passing out. Eventually I parted my eyes and looked at the wounds. They were still a mess but no longer a life threatening issue.

I tilted my head upwards and heaved out a sigh, letting the snow fall quietly on my face once again. Unfortunately I was still not out of the woods, the trees around me seemed far more threatening now than before. With the smell of fresh blood permeating the air and my complete inability to fight back I was no doubt top of the menu for any nearby carnivore.

Without testing my luck, I began crawling again. My body, which was not bleeding anymore, was instead enormously fatigued from the breakthrough. I grunted with every movement, the terrain worked to put me through as much additional pain as possible as my legs dragged over rocks and brambles.

Finally, through the now heavy snowfall, I saw a light. It shone brilliantly as if calling me towards it. I realised there were a great many things this light could belong to and that most of them were potentially bad for my continued survival but at this point it was a chance I was willing to take.

I called out. After hearing my voice once I realised how quiet it was. I empowered my voice with some qi and called again. Darkness began to swallow me as I called over and over, continuously dragging myself towards the light.

Then I passed out.