First Chapter: A whole lot of running away

Xing Ying woke up shaken, laying on a bed of dust and dead leafs he was taken aback by the heart wrenching pain he experienced.

His body ached and his mind trembled, a deeply rooted chill assailed his insides and a scorching heat of an injury tormented his outside, yet, he was clear for a few moments like he never was before. But not for long.

Memories started pouring in like a torrent of nasty sewage water, flooding his once calm sea of mind and quickly corrupting him… spoiling his once timid and healthy mind.

Xing Ying trembled, two personalities fought over control with great agitation, yet one was fading and the battle did not last long, and there he laid, victorious yet feeling defeated.

His mind indeed felt better, yet deeply defiled. It was akin to an innocent child suddenly overloaded memories of his adult self, the innocence was long gone but the memory of how it felt to be pure lingered, and it stung so bad to know how defiled you were.

Inwardly Xing sighed with contempt and sorrow, feeling wrong and evil.

Xing was after all a reincarnated person, he was no criminal or crook in his past life, nor was he a rapist or murderer, he never stole and never cheated, even being a productive member of society, or so the elegy said…

Xing however was one who lurked avidly in the deep dark corners of the World Wide Web, for dozens of years he was exposed to everything the darkest minds could offer, seeing all the filth that floated around in there and then some, entrainment they called it.

His new body by the same name was born and raised in a completely different world however, there was no internet and there was no news, there was not even a communication device invented, it progressed to much the same degree as a medieval earth was and except rampant murder it was clear of most deviant subjects as a whole.

In a body of a young person at least twenty years his junior, and a virgin at that, he couldn’t fathom how pure and innocent the remains of the psyche he encountered were.

A cold gust of wind assaulted his naked body, as the soul had no obstructions it and the body fused more perfectly by the second and the information flowed more clearly between the two.

At that point Xing just noticed that the original occupant of the body was long gone, he didn’t simply commit suicide like Xing himself did, but imploded his soul, leaving only scattered remains that were quickly dissipating, adding to that the help from Xing himself and soon it'll be gone completely, erased forever from the cycle of reincarnation.

Xing noted that method for total oblivion as a good outlet for his frustration, one that didn’t throw him back into the cycle of reincarnation like his suicide attempt at the previous world did.

What followed was a very painful experience of discomfort as the memories settled in and filled all the blanks like a crude and problematic jigsaw, teaching Xing language and common sense of this new world and all the miscellaneous things he will from now instinctively know.

Finally he settled completed into the body and his vision as well as other functions resumed work, more pain immediately followed.

Xing's body was covered with cuts, shallow lacerations oozing still-fresh blood, he wasn’t dead for too long and the injuries were clearly due to soul extermination arts, a nasty form of suicide usually accompanied with a strong outburst of energy. Basically, suicide bombing.

Memories bubbled up and Xing found out the original plan was to explode in the middle of the sect and take the few cocky bastards who picked on his former body owner on a joy ride to hell, going out with a flashy exit.

The only problem was a young miss he was quite in to, showing up in the middle of the act and causing him to give up on the mass killing, to die quite plainly and peacefully… others took him for a fool who couldn’t actually follow through with even petty revenge, some even wondered if he was too dumb to pull off a suicide attempt and just had a severe mistake while cultivating, or so he heard as his body drew its last breaths. . .

"Oi! Soul destroyed due to cultivation? Cultivation is dangerous!" the absurd possibility clouded his mind and blocked off the visons flashing through his mind of the occurrence, lighting up a red light bulb in his head to the dangers of cultivation, one he quickly turned off, he did commit suicide not too long ago after all.

Xing stood up wobbly, he was in the middle of a wasteland, a special location meant to serve as a drop off point for bodies of useless cultivators to act as feed for the wild beasts in the area, all in hopes that the unique energies on the bodies will aid the beasts growing into more formidable creatures, ones which could in turn be used in cultivation, a way to make use of the useless.

"Oh that right…" Xing remembered, the main cultivation norm in this world was to train in some form or another of secret technique, circulating the inner latent energy along the body, and while doing so had a good effect on the body, only by integrating with a "Spirit" which was once a strong beast, and slowly having the energy of it affecting your own, bring about unique characteristics to it could one draw out true power.

A quick rifling through memory and Xing found out his cultivation technique was the most basic freely available one "Invisible Force", ranked as one star normal.

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

His spirit came from a beast known as "Little Horned Boar" which was a beast ranked two stars normal.

The ranks were as follows, each stage had nine stars, and the first of said ranks was the normal rank.

In all aspects he was nothing special, but Xing was not going to stand for this and soon plans of changing the situation started to emerge.

What place was better to hunt for beasts than this wasteland? It curried minimal reward yet with his spirit and cultivation he was like an overlord for normal starless beasts.

Cultivation had many levels, some said it was an endless road while others insisted some final destination, regardless Xing was in the second level of the first stage "Hallow Husk", which had in total nine major levels.

Rustling sounds sounded around him, many pairs of red eyes appeared suddenly in the darkness around him and howls, roars, grunts and calls immediately emerged as the beasts grew excited of some fresh new prey which still had it in him to stand.

This… was not quite a situation where Xing could style himself an overlord, he could take any beast one on one and could still imagine himself hanging on when faced with three, surviving against four and being able to run away safely from five, but he counted fifteen pairs of eyes with ease as his heart sunk and he stopped counting.

"Damn it, fuck!" he cursed loudly in his heart as his body refused to speak, the beasts started to enclose him in a circle.

"What could have attracted so many?" he asked himself, covered with blood from head to toe from all the shallow cuts, stinking of blood and out in the open, how they found him was indeed a great mystery… only to him.

Xing did what he was best at when he was young in his original world, when faced with strong opponents he took in a deep breath of cold air and steeled his heart, then, explosively released all his strength into his strongest muscles and unleashed his greatest might! His legs hit firmly and strongly as his body arced with flexibility, relentlessly his legs hit at the poor ground and he began to run away.

Thinking that he could outrun beasts who run on four while using a body half dead and suffering from loss of blood. That was a great idea from the house of the great creator of great ideas, Xing Ying.

It wasn’t two minutes and he already leaned on a log gasping for breath, though for some reason he had not lost consciousness yet, the beasts easily followed him around, seemingly enjoying the hunt.

Without any other options Xing took a deep breath and started to circulate his inner energy in the way that his body remembered, immediately he executed the cultivation technique Invisible force and thin strands of invisible force started to appear around his body, collecting slowly into a fist sized orb.

A few of the beasts felt oppressed by the strength he exerted, they quickly run away in fear of injury and in search of a less dangerous prey, preferably dead one.

The other part of the bunch was the stronger ones who were close to growing into a one star ranked beasts, there were about ten of them, consisting of five wolves and four lions, as well as a single odd ox.

The brave lions charged at him fiercely, four mighty beasts that could crash stone in their sharp maws, and somehow Xing was calm, this was a quality that the previous owner of the body had, however timid he was and however scared, he was always calm, never running away from a fight he could win.

Xing drew his hands in an arc from both sides, as his calm body executed perfectly the movements that the panicked mind tried to emulate, two palm strikes hit two lions mid jump as they were about to paunch on him, sending them flying and crashing into one of the other lions.  

Xing let loose and didn’t fight the strength he unleashed for balance, instead letting it pull his legs off the ground, while he fell he executed an odd angled kick which hit squarely at the chin of the remaining tiger, causing his jaw to shut tight and his teeth to break.

Falling head first into the dirt Xing quickly rose up to his feet, ready to deal with the five remaining beasts, only to see that two of the wolves were already upon him, ready to claw him… to make matters worse, three of the lions were already back on their feet, roaring in anger.

As if a real bomb went off the invisible force orb exploded as one of the wolves bumped into it, sending flesh and blood all over the battlefield, shocking all the beasts nearby, even Xing was amazed by the might of the technique, standing there like a fool for a few moments before taking advantage of the confusion and running away again.

Naturally none of the beasts followed.

Xing found himself a nice cave and stationed himself there, picking a few types of fruits he knew from trees nearby he stockpiled himself a good amount, with that he entered a meditation period in order to understand his power better.

"Lucky bastard, imploding his soul actually did wonders to his strength, from the earliest stage of level two Hallow Husk realm he jumped to late stages of the level, getting close to its peak." Xing could feel the energy stored inside his body far exceeded what was before he himself got into the body.

That was the reason for the spike in power of that force orb he unleashed.   

Xing started to circulate his latent energy around his body…