Having run through the empty streets in the darkness of the rainy night, he found himself in front of a barricade with uniformed guards on the other side. Some held dark objects, possibly weapons, while others had bows.
Ren didn't stop to consider things and ran closer. The people there noticed him and allowed him to pass alongside a few others.
"You people have been marked; the offense is not leaving the ghost zone within 10 minutes of the warning. Next time you do it, you will be fined 300 credits." a soldier—or so Ren guessed—came forth and said to the four people who came out along with him. Unbothered about the rain crashing on his green helmet with a solemn look on his face.
They nodded with downtrodden expressions. It was all of their first warning, gone with a puff. Ren couldn't understand the language, but he still nodded.
"You may stay here and wait till the ghosthouse is sealed, or you can leave." The soldier said his final piece and walked back to the temporary camp with an emotionless face.
Rain in the area was like a curtain that made everything unclear, faint sound of thunder could be heard occasionally. Ren glanced at the soldiers. They were all wearing a different type of attire from what he was used to.
Sighing to himself inside at the strangeness of his situation, Ren then glanced at the four who came with him—clearly relaxed after moving past the barricade. To him, all four of them looked like beggars in comparison to the soldiers. Their clothes were tattered and all muddy and dirty. Soaking in the rain just like himself.
Maybe they were beggars.
Before they could bring up a conversation with him and cause trouble, he left. The soldiers didn't bother with them either.
As he walked away with unhurried steps, his gaze moved around. Everything was different from how it was supposed to be. Something suddenly caught his eye, and he stopped.
It was an unusual sight: a door that doubled as a mirror, reflecting his own disheveled face illuminated by a solitary streetlight. Looking back at him was a young boy, his face smudged by dirty and sticky water, dressed in rags worse than those he had dismissed as beggars earlier. His hair was an unusual shade of grey, matching a pair of bright but now grimy eyes. He appeared no older than 16, fragile, and vulnerable.
Quickening his pace, his heart pounding, he walked away. Soon, Ren found himself in another alley similar to the one he had been in before and entered it. Immediately, he leaned on the wall and breathed heavily. 'I was reborn, I was actually reborn. In the body of another person at that!'
He struggled to calm down but pushed the anxiety down and looked around, he knew he should try and get a grip on his own emotions lest he end up doing something stupid. Seeing a ladder, he decided to climb it.
The rhythmic thumping sounds of the steel ladder and the slippery hold he had over it made his heart even more chaotic, he was really reborn in a different body!
The upper area was even darker. And as he got a foothold there, he could feel his barriers slowly start to crack.
From this vantage point, he could see the soldiers in their matching uniforms. Surrounded by massive lights coming from some bigger metal carriages, Unfortunately, a building obstructed his view of the ongoing fight.
The reflection of his body flashed back in his mind.
Breathing rapidly, face wet with sweat and water, Ren looked into the distance with a pale face. 'I was reborn into the body of a true human, someone with real emotions and feelings. Someone just like me.'
Until now, he had been instinctively avoiding the topic but he could do that no more.
His heart started to thump with guilt and disgust. To possess a human body? Wasn't that the same kind of thing as the demonic practitioners he shackled into dungeons did? Wasn't it even worse than what they did?
Isn't this the type of demonic practice the temple absolutely abhorred?
He breathed heavily for a while, puffed out all the air in his chest, and breathed some back in. He struggled to calm down the guilt and mixed emotions rising in his chest but he knew he had no choice but to somehow calm down.
'Calm down!' he said to himself, gently biting his tongue. Then, he looked into the distance for a long while relaxed ever so slightly, and sat down. Forcefully calming himself.
'What master said was right, when confused about something, always climb tall walls and look down. It's the best way to calm down,' he held back another choke and thought.
He then softly closed his eyes, acutely aware of his profound vulnerability. In his understanding, individuals without influence or power were often mistreated. His survival, even now, was mainly based on the kindness of the person who had saved him with the blood arrow. Once was lucky, but he didn't plan to let his life be determined by the flow of luck anymore.
He didn't know what kind of situation he was in and he wanted to know without putting himself at risk — the easiest way he knew to do exactly that was to cultivate Martial Arts. To bring some of his former martial might back into this unknown body.
As he closed his eyes, in the darkness, his master's gentle and beautiful face came into his memories. Teaching him the way of Martial Arts. His heart once again painfully tightened.
...
On top of Mount HuaFeng, the plum blossoms gently floated in the morning sun's light.
"Martial Path begins by sensing the dormant 'Innate Qi' in your body, Ren. Only once you do that does your path begin," a woman said, her voice as serene as water but filled with amusement.
"Fairy Miss, what do I need to do to sense innate qi?" he asked curiously.
"Don't call me fairy miss," she laughed, her voice filled with even more amusement. "I am your master now, Ren, you are my first disciple."
...
Wu Ren gently connected his hands in a seal as the memories ate away at him. To sense Qi, another martial artist had to help the non-martial artist trainees to open their "Mind's Eye". But he didn't need that.
He knew what it was like to have an opened "Mind's Eye" and he already knew what sensing Qi felt like. As he tried to think of that good old feeling, his body started to vibrate slightly in a unique, soundless rhythm.
The world started to feel warped as flecks of colorless 'qi' came to his 'senses'. But they were ephemeral and he quickly lost the feeling. He couldn't quite catch it.
As usual, time started to move in its eternal pathway, and the rain seemed at the end of its cycle. But even as the cold touch of water stopped tickling his nerves, he didn't feel it. All of his senses were focused on the small flecks that appeared and vanished in his sight.
It seemed impossible to catch one. Yet, he didn't give up and tried to catch the sensation of qi.
Then, as sudden as it was, he felt his eyes open to the immense amount of 'Natural Qi' around the world. It was like the breath of the world itself —as Martial Masters liked to call it. It was everywhere, transparent, beyond ordinary, and overwhelming in quantity like a wave of majestic wind that laid dormant in the atmosphere.
Immediately after, he also sensed the densely locked energy inside his own body — his innate qi. It didn't move or flow like the Natural Qi or his own Innate Qi used to in his past life, but it was Innate Qi nonetheless. At its beginning stages of might, as it might be.
As the sensation became clearer and clearer, his muscles suddenly tensed, and veins visibly bulged as the fine hairs on the back of his neck stood up. It felt like a sudden surge of electricity as perspiration seeped from his pores and mingled with his damp skin. It was the sensation of innate qi meeting what was beyond his own body, Natural Qi.
He could now sense the qi and use it to strengthen his body in any aspect.
Even though it didn't flow, it could still enhance him in its original place. Innate Qi in the finger can only enhance the finger and can't flow into the fist, but it could enhance the finger. And he had some bit of qi in every part of his body.
That also meant his "Mind's Eye" had opened to the world and he could now sense qi. That was the fundamental thing needed to call someone a '3rd Class Martial Artist'.
The first step in the martial path.
He opened his eyes with a clearer gaze. The darkness of the night faded away and the light was slowly shining from the east, the gentle sunlight piercing the dark clouds as his mind grew calm.
The morning was soon coming, the soldiers in the distance were no longer there but the barricade hadn't been removed yet. The sound of water trickling down from rooftops and landing into puddles flowed in the wind.
There was no longer any use in whining, he had been reborn and revived in a different body and that meant one thing—one thing that he had missed earlier—that meant reviving the dead was a possibility.
If so, his path now was to either find whether his family was alive or if not, find a way to revive them. Just like he had been revived. Dying somehow was no longer an option.
'There must be clues in my own current situation on how to achieve this seemingly impossible task,' He thought, filled with resolve he had never bothered enough to conjure.
He looked at the rising sun and kneeled on the floor. "…Sorry, Master. Your disciple might break some of his vows."
Even though he felt disgusted at himself for possessing a body as young as sixteen. if it was possible to revive them, he didn't plan to let his conscious or the Temple's rules bind him anymore. He didn't mind being hypocritical in this and using some scum-like humans as sacrifice if he could somehow revive them.
But just as he was about to stand up in search of clues, he found an almost invisible set of extremely unique letters infront of him. They weren't clear at first before the letters rearranged themselves into a clearer version of themselves with a simple blue frame of light appearing behind them.
He sat back with a stunned face and looked at the screen, his heart thumping.
[Stele of Sources has completed its fusion with the Celestial Source of Wisdom.]