"Haah... haah..."
Inside a poor thatched house, a boy lay on the ground, his chest rising and falling heavily.
He appeared to be around 15 years old, with unkempt black hair reaching his neck, black eyes, and an ordinary face that could easily blend into a crowd.
'Shit, shit, shit, shit!' His mind raced as he tried to steady his breathing.
'Why am I so unlucky?' he thought, feeling aggrieved.
Just thinking about the mess he was in, he knew his second life could end at any moment.
As he reflected on his new existence, memories flooded his mind.
He, Chen Ping, had originally been a normal 21-year-old human from a planet called Earth. One day, while walking home after buying groceries, he was chatting with friends on his phone, head down, paying no attention to his surroundings.
Engrossed in the conversation, he suddenly heard people shouting at him. Curious, he looked up—only to see a truck speeding straight toward him. Before he could react, it crashed into him. A wave of pain overwhelmed him, and his consciousness faded, the last sounds he heard being frantic shouts and rushing footsteps.
After that, everything blurred. Time lost meaning, his thoughts muddled and unclear. When he finally regained awareness, he found himself reborn in the body of a newborn baby.
To put it simply, he had been fortunate enough to experience Truck-kun's one-way reincarnation service.
But unlike other lucky time travelers reborn into royal families, noble households, or even normal families, he had been born into a poor home. His mother, was a young woman with brown hair, black eyes, and a slightly skinny frame. His father, was a young man in his twenties with a weary face, black hair, and black eyes.
The first few years of his new life were torturous. He had to be cared for by his mother—whether it was feeding or relieving himself, a humiliating experience for a 21-year-old soul trapped in a baby's body.
As he grew, he learned to walk, talk, and understand the common language of this world. Through this, he discovered his parents' names—Chao Xing (mother) and Chen Bo (father).
They lived in the slum areas of Blackwood City, a city in the Peng Kingdom. His father worked at the docks, earning just enough to keep their family afloat, while his mother was a housewife who occasionally made extra money by knitting handkerchiefs and taking on odd jobs.
Though their life wasn't stable, it was at least comfortable. But everything changed when he was about five years old. One day, a group of people arrived at their home, carrying the mutilated corpse of his father—his body missing several parts. They claimed he had been killed during a monster attack at the port.
The news shattered his mother, leaving her in despair. Though their marriage wasn't deeply affectionate, they had still shared an emotional bond. As for him, there was nothing he could do—trapped in the powerless body of a five-year-old, all he could do was brace himself for an uncertain future.
With the little money they had, he and his mother held a simple funeral for his father.
After his father's death, their already poor family fell into even deeper poverty, forcing his mother to search desperately for work. Eventually, she managed to find employment as a servant in a wealthy household in the inner city.
This brought a fragile sense of stability to their shattered lives.
With his immediate struggles momentarily eased, Chen Ping turned his attention to something that had been bothering him—the term monster.
Contrary to his expectations, learning about them wasn't difficult. A few casual questions revealed that monsters were exactly what he had imagined—beasts with supernatural powers and intelligence. In Blackwood City, most major monsters came from the river outside the city, frequently attacking workers at the ship ports.
But in addition to monsters, he also learned about supernatural beings within the human world—cultivators.
Among them, the strongest were like gods, capable of destroying entire cities with a mere wave of their hand. Even the weakest could single-handedly defeat dozens of ordinary people. The first step in cultivation was known as the Body Refining Stage, but beyond that, no one he spoke to knew much.
Digging deeper, he discovered that Blackwood City, being relatively small, had only a few hundred cultivators in total.
Knowing this world was home to powerful cultivators left Chen Ping feeling both excited and uneasy. He realized that if he didn't become one, he could end up just like his father—at the mercy of forces beyond his control.
Determined, he began asking around about how to become a cultivator, only to be met with teasing looks. People told him the nearest cultivation sect was several weeks away by carriage—an impossible journey for someone like him. Even if he ignored his young age, the cost of travel and the lurking demons along the way made it an unattainable goal.
There was another option: becoming a servant under a cultivation family in the inner city. Some of these families occasionally granted their workers a chance to cultivate. But this path came with immense risks—one's life would no longer be their own. In such an environment, even a minor offense could mean death at the whim of a haughty young master.
Knowing he couldn't change his situation, Chen Ping decided to focus on something else—finding his cheat, the kind most time travelers were born with. He tried everything: shouting for a system, meditating to awaken a hidden soul of agrandpa or powerful weapon, and randomly touching objects in hopes of triggering a reaction. If there had been a cliff nearby, he might have even considered jumping off it just to test his luck.
But in the end, it was all a waste of time—he got nothing.
Next, he turned his attention to improving his family's life, just like other time travelers did—creating soap, perfume, or similar goods. But without money, labor, or proper knowledge, those plans crumbled before they could even begin.