1 Chapter 1

Sky touching glass pagodas, speeding metal wagons passing by. Large amounts of people walking at the sides of the street.

'It's this dream again. Has it been this long already?' I thought while stretching myself on the hard-uncomfortable excuse of a bed.

'Well it doesn't matter'

I moved out of my bed, wore my robe and walked out of the small cottage I call my home. Moving outside one can faintly see the outline of twenty similar small cottages facing each other.

As I walked towards the training area on the far-left side of the of cottages, there was barley anyone outside, which was normal considering that it was about an hour before sunrise.

Reaching the training area, I started training the sects standard techniques. As I was fully immersed in my training, my mind started wandering into my past.

...

I was born or more accurately reborn roughly about 18 years ago. Not that being reborn matters much any longer. It's not like I remember much from my past life anymore anyway. Though, I still remember being excited about being reborn, about becoming a main character like in the tales I used to read in my past life.

I was quite disappointed when I realized that my parents were just simple farmers, after my mother carried me out to watch my father and brother working on the field. I even started crawling all over the house searching for a secret manual, refusing to believe that the family that I was born into were just simple farmers.

I stopped after not finding anything for a while, and just accepted the fact that I had been born in a simple farmers family not some fallen prominent clan. And if my mother's worried expression was anything to go by, she probably would have never let me leave her side any longer if I had kept venturing into dangerous places for a 1 year old.

My father on the other hand seemed to be happy and proud from the expressions he kept making while I was crawling about in my quest to find those non-existing manuals. I still hadn't managed to learn the language at the time, so I didn't understand what they were saying and had only managed to understand some words that I had picked up while listening and watching them in their daily life, it was quite hard learning a new language by just listening and watching people go about their daily life with the only words being actively taught to you are 'Mom' and 'Dad'.

Although I didn't manage to find any manuals, I still didn't give up on making something of myself in this life. I didn't want to waste the second chance I had been granted on living a simple life as a farmer, I didn't want my second life to be as normal and plain as my last, so I decided that if I couldn't become an Immortal I'll become a scholar.

After I finally managed to figure out the language, I started making some complicated sentences to talk to my parents. I still remember my parents overjoyed expressions when it turned out that their 2-year-old son turned out to be a genius, although I felt a bit bad as it felt like I had manipulated them, they weren't wrong though, I was technically still a child, and I still figured out a language on my own so there was that.

A few years after that I had not only managed to learn the language to fluency, but I had also started making use of my past knowledge helping my father organize the yield, and I also helped my mother manage the spending of house. My parents were convinced that I was a genius, and I had even garnered myself quite a reputation in the village especially among the merchants that come to the village once in a while, those guys hated when I was there haggling with my parents for the prices of our corps.

Although my relationship with my parents was great, my relationship with my brother wasn't the best, he seemed to be jealous of me and the attention I got from our parents.

At first, I tried getting closer to him, but as he showed no interest in my efforts I just started ignoring him too, but it seemed the more attention I garnered from our parents the more he hated me, so he started trying to make fun of the ideas I made to our father to improve the yield, but I just ignored him as I knew that those ideas worked it was even funny watching him get embarrassed when the ideas he had mocked worked, but that just seemed to frustrate him even more, so he just got harsher with his methods he would make harsher comments, try to push me around when he thought our parents weren't there and so on.

Of course, his bullying didn't escape my parent's attention, and they would reprimand him every time they caught him, but that didn't help but seemed to worsen our relationship, but I didn't care and just ignored him and his childish attempts at asserting his dominance

My relationship with my brother remained this way for a while, but things escalated further when talks about arranging for me to study under the village's scholar started, he started arguing with our parents about how he was supposed to be the one studying under the scholar as he was the older one, and he just started blaming me for all his problems, like seriously what was wrong with this guy he was already 14 years old and was blaming someone 8 years younger than him for his problems. Our mom tried to calm him down and reason with him, but he just pushed her away, and that was the wrong thing to do because he had finally managed to really piss off dad. My brothers screams of pain that day reached the entire village, he didn't manage to sit for an entire month after that, I even nearly felt sorry for him.

My brothers bullying and nagging lessened considerably after that and was reduced to a harsh comment every once in a while, he seemed to be afraid of getting punished by dad again. Our parents thought that he must have been going through a rebellious phase, so like most families in ancient times, they decided that it was time for him to man up and get responsible, and what did that mean it meant that it was time for him to get married.

Though my brother was still considered quite young even for this day and age at 14 years old it wasn't that rare for people his age to get married. Dad gathered a few villagers and built a small house for my brother a bit away from ours, and finally got him married to the daughter of one of the villagers close to us.

After spending most of our money on the dowry and building, my parents had to tighten our spending to be able to afford my tutelage. I felt bad about that, but I promised myself to repay them dearly after I succeed in life.

For the next two years I built a routine for myself which basically consisted of me helping my dad in the morning, my mom in the noon and from the afternoon till dusk I would study with the village scholar.

As all good things in life have to come to an end, as soon as I thought that things had finally started to work out my father got sick with a weird illness, and mother who stayed by his side, nursing him after he refused to see the physician since we couldn't afford it seemed to have caught the illness too. After managing to convince them to let the physician check them, I went and fetched her from her house, she was an old lady in her sixties, she wasn't really a legitimate physician but she had worked for one in town while she was young, so she managed to learn a thing or two, after getting married she decided to settle down in this village.

The physician did not manage to identify their illness and just prescribed them some nourishing food that would hopefully help their bodies fight that illness. My parents out of fear of me catching their illness sent me to stay with my brother, but my brother and his wife were afraid that I had already caught their illness, so they made me stay in the barn, and they would leave me food in front of their door every day.

Unfortunately, my parents did not manage to survive the illness and passed away. I think I cried that day more than I had in both of my lives. A few days after my parents' funeral, the village chief came to divide the inheritance, it was decided that my brother will manage my share of the land till I reached manhood, since I was only 8 years old at the time.

My brother being the piece of shit that he was, was overjoyed by this decision. It turned out that he hadn't matured at all, he was just afraid of dads' anger at the time and only hated me more and more as time went on. As soon as the village chief had made his decision he sold his house to one of the other villagers and moved into our parents' house, and kicked me out to live in the barn again.

My older brother canceled my classes with the villages' scholar, he also tried to force me to work longer on the land, when I refused he had threatened to beat me, but I new he was bluffing because if he had beat me and the village head noticed, he would be deemed unfit to take care of me, and I would be under the care of someone else and that someone would manage my share of the land instead of him.

Unfortunately, my brother wasn't stupid enough to do that kind of blunder, so he took another approach to punish me he cut the amount of food I would be given, and I'm ashamed to say that I nearly caved in after two weeks of barely any food.

But before I caved I had what I can only say was a moment of clarity, 'If that piece of shit won't give me any food then I'll just have to steal some', and so I did I snuck into the house in midnight, entered the kitchen and stole a piece of bread, I nearly gave in to temptation and stole more, but I knew that if I stole more my brother would notice, I left the house quickly but quietly and went back to the barn.

After finishing that piece of bread, I had still felt some hunger so I decided to steal more, but I couldn't steal from my brother again, so I decided to steal from the guy who bought my brothers' house. Though that house was the closest to our house it was still about 100 meters away, since my family lived near the edge of the village. After reaching the house I snuck into the kitchen and stole a piece of bread and snuck out, ate the bread and finally fell asleep satisfied.

For about two years I kept doing the same thing, but expanded the list of targets to not alert anyone of my thievery, I was even nearly caught once in a moment of lack of vigilance.

The expression on my brothers face when I didn't give in was worth the trouble, watching him suffer alone under the sun even became one of my favorite pass times. Of course, I couldn't make him do all the work alone because that would give me a reputation of a sloth, and would turn my brother into a victim, and I didn't want that. I think that he nearly gave up on my share of land at one point in time.

Even though I was living comfortably for the last two years I still did not forget my dream, I did not want to just settle for this kind of life. I still wanted to make something of myself in this life, but it had seemed that all the doors had been closed, I couldn't afford the scholars lessons, I didn't have the money to start a business, even if I stole some I would have to explain were I got it and there wasn't any place in the village for me to work in as everybody had their kids and relative work with them.

When I had nearly given up on my dream, a small group of people arrived at the village, they seemed to be of high standing as the villagers respectfully followed their orders and gathered all the kids of 10 years and younger including me, and presented us to them. The group consisted of 4 rough looking young men whose ages couldn't have exceeded 18, wearing plain white robes led by a fairly handsome young man that didn't look a day over 20 in a black robe with silver colored outlines.

The four young men taught us a simple but weird breathing technique. They made us all sit in front of them, and practice it as they lit an incense stick which I think they used as a timer. After about half an hour of doing nothing but practicing the breathing technique, I started feeling a fuzzy and comfortable wisp try to enter through my nose but got blocked every time, but after about another half an hour when the incense was about to burn out I felt that wisp finally breakthrough the blockage and start to circulate throughout my face, I felt as if it was forcing out something through my nose, surprised but weirdly refreshed by the sudden but comfortable feeling, I failed to notice the surprised looks of the visitors.

I had been woken out of my stupor by the sudden cheering sound of the villagers. As I was confused for the sudden cheering. One of the young men wearing white robes approached me, and started explaining what was happening. It turned out that this was actually a recruitment for a sect called the 'The Thousand Sword Sect', he said that every twenty years the thousand sword sect would send some of its' disciples to its' surrounding lands to recruit disciples, and that I had passed the test.

The young sect disciple hadn't even managed to finish asking me if I would like to join when I had already started nodding my head so fast that it had probably started to blur. I didn't even wait for him to tell me what to do when I ran back to the barn to collect my belongings. Cleaning my face that I had finally noticed were covered with black and smelly blood that leaked from my nose. I threw the robe that was also covered with that blood aside and wore another one. I packed my belongings which didn't amount to much just another pair of clean clothing and a simple necklace my mom had made me at my last birthday with them.

From my excitement of finally starting my own journey, while leaving I had even told my brother who was still gawking from the shock of me getting recruited to keep my share of the land. The only thing I had truly valued and was close to in that village were my parents now that they were gone I didn't really feel that I had any connection to it, so I decided to sever any connection to it from now on.

"���Senior…Li..."

"…Senio…broth….Chen…Li"

"Senior brother Chen Li" I heard a voice call out as a hand touched my shoulder.