Chapter 1 – Buried Once, Buried Again
There was no warmth in the womb he'd left, and even less in the world he entered.
He was born without crying.
The midwife frowned as she wiped blood from his face. "This one's too quiet," she muttered, turning the newborn on his side. "Already tired of life?"
A wrinkled man nearby — the village elder — chuckled dryly. "Then he fits right in with the rest of us."
It was a harsh joke. But in the village of Hearth's Edge, even laughter had grown thin with age and struggle.
The child didn't respond to the voices. He lay still, his eyes shut tightly, his breaths shallow and slow. The villagers would later say that Lin Chen was strange from the start — unnaturally silent, with a stare too old for his years.
They didn't know the truth.
He had already lived. And died.
His name had not been Lin Chen in his past life. It hadn't mattered. No one had ever called it with care.
He had been a laborer — the kind who wakes before the sun, eats last, and dies first. He worked in mud and stone, mines and mills. His hands had known nothing but tools and wounds. His back had bent under weight, not pride. No one remembered how he died. Not even the officials who dumped his body into the pauper's trench outside the northern border.
But he remembered.
He remembered the cold in his bones when he collapsed.
He remembered the emptiness in his chest when no one came looking.
He remembered the silence — not peace, but the absence of all meaning.
So when his eyes opened in this new world, in the body of an infant swaddled in rags, it wasn't confusion or fear he felt.
It was anger.
Not rage. Not violence.
The kind of anger that simmers for decades and becomes resolve.
By the age of three, Lin Chen understood that this new world was a world of cultivation.
Here, strength was not just survival. It was freedom. Honor. Purpose.
And it was reserved for the few.
He lived in a fringe village, at the edge of a barren plain, near the broken roots of a dead spirit tree. The people of Hearth's Edge were the Dust-Caste — born poor, worked poor, and died forgotten. Most never awakened their Qi. None had access to cultivation techniques unless taken away by traveling sect envoys — and even that was rare, usually reserved for children born with natural talents, special bloodlines, or strong spiritual roots.
Lin Chen had none of those.
Not wealth. Not family legacy. Not elemental affinity.
But he had something no one else could see: a soul that had endured suffering without collapse. A soul that refused to be silent again.
When he was four, he began to train — not in secret, but in silence.
There were no manuals, no elders, no techniques. Only his body, and what he remembered from a lifetime of lifting stones, hauling water, and surviving on breath and bread crumbs.
He dug pits, lifted logs, balanced stones, climbed trees in rain, wind, and snow. Not to play. But to feel weight. To remember it. To master it.
By six, the other village children avoided him.
He was too serious. Too still. Too quiet.
"Doesn't laugh. Doesn't run. He's like a ghost."
But the older folk — the ones who had broken bones and long memories — saw something else.
A few whispered, "He walks like someone who's already lost everything."
They weren't wrong.
When he was seven, Lin Chen felt Qi for the first time.
He had just finished pulling a wagonload of winter grain up a rocky slope. His palms bled. His shoulders shook. His legs burned with the strain.
But something stirred inside him.
A warmth. A rhythm.
Like his breath had synced with the sky. Like the earth had answered him.
He collapsed that night, his muscles spasming from exhaustion. But in his mind, he heard a voice — not from outside, but from within.
"You have carried burdens without complaint. You may now carry Qi."
He didn't know what the voice was. A memory? A spirit? A test?
It didn't matter.
From that day forward, every breath he took carried Qi with it.
Most cultivators needed perfect posture, mental stillness, spiritual roots, guidance.
Lin Chen had none of that.
He cultivated through labor.
Every load he carried, every wound he endured, every time he pushed past what his body could handle — he grew stronger.
He called this path the Burden-Forging Method.
It wasn't passed down by ancestors or discovered in a hidden cave. It came from pain, repetition, and unshakable will. A technique born not from genius, but from the desperate desire not to die a second time in silence.
That winter, a wandering cultivator came to the village — a drunkard with torn robes and eyes that looked past people, not at them. He stayed two nights in the elder's hut, telling tales of the Nine Realms of Cultivation to children who'd never hope to see them.
"Each realm has nine layers," the drunkard slurred, "and each one costs more than the last. Not in money — no, no. In truth. You pay with blood, bone, time, and self."
He laughed, coughed blood into the fire, and spat.
"Don't climb it unless you're ready to lose who you are."
Lin Chen listened carefully.
Then asked a question no one else dared.
"What if you already lost everything?"
The cultivator blinked at him — just for a second — then threw something at Lin Chen's feet.
A black seed the size of a fingernail.
"If this grows," the man said, "then your path was never meant to be mine."
And then he left.
Lin Chen buried the seed in a broken pot near the dying spirit tree.
That night, he trained until his hands went numb.
By the time he turned eight, Lin Chen had reached the first layer of Body Tempering Realm — something no one in his village had done without aid from sects or elixirs.
He didn't announce it.
He didn't celebrate.
He simply moved heavier stones the next day.
Because one layer meant nothing in a world with nine realms, each with nine layers.
It was like placing one foot on the first step of a staircase made of clouds, dragons, and stars.
He had so far to go.
But he wasn't afraid.
Because for the first time in two lives, Lin Chen had something he never had before:
A path that was his alone.
[End of Chapter 1]