The night was as dark as ink, cold rain silently slicing into the darkness.
Raindrops slid through the cracks of the ruined temple roof, cold as fine needles, tracing down his gaunt cheeks into his collar, etching icy lines across his skin. Rotten leaves and dust had mixed into a dark slurry in the corners, exuding a damp, moldy stench.
Shen Lan curled up in the blackest corner of the hall, wrapped in ragged cloth over a body as thin as a skeleton. His gaze was empty, like a pool of dead water. The churning in his stomach had blurred the line between hunger and the burning ache of stomach acid—only that sour, bitter taste in his throat reminded him that this was proof he was still alive.
Tonight, without some unexpected turn, he might die.
Boom!
A blinding white light exploded in the depths of his mind!
It was as if a thousand icy steel needles had been driven into the back of his skull, pinning his consciousness in place along his nerves, then tearing it apart.
Pain, vertigo, suffocation—each sensation felt as though it would rip him to pieces.
Images flashed before his eyes with impossible speed:
—Firelight! Gunshots! Blood mist!
On a palace roof at night, he crouched in the cold tiles, dampness seeping into his palms; he leapt down, curved blade slicing open his target's throat, the blood mist glowing in the candlelight with the heat and tang of iron, splattering across his face.
On the snowy border, he lay prone in the wind and frost, his breath crystallizing; in the instant he pulled the trigger, the gunshot shattered the world into silence, and the enemy nation's leader's skull burst into a bloom of red and white.
In a crowded market, wearing a silver respirator, his poisoned sleeve blade slipped into a guard's heart—he felt that moment when the heartbeat abruptly stopped.
On a rainy street corner, he opened a vent shaft in a dark alley, poured in gray-white powder—the rain dissolved the toxin into an invisible vapor that seeped into the building; within half an hour, everyone inside had collapsed like puppets with their strings cut.
Each scene pressed itself deeper into his mind—not flashing past anymore, but bringing with it the air's smell, the blood's warmth, the crisp snap of breaking bone—like a slow-motion film, cruel and vivid.
He remembered.
In his past life, he was Earth's deadliest assassin—Shadow.
A name that made armies, gangs, and governments fall silent.
His missions had never failed.
Until the last—when the bomb took both him and his target into the fire.
When he opened his eyes again, he was nothing more than a talentless mortal, without a spiritual root.
⸻
Rain still struck his face, icy and sharp.
Shen Lan slowly sat up, feeling the tremors of this frail body, the hunger that made his chest cavity feel hollow enough to hear his heartbeat rattle against his ribs.
Moss crept up the corners of the ruined temple. The Buddha's head had long since rolled away. Ash and the stench of rotting flesh hung in the air, making one forget this had once been a sacred place.
Eight years ago, a distant relative who'd raised him stuffed him into a sack and dumped him here, leaving only one sentence:
> "Alive, you're a burden. Dead, at least it's easier."
He had been eight years old.
He cried until his voice was gone, his sobs scattered by the wind, but that retreating figure never turned back.
From that moment, he understood—without a spiritual root, even being alive was a mistake.
⸻
Outside the temple, a cold wind swept fine snow across his face like countless tiny blades. Shen Lan stepped barefoot to the entrance, staring at the huge, cracked slab of greenstone before the gate—once the incense burner's pedestal, now only half remaining.
He crouched, wrapped his arms around the stone's edge, legs coiling—
His spine felt like it had been hammered apart, his chest cinched by an iron band. His elbows tore open instantly, beads of blood mingling with the rain, yet the stone didn't budge an inch.
He fell to the ground, a mouthful of blood-tinged air in his throat, rain and sweat burning his eyes with their salt.
He remembered his past life—
When he'd once broken a rib on a mission, yet still had to crawl two hundred meters to reach a sniping point.
Compared to that, what was this pain?
He closed his eyes, breathing slowly.
> "This body is mine. It is not a waste."
⸻
At dawn, he began to train—
Running laps behind the temple with weights—stones wrapped in beast hide strapped to his body—dragging half a man's weight again and again, until his knees felt like they were filled with lead, his vision dimmed, the wind ringing out of his ears, and his steps moved only on instinct.
Handstands against the stone wall, falling again and again, the skin on his palms scraped open, blood from his elbows soaking into the dirt, pushing back up until his limbs no longer felt like his own.
Soaking his feet in icy water until his bones ached, forcing himself to recall the burning agony of dying in a fire, making the cold and the heat devour each other until he could remain still.
Drawing by the fire, reproducing the killing techniques of his past life—human vital points, poison formulas, trap designs, bone nail launchers…
This was training not for a cultivator, but for a killer.
⸻
These days were painful. Excruciatingly so.
Once, he fractured his ankle, his calf swelling like a steamed bun.
He leaned against a temple pillar, braced the bone with a splint of wood, then bound it tightly with rags.
That moment reminded him of the time he'd taken a bullet grazing his femur, blood flowing nonstop, and still crawled four kilometers through the desert before escaping.
In comparison, this pain was only a reminder that he was still alive.
⸻
On the tenth day, he finally pushed the greenstone half a foot aside.
He looked up and laughed—laughed until he coughed blood, his eyes damp.
In these ten days, he had nearly died twice, fainted three times, and burned with fever for two nights, but he had survived.
More importantly, he had grown stronger.
That night, he created his first batch of poison powder—Bloodbeard vine, Soul-piercing grass, and Weeping Spirit flower ground together with rotting meat, soaked in alcohol, dried into an ashen-brown dust.
A rat beast that licked it twitched, flipped over, and bit through its own tongue.
Shen Lan murmured:
> "Effective."
⸻
In the night, he stood at the temple gate, watching a distant flying vessel slice through the sky. At its bow, a dark-gold banner whipped in the wind—yet the wind blew in the opposite direction, and the banner's intricate pattern glowed faintly, as if staring down at the ground.
He had seen that crest before.
In the target file of his last mission in his past life, the "Otherworldly Cultivator" listed as the highest threat level wore that exact emblem on his chest.
In the cold wind, his fingertip traced killing routes across his diagram, his eyes colder than any blade:
> "One year. No more. In one year, my blade will be ready to cut your throat."
—Shadow, returned.