Jin Kaze woke up to the sound of roosters crowing and immediately tried to murder the nearest living thing.
His hand shot out with killing intent that could have shattered mountains in his previous life, aiming for what his battle-honed instincts identified as an enemy presence. Instead of crushing a windpipe, his fingers encountered something soft, warm, and decidedly non-threatening that let out a confused "mew."
A cat. He'd just attempted to assassinate a cat.
"What in the seven hells—" Jin began, then stopped mid-curse. His voice was wrong. Higher pitched, lacking the gravelly undertone that had made grown cultivators wet themselves in terror. It was coming from a throat that definitely wasn't marked by the ritual scarification of the Blood Moon Arts.
He looked down at his hands with growing horror. They were smooth, unmarked by battle scars or the telltale black veins of demonic qi cultivation. Small hands. *Teenage* hands.
"No," he whispered, the single word carrying more despair than when he'd faced a thousand righteous cultivators. "No, no, no. Anything but this."
"Little Kaze!" came a cheerful voice that hit Jin like a spiritual technique to the face. "Are you talking to Whiskers again? You know cats don't understand human speech, right?"
Jin's head snapped up so fast he nearly gave himself whiplash. Standing in the doorway with that impossibly optimistic grin and gravity-defying hair was Park Dae-sung—his old roommate from the Celestial Sword Sect's outer disciples. Except Dae-sung looked exactly as he had twenty years ago, complete with the morning enthusiasm that had made Jin want to strangle him even back when murder wasn't his default solution to problems.
*Back when I was weak,* Jin thought, then immediately corrected himself. *Back when I was weak the first time.*
"Dae-sung," Jin said carefully, his mind racing through possibilities. Elaborate torture technique? Some kind of karmic punishment? A particularly vivid dying hallucination? "What... what year is it?"
"Huh?" Dae-sung tilted his head with the confused innocence of a golden retriever. "It's the third year of Emperor Taixuan's reign, of course. Little Kaze, are you feeling okay? You've been acting weird ever since you got back from the herb gathering mission yesterday."
The third year of Emperor Taixuan's reign. Twenty years before Jin Kaze would become the Blood Moon Demon. Twenty years before he'd paint half the cultivation world red in his quest for ultimate power. Twenty years before Baek Mu-jin would slide a sword between his ribs with a smile.
Jin looked around their shared dormitory room with dawning comprehension and mounting dread. There were the rickety wooden bunks that creaked if you breathed too hard. The single window that never quite closed properly, letting in drafts that made winter nights miserable. The motivational scroll about "The Righteous Path of Cultivation" that some well-meaning senior had hung on the wall, its edges already fraying from age and neglect.
Everything was exactly as he remembered from his youth, back when he'd been just another weak outer disciple dreaming of becoming strong enough that people would remember his name.
*Careful what you wish for,* he thought bitterly.
"I," Jin said slowly, trying to process the cosmic joke his existence had apparently become, "am going to need a moment to wrap my head around this situation."
"Wrap your head around what?" Dae-sung asked, then his expression brightened like sunrise over the mountains. "Oh! Are you finally having a breakthrough moment? I told you that meditation position looked uncomfortable, but you never listen to—"
"Dae-sung," Jin interrupted, rubbing his temples where a headache was already forming. "Hypothetically speaking—and I cannot stress the word 'hypothetically' enough—if you discovered you had knowledge of terrible future events that you could prevent, but doing so would require you to act completely against your fundamental nature, what would you do?"
Dae-sung considered this question with the same gravity he usually reserved for deciding between rice porridge or noodles for breakfast. After a long moment, he nodded decisively.
"Well," he said, "I guess I'd try to be a better person? I mean, if you know bad things are going to happen, you should try to stop them, right? That's what righteous cultivators do."
*Righteous cultivators.* Jin almost laughed, but it would have come out bitter enough to curdle milk. In his previous life, he'd killed more "righteous cultivators" than most people swatted flies. He'd made the phrase "righteous path" sound like a punchline told at funerals. And now, apparently, he was supposed to become one.
"Right," he said weakly. "Righteous cultivation. The righteous path. Of course."
A bronze bell rang across the sect grounds, its tone clear and commanding—the call for morning training. Jin's enhanced hearing picked up the sound of hundreds of disciples stirring to wakefulness, the shuffle of feet on wooden floors, the splash of water from washing basins. In a few minutes, he'd have to report to the outer disciples' training ground for morning sword practice.
Under Elder Mei Hua.
Elder Mei Hua, whose younger brother Jin had personally tortured to death during his interrogation of captured Celestial Sword Sect disciples. Elder Mei Hua, who in the original timeline would develop a pathological hatred for anyone associated with the Blood Moon Arts. Elder Mei Hua, who would spend her final years hunting him with the dedication of a woman who had nothing left to lose.
And now he had to sit through her lessons on "Basic Sword Forms for Outer Disciples" while pretending to be an innocent sixteen-year-old.
"This," Jin muttered, watching Whiskers the cat fix him with a judgmental stare from atop Dae-sung's pillow, "is either the most elaborate form of karmic retribution ever devised, or the universe has a truly twisted sense of humor."
"What was that?" Dae-sung asked, already pulling on his training robes with practiced efficiency.
"Nothing," Jin sighed, looking down at his own outer disciple robes—simple gray cloth marked with the Celestial Sword Sect's emblem of a blade wreathed in clouds. The same uniform he'd worn in his youth, before he'd traded it for the blood-red regalia of a demon lord. "Just... contemplating the mysteries of existence."
"That's very philosophical for someone who usually complains about early morning training," Dae-sung observed cheerfully. "Are you sure you're not coming down with something?"
*Yes,* Jin thought. *I'm coming down with a terminal case of cosmic irony.*
"I'm fine," he said aloud. "Just... seeing things from a new perspective."
As they prepared for the day, Jin caught sight of himself in the small bronze mirror mounted on the wall. The face looking back at him was painfully young—smooth-cheeked, unmarked by the ritual scars and weathered lines that had made him recognizable to anyone who'd seen his wanted posters. His hair was still its natural black instead of the silver-white it had become after his advancement to Void Transcendence realm. His eyes, though... his eyes still held depths that no sixteen-year-old should possess.
He'd have to be careful about that.
"Come on, Little Kaze!" Dae-sung said, bouncing on his toes with barely contained energy. "Elder Mei Hua doesn't like it when we're late, and I heard she's been in an especially strict mood lately. Something about 'maintaining discipline among the younger generation.'"
Jin almost smiled at that. In his memories, Elder Mei Hua had always been strict, but fair. She'd genuinely cared about her students, even the hopeless cases like his former self. It was only after her capture and torture that she'd become... something else.
*Which means,* Jin realized with a start, *that hasn't happened yet. She's still the person she was before I broke her.*
The thought should have been comforting. Instead, it made his chest feel tight with something uncomfortably close to guilt.
"Right," he said, forcing his voice to match Dae-sung's enthusiasm. "Wouldn't want to disappoint Elder Mei Hua."
*Though disappointing her would be infinitely preferable to what I actually did to her,* he added silently.
As they left their dormitory and stepped into the morning air, Jin got his first real look at the Celestial Sword Sect in twenty years. The compound was exactly as he remembered—elegant pavilions connected by covered walkways, gardens where medicinal herbs grew alongside ornamental flowers, and the ever-present sound of steel meeting steel as disciples practiced their forms.
It was beautiful. Peaceful. Everything a righteous sect should be.
Jin had burned it to the ground in his previous life. Not personally—he'd had underlings for that sort of work by then—but he'd given the order. He could still remember the reports: the main hall collapsed by demonic fire techniques, the libraries reduced to ash, the medicinal gardens poisoned with corpse qi. Hundreds of disciples dead, their bodies left as a message to anyone else who might oppose the Blood Moon Sect's expansion.
Standing here now, watching young disciples hurry past with their practice swords and earnest expressions, Jin felt something he hadn't experienced in decades: genuine remorse.
*I was a monster,* he thought, and for perhaps the first time in either of his lives, he meant it without qualification or excuse.
"Little Kaze?" Dae-sung's voice brought him back to the present. "You're doing that staring-into-the-distance thing again. It's kind of creepy."
"Sorry," Jin said, shaking off his dark thoughts. "Just... appreciating the beauty of the morning."
Dae-sung beamed at him. "See? I knew this herb-gathering mission would be good for you! You're becoming more philosophical. More... I don't know, mature?"
*If only you knew,* Jin thought wryly. *I'm probably the most mature sixteen-year-old in the history of cultivation.*
They joined the stream of outer disciples making their way toward the training grounds. Jin recognized faces in the crowd—some who would die young in the coming sect wars, others who would live to become elders and masters in their own right. A few who would eventually join his cause, drawn by promises of power and freedom from orthodox restrictions.
And there, walking with a group of inner disciples, was a flash of silver hair and jade-green robes that made Jin's heart skip a beat.
Yoo So-young. Even at sixteen, she moved with the fluid grace of a master swordsman. Her cultivation base was already at the peak of Foundation Building, impressive for someone her age. But what struck Jin most was the serene confidence in her bearing—the quiet certainty of someone who had never known real defeat or loss.
In his original timeline, that confidence had been shattered when she'd found her family's corpses arranged in a grotesque display of demonic artistry. She'd spent the rest of her life as a vengeful sword saint, beautiful and terrible and utterly consumed by her need for justice.
Looking at her now, young and whole and unmarked by tragedy, Jin felt that tight feeling in his chest intensify.
*I did that to her,* he thought. *I broke something pure and turned it into a weapon.*
As if sensing his gaze, So-young turned and looked directly at him. For a moment, their eyes met across the crowded courtyard. Jin saw her brow furrow slightly, as if she sensed something familiar but couldn't place it. Then one of her companions said something, and she looked away, the moment broken.
But Jin had seen enough. There had been recognition there, however faint. Some part of her—perhaps her spiritual intuition, sharpened by her Phoenix Constitution—had sensed something wrong about him.
*I'll have to be more careful,* he thought. *She's always been perceptive.*
"Earth to Little Kaze!" Dae-sung waved a hand in front of his face. "Are you going to stand there staring at inner disciples all morning, or are we actually going to make it to training before Elder Mei Hua decides to use us as demonstration targets?"
"Right," Jin said, forcing himself to look away from So-young's retreating figure. "Training. Can't wait."
As they approached the outer disciples' training ground—a large courtyard lined with wooden practice dummies and weapon racks—Jin caught sight of a familiar figure in instructor's robes. Elder Mei Hua stood at the center of the space, her dark hair pulled back in a severe bun, her posture radiating the kind of authority that came from decades of cultivation and teaching.
She looked... young. Unmarked by the spiritual damage that would later cripple her cultivation and leave her with chronic pain. Her qi flowed smoothly through her meridians, uninterrupted by the blockages that torture and dark techniques would eventually create.
Jin stopped walking.
"Little Kaze?" Dae-sung asked, concern creeping into his voice. "What's wrong? You look like you've seen a ghost."
*I have,* Jin thought. *I'm looking at the ghost of who she used to be. Before I destroyed her.*
"I'm fine," he lied, forcing his feet to carry him forward. "Just... nervous about training."
Dae-sung laughed. "Since when are you nervous about anything? Usually, you're so confident it borders on arrogance."
*That,* Jin thought grimly, *is because I remember being one of the most powerful cultivators who ever lived. Confidence is easy when you know you could kill everyone in this courtyard without breaking a sweat.*
*If I still had my cultivation, anyway.*
"Outer disciples, form ranks!" Elder Mei Hua's voice cut across the courtyard like a blade. Instantly, the scattered conversations died as nearly a hundred young cultivators arranged themselves in neat rows.
Jin found himself in the third row, Dae-sung beside him, trying to look like just another eager student. Around him, his fellow outer disciples stood at attention, some nervous, others excited for another day of training. They were so young, all of them. So hopeful.
*They have no idea what's coming,* Jin thought. *The wars, the betrayals, the collapse of everything they believe in. Half of them won't live to see their twentieth birthday.*
Unless he did something about it.
"Today," Elder Mei Hua announced, her voice carrying easily across the silent courtyard, "we will be reviewing the Seven Foundation Stances. I know many of you believe you have mastered these basics, but I assure you—"
Her gaze swept across the assembled disciples and stopped when it reached Jin. For a moment that felt like an eternity, she stared at him with an expression he couldn't quite read. Recognition? Suspicion? Simple curiosity about why he was looking at her like he'd seen a ghost?
"—that there is always room for improvement," she finished, her eyes never leaving his face.
Jin forced himself to maintain steady eye contact, projecting the respectful attention of a dedicated student. Inside, his mind was racing. Did she suspect something? Had he let too much of his true nature show?
*Stay calm,* he told himself. *You're just another outer disciple. She has no reason to think otherwise.*
But as Elder Mei Hua began demonstrating the first stance, Jin couldn't shake the feeling that his new life—his chance at redemption—was already balanced on a knife's edge.
And he'd only been awake for an hour.
"This," he muttered under his breath, "is going to be a very long day."
Beside him, Dae-sung nodded enthusiastically at the demonstration. "I love foundation training!" he whispered. "It's like... like building a house, but for your soul!"
Jin stared at his friend's earnest profile and felt something crack inside his chest. In the original timeline, Dae-sung would die in three years, cut down while defending a village from demonic beast attacks that Jin's actions had indirectly caused. He'd die a hero, remembered by the people he saved, but he'd still be dead.
*Not this time,* Jin promised silently. *This time, I'm going to save everyone. Even if it kills me.*
*Again.*