The sword had plunged right into his chest.
Cold steel cut him to bone, ripped him open and broke his heart with one blow, which was as merciless as it was cruel.
Ethan james froze, there was a moment when time itself appeared to halt.
He knew who was behind him, the old charm he had relied on in a quarter century. The corner of his mouth made the hot blood and his vision swam and the world twisted like a maniac round him.
"...Why?"
The phrase hardly came out of his mouth.
Behind him was Victor Hale, his sworn brother. It was the man who had been beside him in training, beside him in fighting and at one time had said they would rise and fall together.
Victor Hale's face was calm.
Too calm.
He gripped the sword that was in the chest of Ethan James and twisted it.
Ethan James felt agony in his body.
Indeed because, Victor Hale said coldly, not hesitating, you were never intended to out-match us.
Ethan James's eyes widened.
Surpass... us?
He had not yet spoken when the desire to kill came behind.
There was another blade that had pierced him on the back.
Then another, And another.
Ethan James fell on his knees as the shadows around the old altar gave way to figures that came out. All the faces were agonizingly known.
His disciples, his comrades.
Those who he previously trusted his life with.
Tonight there was one reason why they had come together.
To kill him.
The blood dripped down on the stone floor and a hollow broken laugh erupted in Ethan James.
"So this is how it ends..."
He is Ethan James, the youngest disciple to ever attain the Saint Realm on the Azure Heaven Continent. The man who the records are broken, the man who was able to conquer the forbidden lands and one step to the Emperor Realm.
Betrayed, slaughtered like refuse.
Victor Hale withdrew, drawing his sword. Ethan James has fallen down flat, and his life is running out like blood.
You ought to have been a weapon; do you see the lust in my eyes? Victor Hale said. Not a person who was above us.
No one else spoke.
Their quietness was more like a scream than a scream.
There Ethan James lay with eyes fixed on a blood-red sky above the altar which was slowly growing dark. But never was his mind more distinct.
He finally understood, his talent was a sin, his strength, a crime.
In a power dominated world one could not be too strong otherwise he was a threat.
His regret wasn't in dying, it was in trusting others, in showing mercy.
In perceiving that there was loyalty.
"If there is another life..." Blood was filling his throat, and he mumbled, I will never bend my knees to anybody any more.
Darkness engulfed him.
This was what Ethan James experienced first.
Sharp. Raw. Undeniably real.
He wasn't dead.
He choked and naturally made an attempt to make himself active, nothing answered.
His eyes flew open.
In place of stars a low wooden ceiling was before his eyes. The smelled of wood and medicine and bitter medicine.
He tried to move.
The agony rushed his body, feeble and frail, like it would easily come apart at the least touch.
"What... is this?" he murmured.
His voice startled him.
It sounded young, too young.
All at once strange recollections came to his mind. A boy, sixteen years old, his name was Ethan James.
She had the same name... but it was not the same person.
This Ethan James was a nobody. An unimportant servant, who dwells in the fringe of Black Stone City, and is scoffed to scorn his feeble character; he is beaten to scorn his lips. A talentless boy, with no position, who would eventually end up being a non-person.
The memories were crashing on like a tidal wave.
Ethan James clenched his fists.
Rebirth. He had returned, not as a genius, not as a prodigy but as the lowest of the low.
A broken laugh came out of his lips.
So heaven is amusing...
He and his head swam slowly in an attempt to stand upright. This body was like it would break into pieces with a single blow.
Then...
Bang!
The door slammed open.
"Still alive?"
It was three young men walking in, and they were in the clean robes of Black Stone Academy. They were superior in their mere presence, Bullies.
It was immediately confirmed by the memories.
Marcus Reed smirked at the one in front of him.
It seems that you made it through yesterday, Marcus Reed said mockingly. "What a shame."
He went over to Ethan James and kicked him on the ribs, crack.
Pain ripped through him.
The former Ethan James would have cried. Begged. Broken.
But this Ethan James only upraised his head, calm, cold, bottomless.
Marcus Reed hesitated.
"...What are you staring at?"
Ethan James didn't answer.
He smiled, soft but terrifying.
Most of them had witnessed that smile in his previous life, few survived afterward.
Marcus Reed experienced an unexplainable chill all through his spine.
"Tch. Still pretending to be tough?" He raised his foot again.
"Get out," Ethan James said quietly.
Silence filled the room.
Then laughter.
"Did you hear that?" one of them mocked. Trash believes that he is dictating!
The face of Marcus Reed was turned with an angry look on it. Seems like you need another lesson. He reached out.
Ethan James moved, nevertheless, his timing was perfect despite the weakness of his body. He caught hold on Marcus Reed by the wrist and twisted, crack.
There was a scream and the arm of Marcus Reed twisted in an unnatural position.
The room erupted in chaos.
"How is that possible?!"
Ethan James was standing very slowly, with a corner of his mouth smeared with blood, and his body shook and the posture was not in any way yielding.
Well, this body may be weak, he said coldly, but I am not.
Fear had at last come into their eyes.
Ethan James freed Marcus Reed and fell back on the bed totally exhausted. But the message was conveyed.
The bullies fled, silence returned.
Ethan James was lying there with heavy breathing. A weak body, no cultivation, enemies everywhere.
But he had not lost something precious.
His memories, his knowledge, his hatred.
In this life, I will rise again, he said to himself, with perilous smiling.
"And this time..."
"I won't be betrayed."
The shack was as quiet as death interrupted by his rattling breaths.
He watched the plastered ceiling, which was broken, and the cobwebs which hung swinging in the wind through a broken window. This was hardly a place to live in.
So this is how you lived...
His hands she looked down on, thin, pale, calloused. Not the hands of a man who had levelled mountains, but of one who had struggled to keep himself alive.
He clenched them.
Pain surged.
His meridians were narrow. His core was weak. This was body was trash even trash.
The process of training would take years.
He didn't have years.
and shutting his eyes he sought in his memory.
Secret techniques.
Body-forging methods.
Knowledge tabooed By others would be sacrificed with.
There was a dim light burning inside him.
I can rebuild, as long as I live, he said to himself.
Footsteps sounded outside.
The door creaked open.
"Brother James...?"
Some little girl looked in, with a bowl of hot herbal soup.
Lily James, the one person who had ever been kind to him.
I thought you would not get up, thought I, said she.
"...Thank you," Ethan James replied.
She froze.
He meant it. Ethan James looked hard as she went.
Marcus Reed, Black Stone Academy, this city.
They would remember his name.
As he lay down, he started re-creating a torturous training system one that would make a shattered body strong at all costs.
The pain would be unbearable.
But compared to betrayal?
Pain was nothing.
Live till to-night, he said to himself. "Grow stronger tomorrow."
"And climb..."
"One step at a time."
Ethan James passed unconsciously up and down as night went on.
His stuttering breaths were brushing on his incomplete ribs. His hands and clothes were covered with a lot of sweat, but he felt icy cold. He even almost lost consciousness on a number of occasions dragged under the influence of pain and fatigue. but when pitchy darkness would grab him, there was one thought that pulled him up.
I can't die again.
The moonlight at one time changed sides, streaming in the broken window and falling on his face. Slowly Ethan James opened his eyes, Still alive. Barely.
He looked deeply within, attentively, suspiciously. This body contained hardly any spiritual vitality only dim rays, buried in ashes. But to him, it was enough.
He chose to lead it slowly, painfully, in a circulation that was cut into his soul. The instant the energy passed through he felt pain shooting along his meridians. His muscles jerked, and there was more blood at the corner of his lips.
Ethan James closed his teeth and would not say anything.
So weak... but it responds.
That in itself caused his heart to beat.
This body would be killed by normal cultivation techniques, yet what he was on was not normal. It was a method which he had formerly rejected as too slow, too brutal, too unproductive to geniuses, but for trash?
To have nothing to lose, then?
It was perfect.
Minutes passed. Then an hour.
As the moon had soared to the top, Ethan James turned pale as paper in the face, his clothes dripped with sweat and blood. But now some warmth was creeping somewhere deep in his lower region.
The tiniest spark, but it was real.
He sighed and smiled wearily.
"So this is how it begins..."
The city was sleeping outside, and was oblivious of the fact that something long buried was beginning to open its eyes.
In the shattered shack Ethan James shut his eyes again not to sleep, but to suffer.
The world would remain cruel tomorrow, too.
And this time.
He would be crueler.