Screaming.
The first thing he felt was screaming. Not from someone else — from himself.
It wasn't pain. Not quite. It was the shock of existence.
Dren gasped, mouth wide, lungs filling with strange air — thick, earthy, wet. His new throat burned. His tiny chest heaved. His whole body thrashed against something soft and heavy.
Warm hands scooped him up.
Voices blurred through the haze — muffled by new ears, strange tongues that still held meaning like mist holds light.
"He's crying! He's alive!"
A woman's voice. Weak, tearful, full of desperate joy.
"He's strong — oh, thank the Heavens, he's strong!"
Hands wiped his skin with a cloth that felt like it was made of dried moss. He squinted. The world above was low and dark, a thatched ceiling sagging from dampness and age. Smoke drifted from an open cooking pit in the corner. The air was thick with ash, fermented herbs, and the musk of old clay.
A man leaned over him, wiping blood from his cheek with trembling fingers. His face was lined with hardship, his robe worn and threadbare, stitched at the sleeves. But he smiled with something real.
"Welcome to the world, little one," he said, voice rough from years of silence. "Welcome, Yan Shen."
Yan Shen.
That was the name they gave him. He didn't resist it.
His mind, though dim and muffled by new flesh, was still intact — buried beneath layers of instinct and haze. His memories floated like broken glass in black water — glimpses of neon lights, soaked alleyways, cold philosophy, fire in his chest, lightning in his bones.
And a voice — not human — laughing in white space, casting him down into lawless existence.
Now... this.
This frail vessel. These soft fingers that couldn't hold a stone. This tongue that couldn't form a word.
He had been reborn.
The village was called Qinghe, a fading speck tucked between the low hills of the South Qiling Mountains — a place known more for quiet suffering than fortune. Its people lived by tea leaves, root crops, and mountain herbs, trading what little they had with passing traders or monks from the outer sects.
There were no immortal cultivators here. No glowing swords. No flying palaces. Only folk who bowed to rain, feared beasts, and hoped their children might one day walk beyond the mountain fog.
Dren — now Yan Shen — had been born into the poorest house in the village. His mother, Yan Meiyan, was quiet and gentle, her spirit dulled by loss and hunger. His father, Yan Bao, was a herbalist by trade, skilled with roots and pestle but cursed with a crippled leg, injured years ago, by what he didn't know.
They had nothing. And now they had a son.
Time blurred into warmth, muffled sounds, and strange stillness. Yan Shen couldn't speak, couldn't crawl, couldn't so much as control his own neck at will—but he could observe. He could watch.
And that, he realized, was enough.
In his former life, he had discarded philosophies like broken toys. He spat on the idea of surrender, of peace through detachment. But now, stripped of choice, reduced to flesh barely formed, he found himself returning to the only tool he had left:
Observation.
The passive awareness that Krishnamurti spoke of—watch without judging, without naming, without reacting—became his daily practice, not because he believed in it again, but because there was nothing else to do.
He hated the irony of it.
He hated that the very system he once rebelled against was helping him now.
But it worked.
He watched light filter through straw rafters, shifting throughout the day in patterns tied to seasons he could not name. He memorized the rhythm of footsteps—his mother's light, hurried taps; his father's uneven, dragging gait; the cautious pacing of neighbors afraid of disturbing grief.
He watched fire, and how it danced differently depending on the type of wood used.
He watched the way people bowed — not out of respect, but fear — whenever robed merchants passed through the village gate, their wagons creaking under strange goods and silent guards.
He learned names.
Yan Bao, his father.
Yan Meiyan, his mother.
Old Lin, who brought herbs twice a week.
Aunt Yue, whose voice cracked from too many winters shouting across hills.
Shao Liang, the village head, whose tone changed when speaking to anyone poorer than him—which was almost everyone.
He watched expressions. Microgestures. Lies told with smiles. Truths carried in silence.
He understood the way Meiyan flinched whenever the wind howled at night. The way Bao's eyes lingered on the empty corner of the hut where a second child might've once slept.
And even though they fed him with love, whispered dreams into his cradle, and tucked straw dolls beside him to guard his sleep—Yan Shen knew this family was broken before he arrived.
for now he cant do anything to help anyone... he needs to train and attain power