The first thing Jin Xuanji noticed was not the light, nor the warmth of the sun, nor the texture of the sheets beneath him—it was the odd, almost embarrassing sensation of his left hand absentmindedly scratching his groin while his right leg dangled off the side of the bed like it didn't belong to him, as though he had woken up mid-dream and his body had continued moving without his permission.
His hair was an untamed mess, strands curling and shooting off in every direction like a wild beast's mane, and there was a strange stillness in the room that made him feel like something was terribly, inexplicably wrong. For a moment, he simply stared at the wooden ceiling above him, unsure if he was alive or dead, unsure if this was the afterlife, a dream, a hallucination from the pain that had exploded through his body the moment Elder Han's cursed dagger had pierced his soul, tearing through everything he had become, everything he had sacrificed to defy the heavens.
His body didn't ache—no pain, no blood, no pressure of his spiritual core being ruptured, no thunderous pulse of power raging inside him like a broken river. Just silence. Just breath. Just confusion.
He slowly sat up, his movements sluggish like someone wading through thick mud, and the bed creaked beneath him, soft and familiar in a way that made his heart tremble. The room was small, barely wider than the length of a sword, with cracked wooden walls, a single rusted lantern hanging from a hook in the corner, and a large bucket filled with water sitting on the floor beside the door. Jin Xuanji rose, his bare feet touching the cold wooden planks as he approached the bucket, something tightening in his chest, an eerie suspicion beginning to bloom in his mind like frost creeping over a windowpane.
And then he saw his reflection.
Not the face of the Heaven-Breaker, not the weathered and scarred man who had once stood alone on the peak of Heaven's Edge, sword raised against the heavens themselves—but a face untouched by time, unmarked by war, untainted by betrayal. A face with skin still soft from youth, eyes bright and untouched by rage, a jawline still forming, a body that had yet to fully grow into the monster it would one day become.
Sixteen.
He was sixteen again.
He stared for what felt like a lifetime, the silence of the room now thunderous in his ears, and for a brief moment he wondered if this was some illusion—a heavenly illusion crafted to mock him, or perhaps a punishment from the heavens themselves, trapping him in the past to relive all the pain he thought he had buried. But no. No illusion felt this real. No illusion made his chest tighten with such nostalgia.
His breath caught, a soft laugh escaping his lips—not out of joy, not out of madness, but something in between, a mixture of disbelief and awe, of horror and thrill. He touched his face, then his chest, then flexed his fingers. Everything was real. Everything was whole.
"I did it…" he whispered to himself, lips curving into a wide grin. "I really did it…"
Regression.
He had heard of it in old scrolls and secret tombs, legends passed down by mad cultivators and hermits who spoke of time not as a line, but a wheel, one that could be bent if the soul was strong enough, if the will was vast enough, if the heart refused to die. But to achieve regression, they said, one needed to live six lifetimes—six full cycles of birth, suffering, growth, and death, each one feeding the next, until the soul gained enough weight to bend time itself. But Jin Xuanji had lived only one. One life. Thirty-three years of battle, blood, loss, and fury. And yet here he was, standing in the body of his sixteen-year-old self, his past spread before him like an untouched scroll waiting to be rewritten.
'So this is what it means to defy fate,' he thought, his chest swelling with pride. 'So this is what it means to be truly powerful. I haven't just survived—I've conquered death. I've conquered time itself. I am Jin Xuanji. I am the Heaven-Breaker.'
He began to giggle—first softly, then louder, the sound echoing strangely in the tiny room, part joy, part madness, part disbelief. He had been betrayed. He had died. He had lost everything. And now he had it all again. A second chance. A clean slate. A world that hadn't yet turned its back on him.
But then—
"Elder brother?"
The voice was soft, young, hesitant.
Jin Xuanji froze.
That voice—he knew it. He knew it so deeply it hurt.
He turned slowly, and standing in the doorway was a boy no older than thirteen, his eyes wide and filled with concern, a tray in his hands carrying a bowl of soup that trembled ever so slightly.
Jin Wei.
His little brother.
Alive.
Jin Xuanji's heart almost stopped. His knees nearly gave out, and something twisted violently in his chest as a thousand memories flooded back all at once—memories he had buried, burned, crushed beneath the weight of vengeance and power and pain.
At birth, Jin Xuanji had been born without inner energy. A blank spirit. A void. In a world where cultivation was life, that meant he was nothing. Less than nothing. A failure. An insect in the eyes of sects and clans. But Jin Wei—sweet, cheerful, endlessly loyal Jin Wei—had been born with it. A strong spiritual root. A bright future. And yet he never gloated, never judged, never turned his back on his brother. He took care of Jin Xuanji when the world spat on him, brought home what little food he could earn working long hours in one of the biggest bars in the city, smiling through exhaustion, smiling through the mockery of being "the brother of a failure." They beat him. They bullied him. They stripped him of dignity. But he never blamed Jin Xuanji. Not once.
And then, one night, he killed himself.
Jin Xuanji had found the note. He had found the body. He had knelt there in the pouring rain, clutching his brother's lifeless form, screaming until his voice broke, until his throat bled, until his soul cracked.
And then he had taken that pain and turned it into rage. He had stormed the bar. He had shattered tables, screamed curses, tried to kill the men who had pushed his brother into the grave—but he was still powerless, still a failure, and they beat him like a dog and left him in the dirt, the rain flowing toward him like the heavens themselves were weeping.
Now that same brother stood before him, alive, breathing, smiling.
Jin Xuanji's vision blurred, but he held the tears in, biting down so hard on his lip he tasted blood, forcing himself to stay composed.
"Brother… are you okay?" Jin Wei asked. "You were talking in your sleep again…"
Jin Xuanji turned away for a moment, pretending to stretch, pretending to yawn, doing everything he could to hide the trembling in his shoulders.
"I'm fine," he said, voice hoarse, raw, heavy with a thousand unsaid words. "Just had a weird dream, that's all."
But it wasn't a dream.