Xiao Ren wakes seven days earlier, alive again—but not the same. He tests the truth of his second chance... with fire.
He woke with his fists clenched and lungs heaving like he'd clawed his way up from drowning.
The roof above him was still cracked and leaking in the corner. His mattress was still damp straw, and the room still smelled faintly of mold, oil, and old sweat. The iron hook holding his torn robe still hung slightly crooked.
Ren sat up slowly, not trusting any of it. His hands were whole—no burns. His chest was intact—no blackened ribs or flame-scoured bone. No pain. Not even the phantom kind. He could hear a cicada calling faintly from the outer cliffs. The rain had stopped.
Then his gaze caught the bone calendar glyph etched into the doorframe.
His stomach dropped.
Seven days before the furnace trial.
"No," he whispered.
He stood, knocking over the chipped teacup by his sleeping mat. He walked to the basin, splashed his face. Cold water. He checked his reflection. Same tired eyes. Same pale skin. Same three faint scars on his chin. The scar he got after the furnace trial—gone.
He stumbled backward, heart racing. He wasn't dreaming.
A whisper of heat pulsed in his sternum. Faint, but rhythmic. Not like a heartbeat—like a forge cycling breath. He sat cross-legged, closed his eyes, and felt inside himself.
There it was: a thread of flame Qi.
It coiled faintly beneath his bones, tucked between ribs like a forgotten ember. Impossible. He had no cultivation root. Barely sensed Qi, let alone contained it.
He pressed on it. It pulsed once, like an annoyed animal disturbed from sleep. Then it slithered upward along his right arm, warming him from the inside. He felt it move—not just the presence of it, but the motion.
This is real.
He stood again and reached under his bed mat, pulling out a half-melted wax candle he'd pilfered from the canteen weeks ago. He lit it with flint, then held his index finger in the flame.
The pain came instantly. Sharp, bright.
But then something else followed—clarity. A shift in the way the air felt around him. He inhaled, and the breath felt deeper, as if it reached past his lungs and into some hollow part of his body that had never drawn breath before.
He gritted his teeth and held the finger there longer.
A smell of burning flesh rose. He hissed and yanked back.
Skin blistered. But even before his eyes, it cooled, darkened, and then began to fade—not instantly, not magically, but faster than it should have.
He flexed his hand. Pain remained, but something else stirred beneath it.
Pain feeds the flame.
He stared at the stub of the candle, then blew it out.
Later that morning, he walked to the canteen, same as always. He took the usual tray—rice, marrow broth, two pickled roots. Ji Fei sat at a table with three others, laughing about something.
Ren walked past them. No reaction. That, in itself, was strange.
He sat at the far edge near the open window. Wind blew in, carrying the sharp scent of drying bone ash from the inner alchemy yards.
He was alive again. Somehow. The memory of the system echoed in his skull like a voice heard underwater: Death 1 of 99.
Not a dream. Not a hallucination.
"So what now?" he muttered.
There was no guide. No help screen. No textboxes explaining rules. Just... a flame in his chest. A memory of dying. And the creeping, insane idea that he could do it again—and change everything.
He looked down at his tray.
Then, slowly, smiled.