In a small remote village, a girl who appeared to be about twelve or thirteen years old dragged a heavy coffin alone, its weight gouging a path through the dirt. She moved slowly toward the forest's outskirts, one step at a time.
Her young face was caked with dust, cheeks stiff from white salt-trails of dried tears. A gash on her foot left a thin trail of blood in the dust. She stopped occasionally to rest, then continued on.
Thirty minutes later, she reached the outskirts of the forest. The shovel was still where she'd left it an hour earlier, before she returned for the coffin.
She limped over to it, picked it up, and started digging.
Given her weak physique, digging the ground was difficult, but she didn't let it stop her. Her hands trembled and blisters tore open, but she didn't easily give up.
Ten minutes later, she dropped to her knees beside the coffin. Her breathing was ragged and her hands were caked in dirt.
"Brother," she said weakly in a tired voice. "I miss you. I'm scared without you." Her voice cracked as she spoke.
Tears welled up in her eyes, but she wiped them away with the sleeve of her tattered dress.
Then, she stood up, gripped the shovel tightly, and started digging again.
Inside the coffin was a young man who looked about eighteen years old. His face was bruised. His blackened, swollen chest showed signs of a brutal beating.
A deep scar ran from his brow through his eye and down his cheek. Suddenly, the young man's eyes snapped open.
He blinked into the darkness. Then, out of habit, he tried to sit up. Thud! "Ow! What the hell?" Ye Wuji winced as his head smacked the lid above him.
He reached up to rub the pain away, but his hand hit the coffin's wall. There was no space or light, only tight walls and darkness.
He paused and calmed himself down. "Wait? Is this inside in a coffin? Am I in a coffin? Who the heck buried me alive?"
He pressed his palm against the lid, his heart pounding. "Did I finally collapse from testing those cancer cells on myself?" he muttered. "Damn! That antidote I stole didn't work, for God's sake. I wasn't supposed to faint."
His fingers scraped the coffin walls as he tried to think. "Why am I in a coffin? Didn't anyone check to see if I was still breathing?"
Then it hit him. His voice dropped to a cold whisper. "Those self-righteous doctors. Is this how they silence people now?"
He was an oncologist and a rogue cancer researcher. He was no ordinary researcher, but one of the best; an oncologist who danced on the edge of genius and madness.
But his methods had crossed a line.
He'd proposed human trials—real ones—without approval or oversight. The medical world branded him a lunatic.
They banned and blacklisted him in every way possible; even those on the dark web were afraid to deal with him.
With no other options, he turned to the last remaining test subject: himself.
Now, he lay inside a coffin, somehow still alive. He groaned. "Tch. All my research. All the money I bled for. Now it's sitting in the pockets of those bastards. The same ones who called me a madman."
"Just wait. I'm coming for every last one of you. I'll sue you, ruin you, take all your wealth, and bury you properly."
"But first, let's get out of this damn box." He murmured, balling his fist and glaring at the wooden lid above him.
But before he could strike again, a searing pain exploded in his skull.
"AAAGH!" he screamed, clutching his head as if fire were tearing through his brain. With every cry, his injured lungs strained, aggravating his wounds.
Outside, the girl froze mid-dig. Her eyes widened at the muffled, agonized screams coming from the coffin.
She immediately dropped the shovel and stumbled over to tear open the lid with trembling hands.
Inside the coffin, Ye Wuji kept screaming, unaware that it had been opened. His body convulsed and his fingers dug into his scalp. The pain dragged on for ten more unbearable seconds.
Then, suddenly, the headache disappeared. He slowly lowered his hands, his chest heaving. Sweat dripped down his temples and ran across his scar.
Blinking through the haze and sunlight, he finally noticed her. She was sitting on the ground, bawling.
Her face was red and swollen. Her gray dress was smeared with blood and dirt. Snot ran from her nose as she cried uncontrollably.
Ye Wuji stared at him, confused.
"Who the hell are you?" he rasped. Then he paused. A name slipped from his mouth before he could stop it.
"Meiyin," he said aloud as he gripped the edge of the coffin and pulled himself up. The name felt familiar; it was etched into the bones of his new body.
The girl's eyes lit up when she heard her brother call her name. She rushed forward and threw her arms around him.
"Waaah! I thought I'd never see you again! I thought you had left me too, brother!" she cried.
Ye Wuji stood there stunned. "Did I transmigrate?" he thought. Even without looking at himself in a mirror, he knew that this wasn't the skinny, old body he used to have.
She clung to him with her small arms as if she had been holding the world alone. He didn't push her away. He let her sob against his bruised body, muffling her cries in the worn fabric of his rugged robe.
He looked down at her. "So young, so broken," he thought. He had been many things; brilliant, reckless, and cold, but never anyone's brother.
And yet, here he was. When her sobs finally slowed, he raised a hand and gently rested it on her head.
"Okay, silly," he said in a low voice. "Your brother's not dead. I'm never leaving you again." He almost couldn't believe the words that came out of his mouth.
Meiyin slowly let go of him, sniffling and wiping her nose with her sleeve. Ye Wuji climbed out of the coffin and collapsed onto the ground beside it; pain ripped through every joint and muscle.
He sat in silence, breathing heavily, his mind racing. Fragments of memory flickered behind his eyes, not his own memories, but those belonging to the body's original owner.
He saw names and faces, and experienced pain and fear that weren't his own. There was also one harsh truth in these memories.
This wasn't Earth, but a different world, a cultivation world. It was a place where power ruled and weakness meant death. A place where mortals were ants, crushed without notice.
He didn't know whether to laugh at the absurdity or scream.
"A second life..." he mumbled to himself. "But at what cost?"
Ye Wuji's head throbbed even harder, but not from the pain in his body; it was the pain in his mind.
Memories kept flooding in: Blurred images sharpened into cruel truths.
The boy who had once owned this body had been weak, just like one of the village kids, nothing more.
He and his little sister had survived a massacre carried out by a demonic cultivator who had slaughtered their parents and neighbors.
A cultivator hunting this demonic cultivator gave them a single spirit stone. He believed it was a twisted form of compensation.
Ye Wuji's head throbbed even harder, but not from the pain in his body; it was the pain in his mind.
Memories kept flooding in: Blurred images sharpened into cruel truths.
The boy who had once owned this body had been weak, just like one of the village kids, nothing more.
He and his little sister had survived a massacre carried out by a demonic cultivator who had slaughtered their parents and neighbors.
A cultivator hunting this demonic cultivator gave them a single spirit stone. He believed it was a twisted form of compensation.
At the time, the boy was too young to understand its value. To him, it was just a glowing rock, nothing more.
But as he grew older, he learned what it truly was: a rare item rich with spiritual energy, valuable to someone of his caliber. It was a cultivator's currency. However, since he wasn't a cultivator, he couldn't use it.
He held onto it, thinking it might change their lives. Naively, he shared his hopes with his so-called best friend.
He told his friend that he planned to give the spirit stone to the village chief in exchange for training so that he could finally begin cultivating and rise above his helplessness.
That night, his best friend came back with two other young men.
They beat him to a pulp and stole the stone. When he tried to fight back, they beat him more and left his dead body in the dark and cold.
That was the end of the boy's measly life and naivety—well, until Ye Wuji opened his eyes.