Shen Liang woke to sunlight.
That alone was enough to steal the breath from his lungs.
Warm morning light spilled through the paper windows, painting familiar patterns across the wooden floor. The faint scent of boiled rice drifted in from the kitchen. Outside, birds chirped—ordinary, irritatingly alive.
He lay still.
Too still.
This was wrong.
He sat up abruptly, heart hammering, eyes darting across the room. His room. Unchanged. His training sword leaned against the wall where he always left it. His academy robes were folded neatly on the chair.
No blood.
No screams.
No void.
His hands trembled as he raised them before his eyes. Solid. Real. He pressed fingers into his palm until it hurt.
Pain answered.
"Dream…?" he whispered.
But memories rose instantly, sharp and merciless.
The tomb.Whatever it was that he thought he saw.His mother's body on the floor.
Too coherent. Too complete.
Before he could think further, footsteps approached.
"Liang'er," his mother's voice called from outside. "You'll be late again if you keep sleeping."
His blood turned to ice.
Slowly—far too slowly—Shen Liang stood and opened the door.
She stood there, alive.
His mother frowned at him, hands on her hips, expression sharp with habitual irritation. No wound. No blood. No glassy eyes. Just the same woman who had raised him with scolding words and heavy hands.
"What are you staring at?" she snapped. "Did you hit your head again?"
Shen Liang could not speak.
The world tilted—not into nothingness, but into disbelief.
"You—" His voice cracked. He swallowed hard. "You're alive."
Her frown deepened. "What nonsense are you spouting this early? Hurry up. Eat. The academy won't wait for you just because you're useless." his mom said in her usual cold demeanor. He couldn't point towards any moment in his life where she had ever acted out of love towards him
There it was.
Normality.
He obeyed mechanically, eating without tasting, walking without awareness. Every step felt like he was trespassing through someone else's life. His mind replayed the previous day relentlessly, searching for cracks.
Nothing changed.
The streets were the same. The merchants shouted the same prices. The academy gates loomed ahead, ancient stone etched with formation lines that faintly glowed with restrained power.
Magic.
This world ran on it.
Qi refined through meridians. Mana shaped by will. Spellforms etched into reality through talismans, arrays, and incantations passed down through bloodlines older than kingdoms.
Talent determined everything.
At the academy, students were ranked from A to F.
A-rank talents were monsters—geniuses capable of bending qi and mana instinctively, destined for sect leadership or immortal paths.
B and C-ranks formed the backbone of cultivator society.
D-rank talents struggled, but survived.
And then there were E and F.
Failures.
Shen Liang was E-rank.
Not weak enough to be pitied. Not strong enough to be respected.
A stain that proved even cultivator bloodlines could rot.
He took his seat in the rear hall, surrounded by other E and F-rank students. Slouched postures. Dull eyes. The forgotten.
Whispers followed him as always.
"Why is he even here?"
"His mother must have bribed someone."
Where Sheng Liang lacked in Qi he compensated with strategy and physical strength. He was able to beat up students up to Rank B and he did so often times. That is why no one dared to confront him one on one.
A pity, he thought to himself. He loved fighting and he has done heinous things with no remorse.
He was most likely the scariest E rank out of them all.
However none of it mattered at the moment.
Because when the master entered, Shen Liang's breath stopped. He hadn't stopped thinking about it, treating whatever happened more like a dream or a déjà vu.
The same man.The same robes.The same flat, bored gaze.
"The assignment is simple," the master said, voice identical down to its cadence. "Trace your lineage. Record what came before you."
The world rang.
Shen Liang's fingers dug into the desk.
This was the beginning.
Again.
Laughter rippled through the hall. Groans. Complaints. The exact same reactions.
Time had rewound.
Not partially.
Perfectly.
His heart pounded—not with fear, but with a creeping, suffocating realization.
This was not resurrection.
This was repetition.
He remembered everything.
The tomb beneath the western slope.
The box without inscriptions.
The images that should not exist.
His gaze drifted to his classmates, to their careless ignorance, to the master who would dismiss him as useless before the week ended.
None of them knew.
None of them remembered.
Only him.
Shen Liang lowered his head, shadows hiding his expression.
If the day repeated, then the murder had not yet happened.