The sword pierced Lin Xuan's heart with cold precision. As Grand Elder Mo's blade twisted, draining centuries of cultivation, Lin Xuan's lips curved in a bitter smile. He had trusted the wrong man, loved the wrong woman, and built an empire for vultures to feast upon.
"Your Heaven Defying Pill formula dies with you," Mo sneered.
Darkness claimed him—but only for a moment.
Lin Xuan gasped, sucking in air thick with spiritual energy. His hands—small, smooth, uncalloused—clutched silk sheets embroidered with phoenixes. A child's hands.
He sat up in a lavish bedchamber, jade ornaments tinkling in the breeze.
A mirror confirmed his impossible truth: he was twelve again, face unmarred by battle scars, eyes clear of the cynicism that had killed him.
Memories flooded back. The Lin Clan of Azure Cloud City. Third young master, illegitimate son of the clan head, destined to die at sixteen during the family trial—three years from now.
Lin Xuan laughed, the sound startling a serving girl who entered with medicinal soup. She dropped the bowl, porcelain shattering.
"Young Master? Your fever broke!"
Fever, he remembered. The original Lin Xuan had caught a chill that nearly killed him—would have killed him, in his previous timeline. Instead, a transmigrated soul occupied this vessel.
"Leave me," he commanded, voice carrying authority no twelve-year-old should possess.
Alone, Lin Xuan examined his dantian. Empty. No cultivation whatsoever. In his past life, he'd started at fifteen, considered late. Now he had four years of advantage.
Mo. The Lin Clan's destruction. The pill formula that had made him famous—and targetable.
This time, everything would change.
He touched his chest where the sword had ended him. The phantom pain reminded him: trust was a luxury. Power was the only truth.
"Grand Elder Mo," he whispered to the empty room.
"I wonder if you've even been born yet in this era?"
Lin Xuan smiled—a predator's expression on a boy's face.
The heavens had granted him a second chance. He would not waste it cultivating slowly.
Every secret, every technique, every treasure location he knew from his previous life represented advantage.
First: the abandoned well behind the eastern pavilion.
Three months from now, a servant would discover ancient cultivation manuals hidden there—manuals that would launch the second young master's meteoric rise.
Those manuals would be Lin Xuan's.
Tonight.