To understand the sheer panic in the nursery, one had to look back forty-eight hours. Deep within a massive, sprawling manor of ancient, towering architecture and breathtaking gardens, the noble family lived in absolute luxury. Servants busily maintained the grand halls while elite guards patrolled the vast grounds, ensuring absolute order.
Suddenly, one of Madam Xinyi's personal servants burst from the inner chambers. She sprinted frantically toward the Medical Hall, skidding to a halt right at the entrance. Clasping her hands together in a respectful bow and lowering her head, she called out urgently, "Master Li! Madam Xinyi has entered labor!"
The busy hall fell dead silent. Moments later, an elderly clan doctor with a long white beard rushed out, followed closely by assistants carrying heavy medicine boxes. Master Li brushed his long beard with his right hand, tucked his left arm behind his back, and let out a hearty laugh. "Hahaha! Today is going to be a glorious day. Lead the way!"
When they reached the nursery, the outer room filled with tense anticipation. Because Master Li was a man, he remained behind a silk privacy veil to direct the birth, while his female assistants did the hands-on work. Minutes later, a tiny, fragile cry echoed through the heavy silence. The waiting servants and elders burst into immediate joy.
Master Li ordered his assistants to bring the newborn over. "Here he is, sir, cleaned and dressed for Madam Xinyi."
An hour later, inside the quiet nursery chamber, Madam Xinyi rested weakly against her silk pillows, her face pale but completely filled with maternal bliss. Master Li carefully cradled the infant, examining his vital signs.
Suddenly, the doctor's smile froze.
The baby's breathing abruptly stopped. An uneasy, suffocating silence gripped the room. Master Li's mind scrambled in utter confusion, his good mood instantly evaporating. What is happening? Why did he stop breathing? Did we make a mistake? He quickly channeled his energy to test the child, only to make a horrifying discovery: the infant's life source was completely shattered.
To everyone's absolute shock, the child was pronounced dead. Had Madam Xinyi not been a powerful cultivator with a hardened mind, the grief would have broken her sanity completely. Everyone accepted that the young master was gone.
Yet now, two days later, the impossible had happened.
A Return to Life
Madam Wang Xinyi walked into the nursery, looking perfectly healthy, radiant, and full of life. She was flanked by a entourage of neat, highly respectful maids. Everyone who occupied this wing of the manor looked clean, well-fed, and immensely wealthy.
But more importantly, the woman was staring down at him with tears streaming freely down her cheeks. Though Qin Feng's infant vision was still hazy, he could see her eyes sparkling like stars, staring at him with an overwhelming warmth and joy.
Before Qin Feng could process his surroundings, Master Li stepped forward, his face twisted in absolute bewilderment. The old doctor gently took Qin Feng's tiny hand and pricked his miniature finger with a slender silver needle.
Sharp pain surged instantly through his tiny body.
An pure wave of anger rose in Qin Feng's mind—how dare this old man stab him! But before his conscious mind could voice the rage, his primitive infant body reacted completely on its own.
"Waaaah! Waaaah!"
He wailed at the top of his lungs.
The room froze for a fraction of a second, and then completely erupted.
"He cried!"
"The Young Master cried!"
"Hahaha! He's healthy! His lungs are perfectly fine!"
Laughter and joyous chatter filled the room, making the atmosphere livelier than it had been in days. Qin Feng, however, was left utterly stunned.
I... cried? I couldn't even control my own anger.
Only then did the absolute, undeniable truth sink in. He had genuinely reincarnated as a helpless baby. This wasn't a dream, and it wasn't a simulation.
He desperately tried to dig into his mind to remember his past life. Slowly, a heavy realization hit him. What the hell? I can only remember my name and the exact way I died. Why can't I remember who I actually was? He couldn't make sense of the mental block. All he knew for certain was that the beautiful woman watching over him was his new mother: Madam Wang Xinyi, the wife of the clan's Patriarch.
Later that afternoon, a powerful figure arrived at the nursery. It was Elder Mu Ziyan, the sect's premier alchemist.
Carrying Qin Feng with immense care, she brought him directly to the grand Alchemist Hall, a sacred place where potent pills and elixirs were refined. She gently lowered his tiny body into a raised stone pool filled with shimmering spiritual water. The liquid felt incredibly warm, dense with thick, glowing spiritual energy.
"This spiritual water will draw out any mortal impurities, cleanse his inner meridians, and thoroughly purify his blood vessels," Elder Mu Ziyan murmured calmly to the attending maids.
As Qin Feng floated in the pool, strange, intense sensations rippled through his tiny body. It felt sharp and slightly painful at first, but the discomfort quickly melted into a soothing, deeply refreshing warmth. His infant body naturally and greedily absorbed the ambient energy from the water.
While the purification process ran its course, Elder Mu Ziyan closed her eyes and extended her profound spiritual sense into the baby. She was attempting to verify the quality of Qin Feng's spirit root—an ancient, mandatory trait required by all cultivators since the dawn of the old era.
As her consciousness probed his soul, her calm expression slowly began to fracture. First came confusion. Then absolute shock. Finally, a deep, unsettling uncertainty.
The moment the process finished, she abruptly snapped her eyes open and called out to the servants. "Wrap the child, carry him back to Madam Xinyi immediately, and tell her I am on my way."
Elder Mu Ziyan turned on her heel and sprinted directly to the clan's Grand Record Hall.
The keeper of the records looked up in surprise. "Ah, Elder Mu Ziyan, what brings you to the archives today?"
"I need to verify something," she replied tersely, bypassing him and heading straight for the ancient spirit root logs.
She meticulously flipped through ancient scrolls and texts that had been preserved since the era of the clan's founding ancestors, but she found absolutely nothing that mirrored what she had just sensed inside the baby.
I can't find a single record of it here? That's impossible, she whispered to herself in the quiet archives. Does this mean his root is absolute trash... No. There was too much power for it to be trash. There must be more to this. For now, I must report it.
Elder Mu Ziyan left the archives and went straight to Madam Xinyi's private chambers.
"Congratulations, Lady Xinyi," she said, bowing respectfully. "Your son definitively possesses a spirit root."
In an instant, Xinyi stood up from her seat, her face glowing with ecstatic pride. "Hahaha! Excellent! Truly excellent!" Joy completely flooded her features, and her mind immediately raced with plans for a grand, lavish celebration the moment her husband, the Patriarch, returned from his journey.
"My Lady," Elder Mu Ziyan interrupted, her voice heavy.
Xinyi paused, noticing the tension in the alchemist's posture. "What is it?"
"Your son's spirit root..." Mu Ziyan hesitated, choosing her words with extreme caution. "...it is completely unknown."
A dead silence fell across the room. Madam Xinyi's proud smile froze perfectly on her face.
"Unknown?" Xinyi repeated, her voice dropping. "What do you mean by unknown? All cultivators possess a spirit root that maps to the elements. It represents exactly how powerful and talented they are destined to become."
Elder Mu Ziyan shook her head slowly, her eyes filled with a deep gravity. "No, my Lady. This one is entirely different. His spirit root does not match any elemental record in our history. It is neither of the earth, nor fire, nor water, nor wind. He clearly possesses one, but... it simply cannot be measured."
She looked directly into the mother's eyes and delivered the final, chilling truth. "And because of that, his future potential... cannot be predicted by mortal means.