Yang woke to the loud chorus of birds and bright sunlight streaming through the cave entrance. His eyes opened slowly, confusion flooding through him immediately. The sun was already high in the sky, well past dawn. He never slept past dawn anymore. His body had been trained by months of survival to wake with the first light, to make use of every precious hour of daylight.
He sat up quickly, then froze.
He was lying on the cave floor several feet away from his bedding. The fur blanket still lay on his sleeping area, undisturbed and neatly arranged exactly as he'd left it after waking up yesterday. Yang stared at it in confusion. He didn't move in his sleep. He'd always been a still sleeper, even as a child in this life. Grandpa Chen used to joke that Yang slept like a stone, that you could stack things on him and he wouldn't shift an inch all night, so how did he end up on the floor?
As Yang stood, he noticed something felt different. His body felt lighter somehow. Not weaker, the opposite actually. It was like he'd been carrying a heavy pack for months and someone had just lifted it off his shoulders without warning. His movements felt effortless, fluid in a way they'd never been before.
He flexed his fingers experimentally. Even that small motion felt strange, more controlled and more precise than before. Like his body was responding faster to his thoughts, the gap between intention and action somehow shortened.
Then the memories crashed back like a wave of ice water. The crystal. The burning. The liquid fire spreading through his veins. The agony that had felt like it would tear him apart from the inside out.
Yang's hands flew to his throat, expecting it to be raw and damaged from the searing pain. But there was no pain. Nothing at all. He swallowed carefully, testing. Still nothing. No soreness, no difficulty breathing or swallowing. He touched his ears where he clearly remembered blood trickling out and found only dried blood flakes that crumbled away under his fingers.
How long had he been unconscious? A day? More?
Confused and wary, Yang went through his normal morning routine, but everything felt wrong in ways he couldn't quite process.
He picked up his water pot to take a drink. The pot usually required both hands and a good amount of effort to lift when full. This time Yang grabbed it with one hand without thinking, and it came up easily, as light as if it were empty. Water sloshed dangerously close to the rim from the sudden movement.
Yang set it down carefully, staring at his hand like it belonged to someone else. He ignored the weirdness for now.
He needed to relieve himself. Yang stepped outside the cave entrance and walked a short distance into the forest. On his way, he accidentally kicked a stone that was in his path. He'd meant to just nudge it aside with his foot. Instead, the stone went flying into the forest like he'd punted it with all his strength. It cracked loudly against a distant tree trunk with enough force to make a thunk sound.
Yang stood frozen, staring at the tree where the stone had hit. That tree was at least thirty paces away. He hadn't kicked the stone that hard. Had he?
After finishing his business, Yang made his way to the river to wash his face as he did every morning. He cupped water in his hands and brought it up, but he misjudged the force. Water splashed everywhere, soaking his face and chest and even his hair. He tried again, more carefully this time, but still couldn't seem to calibrate his strength properly. It was like his body had changed overnight and his mind hadn't caught up yet to how much force different actions required.
Yang was both excited and frightened. This wasn't normal. This should be impossible.
He sat down heavily by the river's edge, staring at his hands like they held answers he couldn't quite read. The goat carcass from yesterday was gone, probably scavenged by some beast who must have been all too happy to get a free meal delivered right to the riverside. Yang felt a pang of regret at the lost meat. That would have been days of food, and he'd just left it lying there while he passed out in his cave.
But then his thoughts turned to the creature itself. A beast that could throw fire. A crystal in its head. And now Yang was stronger, unnaturally stronger, after consuming that crystal.
The thought felt familiar somehow. Not from this life, but from before. From that hazy previous existence he could only remember in fragments.
Then it hit him like a lightning bolt, so sudden and clear that he gasped aloud.
In his previous life, he'd read web novels. During breaks at work, or maybe during boring college lectures. His memories were fuzzy about the details, but he remembered the stories clearly enough. Stories about people in ancient China-like worlds who could fly through the air, shoot energy beams from their palms, and grow stronger by absorbing cores from magical beasts they killed.
"Beast cores," Yang whispered aloud, his voice cracking from disuse and shock. The words felt right in his mouth, like a key fitting into a lock he hadn't known existed.
Yang's entire understanding of reality shattered and reformed in that single moment.
He'd thought he was just reborn as a peasant in a medieval world. A world behind his previous one in technology and advancement, but still fundamentally similar. Just humans trying to survive, no different from any other time in history.
He'd thought the fireball goat was a strange anomaly. Maybe a rare animal with unusual abilities. Something explainable if he just knew enough about this world's natural history.
But if beast cores were real, if cultivation was real, then everything changed.
This wasn't just a different world. This was a world where humans could become superhuman. Where power existed beyond anything he'd imagined possible. Where the folk tales and legends weren't just stories but actual history.
His mind raced, thoughts tumbling over each other in a chaotic flood.
Those stories Grandpa told about immortals flying through the sky and living for thousands of years, were they real? Not metaphors or exaggerations, but actual accounts of things that really happened?
The villagers' superstitions about spirits in the forest and magical beasts in the mountains, were they based on actual magic? On real creatures with real power that could kill a normal human without effort?
Could there be entire cities of cultivators somewhere that Yang knew nothing about? Although that wouldn't be a surprise, he realized. He was practically a frog in a well, ignorant of the wider world. His whole village was isolated, too far away from anywhere important to matter to anyone. They were so outside the flow of civilization that they didn't even fear robbers, because coming to such a poor and distant village would be a waste of time and effort. No one in the village had ever left. Yang remembered that clearly. All the villagers were born there, married there, had children there, and died there. Generation after generation in the same small collection of mud huts.
Apart from the occasional merchant caravans that passed through at most once a year, they never got any visitors. And even those merchants were just traveling from one small town to another, not coming from any great cities or centers of power.
Yang felt multiple emotions crashing together inside his chest, each one fighting for dominance.
Excitement surged first. He had power now. Real power. He didn't have to be helpless anymore. He'd lifted that heavy water pot with one hand like it weighed nothing. He'd kicked a stone hard enough to crack a tree trunk thirty paces away. What else could he do with this new strength?
But that excitement crashed almost immediately as realization followed.
If cultivation was real, that meant there were people out there who were monstrously powerful. The fireball goat had been dangerous to him, dangerous enough that it had nearly killed him with its dying attack. And that was just an animal, probably not even a particularly strong one given its size and lack of warning from his inner instincts.
What about actual cultivators? People who'd spent years or decades or even centuries developing their power? What could they do?
Could they level mountains? Destroy entire villages with a wave of their hand? The web novels he'd read had featured characters like that, people so powerful that mortal concerns meant nothing to them.
Yang looked down at his hands again, flexing his fingers and watching the way his tendons moved under his skin. Then he looked at the forest around him, seeing it with new eyes.
The forest that he'd thought he was beginning to understand. The forest that had become almost familiar over the past six months, its dangers known and manageable. That forest had just become infinitely more dangerous in a single moment of understanding.
Because now Yang knew there were beasts with powers out here. Beasts with cores in their heads, cores that could grant strength to whoever consumed them. And if there was one such beast, there had to be others. Stronger ones and more dangerous ones. Creatures that would see an eight-year-old child as nothing more than a convenient snack.
But along with the fear came something else. Hope.
Hope for an opportunity to leave the forest. Because if he could find more cores, grow stronger, develop real strength, then maybe he wouldn't have to spend his entire second life hiding in a cave like an animal.
Maybe he could actually rejoin civilization, make something of himself, honor Grandpa's dreams for his future.
Yang realized he was no longer just a child surviving in the wilderness. He'd stumbled into a world of cultivation, and he'd done it in the worst possible way. Alone, untrained, with no teacher to guide him and no idea what he was doing. He'd eaten a beast core without knowing what it was, without any preparation or technique just trusting the unknown feeling that guided him from within. He could have died. He probably should have died, given the agony he'd experienced.
But he hadn't died. He'd survived. And now he was stronger for it.
Yang stood up from the riverside, his decision crystallizing in his mind with sudden clarity.
He needed to figure out what the crystal had done to him. He needed to understand his new strength, learn its limits and capabilities. Test himself carefully to avoid accidentally hurting himself through ignorance.
And most importantly, he needed to know if there were more beast cores he could find.
Because if cultivation was real, and if he wanted to survive in a world with magic and monsters and immortals, then he couldn't stay weak. He couldn't hide in his cave forever, hoping the dangerous things would pass him by.
But more than that, deeper than the practical concerns about survival, Yang felt something else stirring in his chest.
Curiosity. Burning, intense curiosity.
He wanted to know more. Wanted to learn what was out there beyond this forest.
Wanted to see the things this world had to offer. Not for power itself, though power would certainly be useful. But for knowledge. For understanding. For the simple human desire to explore and discover and experience things beyond the narrow confines of his current existence.
He'd been given a second chance at life. A second chance in a world that had magic and wonder and possibilities he'd never imagined. And he'd almost lost it hiding in the forest, just trying to survive one more day.
Yang looked at the river flowing past, carrying water from somewhere upstream to somewhere downstream, connecting distant places he'd never seen. Then he looked at his hands again, these hands that could now lift heavy pots with ease and kick stones like projectiles.
He was eight years old in body. But he had the mind of an adult, the experience of a previous life, and now the beginning of real power.
The forest had taught him to survive. Now it was time for him to learn to live.
Yang turned back toward his cave, his mind already racing with plans. He needed to test his strength properly. Needed to figure out how much stronger he'd become. Needed to prepare for the next stage of his survival, which would now include hunting beasts with cores instead of just trapping rabbits and foxes.
The sun was high overhead, and Yang had wasted half the day unconscious.
His old life in the previous world was gone, lost to fragmented memories. His life with Grandpa was gone, stolen by cruel men with knives. But this life, this second chance in a world of cultivation and magic, this life was just beginning.
And Yang intended to make the most of it.