Xu Zimei should have died long ago.
At least, that’s how the story was supposed to end.
After spending countless years climbing through the cultivation world, he had already experienced everything most people spend lifetimes chasing—power, fear, betrayal, reputation. He had seen ancient inheritances appear, watched sects rise and collapse, and stood among monsters disguised as saints. By the end of it all, there were very few people left in the world capable of standing beside him.
Then he opened his eyes and found himself young again.
Back inside the True Martial Sacred Sect.
Back before everything went wrong.
For a while, Xu Zimei almost suspects this is some kind of illusion. The familiar mountains are still there. The same disciples are walking around pretending they understand how large the world truly is. Even the people who later became terrifying figures are still stumbling through the beginning stages of cultivation.
Only Xu Zimei remembers what they eventually become.
That changes things.
Normally, people would call reincarnation a second chance. A chance to fix regrets, save important people, maybe become some righteous hero who corrects the mistakes of the past.
Xu Zimei has no interest in any of that.
Because the version of him people remember in the future was never considered righteous to begin with. Depending on who survived long enough to tell the story, he was called many things—madman, demon, tyrant. Some feared him enough that even mentioning his name became taboo.
The strange part is that he doesn’t really deny any of it.
So this time, Xu Zimei stops pretending to care about playing the hero.
Armed with memories nobody else possesses, he quietly begins preparing long before the world realizes what is coming. Ancient opportunities hidden beneath ruins. Secret realms that haven’t opened yet. Powerful figures still lurking in obscurity. Xu Zimei knows where many of these paths eventually lead because he already walked through the bloodshed once before.
But memory is not the same thing as control.
The more he interferes, the more certain events begin changing in ways even he cannot predict.
And this world is far from peaceful.
At Willow Bank River, ancient koi are rumored to leap through the heavens and transform into dragons beneath rare celestial phenomena. Deep within forgotten mountains, old cultivators isolate themselves for thousands of years pursuing enlightenment. Wanderers carrying broken weapons casually destroy cities, while beneath certain forbidden lands, terrifying things continue sleeping undisturbed.
Or maybe not sleeping at all.
Xu Zimei understands one truth better than most: the cultivation world has always belonged to the ruthless.
The problem is, after returning to the past, even he can no longer tell whether he is escaping fate… or slowly becoming the exact monster history already remembers him as.
