Volume One: Default
Wenxiu Continent, Tingxiang Kingdom, Yun City, the Tang Family.
In the cool pavilion of the back courtyard, an old man in a long robe stood before a stone table, brush in hand, strokes flowing like a coiling dragon across the paper. Look closely, and one would see that his fingers never truly gripped the brush at all. It hovered and moved entirely on a thread of True Qi.
From a distance he seemed the very picture of leisure, elegant and refined with effortless elegance.
He had laid down only a few strokes when Old Master Tang's True Qi wavered. The brush jerked, the tip slipped, and an ugly slash gashed across the page. Beside him, the steward brewing tea felt the muscles in his face twitch. He knew at once that the old master was in a foul mood.
"Pa!" Sure enough, the old man, who had meant to soothe his temper with a little elegance, slammed the brush down onto the table and roared, "Someone! Go see whether that little bastard is awake. If he is, tell him to drag himself over here!"
......
"Heaven and Earth Creation Cauldron... the true way to use it is to refine the Cauldron Spirit, to use the body as a cauldron! I went wrong from the very start. No matter how I strained, I could never take that last step in the Alchemy Dao..."
Tang Yan mumbled the words in his daze, then his eyes snapped open and he jolted. "Didn't the Heaven and Earth Creation Cauldron blow apart? Didn't my body get blasted to pieces and kill me? How do I still have a mind to think with?"
Jolted awake, Tang Yan was startled to find himself lying on a soft couch, the furnishings around him staggeringly lavish.
In the next instant a flood of information surged up from somewhere deep in his skull. Two separate sets of memories ground against each other and fused, and his head throbbed as though it would split open.
It was a long while before he let out a slow breath and the pain eased. As he sorted through the memories, his expression turned distinctly odd.
He had come from Earth, the most mysterious Alchemist in the Inner Jianghu.
The cultivation lineage had existed in Huaxia since ancient times, but as the ages turned, its practitioners had withdrawn from sight, scattering among mountains and rivers, hidden away in the markets and streets, until they formed what was called the Inner Jianghu.
The blast of the Heaven and Earth Creation Cauldron had, against all reason, thrown his soul into a Body Seizing rebirth. He had crossed into a youth who happened to share his name, Tang Yan, and whose station was nothing less than eldest young master of the Tang Family.
Learning he held such an honored status, Tang Yan felt a flicker of comfort. A young master, at least. His second life had not begun for nothing.
But his face fell soon enough.
This world honored martial strength above all. Cultivation rose through five ranks, Heaven, Earth, Profound, Yellow, and Origin, and each rank held nine grades.
The Host's old strength had been a mere Origin Rank, Second Grade!
He had begun cultivating at six. Even a dog could have clawed its way to Origin Rank, third grade, in that time!
And once he dug through everything this fellow had done with his life, Tang Yan half wished he could cross straight back.
If someone set down this boy's sixteen years, they could title the book How a Good-for-Nothing Was Forged and not be wrong.
Myself, I took up the qin, chess, calligraphy, and painting at five, and dabbled in martial arts and pill scriptures besides. At seven I entered the Alchemy Dao. At twenty-four the Inner Jianghu called me the Little Pill King. At thirty-eight I stepped into the rank of Alchemy Dao Grandmaster, able to refine Ninth-rank pills!
In all the world, those who could stand as my equal could be counted on one hand. Countless figures of the Inner Jianghu had taken my pills and owed me favors beyond reckoning.
Even the mightiest experts, their cultivation honed to its peak, still had to greet me with the respectful title of Alchemy Saint.
Next to me, this earlier Tang Yan really should have found a block of tofu and brained himself on it!
As for how he had ended up here, the body's former owner had harassed the City Lord's daughter, Lin Dongxue, and tried to force himself on her. Liu Zhi, eldest young master of the Liu Family, had happened to pass by, crippled the boy's Dantian, and beaten him within an inch of his life.
The body, already hollowed out by wine and women, had been frail to begin with. The beating finished it off on the spot, and his own drifting soul had, by some absurd coincidence, slammed head-on into the ruined shell.
There was something off about this attempted-rape business, he felt sure of it. But he had only just crossed over, and his head was still a muddle.
Just as he was about to think it through, a crisp voice rang out.
"Young Master, it's bad! The Master, the Master is calling for you!" A maidservant rushed in, flustered.
"I heard." Tang Yan straightened his clothes without the slightest hurry.
"Young Master, the Master said... he said for you to hurry up and get over there..." Seeing him still dawdling, Xiaocui fretted inwardly and reminded him in a small voice.
At her words Tang Yan paused, then ruffled her hair with a grin. "Sounds urgent, then."
The Young Master Tang of this moment was no longer the good-for-nothing of before. He knew perfectly well why his grandfather had summoned him. Nothing more than a scolding and a lecture. Was he supposed to race over just to be cursed at?
Besides, his mind still wasn't running clean. One wrong word and the old man might bring a palm down on him, and there would go half his little life.
Still, knowing the old man's temper, if he didn't go, the patriarch would come storming over himself, and then a beating was all but certain.
"Fine, I'm going now. Fetch me a robe."
"Right away, Young Master." Xiaocui answered and quickly brought over a long robe.
Tang Yan took it, and his expression darkened at once.
The soft satin robe was riddled with holes, one after another, and from the ragged edge of every hole dangled a string of gold trinkets.
Worldly as Tang Yan had been in his last life, he had never seen, never even heard of, anything so bizarre.
"This is mine?"
"Young Master, isn't this your favorite robe? Granny Wang had to alter it seven times before it came out right." Xiaocui spoke softly, though curiosity filled her eyes and brow. Why was the Young Master so unlike himself today?
"Strip all the gold off it and store it away. Throw the robe out and bring me something normal." Tang Yan nearly coughed up a mouthful of blood, marveling once more at the former owner's strangeness. If the boy had poured even this much fussy cleverness into cultivation, his Dantian would never have been crippled.
Once he had changed into a proper robe, Xiaocui studied the Young Master, stripped now of his usual arrogance, and a thought rose up that even she could scarcely believe. Had the Young Master turned over a new leaf?55Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡkOAiD0TBwk
Guided by the memories, Tang Yan made his way toward the back courtyard.
From far off he could already see a burly old man, brush in hand, the very image of idle ease.
Yet with his sharp eye, Tang Yan still caught the faint trace of anger radiating from the old man. And that anger, exactly as he had guessed, was aimed squarely at him.
"Greetings, Grandfather." Steeling himself, Tang Yan stepped up to pay his respects.
The old steward Uncle Mo said nothing, and the servants around them did not dare make a sound. There was no anger on the old master's face, yet that frozen calm pressed down on everyone like a weight.
And it was Tang Yan's arrival that finally shattered it.
"Pa!"
"Crack!"
For the second time, Old Master Tang slammed the brush onto the stone table, and the handle snapped clean in two.
"You little bastard, you've grown a bear's heart and a leopard's gall! It was bad enough when you idled about learning nothing and stirring up trouble, but now your wings have hardened and you actually dared to force yourself on the City Lord's daughter, and you bloody well failed at that too! You've thrown away every last shred of my Tang Family's face!"
Old Master Tang was a savage one indeed. The first words out of his mouth bordered on outright treason. The City Lord's daughter, and what shamed him was that the attempt had failed?
"When you were six, I tested your martial talent myself. You inherited the fine bloodline of my old Tang line, top-grade aptitude through and through.
"If you'd cultivated as you should have, would your Dantian be crippled now? You were in the wrong from the start. You had the beating coming. Where the hell am I supposed to go to plead your case?"55Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡhJXUSlfCok
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