In the summer vacation of 2013, aboard an intercity bus heading from Guyang County, Anhui Province to Yuzhou City.
It was a sweltering summer afternoon, and the passengers on the bus were all dozing off.
In the back row, a pale-skinned young man suddenly opened his eyes, as if just waking from a deep sleep. His face was initially filled with confusion before he looked around.
The handrails, seats, windows, and curtains were all brand new.
"Isn't this the 311 intercity bus I took to Yuzhou City for my first year of high school during the summer vacation after the middle school entrance exams in 2013?"
"I remember it clearly. The 311 intercity bus was just launched this year. A forty-kilometer ride for a ten-yuan fare."
"Back then, I was riding to Yuzhou City with my cousin-in-law's younger sister."
Jiang Ning turned his head. His shoulder felt slightly heavy; a girl was leaning against it, her hair half-concealing her face, eyes closed as she slept soundly.
"Everything matches."
"But didn't I fail the heavenly tribulation and get blasted into smithereens by the lightning? Why am I here?"
"Could it be... I've been reborn?"
Jiang Ning's pupils dilated. Centuries of Taoist cultivation had long forged a mind as serene as an ancient well, yet at this moment, his heart surged with boundless hope.
"I'm back. I didn't perish in the heavenly tribulation; I've been reborn into my youth."
***
Jiang Ning, one of the two Nascent Soul True Monarchs of the Luoyun Sect, also known as the "True Monarch Buyu".
In his past life, at the age of twenty-seven, he had crossed through a spatial rift into the immortal cultivation world.
Endowed with supreme talent and a Heaven Spiritual Root, the moment he entered the sect, he was taken in as a personal disciple by an elder. It took him only three hundred years to reach the Nascent Soul Great Perfection.
Though he was an ascetic cultivator, his combat prowess was terrifyingly formidable. He had once single-handedly slaughtered seven Nascent Soul sects in a single day, shaking the entire immortal cultivation world of Central Province.
Regrettably, he ultimately fell under the Spirit Severing tribulation, blasted into absolute nothingness by the lightning.
Right at the moment of his tribulation, Jiang Ning achieved a complete epiphany. Despite being revered as a Nascent Soul True Monarch worshipped by millions, his state of mind for seeking the Dao had possessed severe flaws.
Assailed by inner demons, the various tribulation-crossing magical treasures he had meticulously prepared went completely unused before his soul scattered and vanished.
The root cause was that at the age of twenty-seven, when his family passed away, his lover left him, and his career suffered setbacks, his heart had already died. Everything after that was merely living in a daze.
When the sect offered him a cultivation technique that promised to sever all seven emotions and six desires, which—when paired with his Heaven Spiritual Root aptitude—would allow him to advance straight into the Nascent Soul stage, he agreed without the slightest hesitation.
From then on, he became an emotionless cultivation machine, advancing all the way and surpassing every predecessor in the history of the Luoyun Sect.
Yet when facing the Spirit Severing tribulation, he finally understood: the Spirit Severing stage was precisely about transforming into a mortal. Having discarded the seven emotions and six desires, how could he ever transform into a mortal?
And so, he failed.
Jiang Ning sensed within his body and discovered that his magical power—vast enough to move mountains and drain seas—had vanished without a trace.
Even his Divine Sense, capable of surveying a radius of tens of thousands of miles, was gone.
He pinched his thigh hard.
"It hurts. It hurts so much."
The physical body that could withstand magical treasures head-on was likewise no more.
"This is no dream. I really am back."
Magical power, Divine Sense, a body tempered a thousand times over, divine weapons and treasures, Medicinal Pills, talismans—his accumulations of countless years were all lost.
Yet no matter how terrifying the Spirit Severing tribulation was, it could never entirely strip away everything he possessed.
What made Jiang Ning even more certain of all this was that he actually... found himself smiling.
Ever since he began practicing that technique which claimed to sever all seven emotions and six desires, he had not smiled in three hundred years; he had long since lost the instinct to laugh.
Jiang Ning's heart swelled with wild, unbridled joy. Despite losing the cultivation base he had toiled over for countless years, he felt not a shred of despondency.
For only at this moment did he feel not like a block of wood, but like a real human being.
Suddenly, movement came from his shoulder.
The girl woke up. A fair and pretty face bore a daze, a few stray locks of hair falling across her forehead in a way that made the heart skip a beat. Yet Jiang Ning quietly shifted away, putting some distance between them.Jiang Ning was born in a small township under Guyang County, Yuzhou City.
His parents worked away from home in coastal regions year-round, so he grew up with his grandparents in an entirely ordinary family.
In the high school entrance examinations, Jiang Ning scored 650 points, surpassing the admission threshold for No. 4 High School. Seeking a better education, his parents asked his father's elder brother—Jiang Ning's uncle—if Jiang Ning could stay at his home while attending No. 4 High School.
The uncle readily agreed. However, after Jiang Ning arrived at his household, his three years of high school were far from happy.
His aunt was not an easy person to get along with; she had a sharp and petty character, worshipped the wealthy while despising the poor, and constantly found pretexts to lecture and pick on Jiang Ning. Moreover, the family had a younger son of the same age as Jiang Ning—his cousin.
Living under someone else's roof, Jiang Ning inevitably found himself forced into comparisons on ordinary days. Because he fell short of his cousin in every respect, he suffered all sorts of blows, not to mention countless instances of differential treatment.
Consequently, after graduation, Jiang Ning never visited his uncle's house again, and the original kinship grew bitterly strained.At this moment, the girl sitting next to Jiang Ning was Shen Qing'e. She hailed from the same town as Jiang Ning, being his cousin-in-law's younger sister, and in the future, she would live with him at his uncle's house.
Shen Qing'e was quite pretty, and in his youth, Jiang Ning harbored a crush on her, developing deep feelings for her.
Whenever he had something delicious to eat or fun to play with, he would share it with her, treating her exceptionally well, acting entirely like a devoted follower eager for any crumb of affection.
He had originally thought that living under the same roof would give him a distinct advantage.
However, once Shen Qing'e arrived in Yuzhou City and witnessed a much broader world, how could a small-town boy like Jiang Ning ever catch her eye?
Compared to his peers in Yuzhou City, Jiang Ning had virtually no standout virtues to speak of. His looks were ordinary, he was not very tall, and he was poor at sports.
The top-tier grades he used to achieve back in his small town barely reached the middle of the pack in the city, falling far short of the top students in their class.
With only a hundred yuan of allowance money each month, what on earth could he possibly use to win Shen Qing'e's favor?For three years, Shen Qing'e had kept Jiang Ning on a string, flirting with other outstanding boys while throwing him occasional crumbs of attention that often left him distracted and disheartened. After the college entrance examinations, Shen Qing'e and a tall, handsome classmate were both admitted to a prestigious university in a coastal city, their futures shining bright.
Jiang Ning had only managed to get into a second-tier university. It wasn't until he graduated and entered the working world that he finally saw through Shen Qing'e's past actions. He quietly deleted her contact information, and from then on, their paths virtually never crossed again.
Seeing Shen Qing'e again at this moment, Jiang Ning felt as though a lifetime had passed. He vividly recalled many memories concerning her—truly, the girl had left too deep an impression on him.
This could also be attributed to Jiang Ning's hundreds of years of cultivation; ninety-nine percent of that time had been consumed by his obsession with training, making him a strict ascetic.
"How much longer until we get to the station?" Shen Qing'e rubbed her eyes.
Jiang Ning glanced at a road sign outside; they were almost at the station.
Seeing that Jiang Ning ignored her, Shen Qing'e furrowed her brow and raised her voice a little:
"Jiang Ning, where are we?"
"We'll be at the station in a moment," Jiang Ning replied.
Shen Qing'e seemed to realize something and fell silent.
The bus pulled into the station, the conductor called out, and Jiang Ning got off, carrying his suitcase.
"Jiang Ning, this box is so heavy!" Shen Qing'e lifted it with difficulty, blinking her eyes at him.
If it were the old Jiang Ning, seeing her like this, he would have rushed forward to take it for her without needing a hint.
Now, Jiang Ning looked down at his own frail frame and decided it was better not to.
Speechless, Shen Qing'e picked up her suitcase and stalked off in resentment.
Jiang Ning moved with the flow of the crowd toward the exit.
Upon reaching the exit, Shen Qing'e looked across at a milk tea shop, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear:
"I'm so thirsty, and who knows when Big Sister and the others will get here."