Living Again

As the leather-faced man watched the back of the palanquin with fear in his heart, Shao Ling was sitting cross-legged on his seat with rivers of sweat flowing from his pores. The thick black curtains of the palanquin transformed it into a mobile sauna, and Shao Ling was concentrating on absorbing the Yang Qi filtered through the curtains in the form of heat.

This was the routine Shao Ling followed whenever he returned to Shao Manor from training in the forest with the scarred man. He was currently meditating- or rather, cultivating, as the scarred man called it- in the veritable inferno that was the sedan chair in order to absorb Yang Qi from the Heavens and Earth. The sedan chair was originally used to shield Shao Ling from the sun, as he was said to be born with Extreme Yin meridians in this world, which made him unable to safely absorb the powerful Yang Qi of the sun. However; the palanquin had become a tool for martial arts training since ever since the scarred man took Shao Ling as his disciple. Training on the way to the forest, followed by training under the cover of the trees, followed by training on the way back and more training and cultivating upon reaching the manor had become Shao Ling's life for the past four years.

Shortly after waking up in an unkown place surrounded by strangers, Shao Ling discovered that the man and women he first met were not abnormally tall; Shao Ling had shrunk to

the size of a ten-year-old child. When Shao Ling first saw his reflection in a basin of water, the shock was comparable to being tossed into an icy river in the dead of winter. In the following days, Shao Ling learned that he had an extremely intimate relationship with the scholarly man and the teacherlike woman; although he rarely saw the man after the day he woke up, the woman fawned over him like an overprotective mother, and the man watched him as if unwilling to miss a single second of the sight of him during meals, which Shao Ling ate together with the pair, along with a few other adults and children. Shao Ling would have to be denser than the earth's core if he didn't realize that the man and woman treated him like their own son.

The ancient-looking clothes, the inconprehensible language, and most of all Shao Ling's apparently close relationship with people he possessed no memory of and his young body brought Shao Ling to the conclusion that he had reincarnated. He really was the son of the man and woman. Or, at least, in their son's body. Shao Ling worked to learn the unfamiliar language and recover his health, which was still fragile despite the total remission- or rather absence of- the terminal blood disease that brought Shao Ling's previous body to a zombie-like state. As time passed, he learned that he, or rather, the Shao Ling known by the people around him, fell into a coma for ten days after the Yang Qi in his meridians reached deadly levels, and the doctors brought to treat him said that it was highly unlikely that he would wake up.

When Shao Ling woke up, it was a new Shao Ling in his body. Shao Ling was unsure of whether he had transmigrated into the young boy's body during the coma, or whether he had reincarnated into this body at infancy and the coma restored the memories of his previous life at the cost of the memories of his current life. Whatever the case, Shao Ling learned that his parents were named Shao Wei and Shao Xiaoyan. Shao Wei was a countryside government official, and Shao Xiaoyan was his official wife- Shao Ling later learned that Shao Wei also had a concubine.

Reincarnation on its own was an earth-shattering discovery, but as Shao Ling lived in the Shao residence longer, he learned more of the outside world and received a shock equal or even greater than the initial discovery of his reincarnation, which was that the world Shao Ling now lived in was not the one he knew. This world had technology comparable to the Han dynasty, and fantastic creatures and immortals were given reverence as real beings. Shao Ling was able to determine that he had reincarnated into a new world rather than the past due to none of the historical figures of his old world appearing in his tutor's history lessons. The situation in which Shao Ling had to figure out which of those two senarios he was in was almost as bizarre as the answer.

Shao Ling would have felt somewhat like the protagonist of a Xianxia novel if not for the cruelty of reality. Much like in his old life, Shao Ling was well-acquainted with doctors in his new life. Although they used pills and traditional medicine- which was cutting-edge in this world- instead of stethoscopes and x-rays, the doctors Shao Ling interacted with shared grim dispositions to Shao Ling's condition. The doctors said that Shao Ling's body rejected the Yang Qi from the sun due to him possessing Extreme Yin meridians, and that the condition was both incurable and terminal.

Having died of a terminal illness once, Shao Ling was determined to make the most of his life while he was able to. One of the greatest pains Shao Ling had to bear in his previous life was being forced to give up practicing martial arts, which had been his driving passion since childhood. The doctors made it clear that Shao Ling was to avoid strenuous activity which might accelerate his absorbtion of Yang Qi, yet Shao Ling was not dissuaded by the prospect of hastening his death. Although Shao Ling would love to live ten thousand years, having his death drawn out for years in his previous life gave Shao Ling the belief that the pursuit of passion is what makes life worth living. Thus, he vocally expressed his desire to learn martial arts. After much deliberation by his parents and consultation with doctors, Shao Ling was permitted to practice internal martial arts, which would not overtax his body, and could potentially extend his lifespan.

Hence, when Shao Ling reached the age of twelve for the second time, a mountain of a man with evil-looking scars on his face and an oppressive aura showed up at the Shao residence to accept Shao Ling as his disciple.