Third chance!

On a beautiful night with both moons high in the sky, there inside some random alleyway were five men thrashing the body of a young boy that looks to be thirteen years old. The boy has already died, but the men didn't care to stop, nor did they want to stop because they were currently enjoying themselves by venting their frustrations on the boy's corpse.

They were just underlings, thus they will always face the ire of their boss, but when they beat, intimidate or threaten the weak, they feel like kings enjoying the fleeting feeling that came with 'power', and this wasn't any different from all the other times.

"Max, shouldn't we have already stopped? He already died, after all, and finished the mission we got from the kids' family plus the cops could be here at any moment."

One man asked Max, their leader, as he continued beating him and not showing any signs of stopping.

"Nah! It's fine considering that the cops don't come around these parts of town and we can vent all our frustrations on him. Besides, it ain't like someone will care about his death, as you said, it was his family that asked us to do this."

As they were talking about what to do, a sudden breathless, panting voice interrupted them.

"You're right guys! ~ This just feels too good! ~ The feeling of my skin pounding against his flesh, the noise the impact makes, and ~ FINALLY ~ the sweet sound of his bones breaking~. Sends shivers down my spine every ~ time! ~. "

The four that were beating the poor child a second ago, immediately stopped what they were doing and moved a couple of meters backwards upon hearing what the fifth figure said, and looked at him with disgust, which didn't faze the fifth guy.

Max, shouted in anger, "Oi! Jimmy! How many times have I told you to stop getting off in these type of situations! Now how are the rest of us supposed to vent our frustrations, huh!? Can't you think about someone else instead of yourself for a change!?"

Jimmy completely ignored him, not even showing him basic respect of being his leader, as he continued pummeling the child's body for a few seconds more chasing sweet release, before shouting in a blissful cry of perverseness.

*Sigh*

Max could only sigh at this scene, which he has already seen too many times, as he can't do anything to him, as his boss valued Jimmy a lot. He could only shake his head and sigh in annoyance.

After Jimmy stood there with a blissful expression for a few seconds, he finally turned around to face the rest as he is panting, red-faced and a blissful expression on his face, which Max and the others could only ignore and sigh at how troublesome he was.

Jimmy walked towards them and joined them as they formed a circle and started talking, arguing, and joking only a few meters away from the corpse of the child they just murdered.

...

Considering it was dark in the alleyway and them standing a few meters away from the child, they couldn't see as one of the boy's fingers began moving, colour returning to his face, his heartbeat resuming and breathing that slowly escaped from his lips.

'Urgh, my head... wait, why can I feel my body? Why are there voices around me, and why can I hear them? I was sure that I already died, except if I somehow got saved or transmigrated again? Alright, considering that may be the case, I will just slowly open my eyes to not alert the voices of those people, scan my surroundings around my body and what type of situation I am currently in.'

The child warily opened his beautiful crimson eyes, that looked like pools of blood, and glanced at his surroundings trying to make the slightest of movements.

He could see that he was in an alleyway with five men standing a few meters away from him, smoking as they are talking. After completing the scan of his surroundings, he looked down at his own body and saw a small body with blood all over his rag-like clothes but he had no wounds, bruises, or fractures on him, even if his clothes would prove otherwise, indicating that he somehow got healed.

After looking around and figuring out his situation did he lay back down in his original position with closed eyes, to not alert the five men.

'It looks like I somehow obtained a third chance at life. Luckily my soul power healed this body after I took possession of it, but now my soul is hurt from both the transmigration and healing process, leaving me with the soul power that can cover the distance of ten meters. But... I wonder in what world I am in; what's the former body's situation; and what made these people kill the previous owner of this body.'

Before he could think about anything more, an unimaginable amount of pain suddenly coursed throughout his body, organs, head, and his soul. It felt like he was being torn apart inch by inch. The pain was so bad he wanted to scream, to shout, to somehow try and ease the pain yet he didn't.

He clenched his teeth and endured it because he didn't want to alert the five people near him of the fact that he is still alive. He had to be careful about anything and everything he did, considering that his body and mental state aren't in the best condition, nor is he currently strong enough to face any of them. Thus he decided to just continue playing possum until they went away.

...

A minute later the pain slowly subsided and with it, a burst of memories that belonged to the previous body's owner.

His name was Edward Springwater, and he was a part of a very wealthy family with a lot of influence. The Springwater family as the outside world saw it was a family that was loving and supporting of one another, but they weren't, it was only a facade.

Edward's family is comprised of eight people: His mother, Carrie Springwater; father, Alex Springwater; two sisters, Rose -and Patricia Springwater; three brothers, Matt, Edd, and Alex Jr. and himself.

But no-one from his family loved him. No, they detested his mere presence even if he didn't talk to them and stayed out of their way, which constantly confused the previous Edward because he didn't know what he did wrong.

In the beginning, he knew he wasn't in the wrong, but gradually he began thinking otherwise, confusing him even more. No matter what happened to him, he always tried his best at everything he did to try and receive some sort of praise, but he never did.

He was always alone, no matter if he was the smartest, the strongest, and had the most potential to be the next heir to his family's business out of all his siblings. None of it mattered as he grew up alone without anyone's love or guidance.

His family put up with his existence for twelve years before they couldn't stand him anymore, and the abuse began.

They first started starving him, where he sometimes didn't have any food for a week. He was beaten by his parents, siblings, and even the servants could bully him; used him as a punching bag to vent their stress and frustrations they had; His siblings forced others to isolate him and beat him up, they even paid others to pummel him to near death; His parents forced him to quit school because his siblings were mad that he was better than them; They even forced him to sleep on the cold floor without a blanket in winter, to name a few things.

Finally, when he turned fifteen, which was only a few hours ago, they kicked him out of the house to live on the street alone with no money, food, or any warm clothes.

But that wasn't nearly enough for them, as they send these five guys to kill Edward, and to make him suffer horrendous pain before he died, which the five of them even stupidly admitted to before they beat him to death.

...

'Experiencing' the life of the previous Edward, the new Edward couldn't help but sigh in regret. Even if he was thousands of years old, he still sympathized with him, since it reminded him a lot of himself in his previous lives, especially his second life where he was in a similar situation. Feeling that, regrettably, such a young child had to live through all those hardships when he could have lived a normal life, go to school and be the top scorer, get a girlfriend and go on with life, but life decided otherwise, though he only felt that way for a second before he calmed down.

He has seen a lot of things in his life, thus he wasn't that affected, but his arrogance showed its ugly head since he felt like they technically did all those things to 'him'.

He has built his arrogance over thousands upon thousands of years of struggle, battle, and stepping over corpses to reach the pinnacle of the cultivation world where he stayed for another few thousand years.

This made him keen to let them taste the hardships he/Edward went through, as it felt like they slapped his face.

...

"Let's move. We have to report back to the boss that we finished the mission."

Lying on his back as he was still in thought, he heard the voices of one of the men commanding the rest, before the sound of their footsteps walking away from his position, echoed in the alley. Even when they went away, he continuing lying there as he thought of his previous lives and what happened and led him here.

'In my first life, I was an otaku on planet Earth, where I spent all of my free time watching anime, playing games, reading manga, and reading novels. The rest of the time I was working in a company like a slave before I finally died at thirty from heart failure caused by stress.'

'When I opened my eyes again, my soul was already in a trash body of the second young master from one of the most prominent families in the immortal world. I couldn't cultivate so everyone around me bullied me for it, but luckily I unblocked my meridians and began cultivating. Taking step by step to reach the peak of that world, which stayed that way for thousands of years. When I was undergoing my lightning tribulation, that would have allowed me to leap into a higher world, but one person I previously released after he tried taking my life, came back and killed me while I was in the middle of the lightning tribulation.'

'Now I was lucky enough to get a third chance at life, but this time I will not make the same mistakes I made in my past lives. I was too soft-hearted towards my enemies in the immortal world, making the same mistakes as those people did in the novels I read back on Earth. I now know with firsthand experience that leaving your enemies alive will eventually come back to bite you. In this life I will be more ruthless towards my enemies, but not towards people I care for. I will try to find my soulmate and even make some genuine friends in this life, which I never had.'

With these thoughts running through his mind, he accepted his new identity quickly, but he didn't want the same name as the previous Edward, because he was starting anew thus he changed it.

'I will not take the name of Edward Springwater, but I will change my name to...'

He opened his crimson eyes as he said the name under his breath.

"... Lucifer Darkstar."

After saying his new name, Lucifer felt something trying to attack his soul. Curious about what attacked him, even though he probably knew who it was, Lucifer still used his soul power to use a skill called inner-vision, which doesn't require any Qi and only relies on soul power, to see what was trying to attack his soul. Moving his soul power to the area between his eyebrows to enter his mindscape, where the soul is located.

Inside his mindscape, he saw a tiny mosquito-like soul trying to attack his soul. He didn't feel his attacks as his soul has been built, strengthened, and enlarged over thousands upon thousands of years of cultivation and experiencing many live-or-death battles, even experiencing three lifetimes. His soul was as massive as an ocean, even if the lightning tribulation damaged it, thus he will naturally not feel pain from something so weak.

Looking closer at the soul, he saw that the soul took the form of a skinny fifteen-year-old, which confirmed his guess that it was Edward's soul that was attacking him. He didn't immediately kill him, since he didn't see him as an enemy or feel any killing intent from him, but instead pure rage. He was alive again thanks to his body, thus he waited to see what Edward will do. He proceeded to watch Edward with interest as he kept attacking his soul.

...

A minute has already passed since Lucifer arrived and began observing Edward, but Edward has just realized that Lucifer was behind him. He turned around and froze as he looked at Lucifer; it was as if he caught him red-handed, like an animal that did something it shouldn't have, amusing Lucifer even more.

Looking at Edward's appearance he saw a boy with snow-white hair, white sword like-eyebrows, with long white eyelashes fluttering open and close, above a pair of beautiful piercing crimson eyes and a skinny malnourished body, which makes him look slightly younger than he is.

'So that's how I currently look like? It isn't too bad for a start, but still...'

Just looking at his malnourished body made Lucifer slightly narrow his eyes and furrow his eyebrows, scaring Edward as he thought Lucifer was staring at him in displeasure and wants to kill him or worse, probably destroy his soul.

Upon seeing Edward's expression, Lucifer could only shake his head as he began walking towards him, and although Edward wanted to escape, he couldn't, because he was being held in place by Lucifer's soul power. He could only helplessly watch as Lucifer slowly approached him.

"Why did you attack me?"

"..."

No reply came from Edward, since Lucifer's question caught him off guard, but Lucifer could see that he wanted to say something, yet he was too afraid to do so. Thus Lucifer could only encourage him to speak his mind.

"No need to be afraid, child, since I took over your body I already owe you a favour, so you don't need to be afraid that I will kill you, so just tell me what is on your mind."

"I at-attacked y-you b-because, y-you..."

Composing himself a bit he continued, "... you only accepted to use my body as a vessel and not my name, but I wanted you to keep it to continue living and get revenge for me!"

Edward stuttered out of fear at first but spoke normally in the latter half of his sentence, though he still couldn't correctly express what he wanted, yet Lucifer knew what he wanted to say.

"No need to worry, child, as I have already started a new chapter in my life with this body of yours, and later I will naturally get revenge on your family for you. I didn't reject to use your name to dismiss your last wish, but I didn't want to take your name, since that is your identity and not mine. Now... I hope with my explanation that you would stop resisting by clinging on to life and pass on peacefully, otherwise, you might miss your chance to enter the cycle of reincarnation and have your soul destroyed. I will surely make them suffer for all they have done to you, whilst I live a new life in your body without tarnishing the name of Edward Springwater. Of course, I will let your family and the people that help them know that 'I' am Edward before crushing them."

Listening to Lucifer's explanation about why he changed his name made Edward much more relaxed, causing his already translucent body to dissipate, yet before he completely disappears he left behind a few words for Lucifer.

"Thank you, Lucifer, for your kind words! Now I can pass on without having to worry about anything, but you must remember that you should also enjoy your life, living it the way you want to, not just by focusing on revenge or gaining strength. Thank you for not destroying or devouring my soul when you could have, but let me enter the cycle of reincarnation. I hope we see each other again, even if I probably won't remember you."

Lucifer hearing his departing words genuinely smiled for the first time in a few hundred years. Standing there for a few seconds after seeing off the departed soul of Edward, Lucifer felt his connection with his new body significantly improve.

He exited his mindscape and opened his eyes before he looked around for any sign of whether the five men were coming back or not. Not seeing anything particular, Lucifer stood up and stretched his body, which was about 1.75 meters, before he started walking in the opposite direction the five men took.

On this day the 2 February 2080, in the middle of the night, with the beautiful two moons hanging high above in the sky, the journey of Lucifer Darkstar began.