(~1,900 words)
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The first thing I felt wasn't light. It was heat.
Not the pleasant warmth of a summer morning. Not the stinging bite of fever. This was deeper—cosmic, a heat that gripped the soul, melted it, and reshaped it.
My eyes snapped open.
Wooden beams above me. An incense burner letting off faint trails of smoke. The sharp smell of bitter herbs. My heart pounded, struggling to match a rhythm that didn't belong to me.
> Where the hell am I?
A voice pierced the fog. "Third Young Master! You're awake—thank heavens!"
A young girl leaned over me, eyes wide with worry. I blinked. Her face was unfamiliar, but her outfit—tight qipao, clan-embroidered sash—looked like something out of a xianxia drama.
No.
Not drama.
> A novel.
A single name echoed in my mind: Xiao Clan.
I shot upright. My chest burned—something deep and unnatural churned just behind my sternum.
I turned to the mirror at the side of the bed and stared.
The boy in the reflection was perhaps twelve years old. Pale, slightly sickly, with jet-black hair tied into a crude topknot. His eyes shimmered oddly, flecks of violet hidden beneath dark irises.
And then the memories returned. Not just of Earth—of my previous life in a hospital bed, dying of an incurable disease—but of him.
> "Xiao Lin," the girl said. "You collapsed again during cultivation. We feared the worst."
Xiao Lin.
That was my name now.
I had been reincarnated into the Battle Through the Heavens universe.
---
I remembered the story. The world of Dou Qi. Of alchemists and flames, clans and empires. I remembered Xiao Yan, the story's main character—a genius turned cripple, only to rise again as a legend.
But I wasn't him.
Xiao Lin, I soon realized, was a side-branch nobody. Buried deep in the clan hierarchy. Weak, untalented, sickly. A "Third Young Master" only by technicality.
No great bloodline. No mysterious teacher.
Only a flickering sense of wrongness within me.
---
The next morning
I forced myself to sit cross-legged in the Xiao Clan's tiny training courtyard. Alone. The other clan youths had no interest in me. I was a joke. And worse, I felt like one.
> Focus.
I inhaled, pulling Dou Qi from the surrounding atmosphere. The flow was like dragging thick sludge through a pinhole. It barely moved. It hurt.
But just as I began to curse my fate—
> It moved.
Something else inside me stirred. A spark. No—a pulse.
It burst from my dantian like an echoing drumbeat. My body arched, vision blurring. I fell back gasping as heat erupted inside me, traveling through every meridian like lightning fire.
A voice—not mine—spoke softly within my consciousness.
> "The ashes remember. The soul endures. Rise, child of flame."
I blacked out.
---
Hours later
When I awoke, I lay flat on the scorched stone floor. The courtyard around me was still intact—but the area where I had meditated was charred black. The grass had burned in a perfect circle.
My breathing was rapid. My heart raced.
I reached inside myself again. This time, my Dou Qi surged with unnatural clarity.
> From 2nd Duan Qi… to 5th.
That should've taken years. Even with talent.
I stood slowly. My limbs trembled, but it wasn't weakness.
It was power. Raw. Incomplete. Untamed.
And deep within my chest, coiled in the dantian like a sleeping serpent, was a flicker of violet flame.
---
That night
I returned to my quarters in silence. The maid, Yue'er, had left food. I ignored it. Instead, I focused.
I sat. Crossed my legs. Closed my eyes.
> "What are you?" I whispered inward.
The flame stirred.
> "I am memory. I am hunger. I am the feather of rebirth torn across time."
It didn't speak in words so much as feelings. Images.
A burning phoenix, wings blackened by cosmic fire, plummeting through a rift in the sky.
Its body shattered in an explosion of violet light. One fragment, small and soul-bound, drifted across realms until it found me.
The flame had not chosen me for greatness.
It had chosen me because I was empty—a hollow soul with nothing to lose.
---
Three days later
The Xiao Clan held its annual internal sparring exam.
As expected, I was dragged into the ring.
My opponent: Xiao Heng, a 6th Duan Qi junior who enjoyed humiliating others. He laughed as I stepped onto the platform.
"Third Young Master," he said mockingly. "You don't look dead yet. Should I fix that?"
Snickers from the crowd. The Elders barely paid attention.
I clenched my fists. I had no techniques. Only instinct and a flicker of a flame that shouldn't exist.
We bowed. The duel began.
He charged. A basic Wind Step. I ducked, absorbed the blow. Let him hit me once—just once.
Then I released it.
Not a full flame. Just a pulse, through my palm, timed with the Phoenix rhythm still ringing in my blood.
My palm struck his chest. His eyes bulged. He flew back ten feet, smoke curling from his robes.
The courtyard went silent.
> "...Xiao Lin wins," one of the Elders announced slowly, stunned.
---
That night, the flame inside me was restless.
> "The vessel is too small. You must grow, or you will burn."
I had no teacher. No magic ring. No ancient master.
But I had something else:
A soul that had died once before.
And I wasn't afraid to burn.