After Sheng Jun Chapter 1 (Part 2)
Translated by Sylver (ko-fi)
Chapter 1.2 Rebirth After Tribulation (part 2)
He could faintly hear the celebratory cheers of the crowd.
Suddenly, Jiang Xingzhi's heart skipped a beat! An inexplicable sense of unease washed over him. Before he could examine it, a soft crack echoed from his chest.
Crack… The opportunity that had maintained his spiritual energy flow suddenly dissipated.
In an instant, the world seemed to freeze.
His meridians, abruptly deprived of spiritual energy, began to break, inch by inch, from his limbs towards his heart.
Tribulation failed. If nothing unexpected happened, his soul would scatter in moments.
Amidst the booming thunder, the blinding lightning seemed to dim slightly. Jiang Xingzhi forced his eyes open. Through his sweat-blurred vision, he saw a dense crowd in the distance, and vaguely glimpsed a familiar figure.
…Xu Jian?
Jiang Xingzhi blinked, wanting to see more clearly. But his consciousness dissipated like unraveling silk amidst the rolling thunder.
Thud, his body fell uncontrollably.
Before his consciousness completely plunged into darkness, he seemed to hear the crowd's cheers abruptly cease amidst the deafening thunder.
And a desperate cry that overshadowed the thunder, "Jiang Xingzhi—!"
****
Darkness, gloom.
After an unknown period of chaos and drifting, a sliver of light suddenly entered his sea of consciousness.
When he opened his eyes again, he saw a sparsely grassy field. The scent of earth and grass reached his nose, and he could hear the rustling of wind through leaves and the faint chirping of insects in the distance.
Jiang Xingzhi wiggled his fingers and blinked.
What was going on? His soul was intact, his limbs were functional.
He sat up and shivered abruptly. Despite the warm afternoon sun overhead, his body was as cold as jade.
Jiang Xingzhi felt his wrist, his divine consciousness flowing through his meridians. He quickly found the reason for his chill—his soul had been damaged by the heavenly tribulation, making him extremely sensitive to cold.
But fortunately, his cultivation remained at the peak of Mahayana, exactly the same as before the tribulation, completely unchanged.
He waved his hand, conjuring a water mirror. The mirror reflected his own face, only slightly paler than before.
Jiang Xingzhi touched his face. "Truly, kindness invites deception, my appearance evokes pity."
After this shameless self-praise, he dispersed the water mirror and fell into thought—the scene of the tribulation was still vivid in his mind, from the descent of the heavenly lightning to the shattering of his meridians.
The opportunity he had found had gone wrong at the last moment, causing his soul to scatter.
Thinking of this, Jiang Xingzhi paused. The figure he glimpsed before his death reappeared in his mind: it seemed to be Xu Jian?
No, it must have been a hallucination. Xu Jian wasn't there that day.
Also, he seemed to have heard someone shouting his name, their voice cracking. He wondered who it was. Perhaps one of his loyal fans?
His pondering yielded no results, so Jiang Xingzhi gathered his thoughts and focused on the moment the anomaly occurred before his death.
He rubbed his fingertips. "There's definitely something wrong…"
He and Xu Jian had found that opportunity together, but for some reason, a sense of foreboding had flashed through his heart at the time.
In that instant, he had seized the opportunity before Xu Jian. Then he was the first to undergo the tribulation, and subsequently, his soul scattered…
Thinking about it now, it was fortunate he had his sixth sense, otherwise, it would have been Xu Jian who perished.
"Counterfeit goods are harmful." Jiang Xingzhi sighed, thinking about the opportunity. It was a powerful counterfeit, capable of causing the downfall of the number one Mahayana cultivator.
—Although he didn't know why he was alive again.
Jiang Xingzhi crossed his arms and looked up at the sky. Blue sky, green earth, air between heaven and earth. Everything was so normal it felt unreal.
However, being alive was the best outcome.
The most urgent matter was to figure out where he was and how to get back.
Jiang Xingzhi stood up and looked around. Currently, he was on a mountaintop. As far as the eye could see, there were no signs of human habitation within a hundred miles. In the distance, he could faintly make out a city.
He thought for a moment and decided not to head straight for civilization, instead walking down the mountain path, thinking strategically, "City life is complicated, I'll stay in the countryside first."
The sleeves of his indigo robe swayed gently with his movements, looking like bottomless pits from the cuffs. If Lin He were here, he would definitely scold him, "Shameless!" Jiang Xingzhi was clearly the most scheming person under heaven.
As he walked, the soil beneath his feet felt dry, and the grass grew sparsely. The trees on both sides were unevenly spaced, and the leaves in the shade looked somewhat withered and yellow.
In Jiang Xingzhi's memory, it had been a long time since he had seen such malnourished trees.
The cultivation world they lived in was in a period of unprecedented spiritual abundance. Even weeds grew glossy and vibrant, often potted by unscrupulous merchants and passed off as orchids.
"The spiritual energy here is too thin." Jiang Xingzhi muttered to himself.
As he walked, he suddenly stopped.
A stone tablet was faintly visible among the weeds by the side of a fork in the path halfway down the mountain. He waved his hand, and the obscuring grass parted, revealing the inscription on the stone tablet—
[Panshi Mountain, Dao Ting Monument
Year 368 of Xuanzhen]
Jiang Xingzhi froze: Damn, Year 368 of Xuanzhen. Wasn't Xuanzhen the era name from over a thousand years ago?
His vast divine consciousness instantly extended towards the distant city, passing through the city gates and spreading to the streets and alleys.
After a moment, he withdrew his divine consciousness.
It was indeed the year 542 of Xuanzhen. He had returned to a thousand years ago!
Standing still for a long while, Jiang Xingzhi slowly regained his composure. His first thought was that his observation fees were still with Lin He.
His second thought was that he probably couldn't go back.
****
Jiang Xingzhi spent a full stick of incense adjusting his mentality. Then, embracing the philosophy of accepting his fate, he walked towards the lookout point, surveying the vast expanse.
Alone between heaven and earth, there were no acquaintances in this world, and no Xu Jian.
But as the saying goes, when Heaven closes a door, it opens a window.
Although his first love had ended with his death, it also meant that the only person who could suppress him wasn't around.
His dramatic nature, suppressed for so long, was suddenly a little excited: with his peak Mahayana cultivation, couldn't he dominate this era?
Action was better than thought. He leaped up, rushing out of the forest to explore his new world. His indigo robes rustled in the wind like a free bird spreading its wings.
The first day without Xu Jian!
Time to let loose!
Jiang Xingzhi's little scheme was in full swing, but as soon as he rushed out of the mountainside, the surrounding air suddenly stagnated. An overwhelming pressure descended from all directions, like a towering mountain falling from the sky—
Thump, a muffled sound.
This came so unexpectedly that by the time Jiang Xingzhi reacted, he was pressed against the dry earth, his hands pinned behind his back by a large hand. Despite his peak Mahayana cultivation, he couldn't move at all.
Jiang Xingzhi's heart pounded, "Who…"
A scorching body pressed against him from behind, cutting off the rest of his words.
The stranger's cool hair brushed against his cheek, and a deep voice spoke almost against his ear, sending a strange shiver down his spine, "Where are you going?"
Jiang Xingzhi's waist trembled.
He widened his eyes in disbelief: Holy sh*t, what kind of pervert exists a thousand years ago!?