‘Ah, am I dying?’

He shuddered. It was hard to think. He was dizzy. He couldn’t feel his knees anymore.

‘You’re shaking, you know that? You’re slipping away,’ he tried telling himself, but to no avail. The only thing that he could move now were his thoughts, so he could do nothing but think wildly.

Blood trickled down from his torn shoulder and soaked through his clothes. It was the fatal wound that he had received from his opponent. He raised his head and looked up at the sky. Today was supposed to be the start of a new era. It was the start of a new year. Today was the beginning of the 18th century, and yet as the people were celebrating the arrival of the new year, Sakuto Naokata was lying on the ground, blood dripping out of his body, unable to move.

“Finally, I can rest now…”

He was completely exhausted. He had endured and survived for a long time, but it would all end here.

He had already tried his best to survive. He felt like he could take a well-earned rest now.

He closed his eyes as life left his body.

******************************

‘Am I dead now?’

Sakuto didn’t know what death would feel like, so he had no idea what was going on.

He remembered feeling like the life slowly draining out of him, and falling unconscious. However, right now, he was still conscious. He just had his eyes closed because he was tired.

‘Am I still alive?’

That was the thought that first came to him.

All of a sudden he heard someone shouting at him from the side.

His eyes shot open. His pupils gleamed with a brutal light, and there was savagery contained within them, enough to silence most people.

However, a few moments later, the killing intent in his eyes was replaced by a look of astonishment.

‘Huh? Where the hell am I?’ He looked around, trying to figure out his location. He couldn’t recognise the place he currently was at. It was nothing like the place he was from. It was extremely different.

Flash!

All of a sudden, thousands of memory fragments and information flooded his mind, and head started aching fiercely at the moment. After he clutched his head and wailed in pain for a while, he felt that he had learned many new things. At first, he didn’t know what the hell was going on, but as the memories sorted itself out inside his head, his mind became clearer. His expression had become completely tranquil. At a glance, he appeared to possess a calm and steady demeanor.

“Have I truly been reincarnated?” Sakuto quietly gazed, standing by the window, letting the rain from the wind hit his body.

The spring rain quietly rained down on Dawsbury city. It was already late in the night, a slight breeze blowing with the light rain.

Immediately, Sakuto breathed in the fresh moist air of the city, how refreshing it felt.

“So I’m not dead after all. Am I just lucky? Or was I chosen?” Sakuto stretched out his hand, his sight fixated on his own young and soft, pale palms, then slowly clenched them, embracing the truth of this reality with all his might.

He had been reincarnated, but he wasn’t Sakuto anymore. He was Claude Rayforth, a young boy of 17 years of age, with a slim body and a childish face. He wasn’t super handsome, but he was still good-looking.

He came from the Longdale Village to apply for the Golden Avarice Academy, relying on his superb performance.

He was considered a genius for his age at his hometown and was the first to reach the first rank of the Earth Realm, at the age of fifteen. From then on, he left the life of a normal person and stepped into the gateway of cultivation.

Everyone in the village praised him for his talent, saying his future could not be measured.

The person who came with him was May Stafford, a girl who reached the 1st rank of the Earth Realm around the same time as him. Now, they were both at 4th rank, at the age of seventeen.

However, when he reached Dawsbury city, he realised how foolish and naive he was. In the city, there were many youths his age who had broken through to the fourth, fifth and sixth rank of the Earth Realm. There were even some people who had already broken through to the eighth rank.

Even though he somehow got selected to the Golden Avarice Academy, he was considered to be one of the lowest level of cultivators for his age. One of the lowly outer disciples.

May Stafford, who came with him from Longdale village, slowly became distant from him as she interacted more and more with the top disciples amongst the outer section.

This caused the young boy to train harder out of anger, but it seemed he was training a cultivation technique that he couldn’t handle, and lost his soul in the process.

“You poor boy…” the young man’s clear eyes quietly looked at the lights sparkling in the night, and curled up his lips slowly into a sinister smile. “Thanks to your pitiful death, you have given me, Sakuto Naotaka, a second chance. And for that, I have to thank you.”

He stretched out his hands, and laughed maniacally. “I, Sakuto Naotaka, have risen from the dead, chosen by God himself. To choose me out of everyone else, it could only mean that he approves of my actions. Very well. I shall grant your wishes.”

He stood back and bowed, as he continued, “From this day on, I am not Sakuto Naotaka, but Claude Rayforth, and the world shall bow down before me!”