The world he opened his eyes to was cold—not with the chill of winter, but the numbness of abandonment. Zhao Lianxu stirred beneath tattered silk sheets, his body frail and bones aching. The scent of old incense clung to the air, mixed with the metallic hint of blood. He blinked against the soft glow of dusk filtering through paper windows, the ceiling above him lined with thin cracks and cobwebs.
He was alive. Again.
But he remembered dying.
The scream of a betrayed heart, the taste of blood on his tongue, and the sight of the woman he had loved, her blade piercing his chest—not with hatred, but with sorrow. He could still see her trembling hand, her lips mouthing an apology through the silence of his fading consciousness. Then, nothing. A plunge into darkness, the void.
Yet now, here he was, reborn in the body of a forgotten prince—sickly, discarded, and weak. A prince from a declining dynasty in a corner of the multiverse, a clan known as the Jade Origin Clan—or so he learned from whispering servants and the mumbled prayers of a grieving old man who claimed to be his grandfather, the King.
No one knew what he had been before. No one remembered Zhao Lianxu, the son of the Prime Minister of the Multiverse, the scion of demon royalty, and the inheritor of a god's sealed legacy. That identity was locked deep inside his soul, buried under layers of time and betrayal.
In this realm, he was known as Prince Liang, the useless one. A boy who had just succumbed to illness two nights ago. But his soul… it had entered just as the old one fled.
And so began the rebirth.
The Jade Origin Clan was a quiet ruin of its former self. In ancient days, legends spoke of their celestial lineage, but centuries of war, failed alliances, and corrupt rulers had reduced them to a minor footnote in the history of the realms. They lived on the edge of the Multiversal Outer Realms, where divine qi was sparse and opportunities even rarer. The palace walls were cracked, the gardens overgrown, and the disciples few.
Lianxu—no, Prince Liang—sat in silence in the royal study, his fingers tracing the veins of an old jade medallion. It had been found clenched in his hand when he awoke. No one knew its origin, and yet when he touched it, his heartbeat responded with eerie familiarity.
Late that night, he wandered.
Drawn by an unexplainable pull, his feet carried him to the edge of the palace grounds—to the ancestral graveyard, a forbidden place watched only by shadows and forgotten by the living. He passed weeping statues, silent tombs, and crooked prayer towers until he reached the farthest point: a collapsed mausoleum nearly buried beneath moss and soil.
A voice whispered through the wind. Not from around him—but from within.
"Heavenly Jade Shall Rise Again."
Those words were carved faintly on a shattered jade tablet buried within the rubble. As he ran his fingers over the inscription, visions flooded his mind: a majestic empire bathed in divine light, warriors wielding starlight, and atop a golden throne, an emperor who looked like him—older, regal, fierce. His breath caught.
This place… this dynasty… was not merely a fading relic.
It was his origin.
The Jade Origin Clan was all that remained of the Heavenly Jade Dynasty, wiped from history, scattered across realms, and buried in shame.
His blood boiled.
They called him weak. They called this clan a shadow. But he would change that.
"If the heavens have given me this second life," he whispered, "then I will forge a destiny greater than any god."
The days that followed were not easy. He hid his growing strength. He observed. He meditated in silence and listened to the earth. The body he now possessed was fragile, but his soul was not. Slowly, using subtle techniques of cultivation buried deep in his memory, he began to nourish this shell—merging parts of his previous life's essence into the new form.
Sometimes he would cough blood after training. Sometimes the old prince's broken meridians would flare with pain.
But progress came. Slowly.
One evening, as the palace prepared for the Mid-Realm Festival—a meaningless display of faded grandeur—he was summoned to the royal chamber.
King Yushu, the man who claimed to be his grandfather, sat on a throne of cracked jade, his eyes dim with age. Around him were two ministers, his younger sister Yao'er, and several inner court elders.
"Liang," the king said gravely, "your body has recovered unexpectedly. The heavens must have spared you for a reason. But this family cannot afford dead weight anymore."
Liang bowed his head. "Then give me a chance to prove I am not."
Murmurs rose.
"You?" one of the ministers scoffed. "You've never cultivated past the Bone Nourishment Stage. You faint from walking!"
"I won't," he replied simply. "Not anymore."
The king studied him. "There is a place. A forgotten land not far from here—Gravestone Hollow. Legends say it's cursed. But it is also the resting place of a powerful spiritual formation. Survive it, and I'll name you heir once more."
His sister stepped forward, worry in her eyes. "Grandfather, that place is forbidden for a reason."
But Lianxu only nodded. "I accept."
Gravestone Hollow was silent, heavy with qi so dense it felt like smoke. The earth pulsed with death and secrets. Trees stood like twisted skeletons, and the path crunched with old bones.
Zhao Lianxu felt it before he saw it—a convergence point, a fracture in space where multiversal qi swirled in violent spirals. As he stepped into the hollow's heart, reality warped. Visions assaulted him: screams of fallen ancestors, the scent of burning empires, and at the center—a mirror.
But not any mirror.
In it, he saw himself—not as Prince Liang, but as Zhao Lianxu, in his true body, with white robes of the Eternal Court, eyes like burning stars, and behind him… a shadow.
The shadow twisted and whispered. "Merge… merge… become whole."
He reached out.
Pain shot through him like lightning. His soul strained. Two selves—past and present—fought to coexist. Visions of his betrayal, the princess, her tears, her dagger. Why did she kill him? The answer eluded him.
He screamed.
And then… silence.
When he woke, he was changed.
The weak shell of Prince Liang no longer felt like a cage. The bones were stronger. The blood, richer. His eyes shimmered with a depth they never had.
He had begun the process.
The fusion had started.
As he walked out of Gravestone Hollow, covered in sweat and dirt, the air around him shifted. Trees bowed. The wind quieted. Even the beasts of the wild watched in silence.
Zhao Lianxu was no longer a forgotten prince.
He was the echo of an emperor—and his roar was coming.