Volume 1, Chapter 1 – In This Life, Know Me

Bai Xiang woke to a burst of static.

The kind of shrill noise you get from those shoddy old-school campus loudspeakers while they’re still being tuned. It drilled straight into his skull and forced his eyes open again.

All he could see was shadow. After a moment he realized he was lying on the lower bunk of a bunk bed; he was under the shade of the upper bunk.

He turned his head a little and stared around the dim room for a while before deciding it had to be a student dorm.

The bunk bed was pushed into a corner. At the foot of the bed sat a desk. The room’s meager light leaked through a slit in the curtain opposite the desk; he could just make out books and odds and ends scattered on the desktop.

Letting his body slacken so his head sank naturally back into the pillow, Bai Xiang felt a bit lost.

Because this wasn’t where he was supposed to be.

As an orphan who’d never been adopted because of an eye condition, as an ALS patient who had fought disease from a bed and a wheelchair for ten years—if his memory wasn’t failing him—he should already be done for.

“ALS” is a strange term to most people. Even those who’ve heard of it don’t truly grasp how terrifying it is.

Clinically called “Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis,” it can, within just a few years of onset, cause muscle softening, muscle atrophy, bulbar palsy, and other symptoms, leaving a person paralyzed—or dead ¹ notable individuals who has this include Stephen Hawking .

Its most frightening aspect is that it cannot be cured. A confirmed diagnosis is essentially a death notice that will take effect in a few years.

Bai Xiang had once overheard nurses whispering that… many ALS patients don’t so much die of the disease as of depression—of the pain and despair of watching themselves day by day become paralyzed wrecks.

He’d been through all of it. He would say those descriptions were no exaggeration.

Compared with the usual three-to-five-year life expectancy for ALS, his ten years stood out from the crowd.

He’d endured longer and understood more deeply.

So it’s easy to imagine how deranged the surge of emotion was when Bai Xiang finally processed what it meant that someone who should be dead had opened his eyes in a stranger’s room…

But the frenzy lasted less than a second before he forced himself calm.

What if he was wrong?

What if it wasn’t what he thought—no time-slip, no rebirth into another body—but merely someone interrupting his final “death ritual,” even harvesting his “corpse”?

First, analyze: I’m not worth pushing criminals into that kind of risk.

An orphan with no assets, almost zero social capital; the hospital had covered his last few years of treatment—funded by their curiosity about why he hadn’t fully gone limp and why he could still manage the bare minimum of “self-care.”

Even if a body and organs had value, his wouldn’t be valuable enough to make thugs storm a hospital to snatch them.

We can rule that out.

A prank… even less likely. He had no qualifications or value to be the butt of any prank.

And the most important evidence was that he could feel his body was different.

His thoughts were like radio currents. He could feel those minute currents depart his brain, slide along the spine, along the nerves and blood vessels, all the way to fingertips and toes.

He could clearly feel his fingers and toes again.

He sat up and, first thing, raised his hands.

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A pair of fair, clean hands filled his vision.

Ten slender fingers, rounded nails. Aside from a few faint calluses visible on the palms, they were perfect hands.

He leaned forward and saw, beyond the quilt, a pale instep extending out.

With a thought, ten rounded toes laced over one another, their nails catching a glassy gleam.

After trying sitting cross-legged and drawing his legs in, he was certain—this wasn’t his original body.

Evidence?

Maybe advanced science could explain curing a terminal illness or getting a synthetic body, but the fullness in his chest and the emptiness between his legs were not things science could explain.

At least, not the science Bai Xiang knew.

Three minutes later, controlling this new body to stand before the sink, Bai Xiang fell into a light trance.

There was a half-length mirror on the sink. In it stood a pretty girl in a white shirt and black shorts, slight of build, long hair of pure white cascading loose.

Seventeen or eighteen, perhaps about 168–170 centimeters tall. Thin as she looked, what lay beneath the shirt wasn’t exactly flat; if not astonishing, her development at least outpaced most girls her age.

Her face was near perfect: the high bridge of a Westerner’s nose and the gentle elegance of an East Asian visage, the two balancing each other so her eye sockets didn’t look too deep, letting that heroic air keep from stealing the show.

Her white hair had a faint curl; her eyebrows and lashes were white as well. Her eyes were large, the irises an inhuman golden—like a black cat’s eyes: striking at first glance, but the longer you stared, the more a strange, uncanny air seeped out of them.

“Definitely a girl…”

Bai Xiang frowned.

He’d already confirmed that part just now.

After a moment’s thought, Bai Xiang closed her eyes in front of the mirror.

She was still afraid.

Afraid it was a dream.

Afraid that when she opened her eyes again, the face in the mirror would be different and her life would plunge back into a bottomless abyss.

Yes—after tasting that level of despair, little changes to the body hardly mattered.

She didn’t care which third-person pronoun people used for her. She cared only whether this was a sound, whole body—whether with it she could go out and experience, breathe in, embrace everything she once missed.

One second.

Five seconds.

She didn’t know how long it was before she opened her eyes. The girl in the mirror was still there.

“Then.”

All emotion drew inward, settling into those uncanny golden eyes.

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“From now on, I am you.”

The instant she said it, Bai Xiang felt as if something subtle in the void overlapped here. In the blink of an eye, her perception and control of herself—and even her surroundings—seemed to climb by more than a notch.

More importantly, fragmented things began to well up in her mind.

Their name: Memories .

…

“Chilong No. 1 High School, Grade 12 (Class 1).”

“And… also called ‘Bai Xiang’?”

Sitting back down on the lower bunk, Bai Xiang stared at the book in her hands.

The cover said History: Compulsory 5, but what mattered more were the handwritten words beneath the cover print—first, she needed to confirm who she was.

She had already rummaged through the room and found no trace of anyone else living here.

It was a bunk bed, but the top bunk was stacked with cardboard boxes.

Single-room privileges for a senior-year exam candidate, huh.

Bai Xiang mused.

“Compulsory 5.” If it’s one volume per semester, this would be the fifth semester—that is, the first half of senior year, with less than a year to the big exam.

Yes, the Big Exam—not the gaokao ² Hardest unified exam in China, taken before high school graduation .

This wasn’t the world she knew. Its history differed from the one in her memory, and although students here were divided into exam tracks, it wasn’t just arts and sciences—there was also a Sword Exam.

The Sword Exam tested only sword dao.

Bai Xiang set the book aside and looked at the item on her lap—a black wooden practice sword with white cloud patterns, just taken down from the wall.

Though wooden, it was finely carved. Whatever timber it was, the blade—though thin—had a surprisingly good spring.

Raising the sword flat and watching the faint tremor in the blade, Bai Xiang closed her eyes, and a scene surfaced in her mind.

In a spacious hall, a group of children only a few years old sat straight-backed in pure-white, right-lapeled training robes, listening intently to an old man’s stern instruction up front.

“A sword is not just a weapon!”

“Demonic force is fierce and chaotic, gnawing at the heart; human reason is clear and self-restraining, upholding the right!”

“Since the Taizu founded the realm 1,600 years ago, our Great Yu carved out a grand legacy in an age of wolves on all sides and demons rising everywhere, by walking this resplendent Great Way—use human reason to harness demonic force, seal the ‘Demon Pool’ into the blade, so that mortal strength may touch the divine!”

“Today, you enter my Shenming Sword Dao. First I will teach you how to keep to the right.”

“Before training the sword—train the person!”

“This is your first lesson: Sword Contemplation!”

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“Repeat after me—To cultivate resolve: when the mind and vital breath find their thoughts blocked…”

The scene shifted. Now it was a poised woman in a suit at a lectern, chalking notes on the board.

“‘Know the Self,’ ‘Nurture the Spirit,’ and ‘Forge the Sword’ are the Dao’s first three realms, also called the forging triad.”

“The key first step is entering the Dao through ‘Know the Self’—through long, steady recitation of human reason by way of Sword Contemplation, to awaken your innate heart-aspect.”

“Only after awakening the heart-aspect can you ‘Nurture the Spirit,’ letting spiritual strength feed back into the body to improve coordination and resilience.”

“When your spirit-nurturing bears fruit, only then are you qualified to attempt ‘Forge the Sword.’”

“During forging, you draw the Demon Pool into common iron and, with the heart-aspect of human reason, suppress demonic power. Then you may have a chance to turn the Demon Pool’s baneful force to your own use, and on the basis of the heart-aspect refine an outer aspect.”

“The sword that houses that outer aspect is the foundation of your attainment—it is another you, a body outside your body.”

The memory ended, and Bai Xiang came back to herself.

She had taken in quite a lot—not only that sword-dao system, but also this body’s past.

This self, like her previous life, was an orphan. As an infant she’d been abandoned at the gate of the meditation court of Yinling Temple on the pedestrian street.

The stern old man in the memory was named Bai Shengju—“Sheng” as in “prosperity”—the eighth Dao Master of the Shenming Sword Dao.

He had been in the temple discussing Buddhism and Chan with the abbot. On hearing of the abandoned infant, he thought it over and decided to adopt the child.

Thus Bai Xiang entered the dojo, and among the Bai family’s fourth generation, she counted as the senior sister at the head of the line.

As for the dojo—impressive as it sounded, given how flourishing sword dao was in Great Yu—nine prefectures and thirty-six circuits, with over a hundred sword daos big and small in the Chilong Circuit alone—these sword daos held a status in society much like modestly famous martial arts gyms had in her previous world.

They relied on ancestral afterglow to attract students and keep the lights on; they did not possess any grand Great Way. Even reaching the first of the Dao’s initial three realms—“Know the Self”—came down to luck for most disciples.

That wasn’t Shenming’s fault. Almost all sword daos were like that.

Most were founded in wartime chaos; the first Dao Masters had real skill. But over time, demon calamities or human disasters shattered their transmissions. Forget the most fundamental and crucial “Demon Pool Visualization Diagram” needed to attain the path—some sword daos declined so far they no longer knew why they were named what they were.

Names of sword daos aren’t chosen at random; they usually tie closely to the lineage.

Shenming counted as fortunate: at least some sword forms and routines had survived, and they still kept the old rites. Every few years they could produce a disciple who’d “Known the Self,” putting them solidly in the middle tier.

As for the top tier, that was reserved for the imperially enfeoffed “Nine Daos and Seventy-Two Paths.” ³ Enfeoff : (under the feudal system) give (someone) freehold property or land in exchange for their pledged service.

The Nine Daos were the nine great sword daos invested by the Son of Heaven to sit over the nine provinces and guard the realm.

The Seventy-Two Paths were the well-known sword daos recognized by various regional associations and leagues.

These daos retained complete lineages and commanded great force and influence. Beyond their main halls they controlled extended industries.

Companies, foundations.

Most commonly, they partnered with elite universities.

For example, in Qizhou, where the Chilong Circuit lay, the famed Qizhou University had a partnership with Benling Sword Dao, one of the Nine. Every year, countless sword-track students longed to enter Qizhou U because of it.

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As for Shenming’s senior sister Bai Xiang attending Chilong No. 1 High, it was because her innate talent was poor. With no hope of getting into a top sword academy by raw strength, she could only cram academics, hoping to scrape extra points on the academic side to gamble on her future.

A little ridiculous.

But very real.

After all, Great Yu was a modern society. Never mind firearms and artillery—there were railguns and laser cannons by now. In that context, sword dao’s status had certainly declined.

“Xiang’er, you’ll be eighteen soon—an adult. Walking a pure sword-dao path won’t do. As it happens, there’s a slot to transfer you into a class to study. Try the academic track.”

In the memory, Bai Shengju sounded careful, but the meaning between the lines was the same.

You don’t have the talent. Stop thrashing around.

But the original owner clearly wasn’t resigned to that. The fact she still carried this cloud-pattern wooden sword—and had hung it squarely on the wall—said as much.

So is “Know the Self” really that hard?

With a thought, Bai Xiang instantly changed her posture: left foot curled and laid across the bed edge, sole upturned; right leg draped over the left ankle to hang to the floor; both hands formed a seal on her knees, wrists cradling the cloud-pattern wooden sword.

Sword Contemplation.

The name sounds lofty, but it’s really just steady recitation of maxims of human reason to firm the will, to remind yourself you are human—a higher animal that reasons and keeps the rites and laws.

The posture wasn’t mystical either. She could adopt it so quickly simply because of muscle memory.

If I’m not mistaken, what you truly need to awaken “Know the Self” is pure mental strength.

Reciting is just a way to strengthen the spirit, fortify resolve, and raise your chances.

Then I actually…

With the barest turn of thought—she hadn’t even begun silently reciting the transmitted verses—Bai Xiang felt a cool current spread from her brain through all her limbs and bones, seeping soundlessly into her five viscera and six bowels.

She opened her eyes and took in the room—she could make out even the finest dust motes.

Eyes, hands, body.

Though she wasn’t stronger, her control and coordination were worlds apart from before.

This is “Know the Self”?

She took up the cloud-pattern wooden sword again.

This time her hand was steady. Held flat, the blade didn’t tremble at all.

My talent is poor…?

Turning to the stack of books beside her, Bai Xiang stood, tossed the other textbooks back onto the desk, kept only History: Compulsory 5, and sat down on the bed to read.