“Yanyan.”

My eyes snap open. The voice echoes like a bell somewhere beyond the ceiling of my skull—soft, patient, impossible to ignore. I blink and the world comes into focus: walls lined with books, shelves crowded with photos and scrolls. Magic diagrams. Martial-arts poses frozen mid-strike. Rows and rows of knowledge, all of it humming with a strange, old-life familiarity.

“Yanyan—where is this? Where am I?” I whisper to myself, though my throat still feels too small for the question.

Is this another world? Of all the cliché possibilities—summoned to a castle, dropped into a village—I never expected a library for gods. I remember shouting that thought out loud. “What the hell is this—WHERE AM I?!”

A voice answers me from nowhere and everywhere: Recall everything from the start.

Remember everything? Who said that? Hey—! My mouth opens to shout and a white sphere slides into my vision. It threads into my head like a needle. Memory floods back in a sharp, drowning rush: my forty-seventh birthday, the chest pain, the ambulance lights. One moment I was a man with a mortgage and a horrible singing voice; the next, I’m staring at a ceiling that doesn’t belong to any hospital I’ve ever seen.

I died of a cardiac arrest on my forty-seventh birthday. I—what a cliché. Reincarnated, of course. Of course. Why wouldn't it be cliché?

I reach for a book because old habits die harder than people. My hand finds nothing. No fingers. No hands at all. I look down and panic spikes—there are no arms, no legs. A warm, ridiculous sense of disbelief wells up: am I a fetus? An embryo? A toad?

“Calm,” the unseen voice says. “Do not be afraid. You are still formless. You are not yet born into that world. I will give you a chance. When you are born, think this phrase first and everything you wish to know will be stored in your mind. Live fully, my little one.”

Live fully, huh. Cute. Also vague as heck.

“Wait—don’t go! What are these books? Why me? Why—” I crawl, if that’s the right word for a collection of thoughts trying to move, toward the nearest shelf. My fingers—my non-existent fingers—brush the spine of a volume titled Ancient Runes and Martial Legacies. The page opens under my will, and names spill out of it: Roar of the Void Dragon. Palm of a Thousand Dynasties. Dark Thunder Dragon—ancient arts the sort of people in comic books fantasize about. My heart—if I had a heart in the usual sense—stutters.

I switch volumes obsessively, one after the other. Technology manuals from a life I remember: schematics, circuitry, crude sketches of machines I once built in garages and basements. I read them like someone drowning reads the surface of the water first—careful, hungry. Sleep? Who needs sleep when you might be a frog-boy about to be sent into a world of magic?

Three months pass like pages turning in an old book. The voice returns. A column of light swallows me. I feel myself slide, tear free from the book-filled chamber, and then—cold and startling—sudden newborn air fills my lungs.

I open my eyes again, and the world is loud with crying and blessing. Warm hands, rough with honest work, cradle me. Faces blurred with tears of joy gather close.

“Qui’er, he’s a boy!” a woman cries, voice raw and shaking. Her hair smells like home and river water.

“Nei Yan, thank the gods—” my father says. Hands callused, eyes wet. They name me there and then: Yan Yan. Our family—Long Yan—has a son. A real child to hold and to raise.

They don’t know the truth. They don’t know that somewhere above the clouds, a god tucked knowledge into my skull and set a phrase on repeat: Memoir d’ Joho Xixi Jeongbo. It sounds like gibberish—Japanese? Chinese? Korean? A garbage bag of languages. Whatever it is, I repeat it under my breath and something else answers me.

A translucent frame blooms in front of my vision. Only I can see it: a clean interface floating in the corner of the world, a search box blinking patiently. I can feel it in my mind, like the pulse of an old operating system booting up. It displays everything—stats, names, places. When I look at my parents now, little tags float over their heads: Qui’er — Human (No Affinity), Long Yan — Human (No Affinity). Levels. Status. Is this—some kind of game?

I press my non-existent thumb to the search bar and the world answers. Luzviminda Continent, it says. Eight major houses: Bai Yun, Cheong Ah, Xuan Xu, Gwan Shi, Woo Ji, Nie Tong, Sosuke Dan—and Hong Yan, where the Long Yan family lives. We’re a subsidiary branch—small, respectable enough but not powerful. The Yan family is minor in a world of major families.

Great. Subsidiary. Perfect future for all kinds of plot-driven suffering. I’m a newborn. I can’t even pronounce the phrase properly, yet my mind holds knowledge like a hard drive with far too much data. Cultivation systems, elemental affinities, martial techniques, and—worse—the realization that I’m ridiculously overqualified for infancy.

Four years later, and nobody’s less suspicious than they should be.

“Yan!” my father calls. “Where did you run off this time?”

“At the river,” my mother answers. “Those rocks keep him busy.” Their voices are the soundtrack of normal life, but beneath the surface everything is not normal. I levitate a pebble and play with it between my invisible fingers. It’s such a tiny, stupid joy to make small things dance.

“Come on, Yan. Go to the countryside with me. Make friends.” My father smiles, proud and streetwise. If only he knew.

“I don’t want to,” I answer, and I mean it in the way only a toddler who’s seen way too many manuals can mean it.

He laughs. “Kids these days.”

I can read his thoughts, by the way. Don’t tell him I said that. The power is both fun and alarmingly convenient.

We sit down to eat and the normal morning collapses like a rotten floorboard.

BOOM.

The door explodes inward. Rough hands, shouting, torches—bandits, the kind of lowlife types who think a village is a safe bet for plunder. Panic is sudden and wet in the air. My parents move—my father ordering, my mother crying—and then I see what I don’t expect: a spear of light, a flash of motion that isn’t mine, and my father falls.

Time does something strange then. Pain pours through like a second heartbeat. Anger swells—hot and animal. I have a memory of a city hospital, of screens flipping through warnings. None of that prepares a child for the sound of his father’s head hitting the floor.

My mother screams. She grabs me. “Run! Yan, go!”

I scramble. I am four and everything inside me fractures into a single, terrible decision. I shouldn’t be able to do what happens next. I shouldn’t be able to make their throats stop and their bodies go silent with a sound that didn’t exist in my old life. But I do it. I scream—not with the voice the world recognizes but with something older—and the bandits’ heads fly. Blood arcs like a terrible constellation.

Silence drops over the room like a curtain. I collapse, chest heaving. Tears come raw and hot. I don’t understand everything that just happened, but something in me knows the animal laws of cause and result: my rage can carve reality.

A voice that is not the god’s this time—different, amused, ancient—sits cross-legged nearby. A man in a blue kimono, striped, with hair pulled back into a crownlike knot, holds a staff and watches me with more curiosity than concern.

“Oya? You awake, boy?” he asks as if he’d found a clever insect.

I stare, blurred vision and all. Just who is this guy, sitting in my living-room-turned-shambles, with the calm of someone who’s seen too many miracles? My chest still burns with fury and fear, and I know, with a certain terrible clarity, that this is only the beginning.

“Oya? Boy? You awake?”

A calm, gentle voice drifted through the haze. My body felt heavy, like I’d been asleep for centuries. When my vision finally cleared, I saw him—

a man sitting cross-legged in front of me, smiling faintly. His hair flowed like black silk, tied with a golden crown, and his robe shimmered with heavenly light.

“Who… who are you?” I stammered, pushing myself up. “What happened!? Where am I? My parents—where are they!?”

My voice cracked as panic surged through me. “Where’s my mother!? My father!?”

The man lifted a hand, his tone steady.

“Boy, calm down. What you experienced was foresight magic.”

“Foresight… magic?” I repeated, breath trembling. “No, that can’t be! I was with them—my parents—they were right there when the bandits—WAHHHHHHHHH!!”

I tried to scream, but nothing came out. My mouth moved, my throat burned, but no sound escaped. I clawed at the silence, terrified.

“Boy’a, calm down, little one,” the man said again, softly but firmly. His presence alone quieted the storm in my chest.

And then, like a spark in my mind, I remembered that voice—the one that called me little one in the white room before my birth.

I stared at him wide-eyed. “You… You’re the voice! Aren’t you!?”

The man smiled faintly. “Boy’a, I’m not just a voice. I am the God of Heaven and Earth. There are many gods above, but only I have the power to reincarnate a soul.”

I froze. “You’re… a God?”

He nodded. “Yes. And right now, you’re in my Sacred Room.”

I looked around—the endless white space, the air shimmering with divine energy. “Then… what I experienced… that wasn’t real?”

“It was a vision,” the God explained. “What you saw was your future. Foresight Light Magic allowed you to live through it as if it were real, but your reincarnation hasn’t truly begun yet.”

My heartbeat slowed. “So… I haven’t been reborn yet? I’m… still here?”

He nodded again.

“You see it for yourself,” he said. “Do you have hands? Feet? A body? When you first arrived in this room, did you have any of those?”

I looked down at myself—formless, weightless, a flickering soul of light. “No… you’re right.”

“But I don’t understand,” I said, desperate. “I didn’t cast any magic! I just read books! How could I—how could I cause that?”

The God’s expression softened. “When you read those books, you unknowingly activated a forbidden spell—Prae-Cognitio. It’s an ancient foresight magic that reveals the path of your destiny. It didn’t trigger right away—it waited until your mind absorbed every bit of knowledge from that room.”

My eyes widened. “The light that entered my head… that was it?”

He nodded. “Yes. That light was the spell binding itself to your soul.”

I stared down, trembling. “But… it felt real. Everything. The pain, the anger, their deaths—it wasn’t just a dream.”

“That’s what Prae-Cognitio does,” the God said gently. “It doesn’t just show the future—it makes you feel it. Every emotion, every loss, as though it truly happened.”

The God lifted his hand, and in the air, a small image shimmered into being.

It was my parents—kneeling beside each other, hands clasped, praying before a small shrine. My mother’s eyes were closed, her lips whispering gratitude. My father smiled beside her, proud and alive.

Tears flooded my vision. “They’re… alive?”

I reached for the image, but it vanished in light.

“Now that you’ve seen them,” the God said, “what will you do, boy? Will you accept that future? Will you let it happen again?”

My hands—my glowing, trembling hands—clenched tight. “No… Never again.”

The God’s expression warmed. “Do not fear defying Heaven and Earth, little one. As long as your heart is pure, even rebellion can be righteous. Protect them. Change the fate you’ve seen. That is why I’ve shown you this path.”

I bowed my head, tears dripping like rain. “Thank you… thank you, God.”

He smiled, the light around him growing softer. “Go, little one. I can no longer interfere with your life, but I grant you my blessing. Live your new life fully. And remember—your choices now will rewrite everything.”

His form faded into golden mist, his voice echoing faintly—

“See you again soon, my child.”

Light swallowed everything.

When I opened my eyes again, I recognized the ceiling—the faint glow, the warmth, the muffled voices.

“Qui’er!” my father’s voice shouted. “It’s a boy!”

My mother sobbed with joy. “Thank you, God of Heaven and Earth, for blessing us with a child!”

Tiny fingers wrapped around theirs. I couldn’t stop the tears from falling.

The world was the same, but I wasn’t.

I looked at them—my mother, my father—and whispered with the voice of a newborn, a vow that only I could hear:

“I’ll never let you die in front of me again.”

My father laughed joyfully. “Let’s name him Yan Yan—it means God’s Gift.”

And this time, I promised myself—

I would live up to that name.

Two years had passed since I was reborn. Though I was only two years old, the weight of what was coming pressed down on me. Sitting on the floor, watching my parents, I tried to strategize how to protect them. This isn’t a vision anymore… this is reality. HOW!?

I remembered the magics and martial arts stored in my mind from that mysterious phrase I had been given at birth. One of the first spells I recalled was Teleportation—a magic that allows instant travel to a known location or person. Testing it, I focused on the bathroom in our house, and in an instant, I found myself sitting on the wooden “pooper.”

“YAN! Why are you there?!” my father shouted in shock, rushing over to clean me. I had grown unnaturally fast—already one and a half meters tall at just two years old. But he didn’t question it too much; perhaps he thought my mother had something to do with it.

What is happening to me? I asked myself. And how can I use this at just two years old?

A brilliant idea struck me, and I couldn’t help but laugh.

“Honey, what are you laughing at? You’re so cute,” my mother said, walking toward me in her white dress. I felt the warmth of her embrace and couldn’t hold back my tears. My father soon joined, hugging her tightly. I prayed silently, asking God to help me overcome this first obstacle and protect my family and our village from the disaster that would soon strike.

At three years old, my stats were astonishing:

Agility: 400

Magic: 500

Strength: 300

Vitality: 400

Status: 200

From what I had learned in the books, cultivation in this world followed the classic Chinese system:

Mortal Realm – Base human limits

Qi Condensation (Qi Core) – Ability to sense and control energy

Foundation Establishment – Strengthening the body and magic potential

Core Formation – Creating an energy core for sustained power

Nascent Soul – Soul refinement for advanced abilities

Spirit Severing – Immense spiritual and magical growth

Void Immortal – Near-divine abilities and lifespan extension

Transcendent Realm – Ascension beyond the mortal plane

Rebirth King – Ultimate peak of cultivation

Compared to that system, I was already at the Nascent Soul stage at three years old—an unheard-of level for such a child.

I could walk and talk like a normal child, but I had to act like a baby to avoid suspicion. Using the system’s Device Plan function on the transparent GUI only I could see, I started devising strategies for the bandits who would one day attack our village.

Magic elements I could use were divided into:

Attribute-less: Black, White, Void, Ancient

Attributed: Fire, Water, Air, Earth, Thunder, Ice, Sand

Every day, I practiced magic in secret. I chanted Invisivobaltile, a spell that could hide up to ten objects and three people—including myself. I levitated pebbles for fun, practicing control without my parents noticing.

I also trained in Shadow and Light magic, which allowed me to roam unseen without consuming mana, as long as I stayed in shadows or under light sources.

While helping my mother with housework and watching my father practice swordsmanship, I remembered advanced martial arts like Sword that Defies Heaven, which allowed 78 consecutive attacks at lightning speed, Heaven Palm, and Soaring Dragon Finger, which could form miniature sword-like extensions from my fingers. These techniques would be crucial in dealing with the bandits.

Reviewing my plans, I noted the bandits’ abilities:

One could levitate a sword

Another controlled two elements

One had an Immortal Medium-Peak aura

Most minions had elemental or martial abilities

Against our village’s defenses—four Semi-Mortal Low-level elementers, two Mortal High-level swordsmasters, and two Mortal Beastmasters with a small bear and medium eagle—they were powerful but not unbeatable.

I used Hypnotysiem to put my parents to sleep safely in their bed and activated Invisivobaltile and Aerial on myself to fly invisibly over the village outskirts.

Hovering above, I saw the incoming bandits and listened in using Soundrosiom, but the effort drained my mana. Weak from overexertion, I returned home, lifted the hypnotism from my parents, and crawled back into bed, my senses heightened for any approaching danger.

Even at three years old, I knew: survival would require cunning, power, and patience. And I would do everything in my power to protect my family.