Reborn To Live Without You (and other stories)

The Immortal Who Chose To Live

"Master Shifu, where are we going this time?"

The man, whose actual name was Huang Jianyong, simply smiled as he glanced over his shoulder, but continued to leap from tree branch to tree branch without hesitation. As if gravity was optional. Xing Xia shook his head with a sigh, but continued to follow him anyway. Who knew what mischief his Master Shifu would lead him into for 'training' purposes this time? Still, he trusted him enough to not dive too deep into questioning, while also knowing he'd likely regret it. They had been together for half a century now, a bond of trust had naturally formed in that time.

Forty years ago, the man had proposed to take him as his first disciple and he had accepted after some thought. It had served his purposes at that time; he'd needed to come to the other realm, but he had worried about being strong enough to survive here. Getting here at all had been an issue that only vaguely crossed his mind. With the olive branch offered by Huang Jianyong, not accepting it would have doubtless be unwise, even if accepting it could have been equally so. He had known little about this Master Shifu at that time, only that he liked to seek him out to lament from time to time. Actually, he still liked to do that and Xing Xia still needed to open his purse to pay his bills.

Yet following this sometimes irresponsible and irrepressible Master Shifu of his had not been without merit. He had cultivated easily to the next stage of Body Tempering and was partially through this current one as well. This was a decent rise of cultivation by anyone's terms, despite his root being not favourable for lone cultivation purposes. After all, where each stage of core formation took years to surpass, each stage of Body Tempering would take decades. Later, each stage of Mind Tempering would take him centuries, while in each stage of Soul Tempering he could expect to linger for millennia. Of course, that was if he could break through the bottleneck and endure the tribulations that came with them.

He shook his head, throwing off the notion, while keeping one eye on his Master.

Huang Jianyong stopped suddenly before a sizeable pond into which a waterfall crashed in thunderous vigour. Droplets sprayed into the atmosphere and captured by the light peering through the tall treetop canopy, they formed a seven coloured tribute to the churning waters. Sheltered by the rocks and trees, the waters and their surroundings looked clean and untouched.

The water vaguely reminded him of the lake in his former dimension.

Since he'd been reborn in his twin brother's body, he'd lost access to that dimension. He could only assume that it was still in his original body, wherever that happened to be. Despite roaming here and there with his Master Shifu, he'd not found even a hair of one of those people, so had no clues to whether his former shell lived or had died. After all, although his time had reversed, did not mean that it ran parallel to this realm.

For one thing, the years were longer here, days and nights seemed to be unaffected by season and the weather was ever mild of temperament. As for how long had passed; well it was just due to his excellent memory and attention to that detail that he could calculate it with ease.

He'd learned so much about this realm either from his Master Shifu or from his kind Grand-Shifu and his Martial Uncles and Aunts and 'cousins'. Honestly, interacting with the members of his Master's Sect had tempered much of the hatred he'd held in his heart towards Cultivators and the people of this realm. That old man, Grand-Shifu had been how Huang Jianyong described him, innocent and pure of thought. He was like the gentle grandparent that Xing Xia had always wanted as a small child, the one who always welcomed their grandchild with a warm smile, taught them to play checkers, but made sure that the child won more often than not. Who gave them a slither of cake, while winking conspiratorially behind their own child's back. That he'd survived to such an age was likely attributed to his own deceased Master and other members of the Sect, though he did hold much strength within as well.