Even though he was unconscious, everything that the previous owner of the body had endured since birth was painted vividly in Fad Zai's mind.
Memories didn't whisper, they screamed, clawed, and bled into his soul like ink spilled on parchment.
It wasn't a dream or illusion. It was a fate worse than death, one so raw that it rooted itself into the marrow of his being.
The pain was not observed, it was inherited.
The suffering, the humiliation, the hate, the bullying, the despair, it all downloaded into his consciousness like some cursed program forcefully installed into an already fragile system.
There was no refuge in unconsciousness. No peace in darkness. Only torment so potent that it forced tears to slip quietly from the corners of Fad Zai's closed eyes, carving silent rivers down his ears.
Turns out, the previous owner of this body, Fad Xu, was originally born in the house of Xu; Yeng Xu and Lin Xu being his birth parents, a family that values strength above everything else.
He has an older sister, Fei Xu, but Fad Xu had never experienced anything close to a parents, or family love.
He was hated, mistreated, bullied by his own family just because of his broken dantain.
As we all know, a dantian is the very heart of a cultivator's existence, it's the one that triggers a cultivation essence, and even a cultivation root; the silent furnace where qi is refined, where dreams are distilled into power.
It is not merely a core; it is a cradle of destiny, spinning threads of fate from tendrils of qi.
To cultivate is to awaken the dantian, to breathe life into that quiet void and let it bloom with cosmic energy. From it flows strength, clarity, and the whisper of ascension. Without it, even the most gifted are but shadows cast by a flickering hope.
And since Fad Xu was born with a crippled dantian, the world has always felt distant, like a dream glimpsed through frost-covered glass.
From the moment he drew breath, his body knew only fragility. His skin was pale, almost translucent, as though the heavens themselves had forgotten to color him in.
Each heartbeat echoed faintly in his chest, like a drum muffled by sorrow. The elders of the sect whispered that his soul flickered dimly, as if unsure whether it belonged to the living.
He could not run. He could not train. At times, he could barely sit upright. Qi, which flowed so freely in his peers, passed him like wind through a hollow reed.
Sleep brought him no relief. In dreams, he stood beneath twin moons with arms outstretched, but felt no warmth, no pulse of power. Only silence, and the haunting hum of qi as it recoiled from his broken core.
His bones ached with winter before autumn had even ended. Coughs stitched crimson threads across handkerchiefs. His breath steamed with unnatural chill, even under the summer sun. And through it all, Fad Xu endured, eyes dim with exhaustion, yet never bitter.
Some might thought that his delicate nature could have brought him closer to his parents since he needed at most care. But it didn't.
In fact, he remembered, when he was five years old, his condition overwhelmed him, sending him balancing at the edge of death, but his parents were nowhere around to take care of him.
It was like they never cared if he dies or live, as they were busy training the disciples of the the Xu sect.
But this didn't kill his spirit, Fad Xu fought through, his will power pushing him to survive. And when his condition stabilized, his parents immediately send him to the orphanage, claiming that Fad Xu had faked his Illness and scared them to the death, and this was his punishment.
But even then, at the orphanage, things weren't any different to him. He became a ghost among the living, watched but never followed, heard but never felt.
Children grew quiet around him. Birds fell silent on their perches when he passed. It was as if the world sensed the wrongness that clung to him: not death, but something older... something forgotten by the heavens.
Some claimed it would have been better to just mercy-kill him since he wouldn't survive long, but Fad Xu survived.
Not because he was strong, but because pain had nowhere else to live.
His crippled dantian did not kill him. It hollowed him, and left behind a vessel the world didn't know how to name.
Last year, during his fifteenth birthday, he received a letter from his parents that summoned him back home. And Fad Xu has never felt that excited.
It was like a dream come true as his parents were, at least, finally showing some shred or love.
But getting home, Fad Xu was quickly disappointed as he finds out that his parents had never send him that letter. He finds out that his parents had long adopted another child as his replacement, Feng, who later takes on the Xu surname and started calling himself Xu Feng.
Fad Xu finds that it was Xu Feng who wrote to him with the help of his older sister as a prank, and since he showed up without his parents' approval, he was badly beaten, punished, and even stripped away his surname before he was send back to the to the orphanage.
But "luckily," Xu Feng, his adopted brother who certainly seemed to be having his parents ears managed to conceive them in to letting him stay, and life hasn't been any easier to Fad over the past year.
They didn't care about his condition, Fad was treated like a slave, bullied by his adopted brother who painting to him countless blames that would get Fad punished by his parents.
The only person who has been taking care of Fad and somehow understanding his condition was an old nanny, Zai Imoh, who treated Fad like her own child.
She even granted him her first name after his surname was stripped away to make him feel a little better, and since Zai was more of a mother to him than his birt mother, Fad gladly accepted it, and hence, Fad Zai.
But this didn't stop him from being molested and treated like a slave.
It was just recently that he was accused of peeping at his mother while taking bath.
She was his mother. How could they even believe that he could do something like that.
This was just too much for him to endure, the shame, not anymore.
He knew it was Xu Feng, but Fad Zai could never prove it. His parents listen to Xu Feng more and never grant him an ear.
And since all from the beginning they wanted to get rid of him, and with this much shame, Fad Zai drunk a poison while being drag to the sect court hearing. It was then that he died, and this Fad Zai took over his body before he could crush on the floor, making nobody to figure out what had really happened.
"Why isn't he waking up. It had been three day already." Lin Xu muttered while squeezing Fad Zai's hand.
From the last three days when Fad Zai was unconscious, Lin Xu hadn't left his bed even once, she was there, day and night, now treating Fad Zai as if he muttered the most.
His begger-like clothing had been stripped away and he now wore one of the finest robes in the sect.
The room he was currently sleeping on was large, like a Prince's chamber, and standing next to Lin Xu were Yeng Xu, Fei Xu and Xu Feng.
"He has to wake up. He is the future of Xu sect." Yeng Xu muttered while turning to his daughter. "Quick, go and spread the news. In the coming ten days, a grant banquet will be held at the house of Xu to announce Fad Xu as the future of Xu sect." He spoke.
"But Paa..." Fei Xu shrugged while stomping her leg on the floor in disappointment.
Smack!
A thunderous slap across Fei Xu face send her running out of the room.
"I hate repeating myself." He muttered while turning back and sit next to the unconscious Fad Zai.
'No!' Xu Feng screamed in his head, his chest boiling of anger as he could barely control himself.
To him, Fad Zai was a competition that needed to be eliminated at any cost.
'I won't allow this, I can never allow you to take everything away from me.' He muttered while turning around and walked out of the room.