Volcanic Age

Prologue & Chapter 1: Regression (1)

Prologue.

Struck by the desire to sleep, he could barely crack open his eyes. At best, he could open them halfway. Any more was not possible.

“Ah…”

He moved his lips, dry as dirt, to produce sound. However, what came out was nothing more than a moan.

“Elder… you cannot… go like…”

HIs vision had turned cloudy, and he could no longer see anything properly. He felt that someone was calling out to him, but his ears had lost their function, and he could not hear what he was being told.

‘I am…’

Zhou Xuchuan.

He muttered his own name in his mind and looked back at his own life. The first thing he thought of was that he was an orphan, wandering around aimlessly, until he luckily managed to catch the eyes of his master and entered the sect of Mount Hua.

It was a great stroke of luck. Mount Hua was one of the ten prestigious organizations of the orthodox faction, and one that was renowned for swordplay. As an orphan, it was harder to find something better than that.

Ever since then, he had lived a life of gratitude as a disciple of Mount Hua, and before he knew it, he had risen to the ranks of the Five High Elders of Mount Hua.

‘I was truly lucky.’

The title of high elder in Mount Hua was absolutely not light. They were second only to the sect master in a huge organization like Mount Hua. As the title carried significant weight, it was not a position that was easily attainable, and as such, they received the respect of other disciples. Cultivation aside, those occupying the position had to be intelligent, and great importance was placed on their reputation in the world as well.

In other words, they needed fame as well as all sorts of achievements. It was not a position that could be attained by seniority and experience alone… but there were always exceptions.

One such exception was him.

‘I didn’t know someone like me could become a high elder.’

He entered Mount Hua out of a stroke of fortune, but that didn’t mean he displayed brilliant talent and achieved many things. He did not have a lot of talent in martial arts, nor was he particularly smart. He never stood out and had lived his life like many others.

Of course, he never put in extreme amounts of effort in the first place, so he knew that it would be greedy of him to want more. Not that he had any of that greed in the first place.

Despite that, he did not slack off. He wanted to repay his gratitude towards his master, who had taken in an orphan like him.

It was truly a mediocre, ordinary way of living.

So then, how did he become one of the five high elders?

The answer lay in a life that wasn’t exactly peaceful.

In the decades that he lived, there were many wars. From what was told down to the later generations, there were enough wars for it to be called the era of war and chaos. It was hard to count just how many wars had started, truced, and ended in those decades.

Mount Hua was naturally in the middle of that storm, and numerous sect members had lost their lives. Not to mention the third generation members, who were the pillars of the sect; even the second generation—which consisted of sect elders, and the first generation—which consisted of retired elders, had taken damage.

The Five High Elders of Mount Hua had also gotten caught up in various conflicts, consequently leading to constant changes in membership. Eventually, when all that conflict ended, there were no longer enough talents to become high elders.

Here lay the reason why Zhou Xuchuan could rise to the position of a high elder despite having ordinary talent.

A position among the Five High Elders of Mount Hua was not something that one could obtain through seniority alone, but that didn’t mean that seniority was unnecessary. If someone had great cultivation, but had little experience and was low on the seniority ladder, the sect members would naturally reject them.

That was why, despite being inadequate, the seniors became high elders first, and he became one such lucky man.

However, nothing changed despite becoming a high elder. As the era of war and chaos had just come to an end, there was nothing that could threaten his life. He would only help out the sect master and the other high elders from time to time, and lived his life within Mount Hua.

The other second-generation sect members put in effort into raising the later generation, but he didn’t participate in that. He did not even accept any disciples. That was because he thought that he wasn’t good enough to teach anyone.

‘I just rose to the Harmony Realm a few days ago…’

He found renewed interest in cultivation in his later years. That was thanks to the fact that he could browse through numerous cultivation manuals after having risen to the rank of high elder.

Thanks to that, he managed to enter the Harmony Realm, but it was already too late. It seemed that he only managed to achieve enlightenment because he had instinctively sensed the coming of his death and had entered a state of terminal lucidity.

‘It wasn’t exactly a meaningful life…’

When he looked back, his life was riddled with regrets. He had not made love—something that many others did. He had his hands full cultivating, and had never even held the hand of a woman.

He wanted to gain fame in the secular world, but he wasn’t nearly powerful enough. He lived in the era of war and chaos, one of the most chaotic periods in the history of the martial world. There were numerous chronicles being written, with countless stories of heroes and villains rising.

His name, unfortunately, was not among them.

“Aah…”

He started losing energy. Maybe this was how he was going to die.

The ones watching his last moments were those who had no relationship with him, people whose names he could not even remember. They were only here out of respect for the high elder of a grand sect; nothing more, nothing less.

He wanted a family. He had lived a lonely life for a long time.

He recalled his master, who was kind, but left this world early.

He envisioned the backs of numerous reliable heroes in the era of war and chaos.

He saw beauties that he could never reach.

‘Yes, perhaps, I…’

His consciousness fell into the depths of the abyss.

‘...may have yearned for such a life…’

Shake.

“Xuchuan… Xuchuan… wake…”

He felt everything shaking, as if he were lying on a boat. The movement even jolted his brain, forcing him to open his eyes.

The first thing he saw through his cracked eyelids was a rather handsome man who looked to be in his late thirties.

“...?”

The boy, who looked to be six or seven years old, muttered in disbelief as he looked at the handsome man who had woken him up.

“Master… how could…?”

“A few days ago, you treated your master like a dead man and cried relentlessly, and now I see you’re talking in your sleep.”

He was a fine example of someone aging handsomely. His hair draped down like silk, his eyes looked noble and kind, and although his face was marked by wrinkles, they did not look ugly; instead, they imparted a certain kind of beauty to him.

The boy, Zhou Xuchuan, rolled his eyes at the words of his master, Liu Zhengmu, and fell into thought.

Oh!

His thoughts didn’t last long. The events that had occurred during the past week flashed through his mind, and in a brief moment, he recalled the situation he was in.

Zhou Xuchuan, eight years old. Fourth generation disciple of Mount Hua.

The first thing that came to his mind was information about himself.

Liu Zhengmu, forty years old. Third generation member of Mount Hua.

The members of Mount Hua were divided into four generations.

The first generation consisted of elderly members of the sect who no longer involved themselves with the matters of the world.

The second generation were the sect master and the sect elders. Other than the elders, those higher up in seniority were also part of this generation.

The third generation were the mainstay of the sect. They were mostly young adults to middle-aged, and they had the greatest numbers. The third generation could also accept disciples.

The last, the fourth generation, were children and novices who couldn’t even be called martial artists—in other words, the future generation. Even the oldest members of the fourth generation were twenty, just barely enough to leave the sect and roam the world.

Zhou Xuchuan was one of the late entrants even among the fourth-generation disciples.

The most important fact, however, was that…

I have come back to the past.

He subconsciously groaned. Honestly, he still couldn’t believe what had happened. He had suspected his own brain of playing tricks on him dozens of times during the past few days.

The Zhou Xuchuan who had experienced the era of war and chaos and managed to rise to the rank of high elder was dead. That life was absolutely not an illusion. He had managed to climb to the Harmony Realm in his later years, but he had died not long after, unable to overcome his own lifespan.

So then, what was this? He had closed his eyes in death, yet he had opened them once more to witness an unbelievable sight. He had regressed back to his childhood, an age he could hardly even remember properly.

At first, he wondered if it was a dream. After that, he wondered if this was some kind of punishment in the afterlife. Next, he even wondered if he had ascended into immortality and entered the world of immortals.

However, all of his hypotheses were wrong. It was not a dream, nor a punishment in hell, nor even a reward given to him by the immortal realm.

He could hardly believe it, but he eventually accepted the reality in front of him after experiencing it firsthand for the past week.

This is before even flowers stained in blood started blooming, before the storms of conflict had brewed. I have returned to that time.

To a time still peaceful, where his master, the only person that cherished him like family, still existed.

I can do it.

Unnecessary emotions and trivial thoughts in his mind dissipated. Replacing them was a certain burning emotion that welled up from the bottom of his heart.

Once again.

He did not know why he had returned to the past.

He did not know who had sent him here.

Nay, honestly, he didn’t care either way—that was the conclusion he came to in the past week.

He had lived an ordinary life, and he had met his demise without anyone who cherished him.

And somehow, he was now back in the past, possessing the memories of his ‘previous’ life.

I can live the life I want!

Although it wasn’t perfect, he would be able to live a completely different life now that he had these memories. That made him excited, and something that had turned cold within his heart started burning up again.

He knew about the various big events that were going to happen in the future, including the War of Factions, as well as the numerous conflicts that made up the war and the true villains in the dark.

Even aside from that, he had been able to browse through the various secrets of the sect and of the martial alliance thanks to his position as the high elder in his later years, so he knew some details of other major events that he hadn’t experienced himself.

Above all, I will do this and that with women too!

It was so frustrating to die a virgin. In his later years, his sexual drive had somewhat lessened, but before then, it had been quite painful.

The Mount Hua Sect was one of the secular sects among the Daoist ones, so their view on marriage was on the liberal side. Of course, the sect master was asked to refrain from having children even if they were to get married, as they had to take responsibility for the sect. In any case, for a sect of the orthodox faction, it was taboo to blatantly indulge in matters of the flesh, but people turned a blind eye to a moderate amount.

Despite that, he had never even held the hand of a woman, and he had lived surrounded by men.

That frustration and regret had managed to stand through the reversal of time, and they now gleamed silently through the eyes of the eight-year-old Zhou Xuchuan.