The Sage found himself surrounded by a twelve-colored shield traveling through a valley of stars and darkness. The void outside trembled with a Divine Will, and it raged at his passing. The shield did not bend, but its colors faded with each strike.

The Sage recognized the Reincarnation Path and understood that he died again. In his first life he lived as a powerful cultivator, one who kept the peace for nearly 50 millennia. In his second life he lived as a scientist on Earth.

The Sage wondered, for a moment, what his third life would bring him. He reached his hand out and caressed the shield, taking note of the fading colors. The shield didn't look like it could hold through another reincarnation. This would be his last opportunity to keep his consciousness through the Paths.

The Rainbow lights trembled, and a terrible darkness overtook the starlight valley. Only the light from a single star shined. Then, the light grew bigger, and bigger still.

The Sage's soul hit the membrane of light like a lead ball bouncing on thin rubber. The membrane distorted, bending further and further before it snapped, letting the soul through.

The Sage found himself floating on the cusp of a planet's atmosphere. He couldn't even see the the curvature, for the celestial body was too large. It spread out in all directions without end. Only by turning entirely around could he see stars again.

A charged energy surged through the atmosphere, an energy The Sage found similar but holistically different from the Spiritual Energy he once knew.

A powerful suction struck The Sage's soul, and he began to fall. The planet grew larger and larger as he neared, the wind whipping by him at gale-force speeds. Clouds shattered, dispersed by the soul dropping like a falling star. Once the clouds faded several continents came into view. Soon those too passed from vision.

The Sage watched one section of the world grow larger and larger as his perception shifted. Soon the world transformed into a large forest, stretching for hundreds of miles in all directions. To the north stood a city built of metal and stone. To the south were several villages; they were scattered like dandelion seeds across the land. To the west laid a great ruin of a city long dead with snaking rivers running through it like veins. And to the east stood a mountain range, larger than even the grandest peaks of the Himalayas.

The woodlands grew larger and larger. Then, in a flash, the Sage found himself flying towards a body lying on the side of a small dirt trail.. The body of a child, no more than 12 years of age. Next to it were several adult corpses.

The Sage hit the body and felt no resistance. The child's soul shattered at a touch, and the fragments passed on into the cycle of Samsara. A few fragments remained, diffusing themselves into the Rainbow Shield, and merging with the Sage.

The Sage's soul fused to its new host. The Rainbow Shield vanished, its energy surging into the child body, healing its wounds at an astounding rate. The Sage didn't have much time to acclimate himself with the new memories before his consciousness faded, the stress of the situation proving too much for his new body to handle in one sitting.

-

A rustling sound the Sage and she managed to open her eyes. A little girl's memories were floating in her head, grinding against the fringes of her mind. The name of the forest came to her alongside other small memories: Tin's Soldier Garden, a dangerous place full of monsters. Her parents were moving to the city and were unlucky. They met bandits on their travels between the Tin City and the villages of Southern Tin. The bandits left them with only their carriage and one horse. The horse broke a leg and they ended up stranded in the forest. Without food they could only forage, and they ended up consuming a deadly mushroom.

The scene around her took a moment to come into focus. She could hear the grunts of beasts along with a terrible ripping sound. Monsters—unlike any Desolate Beasts she ever battled with in her first world—were tearing into her family's corpses like some kind of Thanksgiving dinner.

—No. They weren't her family. They were the family of this new body. Nothing more.

She held her breath. Her body had no strength. Thankfully it was laid off to the side, near several bushes and spindly vines.

Using her immaculate knowledge of stealth techniques, the Sage overburdened the muscles of her new body to silently crawl into the underbrush. With each movement she could feel her tendons stretch and pull, her muscles tear, and her bones strain. Her legs and arms burned and a wetness on her cheeks confirmed that she was crying.

-

[Skill Gained - Stealthed Movements

Stealthed Movements has reached MAX rank.]

-

A strange blue screen popped up in her sight, distracting her from the carnage nearby. With a thought it vanished. The screen was reminiscent of a game-screen popup from her second world. The Sage continued her silent crawl and found, oddly, that the movements became easier and no longer stressed out her muscles.

The foliage was thick and green, with a strong mint-like scent. She kept her head down and, once out of sight, stopped moving entirely. She could only watch as the beasts, some amalgamation of ape and crocodile, ripped bloody flesh apart to dine. Not even the horse survived.

These beasts were different. In her first world, beasts had intelligence closer to humans and wouldn't attack or eat corpses, but they were very powerful. In her second life beasts were meager existences on the fringes of the world, but they were primal and would attack humans whenever possible.

These creatures seemed to be a combination of both. They possessed the strength of Desolate Beasts and the savagery of the Earth wilds.

Watching the monsters, she was finally able to witness one use of the strange 'Spiritual Power' in the air. The creatures absorbed it from the air and used it to nourish their musculature and skin, much like an outer-cultivation technique.

The Sage prodded her body's memories and quickly learned that this energy was known as 'Mana'.

A strange thought came over her and mixed together with the unique memories of the body. Quietly, she thought to herself the word [Status].

-

[Name: Cara

Age: 12

Occupation: None

Titles: None

Level: 1

Health Points: 7/10

Mana: 10/10

Strength: 3

Speed: 4

Accuracy: 5

Stamina: 3

Skills:

Spoken Language (Common): 4

Read/Write Language (Common): 3

NEW - Stealthed Movements: MAX]

-

This world started to seem more and more like a video game from her second life. From her status she could divine a few things. One, her meager attempt at sneaking earlier earned her a skill. Two, there were popups or messages informing her about earning a skill. Three, there seemed to be levels, stats, Health Points, and Mana. Four, after earning a skill, she felt different, as if the skill were ingrained into her bones.

This meant that the 'status' was a representation of her physical and magical skills. It also influenced her, such as when she got better at stealthed movements purely because of it appearing on her status.

This world was clearly similar to her first one, but it evolved in a different parallel. Her first world relied on cultivation but this one relied on magic. She held out her hand and gathered a ball of the ambient mana from the air.

-

[Skill Gained - Mana Manipulation

Mana Manipulation: 1]

-

It was volatile and explosive, stinging her skin. She couldn't hold the ball together for more than a moment before it forcibly dispersed.

Her first thoughts were to use Mana to substitute Spiritual Energy and form a Dantian.

She closed her eyes and focused on pulling the Mana from the air in through her nose. The virulent energy stung and her eyes began to water. Carefully she moved the energy into her meridian paths..

Pain.

Her entire body shuddered in raw, agonizing pain. It felt like she had been struck by a thunderbolt. Her eyes went bloodshot and she focused inwards as the 'Mana' tore her meridians apart. She raised her right hand and bit her thumb, making it bleed. She quickly formed three hand-seals; it was a method to move energy in the body and guide it externally. She needed to streamline the energy paths. A gust of Mana burst out through the bleeding hole in her thumb, and her body collapsed.

It was clear that forming a Dantian out of Mana couldn't happen. These internal injuries could take years to heal.

Her mind wandered for a moment and she considered her situation. She wasn't quite certain how many reincarnations her soul shield would give her, and she certainly didn't want to test it. She wasn't happy having a small female body, but it was better than having her memories stripped and her soul shattered in the reincarnation cycle. Killing herself was definitely far from the best choice. Besides, there were Six Paths to power. If Internal Cultivation didn't work with Mana, one of the others surely had to. The energy was far too similar to spiritual energy to have no overlap...

She stopped focusing on her internal situation and watched the Magic Beasts again. The scene was gruesome, but necessary. she could see the Mana in the air circling around them like buzzards over rotting prey.

The creatures continued to absorb the Mana and perform what looked to be some form of outer cultivation technique in order to reinforce their strength. Watching the way they used Mana, it seemed similar to a weak version of a Tyrant Body technique.

She focused on gathering a ball of Mana in her hand again, but this time she sucked the ball of Mana direction into her hand's flesh. She quietly recited a mantra and performed the Outer-Cultivation technique for the Jade-Dragon Body, a Tyrant Body technique she had invented in her first life.

The Mana surged like an elixir in her skin. Her muscles and flesh grew firm, rippling with power. She flexed her hand, astounded at how incredible it felt. The Mana seemed even better than spiritual energy at fueling an Outer-Cultivation technique.

Now that she had tested the technique on her hand, she was certain it was safe to perform on the rest of her body. She focused her mind and began cultivating, drawing more and more Mana in to nourish her flesh and bones. The energy flowed around her like river eddies, sparks and flashes visible only to the soul echoed on the air like ocean waves. She felt the energy siphoning through her pores and, following a specific cultivation mantra, it began swirling and infusing into her muscles, tendons, bones, and flesh. Even her organs were being nourished and reinforced.

An hour passed and the beasts outside finished their meal. Silently, they returned to the forest. A powerful sorrow overtook the Sage knowing she couldn't bury the parents of this body. She vowed revenge on both the bandits and beasts hiding in the vast Tin Soldier-Garden.

-

After five hours of non-stop energy gathering and cycling, the Sage's body began to tremble. Her skin began to pale and smooth. Her muscles exploded with newfound power. A surge of energy overtook her and a layer of filth and muck began to bubble up from her pores. She had finally broken through the first rung of the Houtian Realm of her Jade-Dragon Body technique. Five hours to reach the First Rung of the Houtian Realm was outstanding. If anyone from her first world heard of such a thing, their jaws would drop and they'd doubt it immediately.

She washed the filth from her skin by wiping her body down with leaves from a nearby tree. She recognized the species as a form of maple, but it was too mutated by the ambient Mana, giving its leaves and sap a medicinal scent. At this moment she considered her thoughts on Alchemy from her first world and Chemistry from her second. She was certain that by using both she could recreate powerful cultivation pills and enhancements to train her outer-body technique. She'd need a mortar and pestle, though. She could create one over time, but without glassware to hold her potions and pills she'd be hard pressed to make something worthwhile. Wooden and stone bowls would contaminate and reduce the medicinal quality.. She could always try to find human settlements to steal the glassware she needed, too.

She squeezed her hands to feel her strength. It was absurd just how powerful she felt at only the Houtian First Rung. Once more, she collected a ball of Mana in her hands and she looked at it deeply. The energy seemed far more volatile, like a ball of explosive powder, whereas spiritual energy from her first world felt soft and thick like loam.

She considered many things about Mana. There had to be a way to diffuse it in order to make a dantian. Many theories flew through her mind, but she was wary to test any of them after her first failed attempt at internal cultivation. Her meridians were currently injured; she would have to wait a few years to conduct quality tests.

Perhaps inner cultivation couldn't even be used with Mana at all.. That would eliminate three of the main Six Paths, but that also left three others. Admittedly none were as easy, diverse, and useful as an Inner Cultivation Path—particularly the flexibility of the Dantian—but there was nothing she could do about it. she still needed to do a ton of tests.. Though, for now, simply training her Outer Cultivation would suffice until she could get herself set up in this world.

-

"Status," she said, the word foreign on her tongue.

-

[Name: Cara

Age: 12

Occupation: None

Titles: None

Level: 1

Health Points: 177/200

Mana: 198/500

Strength: 300

Speed: 307

Accuracy: 288

Stamina: 348

Skills:

Spoken Language (Common): 4

Read/Write Language (Common): 3

Stealthed Movements: MAX

NEW - Mana Manipulation: 3

NEW - Jade-Dragon Body Cultivation Technique: 1H]

-

Her eyes immediately fell on the new status numbers. Her higher stats were expected. The First Houtian Rung was a massive step for most cultivators, after all. Most warriors would spend 10 years of constant training to reach this level. Thankfully, due to her experience and knowledge, such a thing came naturally.

She looked through the memories of her new body, but unfortunately the girl Cara knew little about the levels of powerful creatures in this world. The body didn't know anything about stats themselves, either.

She needed more points of reference. She had no clue how powerful the warriors and magicians of this world were. It would be risky to show herself to the outside world. She doubted that many people would know how to perform Outer-Cultivation techniques and her strength would definitely be too shocking for a 12 year old girl.

The best course of action would probably be to train Martial Techniques that could be done with only Outer Cultivation, since external arts seemed to work well with Mana. She also needed to practice a few martial art styles that specifically worked well with the Jade-Dragon Body technique. Just knowing them wasn't good enough, she needed to develop the movements into muscle memory with her new body.. And she secretly wanted to see how her martial arts knowledge would react to being 'skill-ified'.

As her thoughts sputtered down her future plans, a flicker of sunlight reached down through the canopy above her. She looked up and smiled. She spent her first life teaching disciples. She spent her second life trying to find a way home. Perhaps—this time—She would simply try to enjoy life to its fullest.

Maybe she could even find a way to use this 'Mana' to change this body from female to male. She certainly didn't plan on living up to the societal standards for women. She raised female disciples in her first life and helped them with everything while they grew up, so she knew all the 'troubles' that would be coming her way.. She was certainly not looking forward to them.

The status listed her name as Cara.

"In this life," she said aloud, her voice small but strong, building in intensity, "I am no longer The Sage. Nor am I The Scientist from Earth. In this life I am Cara, and I shall enjoy it."