"Aish…" Liu Shiye sighed as he lounged in front of his home. The rain had broken and the clouds parted, light now descended, somehow making the the brisk air more crisp.
It has been three days since he woke up in this world no one has come to visit. He was obviously not as well liked as he assumed. Maybe he was wrong, but he was too paranoid to find out.
The very first night in this new world, from the depths of his sleeping mind, the inherited memories of his predecessor's final weeks surfaced only in fragments, but what they revealed was enough to seed deep wariness. There had been sickness. Not a simple fever, but something fouler—something invasive.
Heat that would not break.
Lungs drowning in their own mucus.
Blood thickening, clotting wrong beneath the skin.
A foggy face had emerged, a sweet voice spoke with malice and the thick taste of iron filled his mouth. Then everything was over.
"Poisoned" he sighed again, "Me…Such a cliche."
Liu Shiye pursed his lips, and flicked his fan as he thought.
"What not to do" he spoke aloud, still able to speak English.
"Be loud and stick out."
"Who killed me? It could be anyone." he sang, "Still, I won't survive becoming a shut-in. Whoever poisoned me must have done so for a reason."
Those who passed by looked at Liu Shiye with concern. They saw the young man speaking gibberish and looking to the sky. They could only shake their heads and continue on. But none dared to cross the line onto his land.
Liu Shiye stood up and entered the home once more. Memories were still coming. He decided to wait.
On the fifth day, the conclusion came not from knowledge but from instinct layered over fractured recollection. He remembered the taste of bitterness forced between clenched teeth. The smell of boiled herbs. The way the tribe's healer had refused to meet his eyes near the end.
Someone had tried to save him. Or someone had tried to make certain he did not survive.
The memories broke apart before offering clarity—faces blurred, voices distorted, motives hidden behind the haze of death.
Enough to fear. Too little to defend. The memories were also coming slowly. So he had no choice but to move around and investigate on his own.
He explored little, spoke less, and observed everything.
The body he inhabited possessed familiarity with the settlement—pathways felt natural beneath his feet, doorways found his hands without conscious direction—but Liu Shiye did not trust inherited instinct. Borrowed experience was not the same as earned understanding.
He treated each memory like thin ice.
Testing.
Applying pressure slowly.
Prepared for it to crack beneath him at any moment.
Most of his waking hours were spent within—or just beyond—the Liu compound.
It stood apart from the broader sprawl of the Tiger Blood Tribe's settlement: an enclosed stretch of longhouses reinforced by timber palisades driven deep into the earth. The wood was darkened by age and weather, notched with old blade marks and claw scoring that had never been sanded away.
Animal skulls hung from the posts at measured intervals.
They were not decorations. They were recorded.
Each skull marked a hunt. A rite of passage. A victory claimed by a member of the Liu bloodline. Some were small—wolves, boars, horned predators native to the mountain slopes. Others were massive, their bones bleached pale by seasons of rain and sun.
Fanged things.
Scaled things.
Creatures whose existence alone confirmed this world's brutality.
Some nights, after a good hunt, fires were lit in iron pits set along the compound's center path. Flames burned hot and bright, fed by resin-rich wood that snapped loudly as it caught. Meat roasted openly above them—whole haunches skewered on iron spits, ribs split and splayed.
Fat dripped into the fire with a constant hiss.
The scent saturated the air so completely it clung to skin, hair, and clothing long after the meals ended. Even the smoke carried weight, heavy with grease and blood.
Liu Shiye ate—but cautiously. He consumed what had been stored within his longhouse first. Dried meat tough enough to strain the jaw. Hard grain cakes baked for travel and longevity rather than taste. Smoked marrow wrapped in treated hide, rich enough to sustain a hunter through days in the wild.
He rationed it carefully, observing how his body reacted to each meal, how quickly it metabolized, how hunger came and went.
He did not join the hunting parties.
Among the Tiger Blood Tribe, survival and worth were measured in brutality.
Men earned standing through beast hunts in the surrounding mountains, through border skirmishes with rival tribes, through escorting trade caravans across predator-infested territory where death was considered a routine hazard.
Boys as young as twelve participated in blooding hunts—their first sanctioned kill marking their recognition as true members of the tribe's warrior lineage.
Liu Shiye avoided all of it.
Not out of fear.
Out of ignorance.
He did not yet understand the limits—or potential—of this body. He did not know how its strength compared to others, nor the techniques, traditions, or expectations tied to the Liu name.
To act prematurely in such an environment would not be bravery.
It would be suicide.
So he watched.
From doorways.
From palisade shadows.
From elevated walkways where he could study training drills without participating.
He observed how hunters moved, how they carried weight, how they positioned their feet when sparring. He listened to conversations around the fire—stories of hunts, of rival tribes, of creatures that lurked deeper within Corpse Mountain where even veteran warriors tread carefully.
He memorized faces.
Noted alliances.
Tracked who spoke to whom—and who did not.
And slowly, piece by piece—
Liu Shiye began to learn the world he had chosen.
Another week and a half passed.
By the end of it, the Tiger Blood Tribe had unfolded before Liu Shiye like a living map—its rhythms, hierarchies, and tensions revealing themselves not through formal introduction, but through observation, routine, and the unspoken language of power.
At the tribe's center stood the Ouyang Clan Hall.
The structure dwarfed every other longhouse in the settlement. It had been built from blackwood logs so thick that three grown men linking arms could barely encircle one. Age and ritual had darkened the timber further, oil and smoke sinking deep into the grain until the walls appeared almost lacquered.
Its roof was layered in scaled beast hide, stitched and reinforced, each plate overlapping the next like armor. Rain struck it with a dull, muted percussion, sliding down in dark streams tinted faintly by years of blood offerings poured across it.
This was where tribal war councils convened.
Where disputes were settled.
Where executions, when necessary, were sanctioned.
The Ouyang did not rule as kings.
They ruled as war chiefs—authority earned, not inherited blindly. Their dominance rested on generations of proven strength, battlefield victories, and the unbroken command of the tribe's main warbands.
Strength legitimized power.
And power, maintained long enough, became tradition.
Flanking the Ouyang were the tribe's two pillar families.
The Xue.
And Liu.
The Xue compound stood closest to the tribe's eastern gate, its placement neither accidental nor ceremonial. They commanded the mounted patrols—riders trained to traverse the surrounding wildlands—and oversaw most beast-taming operations within the tribe.
Their warriors specialized in breaking predator mounts: ridge wolves, ash-coated hyenas, even scaled drake-hounds captured from the lower ravines. Not the average beasts of the mundane world Liu Shiye once knew.
Their banners bore the mark of white fangs, stylized and elongated—trophies taken from frost-region predators said to roam the northern glaciers beyond mapped territory.
Pale bone against blood-dyed cloth.
A symbol both feared and respected.
The Liu family compound lay opposite them, occupying the western grounds near the tribe's training pits and blood arenas.
Where the Xue mastered beasts—
The Liu honed warriors.
Training fields stretched wide within their palisades: weapon racks, sparring circles, sand pits darkened by years of spilled blood. Iron posts scarred by blade testing stood like grave markers along the edges.
This was where bodies were forged.
Where endurance, pain tolerance, and killing techniques were refined without mercy. Here a killer had the choice of a hundred different paths. And it was here that Liu Shiye resided.
The tribe called him Young Liu.
Never Liu Shiye. The address carried respect—but it was measured. Formal. Edged with distance.
Not quite warmth. He learned that quickly.
Not quite dismissal. He had value. Because his lineage was known to all. His parents had once stood as the heirs of the Liu family.
He learned of them slowly, through overheard conversations, elder recollections, and fragments of inherited memory that surfaced when triggered by place or object. It was then that the world revealed itself as something more, something of a martial world that Liu Shiye couldn't fully grasp.
His father—Liu Zhen—had been a rising war captain. He had a body like a beast and trained the Four Armed Raging Ape Technique. It made him fierce and durable.
A man whose reputation bordered on myth even within the brutality of the Tiger Blood Tribe. Stories of his strength circulated freely: how he had once wrestled a horned iron boar bare-handed after his spear shattered mid-hunt.
The beast's tusks could pierce layered hide armor. Liu Zhen had snapped one off and driven it back through the creature's skull. Whether exaggerated or not, the tale persisted—and in tribal culture, persistence mattered more than proof.
His mother was remembered differently.
She had not been born to the tribe.
She came from beyond their lands—an Aramaic speaking woman from Zhengqi, Alkebulan to the natives, and would be known as Africa in the future. She arrived with a long-distance trading caravan that crossed tribal territories to exchange metals, medicines, and rare cloth.
Her presence alone had stirred tension. The people of Corpse Mountain Range accepted trade and expected them to be like the wind. But his mother was more like a spore riding the wind, only taking root when she found a true home.
And, against expectation, she and Liu Zhen fell in love.
Their union fractured the Liu clan internally.
Some saw it as dilution of bloodline purity. A pathetic excuse. Others saw opportunity—new alliances, new trade access, new influence beyond the mountain territories.
But Liu Zhen and his wife stood united in purpose.
They swore to restore the Liu family's independence—freeing it from growing political pressure exerted by both the Xue and Ouyang, whose influence had slowly begun to encroach on Liu authority through generations of political marriages.
Their marriage became more than romance.
It became defiance.
A declaration that the Liu would remain its own pillar—unbowed to external control. And their son, Liu Shiye, the first Liu in a hundred years free of Ouyang and Xue parentage.
But, both of them died three winters ago.
A trading mission, the tribe said.
During the mission, a sudden surge of migratory predators driven down from deeper mountain regions. Caravans had been threatened, and Liu Zhen led the escort force beyond the Red Ridge to intercept the threat.
They never returned.
Search parties found no bodies.
Only weapons.
Broken.
Blood-caked.
Armor fragments scattered across trampled snow.
Among the tribe, absence of a body did not imply survival.
It implied consumption.
After their deaths, the position of Liu heir did not pass to Liu Shiye.
He had been too young.
Too untested.
Lineage alone could not command warriors.
The elders convened and selected a successor from the family's second branch.
Liu Feng. Older. Battle-proven.
Known for a ruthlessness that bordered on cruelty even by tribal standards. His rise stabilized Liu's military standing—but it shifted internal power irrevocably.
And yet—
Despite losing the heir's seat…
Despite his youth…
Despite his reclusive recovery…
Liu Shiye's position within the tribe remained… delicate.
Not weak.
Not secure.
Balanced on an unseen fulcrum.
Because of her. Liu Ming Fei