Ch1 – Re-shell Re-birth — Bringing home an urchin

Out of thin air he condensed water to form a mirror, which showed the reflection of a teen about 17 or 18 years old, dressed all in white with a tall and upright stature.
He had upward slanting brows, eyes that shone like stars, slightly thin lips, and a forehead that expressed youthful vigor, which together created a visage of true perfection.

If anyone else had died and found themselves reborn as a beautiful young man, they might think it previously had all been just a dream, and awaken with a smile.
Su Mujin, however, had a slightly melancholy expression. 

There was some good news and some bad.

The good news was he had been reborn.
No longer would he be a human shaped lingyao subject to torment.

But perhaps the previous owner of his current shell had experienced an even more miserable life?

Su Mujin recalled his previous incarnation’s life.
It was truly a spectacle too horrible to endure. 

He was adopted by a kind-hearted family after his parents abandoned him as a newborn.
The year of his 10th birthday, there was a famine.
His foster parents didn’t even have enough to feed their own children, so how could they manage to help him? So as not to burden his foster family, one night he bowed thrice at the gate to pay his respects, then quietly departed .
.
.

After leaving, he begged to survive until he turned 13.
One day Gu Yunxi, the daughter of Taixu Sect’s sect leader, passed by.
She saw that his aptitude for cultivating his spirit roots was promising, and brought him back with her to the sect.
Come to speak of it, Gu Yunxi is not the kind of person who willingly helps others.
In fact, she’s extremely cold blooded.
Su Mujin had no inkling of the real reason why she took him in and cared for him.

Su Mujin always repaid the kindness extended to him, so his previous incarnation always treated Gu Yunxi as though she was his blood relative, and had given her the respect he would have given an elder sister.
If he encountered any precious lingyao, he would immediately give them to her.
Later, when Gu Yunxi suffered a serious injury and was at death’s door, he revealed his phoenix heritage without hesitation, and gave some of his blood to heal her.
Gu Yunxi emphatically promised never to speak a word of it to another soul.

Su Mujin never expected her to collude with dashixiong Mo Ran to use him as a human shaped lingyao, and imprison him for three hundred years.
Strangely, his memory prior to being imprisoned was fragmented.
Had such a long imprisonment made him forgetful?

’

It was precisely during this time of imprisonment that he got to know the previous owner of his current shell — Gu Feng.

Had they not suffered imprisonment together for three hundred years, he would never have known that the sect leader had a son.
Although Gu Feng was Gu Yunxi’s younger half-brother, she treated him with contempt.
Su Mujin, at most, had his blood taken from time to time, but as for Gu Feng .
.
.

Gu Yunxi originally tortured Gu Feng in a myriad of ways, but felt it wasn’t nearly enough.
Consequently, she announced a reward — so long as anyone could think up a new torture method, they would be rewarded with spirit stones in accordance with the level of cruelty.
These punishments were inflicted one by one on Gu Feng’s body.
In order to guarantee that Gu Feng remained alive to be tortured, Gu Yunxi grabbed a bunch of heavenly treasures to prolong his life.

Why would a person deal so cruelly with their own flesh and blood? Su Mujin was uncertain as to the reason.
No, now it is he that should be called Gu Feng.
His former incarnation had asked the original owner of this shell about it, and was told that his elder sister had no empathy for him, and that the situation was inevitable. 

Gu Feng’s face was expressionless as he put away the water mirror.
He contemplated — this body’s current age is 17 years old.
His rebirth placed him in the body of ‘Gu Feng.’

We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection.
If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.

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This body was of the exceedingly inferior five spiritual roots type — he was 17 years old, but had only reached the peak of qi refining stage of cultivation.
Gu Yunxi had already reached the peak of the foundation building stage at age 15. 

Gu Feng: “.
.
.”

Had the heavens purposely set him up to fail? This aptitude was worthless compared to those of Gu Yunxi and Mo Ran.
Even compared to his previous incarnation, this shell fell far short.

Wait a second — recalling his previous shell, Gu Feng suddenly had a thought — he wasn’t reborn in his own body, so did his previous incarnation’s shell, Su Mujin, still exist? Given the age of his shell, he could extrapolate the current location of Su Mujin.
At this time in his previous life, he should have just entered Taixu Sect.
It was nearly time for that fateful event to occur.

Recalling that event, it left a shadow his psyche that persisted even until this moment.
It was practically the darkest day of his life, if you ignored his later days of imprisonment. 

’

Su Mujin had just entered Taixu Sect, but still wore the tattered clothing from when he was a beggar.
The other disciples were haughty, constantly stared at him in derision, and pushed him out of their way.
But that was nothing.
He wasn’t so weak as to be unable to withstand people rolling their eyes at him.

He would never forget the day of the incident.
It was the third day since Su Mujin had arrived at Taixu Sect, where the disciples for the most part abstained from eating, so naturally there is no dining hall.
He hadn’t eaten in days and his hunger was overwhelming.
He was only able to find a few blades of grass to pluck and eat.
He had no idea that the grass was a lingyao.

As it turned out, some of the spoiled brats who despised him happened to see.
They dragged Su Mujin to a deserted location with an icy pond and beat him.
He thought they had finished with their abuse, and didn’t anticipate they would suddenly throw him in the pond.
At that time, he didn’t know how to swim.
Fortunately, the pond was not too deep — the water only reached up to his chest — but it was extremely cold, and each time he started to climb up onto the bank, they pushed him back in.
Who knows how long this continued before he had completely frozen through and his skin had turned purple.

Su Mujin w