Blood pooled inside his mouth, hot and metallic, spilling across his tongue like the iron taste he had grown addicted to. His body ached, trembling from the countless blows he had taken. Zhang Wei, once feared in the underground circuits, staggered but refused to fall. His chest heaved, lungs dragging for air. The crowd was screaming, stamping, drunk on violence. Fists like hammers had broken ribs, shattered skin, and yet still he grinned.
I love it… this taste… this pain…
He spat blood at his opponent's feet and swung one more time, the fist thudding into flesh, but his own vision blackened. The last sound he heard was the roar of the crowd fading into silence, like someone had pulled the plug on life itself. His heart throbbed once, twice, then nothing.
The void swallowed him.
It was not gentle. It was cold and suffocating, as though he were buried beneath the weight of the earth itself. He expected nothing more—death was final. Yet something lingered. His instincts, honed by years of bloodsport, screamed that this was not the end.
Through the darkness came warmth. A heartbeat, not his own. A rhythm surrounding him, pressing, cradling. The weightlessness twisted into something else, and then there was the painful rush of sensation—air rushing into lungs, light searing eyes, voices crying out in a language he somehow understood.
But when his sight cleared, he was not an infant staring up from a crib. He was a child.
Five, maybe six years old by appearance. His small hands flexed, soft yet strong, the bones already denser than they should be. Black hair fell past his ears, uneven but thick, and his reflection in a bowl of water revealed sharp gray eyes, a gaze that never looked like it belonged to a child. They were eyes that measured everything—walls, people, even the sky itself—as if already sizing up opponents.
The villagers whispered.
It began the moment he was found. His parents, simple farmers, had taken him in as though he were their own, though no one quite understood where he had come from. Some said the boy was cursed, that he appeared under the shadow of a storm the night his mother screamed into labor. Others swore the gods had placed him among mortals to balance the cruelty of men like Yujiro Hanma in the far-off lands of Japan. Whatever the reason, the boy's presence unsettled people.
He was too quiet for a child.
Zhang Jie did not play like the others. When the village boys wrestled in the dirt, he stood apart, watching, studying. When they came to shove him into the game, he responded without thinking—ducking under a swing, twisting, and sending the aggressor tumbling headfirst into the ground. He had not meant to hurt them, but his body moved faster, sharper, like muscle and instinct remembered something his mind did not.
That was when the whispers grew louder.
One afternoon, the men were repairing a collapsed wall, stone blocks stacked heavy enough that two grown adults struggled to shift them. Jie had stood nearby, silent as usual, eyes fixed on the work. Then, without word, he stepped forward and wrapped his small hands around one of the stones. His father shouted, afraid the boy would crush his own fingers. But the stone lifted. Not easily, not with the casual ease of a giant, but with steady strength. His arms quivered, veins standing out against smooth skin, and then—he carried it.
The men dropped their tools in shock.
No child should have done that. Yet the boy walked, set the stone beside the others, and looked at them with those gray eyes that never blinked. No triumph, no childish glee. Only calculation, as if measuring their fear.
That night, the tavern was thick with muttering. Mothers pulled their children close, fathers warned their sons not to test him. Some thought him blessed, others cursed. The older villagers swore they had seen warriors with such eyes before—men who lived only for battle, who found beauty in blood.
His father, Zhang Jian, looked at him with pride veiled in unease. His mother, Li Hua, brushed his long black hair and whispered comfort, pretending not to notice when her hands trembled. They loved him. But even they knew. Their son was not ordinary.
Days blurred into weeks, and more signs appeared.
Wolves prowled the forest near the village, starving as winter dragged longer than usual. One evening, Jie wandered too far from home. He did not scream when the first wolf lunged. He did not run. His instincts—those buried memories of Zhang Wei, the underground fighter—awoke like fire under his skin.
The villagers who rushed after him did not find a mauled corpse. They found a boy standing, gray eyes steady, one wolf sprawled broken at his feet and the rest circling warily, unwilling to test him further. Blood stained his knuckles. He looked at the men who arrived with torches and spears and simply said, "It tried to bite me."
They dragged him back, muttering prayers. His father's hand was heavy on his shoulder that night, not in punishment but in silence.
The whispers became belief.
Children did not break wolves with their fists. Children did not lift stones or dodge blows like seasoned fighters. This was no ordinary boy. This was something else.
And Jie knew it. Deep inside, he recognized the feeling. Muscles that remembered strength, instincts that knew combat as naturally as breathing, eyes that searched for threats even when none existed. He did not understand the name Zhang Wei anymore—it was like a half-forgotten dream—but he knew the hunger.
The hunger to fight.
Lying in bed, staring at the wooden ceiling, he flexed his hands. They were still small, but the bones were hard as stone, the grip tighter than it should be. His heartbeat quickened not with fear but with anticipation.
I'll grow… stronger.
His lips curled into the faintest smile.
Outside, the village slept uneasy, caught between reverence and fear of the boy in their midst. Inside, Zhang Jie lay awake, gray eyes glinting in the dark, already sizing up the world.
The legend of China's hidden beast had begun