The Night My Clan Was Slaughtered, I Awakened a Golden Bloodline

In writing class, Qian Shiren slid his notebook across the desk.

The assignment was titled "The Person I Know Best." He had written about a man named Shen Du: a man who died nine times, on the same day in each life. In his tenth life, he returned with a knife, but in the end, he killed no one and saved no one. He simply shut himself in a room and spent every day holding himself back.

The teacher marked it with a red pen and wrote three words: "Completely unbelievable."

"What's unbelievable about it?" he asked.

"All of it." The teacher pushed the notebook back. "There's no one like that in this world. You made it too extreme."

He didn't argue. He just put the notebook in his schoolbag, went home, and dug out his grandfather's old, dust-covered journal.

There were many people in the journal. A boy hiding a knife in a funeral home. A woman whose hair turned white by a pond. An old man leaning on a cane as he walked into the fog. The more he looked into them, the colder his hands grew. These people didn't seem made up. They seemed to have truly lived.

He wrote late into the night beneath the lamp. The wick popped, and he rubbed his eyes.

When he looked up again, the lamp was still burning.

Beneath it, a person sat with his back to him, slowly sharpening a knife until it gleamed.