He Zhi was flabbergasted by the sudden thought that he started over.

What was this, a game? What had caused the restart?

He decided to retrace his steps, following his previous life.

First, he grew up as a frog. He needed to get energy in order to activate the Bloodline, but didn’t know if he wanted to go about it in the same way as last time. Why? Because his siblings got involved.

If they hadn’t have been captured, they wouldn’t have gotten him in trouble.

No, if they hadn’t been captured, He Zhi would still be in the small pond or the Misty Turtle Tribe’s village.

Wait, what if they weren’t ever there?

He Zhi was always a loner in the first place, why bother taking care of others? He should be worried about his own safety!

Completely ignoring his brothers and sisters, He Zhi focused on ways to get at the Riverweed without endangering himself.

But the catfish was always waiting! Not to mention, the eel was still being problematic.

Wait, how did the eel get lightning abilities in the first place?

As a tiny tadpole, He Zhi followed the eel around, searching for its whereabouts. Upon discovering its hidey hole, He Zhi waited until the eel left to begin exploring. The hole would have been too wide for him once he grew up, so this was an opportune time to retrieve whatever it was that gave the eel lightning powers.

But…how? How could it use lightning energy without it being magic?

No, what He Zhi didn’t know was that it was indeed magic. The Lightning Eel uses a Static Cloak Spell. However, it can only use it for fifteen minutes and then must sleep for the day. Those fifteen minutes are what the eel uses to hunt each day for food.

Unaware of his predicament, He Zhi only had 10 more minutes until the eel came back!

The hole was indeed strange, it was more like a tunnel. Eventually, he entered a small room that was completely spherical. Again, what caused these strange shapes?

And then it dawned on him. The stone! The strange stone in the swamp! If it didn’t have anything to do with the old man who gave him the Bloodline, then the only other thing he could think of was the strange rock!

Unfortunately, there was no rock here, just a tiny pebble. And instead of the calm feeling, it was erratic and almost felt like it was moving.

Instead of feeling energy from it, He Zhi noticed there was a thick feeling surrounding it. Could this be energy? Normally, it was in plants or animals, why would it be here?

No, that’s not right. It should be everywhere, but it wasn’t normal for people to use the energy in the air, was it?

Again, unbeknownst to He Zhi, he had stumbled onto the ancient ways of magic. Current uses of magic came from the Bloodlines and Inheritances, but only used the internal energy.

The ancient ways required more time to cast since they needed to gather the Mana in the surrounding area. There were key words that would help the accumulation of Mana, but they were now long lost.

The internal magic spells still required short phrases and incantations, but didn’t need to be specific. The body itself could feel the magic power within the words. Essentially, a high powered Mage could in fact use incantationless magic.

However, the people did not want to waste time. They used incantations to speed up the process and grant the spells extra power.

When He Zhi thought of energy being in the air, he moved onto another amazing train of thought.

What about absorbing the energy directly from the surroundings?

And so he went to work. Unlike directly consuming the energy through consumables, absorbing the energy through this method was absolutely difficult.

He was so lost in thought, he didn’t realize the eel was back. Fortunately, it was completely out of its lightning energy, so He Zhi didn’t immediately die. However, it still had enough energy to strike at a small defenseless tadpole.

It dropped its meal, alerting the meditating tadpole to its presence. He Zhi darted away as fast as possible, but was cornered by the eel. In a last ditch effort to survive, He Zhi swam directly into the eel’s body.

He was trapped, and the only thing He Zhi thought was that the electricity wouldn’t be sent into its own body, would it?

Well, he was correct.

He Zhi was small enough to be swallowed whole. He was squeezed by the eel’s innards, but the remains of its meals kept He Zhi alive…for now.

Several days passed, but He Zhi wasn’t willing to go to either end of the eel. He stayed in the stomach, but was having a difficult time trying not to be eaten up by the acid.

If He Zhi had only known that the anus of the eel was actually close to the front of the mouth, he might have been more agitated.

But since he didn’t, he tried to maintain his current situation. He even nibbled on the siding of the stomach, even though it was disgusting.

But he now had it! He could sense the feeling of the lightning element that much easier! Sure, the surroundings were getting noisy, but that meant that he was damaging the eel! If he could safely gather power, he might just be able to get out of such a situation with his life still intact!

He chewed enough of the lining of the stomach to gather one thread of energy. He focused the power to circulate, cultivating even during the tumultuous event that was happening. He had to meditate and still keep an eye out so he didn’t get pulled into the deeper portions of the eel.

After several nerve wracking hours, He Zhi managed to actually complete his new first circulation. However, it wasn’t the frog one like he did in his last life, this time, he went directly for the human pattern.

But he forgot! He blacked out from the pain!

***

Several moments later, a sharp pain woke He Zhi up. When he looked around, he noticed he was stuck in some hole. It was an aperture that led to the intestines! He had become stuck with his body splayed outwards in several directions.

Although he couldn’t rest since he felt that the aperture was widening.

He swam back to safety and lodged a tiny webbed hand into the wall of the stomach. There, he gathered the energy to help him heal, albeit slowly.

After another couple of hours, He Zhi was finally able to start practicing with this new energy. Previously, he could produce a spark, but he hadn’t eaten anything with actual lightning element in it. Now that he had, the purple energy was very powerful.

He took several chunks of the stomach and nibbled while he thought about his predicament.

He had come back and needed to do something.

But what?

The old man who gave him this power wanted to see what He Zhi could do with it, but got angry when he had tried to sell it to survive.

He Zhi couldn’t understand such a problem. If the man wanted him to do something or not do something, why not just tell him? And why couldn’t he remember during his first life?

As he ate in thought, several new threads of purple energy slowly swam around in his inner self. He Zhi thought about immediately combining the threads, but decided against it. He couldn’t afford to black out now. He had nearly blacked out several times just trying to complete the rotation in the first place.

For now, he needed to use his attack.

He Zhi focused his energy into a swirl and readied for a cone.

However, nothing appeared.

What? Why? But water and wind could do it, why didn’t the lightning do it?

Wait, he just needed to imagine it.

But…lightning doesn’t swirl…

He Zhi pondered in relative silence as the eel was bashing itself into the rock wall in pain. It was weakened from the magic spell and still needed rest in order to regenerate, but now its stomach was hurting. It couldn’t figure out what was going on, but it was scared!

None of the other eels would come near, so its place was always left alone. Even if the electric eel died, no one would probably visit the place until long after the lightning disappeared.

But He Zhi wasn’t bothered by that.

“How does lightning normally move? Doesn’t it sort of branch downwards? Like a tree, perhaps?”

After that thought, he imagined the energy branching out in paths, bisecting the very air in a jubilant fashion. Next thing he knew, his vision was filled with white and his whole world got flipped around.

When his vision returned, he was outside of the eel! He looked around and noticed a massive hole on its side.

Did he do that? That was impressive!

Lightning is dangerous!

Unlike the water and wind, this lightning actually drained him of his energy in almost an instant!

Maybe it was because he was still a tadpole…

He fell unconscious, the dying eel writhing in its death throws until becoming silent forever.

***

He Zhi awoke to see a large meal in front of him. He wanted to skin the eel and finely cut up the meat so he could save some for later, but he needed to kill the catfish first.

Instead, he searched for the lightning stone and held onto it. The power inside was long gone and only sent a tingle when he first grabbed it.

He spent several days in his safe area and practiced his moves. The most basic part of lightning was its blinding fast movements and strikes. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t last long and his energy would be practically depleted right after.

Unlike the wind energy, lightning energy was only good for straight movement. Zigzags were fine, but turns, dodges, and weaves wouldn’t be easy. Instead, he needed to focus entirely on just trying to get from point A to point B. He had nearly wrecked himself several times by almost smashing into the wall.

After one week of practice and getting used to the techniques, he was slightly better than someone who hadn’t ever used energy before. After all this time, He Zhi hadn’t even lived in this world for a total of a year, even including his second life.

If all it took was a week of practice to become strong, then everyone in the villages would be strong. Speaking of the villages, how would the world change if he didn’t get involved? He Zhi still needed to ingest different beasts so he could use the different elements, but he didn’t have to eat Arthur or the Heron Family.

Instead, he could just visit the various parts of the mountain.

Wait, why did the mountain have these different sections of energy? New questions were popping up in He Zhi’s mind one after another.

No, for now, he needed to get strong. Travel the mountain in search of the animals or plants needed to use the various energies and then absorb the power of the Mana Stones. If he could combine all of the threads, then he would obtain that ultimate power the old man let him see just before it was taken away.

First on the list of energy to obtain was the water energy. And to do that, he needed the catfish sleeping lazily in the pond. After that, he could visit the swamp, eat a wolf, and grab the other stone.

That was another thing! He needed to find the secret of these stones!

If not, he might never know what would possibly happen to him if he died again!

But that would only be if He Zhi died. And he wasn’t going to die. Not this time.