Rebirth of the Martial Proud

Rebirth of the Martial Proud is an Eastern fantasy novel by the web author Tang Dynasty Assassin, first published on Zongheng Chinese Network. It runs to eleven volumes and 464 chapters (plus an author's note "About the Ending") and is complete. At the opening, the protagonist Ye Feng reaches the end of his life at thirty-five: he began training in martial arts at five and never slackened for thirty years, yet failed at the hardest threshold of the martial path, his powers scattering until he was a cripple. On the same day, the Tianji Valley stronghold is annihilated by a sword-light from beyond the heavens, and he sinks into boundless darkness. When he wakes, before him lies Hengyang City in a sky full of snow, the two stone lions and the black plaque with gold characters before the gate of the Marquis of Valor's manor. He has returned twenty years in the past, when heavy snow blankets Hengyang and wind and thunder roil the nine heavens. In his previous life, his father Ye Xiao "died in battle" after marching out with the Marquis of Valor; three years later he learned from his father's comrades that his father had actually been poisoned by Ye Xian, the Marquis's second son, and the family was forced to leave Hengyang City. His mother and young sister died of illness one after another on the road, and he was left alone at eighteen; he then served in the army for fifteen years only to grasp a chance at revenge. Given a second chance, Ye Feng holds the memories and experience of twenty years. Starting as a lowly branch-clan junior in the Marquis's manor, he maneuvers step by step through the training grounds and the intrigues of the household, guarding against Ye Xian's schemes while seeking the martial inheritance truly meant for him, his long sword pointed at the heavens as he sets out once more on the path where he once fell short. The book's keynote is "the greatest cheat in life is to live it again," unfurling family grudges, military martial arts, and jianghu factions layer by layer.