Marks were part of one's body even when they were just born. Marks were located in the area below the chest but above the stomach. The marks represented a 12-year cycle: zodiacs.
Each of these zodiacs had a specialty to them, so when one was born, once the mark was determined, his future would be planned. No one opposed to these rules, with the exception of mark geniuses.
A mark had different levels to it, each one darker than the last. When one was born, the mark would be faint.
In addition to this, there were different colored gems inside the body, not visible to the naked eye. Only when one was meditating would they see the gems.
The gems had varying colors and sizes, with the green one being the smallest, the yellow gem being a little larger, the red gem larger than the yellow gem, the violet gem larger than the red gem, and finally, the biggest, the blue gem.
One had to absorb and circulate the Earth's energy into these gems to darken the mark. When one gem lights up, the mark blackens. Once all the gems are lit up, the mark absorbs these gems and adds a little more detail to the mark. It becomes more visible.
This increases one's strength, and if they wanted to darken the mark more, they had to repeat this process, but with an increasing number of gems each level!
Everyone had difficulty lighting up all the gems. The only people that were at ease when cultivating were the mark geniuses. Anyone with a mark abnormality was called a mark genius.
These mark geniuses only appeared once every half a century, but every time they did, the nation where this genius was born would prosper. This mark genius would excel at all subjects, very much so that even a genius at that subject would have to bow down to this man.
Of course, some people with a mark abnormality also fell to temptation and became spoiled. When it was revealed that their mark was indeed abnormal, but their body had normal potential, they were labeled as marked trash!
A young man was sitting in his room, dejected. Staring at the mirror, he was looking at his reflection disappointedly, as if he expected - no, wanted to see someone else inside the mirror, rather than his own face.
"Ugh, why did I end up in this body?"
It has been ten years since Li Bai was born, but not once did he feel lucky. His soul was a special one - it was one that preserved memories of the previous life.
That was the reason why in all of the previous lives this soul had, most of them rose to be influential people in their time. They have been written in books even now. Their legends have been preserved.
When Li Bai had the time, he would bask in self-pride while reading in the library about his past selves. He would feel extremely proud of himself when he read these books about him.
The only exception towards the tradition this soul had of raising geniuses was the first few bodies he had, and also a few sprinkled throughout.
The first had extremely high potential, but he was born in the slums. He did not have the resources to raise himself nor the knowledge to compromise.
Everything changed when he died and he was born again. He lived in the slums too, but now, he discovered that memories were preserved within his soul, so it mattered not if his current body was strong, he only needed the knowledge.
In his first ten lives, he studied profusely. He even got lucky when in half of those ten, he became the child of a rich person or even the leader of a country. Of course, all of these bodies had extremely high potential, a mark abnormality, not comparable to these so-called geniuses that he kept hearing about.
