Cursed Sovereign Spirit
The moment its name appeared in Harry's mind, the lone eye opened.
He saw the rivers and clusters of stars freeze in place, he felt the universe shiver, and the whole world dim. A vast and terrifying pressure descended, covering the heavens and earth. Immortals bowed and Devils knelt, Gods prostrated and Demons trembled, and an anguished howling echoed across the world. The universe was wailing.
The figure fixed its vision on Harry.
Within the eye was a boundless arrogance, an infinite pride and a domineering glare. Under that single eye, Harry felt as tiny as an ant.
No, smaller than ant. Beneath it, he was as powerful as a mote of dust.
'This is my Magic Spirit?'
Harry floated there, and locked eyes with the mummified figure. It was humanoid, that was all Harry could make out beneath the chains. There the two of them stood – perhaps for a single second, or perhaps for an eternity. Time was a meaningless concept here.
Finally, it spoke.
"The Detestable Heavens conspired to prevent my awakening."
It was a lonely voice, one that weathered the endless years and suffered for even longer. It came from a faraway space, muffled through both distance and the chains. Yet when it reached Harry, the voice shook him to his very core.
"You conquered the obstacles fated to be in your path, and awoke me from my eternal torment. You did not disappoint the lineage of the Sovereigns."
"But, the Detestable Heavens always plays its cruel jokes. It is I who must disappoint you. I am in no position to be your Spirit, and you cannot be my master."
Whatever thoughts were forming in Harry's mind all came to a sudden standstill.
"Why not?"
"Our lineage has been severed, and our existences have been cursed. You cannot take my mantle, nor do you understand what it means to walk the path of a Sovereign."
"If we met in a different era, we would stand side by side, unparalleled and undefeatable. We would ramble across the stars, and show disdain for the whole world. Perhaps, we would topple the Detestable Heavens itself, engraving our existences into the Vault of Stars."
"But in the current age, and my current state, it is impossible."
"You can't do that!" Harry almost went crazy over what he was hearing.
Who had ever heard of a Magic Spirit that couldn't bond with its cultivator?
"As the one who bears the Condemned Physique, you have been branded by the Detestable Heavens. You are destined to face unending adversity. The more you grow, the more your enemies will multiply, the stronger you get, the more powerful your foes shall become. You are hated by the Detestable Heavens itself, and the whole world is to be your enemy – do you have the strength to rise above the world?"
Harry froze, and slowly processed that revelation.
"Cast your gaze across the stars. Look at how they glitter and beckon. They are all yours for the taking, except you are fated for death at every step."
"As the one who bears the Condemned Physique, you must carve your own destiny. Defy the Detestable Heavens, and continue cultivating my technique. If you can restore the lineage, and free me from these chains, then one day, the glory of the Sovereigns will reappear in this world."
"But first, you must survive the upcoming tribulation."
Rather anti-climatically, the figure and its cosmic surroundings all disappeared, and Harry abruptly found himself back in the dark chamber beneath the Swan's Seamount.
"You – you – come out!" Harry gave an unwilling howl. Just like he'd seen other cultivators do countless times, he yelled out the name of his Magic Spirit, and willed it to appear.
"Cursed Sovereign Spirit, come out!"
"Cursed Sovereign Spirit, come out!"
"Cursed Sovereign Spirit, come out!"
"Come out! Come out! Come out!"
Nothing happened.
In the end, Harry collapsed back on the ground, his thoughts frantic and confused.
Perhaps, it had all been a dream.
A Magic Spirit that didn't appear until the 9th level of the Body Tempering Realm… what sort of existence was that? He counted on his fingers, and ended up at Ranks 25, 26, and 27.
"There's no way," he snorted. When even Rank 5 Magic Spirits were rare across the world, and Rank 6 and above was just a legend, how could his be Rank 25 or above? It was impossible for such a thing to even exist.
It was also impossible to do what that figure had done – float in the empty universe, and gaze upon the stars from above. When other people awakened their spirits, they got a Magic Beast or a weapon or some other item that they could summon. His spirit was nothing like that.
It had a power that surpassed understanding, surpassed imagination itself. Never in a million years would Harry have guessed that not only was he not Spiritless, his Magic Spirit was such a powerful being.
Though if the Magic Spirit was that strong, why was it wrapped up in chains? Could a being like that even be defeated?
And at the end, what did it mean by 'survive the upcoming tribulation'?
Harry barely understood anything that his Magic Spirit had revealed, but he did make one connection. It had told Harry to "continue cultivating my technique". It must have meant the Nameless Technique. But that was impossible, because he got it from that rock his mother had given to Slughorn.
Now that he thought about the Nameless Rock, he distinctly recalled his experience when first touching it. That time, he lost consciousness and was transported to a dark space. There, he heard a voice that said he had a cursed spirit, and a condemned physique. With no idea what that meant, he put that out of his mind.
Now, the figure wrapped in chains had said the same thing. It was called the Cursed Sovereign Spirit, and apparently, he had a Condemned Physique, which was the source of his misfortune.
"Well, if I really am both cursed and condemned, that does explain a lot of things," Harry mused. It did explain why enemies seemed to be attracted to him, and it explained why he suffered everywhere he went. If that was his fate, then it was no wonder his life was so tragic.
'The Detestable Heavens conspired to prevent my awakening,' it had also said.
To awaken, Harry had to reach the 9th level of the Body Tempering Realm. It truly did seem like the world was pitted against him, pulling all its strings to prevent it. When he got close to the 9th level, his Sect was destroyed, and he strayed mere millimeters away from death. There was even the Fetal Crippling Poison – a poison that made it nearly impossible to reach the 9th level of the Body Tempering Realm.
"There's no way," Harry finally shook his head. "Fate and destiny, do these things actually exist? I always thought I was just plain unlucky."
Ultimately, he didn't know what to think about any of this. The experience shook him to his very core, causing him to question everything he knew about the world.
Perhaps, Magic Spirits didn't end at Rank 5 or 6. They could be awakened all the way up to the 9th level of the Body Tempering Realm.
Perhaps, the cultivation world was far broader than he initially thought. This wasn't the first time he had seen or heard of beings that existed among the stars. Back when he touched the Nameless Rock, he saw a vision of a galactic scale battle, and during the treasure eruptions, he heard a tale of a legendary swan that tried to fly into the Outer World. He thought the world was limited to the planet he was on, but perhaps, a vast world lay beyond his vision, among the stars.
For two whole days Harry sat in the gloomy depths of the chamber, just replaying the interaction between him and his Magic Spirit over and over. It was frightening, awe-inspiring, humbling, so many things all at the same time. He couldn't even sleep, such was the intensity of that encounter. Assuming he hadn't dreamed it all up, it both terrified and inspired him.
After two days, he felt the Qi in his Skeletal Meridian settle, meaning he had reached Perfect Opening. For others, this was a process that took months of diligent practice circulating Qi around their body. But for him, it naturally happened in two days.
"Time to break through the Qi Absorption Realm," Harry spoke out loud. In the solitude down here, talking to himself was the only way to keep himself sane.
"I never thought I'd reach the Qi Absorption Realm. My whole entire life, I thought I'd never get this far. Now that I've finally done it, I'm about to die," he bitterly chuckled at the irony.
Once the Qi settled in all his meridians, he could feel a number of changes beginning to happen in his body. All the Qi in his meridians was trembling, and in the center of his abdomen, beneath his navel, a force emerged that was drawing all his Qi towards it.
Whooosh!
Like a gathering tide, he felt the Qi in his meridians rushing towards the area beneath his navel. The meridians were like rivers, and Qi was like water. Eventually, rivers flowed together to reach the sea.
He waited in anticipation, but at the last step, the Qi failed to congeal together to form the sea. Again, and again, he tried but failed to take that very last step.
"Something's not right," he frowned. "Somehow, I can't gather all my Qi together to form the Qi Sea. There's some strange force preventing it – huh, did it get darker?"
Indeed, his surroundings abruptly became dimmer. He looked at the Natural Essence by him, but it was still shining brightly. He looked around, then upwards, where he knew the orange-walled vent to be, and his mouth dropped in shock.
A mile above his head, the vent was covered by a rapidly expanding black thundercloud. It grew and grew, until it reached the confines of the orange metal, at which point it began churning and boiling. Little arcs of electricity could be seen zapping along the undersides, while the air suddenly turned thick. Thunder rumbled.
"What the – is that a thundercloud!?" Harry leapt to his feet, and started backing up.
How the hell could a thunderstorm start down here?
'This is impossible! It's impossible!' he wanted to scream. It was obviously impossible!
He was about to run away – though he didn't know to where – when the thundercloud stopped growing. It looked like a giant black eye staring down at him. At the same time, a sort of willpower flooded the room, catching and restraining him.
The thundercloud had locked into him.
"Don't tell me… that thing's going to strike me?" he screamed.
Harry madly struggled, but it was like he was frozen in place. He couldn't move at all, and could only look upwards at the impending disaster.
The thundercloud was trembling, like how a pot of water would bubble right before boiling. With nothing else he could do, Harry pushed his defensive power to the peak.
Strengthening Flesh! Forging Bone!
And just for good measure –
Washing Marrow!
It wasn't a moment too soon. The cloud above him burst open, and a massive strike of lightning shot downwards, like a descending spear. Within that lightning bolt, Harry could feel an unsurpassed fury and terrifying destructive will.
BOOOOOM!
"AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH"
He screamed as the bolt of lightning struck him right in the forehead. It travelled through his body, out his feet, and spread its destructive energy across the floor. He was tossed backwards like a ragdoll, and he could smell his own charred flesh. Smoke wafted off his body as he convulsed on the floor. His body wouldn't stop twitching, and Harry thought for sure he was going to die.
The strength behind that strike was incomparable, and even with his toughened body, he wasn't a match for it at all. The instant the lightning struck him, he bore the full brunt of its anger and wrath. As it turned out, neither Strengthening Flesh nor Forging Bone were able to protect him against lightning. Only Washing Marrow helped by healing him afterwards.
Above his head, the black clouds slowly dissipated, revealing the orange-colored metal vent once again. But it left a lingering destructive willpower, along with the unreconciled feeling of not finishing its target off, behind in the air.
"What the fuck was that?" he groaned. Since when was entering the Qi Absorption Realm accompanied by a bolt of lightning?
Harry just barely got back to his senses, when all of a sudden, the floor began shaking.
"Don't tell me – now it's an earthquake?" he yelled. But no, it wasn't an earthquake. That bolt of lightning had torn through the red floor. A large hole was in the ground, leading to further depths, and then all of a sudden, the entire floor of the chamber lurched underneath him, everything turned vertical and sideways, and he was falling.
Splash!
He landed in an ice-cold pool of water, and immediately started shivering. Fortunately, the water was there, or else the impact would have been very painful indeed. But the chilling pond froze him to the bone. When he stood up, he realized the water reached all the way to his neck.
"W-what the –" his teeth chattered as he took in his new surroundings. He was in a flooded cavern, one lit up by a golden light. As it turned out, the red layer he thought was the floor actually hid yet another chamber beneath the Swan's Seamount. This was a humongous cavern, far larger than the one above, and filled with water. Obviously, this was where all the water had disappeared to.
And then he turned his head, and froze in surprise.
Not far from him, there was a pillar of ice that stretched from the floor to the ceiling. It was the source of the cold, and water around it had all frozen, forming an island of ice in the middle of the cavern. The pillar of ice was large enough that it would take ten or more people holding hands to wrap around it. It was perfectly circular, and also perfectly clear, like it was made of glass.
But that wasn't the strangest thing, because in the center of the pillar, a woman existed. She was encased in the ice, resting peacefully with her eyes closed, as if she were asleep.
But she couldn't be peacefully sleeping either, because she was also on fire.
Flames with the color of pure gold were rooted on her body, raging against their icy prison. They were the source of the golden light. Despite the lack of fuel, they burned. Yet, the ice didn't melt, and the woman lay still, like she couldn't feel them.
'She must be dead,' Harry thought. 'How long has she been down here?'
Due to the ice encasing the flames, Harry didn't feel a single bit of heat. If anything, he was freezing cold.
Was this the true secret that laid at the bottom of the Swan's Seamount?
The room was cold and bleak, and also creepy. Somehow, he got the feeling something was watching him, even though his only present company was this dead woman. It made goosebumps rise on his skin – as if they weren't already visible due to the cold.
He waded closer, and pulled himself out the water, standing on the island of ice. He got as close as he could without freezing to death, and examined the woman.
There was only a single word that could do her appearance justice – perfect. She looked like a graceful fairy that stepped out of a painting, a being that shouldn't exist. This was the kind of beauty that could start wars or topple nations, one that could cause fish to sink or birds to land. Her appearance hid the moon and shamed the flowers, a peerless beauty that exceeded the natural world. Though she was on fire, there were no burns on her unblemished skin.
Harry looked around the large cavern, but it was empty aside from the water and this icicle. Then he looked back at the burning woman – and saw two eyes as blue as the sky staring back at him.
"AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" Harry let out a loud scream.
He scrambled backwards, slipped on a patch of ice, and landed on his buttocks. He tried to stand back up, but fear overtook his brain. His legs weren't responding, so Harry just backed up as quickly as he could, as far away as possible from the woman who was definitely staring at him.
'Fuck, fuck, fuck, what the fuck is this creepy place?' he screamed. He sprinted away at full speed, all other thoughts leaving his mind.
When meeting something beyond understanding, the human brain shut down and reverted to its primal instincts. A single thought dominated all others – run!
"Don't leave."
A gentle voice came from the ice pillar, and resounded through the cavern. In an instant, a large, thick dome of ice grew around the pillar, trapping Harry inside. A moment later, Harry ran into it face-first, and bounced right off.
He may as well have run into a steel wall. This ice was unnaturally hard, hard enough that despite Strengthening Flesh, he felt an enormous pain on his forehead.
Rebirthing Muscle! Burning Blood!
Energy surged through his body, and he mustered all the power he could to smash the ice wall with both fists.
BANG!
The next moment, Harry screamed again as he felt all his knuckles crack upon impact. Whatever this ice wall was, it was too strong for him to break it.
"You are my first visitor. Why do you have to leave?"
Harry slowly turned around to look back at the frozen woman. She was still on fire, and still trapped in the block of ice. But those two deep blue eyes were definitely staring at him.
"You – you're alive?" he blurted out the first question on his mind.
"Alive? In some sense of that word, yes."
"How long have you been here?" Harry asked. The Swan's Seamount was said to have erupted for centuries, perhaps millennia. This woman couldn't have been under here this whole time, right?
"How long?" the woman sighed, and closed her eyes.
"Endless years have passed. I have seen the seas of blue turn to fields of mulberry, and the mulberry fields turn back to blue seas."
Harry's mouth dropped open. "What – how is that possible?"
The woman opened her eyes again.
"I suppose you have yet to see the endless mysteries of the cultivation world. Even if I explained, you wouldn't understand, as the gap between you and I is too vast."
"But though you are weak," her voice suddenly grew hard, "I led you here for a reason."
Harry backed up again upon hearing that change in tone. The woman sounded dangerous now.
"I have been trapped for so long, that I lost all hope millennia long ago. I thought I would be trapped here for millennia more, slowly wasting away. Of course, a young man like you wouldn't understand this feeling. But, the Heavens reward the patient, and always leave a path. Now that a chance has presented itself, I have to take it."
"What are you talking about?" Harry's voice trembled.
There was something very wrong here.
"There's no need to look so frightened. I'll just take over your body, that's all. I will have to restart my cultivation, but that's an acceptable price to pay. I can tell there is something in your body, something very precious that will help me. For it to bring down the Heavenly Tribulation, it must be an object that defies the Heavens, something that shouldn't exist. With me, your body, and that thing, you will ascend to the peak of the world – with me in control, that's all."
"Wait, wait, can't we discuss this?" Harry pounded on the ice wall, but it didn't give at all.
"There is no room for discussion."
From within the ice pillar, the figure floated forward, right through the solid ice. Harry could see straight through her, like a ghost or spirit.
"Relax. As I said, it will be painless."
The ghost-like thing drifted closer, and reached him in a blink of an eye. Their bodies were just a few inches away from each other, and Harry thought he would pass out in terror.
'Holy shit – a ghost! Ghosts are real!'
But more importantly – this ghost was going to take over his body!
He was going to die!
If not in body, at least in mind and spirit!
'Oh, why does this shit only happen to me?' he almost wanted to cry.
Over the past few days, he had brushed against death far too many times. He felt like he was walking on the tip of a blade, and a single misstep would send him off the edge, into oblivion. Each time he survived, only to be thrown into an even more hopeless situation afterwards.
And this time, it was actually over.
'I really am fated for death… this life was really unfair,' was Harry's final, bitter thought.
The ghost-woman lifted one flaming arm, and reached out to touch his forehead with a single finger.
And then…
He felt a sudden, scorching pain on his chest. At the same time, the woman's eyes widened, and she jerked her ghostly hand back.
The metal bird around his neck was burning, urgently burning, turning into a small wisp of fire. There was a flash of light –
"A phoenix flame!" the woman exclaimed, her voice full of shock. Or was it awe?
– a feeling of being hooked by the stomach, and then Harry Potter was gone.
End of Act 1 – Phoenix Rises from Ashes