The forest was calm that morning, much like it had been for the last decade. The gentle swaying of trees in the wind joined by ambient calls of various wildlife altogether produced a soothing ambiance that many would find easy to sleep to. And indeed, many of this forest's lazy inhabitants were still sleeping.
Suddenly, a tall elderly man wearing white robes appeared out of thin air.
"XU HAAAAOOOOO!" Longwei roared in fury, elegantly swinging his sword with his eyes closed shut. His white hair and beard trailed down to the base of his torso, swaying with each movement yet never getting in the way of his swings. His eyebrows too were long, extending out to the sides in defiance of gravity. His skin was smooth as jade other than some refined wrinkles that he allowed to remain on his forehead and beside each of his eyes. Other than those tasteful wrinkles, everything about him looked perfect.
Perfect, that is, if one ignored the marks of conflict. Longwei's otherwise flawless skin contained cuts that were still bleeding and bruises that were black as night. His hair was in disarray and dirtied. His white robes were bloodstained, but otherwise undamaged. Bits of blood and viscera lingered on his sword, arcing outwards with each swing and painting the forest with a morbidity not often seen anymore in this world.
"Hraa!"
Longwei was behaving so fiercely for a reason. A short moment earlier, Longwei's heavenly spirit sword was a third of the way through Xu Hao's head when the demonic cultivator had detonated his own cultivation instantly through the use of an artifact. The detonation had temporarily blinded Longwei, but more importantly its force had interrupted the 6th slash of Longwei's Soul-Shattering Seven Sun Slashes technique.
To make matters worse, Longwei could no longer control or sense any Qi, and he felt incredibly sluggish. Longwei suspected that his cultivation had been numbed by the detonation, but he had no time to concern himself with that. He could still hold a sword, and his heavenly spirit sword was more than capable of cutting a Nascent Soul on its own. So long as he was careful not to use any complicated techniques there would be no risk of Qi backfire.
Two breaths passed and Longwei had found no success in his ferocious swings. He paused, held his blade calmly, and focused himself.
He had eyes, yet he had not opened them. Now he opened them, and he could see. He looked left, right, up— 'There!' he thought, seeing a bright glow through his still-recovering vision somewhere vaguely above and forward. Longwei leapt with all his might towards the light and thrust his sword forward, intent on skewering the soul.
Longwei was disoriented and had no idea how high he had leapt. He was under the belief that he would leap as high as a mountain, which was more than fast enough to catch a moving Nascent Soul.
The reality was that he had only leapt a couple feet, and that the bright glow he saw was only the sun.
"Keuk!" Longwei crashed hip-first onto the grassy floor, blood spraying from his mouth as he collapsed onto his back.
His expression warped to a primal fury as he lay curled on the ground in pain. He realized Xu Hao had escaped. Longwei's body shook with fury. "XU HAOOOO!" Longwei howled to the heavens, then spit out a mouthful of blood that fell back down and further stained his robe red.
Willow's death flashed before his eyes. He saw the world tree glow as it prepared to sacrifice its cultivation so that Longwei might live and save the world of Yongyu. A massive detonation of pure Heavenly Qi followed, expanding outwards and cleansing the world of Demonic Qi. Every demonic cultivator in its path had immediately perished in a mist of red. Willow was already dead by the time the light faded, its branches withered and its trunk split open down the middle.
If only they had known that was exactly within Xu Hao's plans. Longwei then had to defeat a demon that had formed from the absorbed souls of all the demonic cultivators and demonic beasts. Then he had to face an empowered Xu Hao who had absorbed the demon's soul an instant before Longwei had purified it. Xu Hao had used the soul to immediately ascend to the same stage of cultivation as Longwei and then revealed he was secretly an immortal cultivator from the ancient past and had secretly been the cause behind all of Yongyu's beast waves, demon invasions, and most of its wars, and that he was even the mastermind behind the religion that was prevalent around the world.
Longwei had half expected Xu Hao to claim he was the one who summoned Longwei to the world, and that Longwei had only ever been dancing within Xu Hao's palm all along, but evidently Xu Hao was just as perplexed about Sun Longwei's existence as he was. Somehow, despite having mastered many divination techniques and possessing a hoard of artifacts that could read the threads of fate, Sun Longwei had never appeared in Xu Hao's visions, and even when Xu Hao had personally appraised Sun Longwei's power it had always looked unremarkable. "Even now," Xu Hao had said, panting for breath after a heated exchange of blows, "your fate looks so ordinary, and your cultivation so unremarkable. How are you doing this?! Tell me before you die, and I will leave your corpse intact!"
Longwei's flashback ended, and his free hand palmed the pocket which contained a seed that housed Willow's dormant Nascent Soul. Another mouthful of blood sprayed from his mouth, his robe further drenched in his own blood.
'Xu Hao's Nascent Soul was damaged heavily by my technique.' Longwei rationalized, rising to his feet and ignoring the pain in his hip with gritted teeth. 'He would have needed to enter a vessel quickly, lest he fade to nothing. He can't have gone far.'
He breathed deeply, then his face went as calm as a lake in a painting of a very calm lake. 'His options are also limited with a damaged soul, and the signs of possession are obvious to anyone with eyes. He will be vulnerable while his Nascent Soul is busy taking over its new host body.'
Longwei flicked the remaining blood off his sword and began walking in a random direction with a slight limp, not daring to risk using a recovery technique or even check himself with spirit sight lest he make things worse through Qi backfire. 'I will scour the area and cut him down.'
*rustle rustle*
'Could it be so easy?' Longwei gripped his sword tightly and quietly approached several bushes where he had heard the rustling. 'Had he been so desperate as to possess a small forest critter?'
Longwei raised his sword over his head in preparation to strike, looking for the tell-tale signs of a Nascent Soul takeover. Glowing is the most noticeable sign. The next most noticeable signs are frequent seizure-like spasms and incoherent screams. Even something as trifle as a cicada would glow, spasm, and scream as two souls fought over its body.
*rustle*
Longwei brought down his sword immediately—but stopped himself mid-swing, his eyes going wide and his pupils constricting at what he saw. A spirit beast the size of an adolescent lion had suddenly poked its black and blue head out of the bush, eyeing him playfully. "Mrawr!" it exclaimed with a distorted voice and a toothy smile.
Longwei shuffled back a short distance and held his sword at his side, looking at ease but actually holding a stance that was ready to strike at a moment's notice. Longwei's mind worked at lightspeed. He knew he was ill-prepared to face a spirit beast with his spirit still numbed, and so believed it was best to avoid confrontation. Scaring the beast off was his best bet. But Longwei was not afraid, no, for he feared nothing, not even the heavens!
"Kowtow before this daddy, junior, or face the immensities of heaven and earth!" Longwei said imperiously, his free hand brushing to the side and making his robe billow dramatically.
The beast smirked, but then froze stiff. Its eyes went wide as it looked him up and down, seeing the battle-stained form of Sun Longwei. Neither moved for a single breath.
The beast then turned and fled, the yellow mace-like end of its black tail whipping along behind it as it disappeared through the wall of shrubbery.
Something about the spirit beast seemed familiar to Longwei, but he was too busy congratulating himself on another junior well-intimidated to care. He had spent much time perfecting his intimidation act, after all, and it had been some time since he employed it on a wild spirit beast without the aid of Qi. Intimidation was a vital skill that every elder needed for silencing the swarms of arrogant juniors that thought to show their elders no face!
His thoughts drifted, and he wondered how the spirit beast had avoided falling prey to the demonic corruption—but then he froze in both body and mind when he realized that the rest of the forest was similarly untainted. 'How had I overlooked—no, I was so focused on slaying Xu Hao that I could not see the forest for the trees!' Looking around, he saw that the entire forest was vibrant and alive rather than dreary and dead like it had been during his duel with Xu Hao.
Confusion and worry fought for dominion over his mind. 'A dream?' He carefully attempted to circulate his cultivation, putting so little force behind it that Qi backlash would be almost impossible.
But nothing happened.
Seeing no other choice, he brought the edge of his spirit sword to his free hand and slid the blade across, splitting his own flesh with a hiss of pain. Blood poured from the wound and his hand stung fiercely, but that was it.
Longwei was again wracked with confusion and worry. 'This is no dream.'
*rustle rustle*
Longwei turned to see the spirit beast from before approach with a pep in its step, eyes locked on his own. Longwei maintained an appearance of calm, but internally was violently attempting to circulate his cultivation to no avail. He no longer feared the risk of Qi backlash if his very life was in danger.
The pep in its step slowly faded as it came to a stop several feet away. It looked to his cut palm that was pouring blood onto the floor like a running faucet, and then looked to the sword that was freshly wet with his blood.
Longwei opened his mouth, but all he got out was a gust of air as the beast blurred into him with a sudden burst of speed! It knocked him to the ground and batted the sword out of his hands in a single instant, and next thing he knew the beast was standing over him.
Longwei quickly rolled out from under the beast and stood up, readying his hands and expecting to die, but what he saw next shocked him. The spirit beast was not facing him. Instead it was facing his sword, growling at it as if it were an enemy. It then leapt towards the inanimate object, its jaws leaking black Qi as it bit straight through the spirit metal and shattered the hilt in one clean motion.
Longwei took a few quiet steps away. After breaking line of sight around a tree, he made a tactical retreat at full speed, hoping the sword proved a capable enough distraction.
Were he anyone else, he'd probably be screaming about swearing vengeance and how he'd slaughter the spirit beast's family to the 9th generation. Instead he ran quietly, and had not stopped running even after half an incense stick's worth of time had passed.
Many strange creatures appeared in his path, their appearance tickling at his memories, but he paid them no heed. Survival was his top priority.
A spike of pain shot through his hip when he narrowly avoided tripping over an exposed root, and Longwei cursed his decision to use his bag of holding as a weapon against Xu Hao. He'd not be suffering like this if he had even a single recovery pill!
A roar reverberated from behind him, no doubt from the beast. Longwei moved even faster, pushing his weakened body to its utmost limits. But to his dismay, the beast suddenly appeared a short distance ahead.
Longwei froze in his tracks, realizing escape was impossible as the creature carefully approached him, eyeing him cautiously.
'I still have my protectively enchanted clothes that are made of far stronger Qi infusions than the sword. With luck, I can trick it into biting down on my robes while I aim for its eyes!'
Longwei took a hunched forward stance, arms extended forward like a crab's claw. He knew he had no chance of survival. But if he could at least blind the beast then it might not sense his Nascent Soul escaping from his body after he dies. He'd have to restart his cultivation from almost the beginning, but at least he'd continue existing.
Recognition suddenly came to him when the luxio tilted its head and dug a paw into its black mane. 'I remember now, this species of spirit beast is named Luxio.'
Longwei waited tensely for a sudden attack much like before, not trusting his fuzzy memories of it being friendly, only to be surprised when the beast pulled out a large blue fruit that was stuck to its claw. "Mmmmmra." the luxio mewled out, holding the fruit towards him.
'They were of the Lightning Dao… Then it was hopeless from the beginning.'
Longwei eased his stance, concluding that he had no chance against a spirit beast of the Lightning Dao in close quarters combat without Qi of his own to protect him. The beast closed its eyes and smiled as he accepted the fruit. After failing to find something clean to wipe it on or cut it with, he reluctantly brought the fruit to his mouth and bit in. Its juices gushed out, and the taste actually wasn't bad.
'…!'
It took every ounce of willpower Longwei had to not make any sudden movements as a surge of Qi—'No, not Qi, but something else!'—flew through him. The energy went through his spiritual body, but it was fleeting, passing through him without settling at all. It was only thanks to his many years of experience as a cultivator that Longwei was able to latch on to the energy, attempting to guide it through his meridians.
This proved to be a mistake, however, as the not-Qi took a violent reaction once it came in direct contact with his meridian channels. Longwei was suddenly struck with a terrible full-body pain and collapsed to the floor, coughing up blood!
"Mraow!"
He tried to expel the not-Qi from his spiritual system, but it refused to leave. Each of the minor cuts throughout his body reopened, then mended, only to reopen again in a gruesome cycle. Terrible spasms shook his body as the energy rapidly bounced through his meridians in search of something, but Longwei had no idea what that something was. Blood sprayed from his mouth like a geyser!
Taking a gamble, Longwei looked inwards with spirit sight. 'The channels! It's stuck within the walls of the channels!' A profound insight struck Longwei as he recognized this energy was not behaving like the water-like Qi he was familiar with, but rather like electricity running through metal. 'But what can I do about that?! If it is stuck inside the very walls of the channels, then I cannot direct its flow at all!'
A dangerous idea crossed his mind. One that could kill him outright, both body and soul, if it did not work. But Longwei had no other option, as his meridians were beginning to break apart from the unstable energy darting around. 'I must trap it within my dantian! It is my only hope!'
With careful precision, Longwei linked his meridian channels directly to the central Qi storage of his cultivation, his dantian. The foreign energy converged into his dantian as soon as the direct link was made, as if that had been its goal all along. It swirled along the dantian's perimeters violently, much like it had his meridians, and Longwei screamed in pain as his dantian began to do something unthinkable.
'No!' he thought through spirit-rending agony. 'It is destroying my meridians! My cultivation base!'
Longwei could only watch helplessly through his spirit sight as his dantian began shredding the bulk of his meridian system. Like trees being pulled into a massive woodchipper, each of his carefully cultivated meridian branches were being slowly absorbed through his dantian's walls and spat out into the center as loose shreds.
The parts of his soul that lined the inside and outside of the meridian channels were spared, thankfully. While not something to look forward to, Longwei knew he could cultivate back to where he had been so long as his soul was undamaged. He had done it before, after all, and all his profound insights and past experiences had meant it was a greatly expedited process each time.
His cope was interrupted when the pain suddenly intensified. The strange energy within his dantian began to stir, shooting into the dust cloud of shredded meridians. His body began to glow, and his screams only grew louder with the light. His body shone like a nine trillion lumen flashlight in the dead of night as a great change took place.
The glowing suddenly stopped and his pain vanished. He had survived. More than that, he even felt energetic. 'A breakthrough?!' He shot up to a seated position, inadvertently pushing something he couldn't see out of the way. His entire body was coated in blood and black sludge, giving him an appearance like a demon. Some of the blood had even found its way into his eyes, obscuring his vision and causing him to tear up. It was an automated bodily response to clean foreign substances from the eye. He wasn't crying. Sun Longwei does not cry.
Something sharp pressed on his shoulder and shook him, a strange electric shock pulsing through him at the same time. "Mreow!"
He looked at Luxio with dirty, unfocused, and bloodshot eyes. The spirit beast looked back at him in worry. 'Not a threat.'
He tried circulating his cultivation by habit, as all cultivators do after a breakthrough, and to his surprise there was actually a response. An entirely unfamiliar response.
Rather than Qi flowing out from his dantian and traveling through the meridian channels like water, there was instead a light that arced out of his dantian and traveled through the walls of the meridians themselves. Its travel was inefficient, the walls not designed to act as a conduit. The energy frequently wound in unnecessary loops, obstructing the energy behind it and sometimes even getting turned around at points. It continued the rest of its journey through his now pitifully small meridian system and returned to his dantian, where it lay dormant again.
Longwei didn't even want to think about what had happened to his dantian, or about how all but one of his spirit roots had been destroyed. So instead he focused his mind on something else. 'This is not Qi. Had Xu Hao's artifact sent me to a different universe, one without Qi? That would explain why I could not utilize Qi earlier, and also why my heavenly spirit sword did not glow when I cut myself. But how could he have possession of such an artifact?'
Longwei, having once lived in a world without Qi called Earth, knew that not all universes operated under the same rules. While his memories of Earth had been hazy even on his first day in Yongyu, he knew well that Qi was not present on Earth. Even if all life on Earth happened to have no spirit roots or affinity for the Dao, Qi was simply too active of a force to go unnoticed or have knowledge of it suppressed. Even if the concentration of Qi were weaker, Earth was large enough that the ambient Qi of existence, especially that of life, would have lead to manifestations of its power in many places.
Thus, given the difference in fundamental energy between this world and Yongyu, Longwei concluded that he was in a different universe entirely.
This was both good and bad for Longwei. Good because he need not worry about Xu Hao reaching an artifact cache and returning with a vengeance. Bad because Xu Hao would possibly go unopposed and thrust Yongyu into another demonic era, which he will certainly attempt now that he's learned of a method to breakthrough to the Celestial Stage. While this was of no danger to Longwei anymore, he still felt responsible for Yongyu's fate. But more than that he felt the desire for revenge, to cripple Xu Hao's cultivation permanently, to sever all of Xu Hao's limbs, to roast Xu Hao's soul in blightfire for all eternity—!
"Mraow!" The spirit beast shook Longwei's shoulders, sending another light pulse of electricity through him and breaking him from his thoughts. It looked at him in worry and concern, with hints of fear.
Longwei brought his hand to his mouth and cleared his throat, coughing out a clot of blood. "Apologies." He wiped his hands mostly clean of blood and sludge against the forest floor. "I was a bit disoriented by that unpleasant experience."
The luxio looked away in shame with its ears folded back. "Ah, do not worry junior. You were only trying to help." Longwei put his hand on their head, pops of static lashing harmlessly against his skin as he began brushing their mane. The spirit beast purred, its deep rumble reverberating up Longwei's hand. Longwei's heavenly petting technique had claimed another victim.
A thought crossed his mind. One that could aid him greatly. "And indeed, you have helped this senior greatly. As reward for your assistance, this great senior is willing to accept you as his disciple!"
The beast snapped to attention and its eyes lit up, both figuratively and literally, looking at Longwei like he were an angel.
"I can sense you have an overflowing spirit and durable bones." Longwei proclaimed with the air of a peerless master, using his extensive experience with bullshitting others to its full potential. He stood up, then magnanimously gestured his once-bleeding hand to the skies, the exaggerated motion intentionally causing his bloody robe and beard to sway impressively in the air. "With this esteemed senior's profound guidance, even the heavens shall be within your grasp!"
"So, what say you, junior? Does your ambition burn bright enough to reach even the heavens?"
Luxio nodded her head excitedly, then leaned in for more pets. She was so so so glad that she decided to go on an adventure today instead of lazing about in the berry grove like usual! Thanks to that, she saved this human! That evil sword hurt him! That's not good! Luxio broke it to pieces! And now she had a human!
But the human was so weird! The way he talked was just like, what? And what kind of human wore loose clothes when in the forest, won't it get caught on stuff? And it's white! Or, it was white… Luxio knew that bright colors got dirty the easiest, so she wasn't surprised that his white clothes and hair got so so so dirty! And his beard, oh my gosh she's never seen a beard so long before! If it were any longer he'd surely be tripping on it!
This human was funny! And stupid! But also smart! He knew how talented Luxio was! Now she had her fated human! Oh my gosh, infinite pets!
"Ehem." The human made a noise and pulled his hand away from her head. "Junior, are you familiar with where the nearest human territory is? This senior wishes to test your knowledge!"
She knew where! She nodded her head very fast, showing the human that she knew and that she was very knowledgeable!
"Then show this senior that your claim holds truth! Impress me and perhaps I may make you my top disciple!"
She swiftly nodded twice, then turned and dashed off into the forest!
…!
She rushed back, remembering that humans weren't so fast!
"This way, human!" she mreow'd out, bouncing on her paws impatiently as he slowly walked over. This time, she'd lead him through the woods at a pace that a human can manage!