The world returned to him not in fire, not in glory, but in the fragile wail of a newborn.
Jin Wu-ren gasped his first breath with the indignity of blood and mucus clinging to his tiny face, his muscles spasming in helpless confusion. His world was heat, dampness, and blinding light. Yet through it all, his mind remained clear—too clear for an infant.
He was not a babe just born.
He was Tian Yao.
The Heaven-Searing Emperor. The Tyrant of the Nine Heavens. The man who shattered fate's bindings and ascended beyond the divine.
Once.
Now, his hands were fists too small to hold even a stick. His voice, a pathetic cry. His divine soul—a fractured mirror, barely able to contain the echoes of what he once was. But his memories were intact. His mind remained unbroken. And that was enough.
A low murmur reached his ears, voices filled with awe and exhaustion.
"He's strong," a man said, his voice rough like gravel but softened with wonder. "He didn't even cry at first. Just looked at me. Like he was studying me."
A woman laughed, breathless and tender. "He has your eyes, Jin Yao. Fierce, but calm."
"Nonsense. He has yours. Beautiful and clever."
The woman—his mother, he realized, though it felt strange to assign the word to anyone—brushed a fingertip against his brow. Her spiritual energy was weak, unrefined. Barely at the second realm of Body Forging, and riddled with inconsistencies. She was no cultivator of power. And yet her hands were warm. Steady.
"We'll call him Wu-ren," she said. "A man without burden. A man free."
Jin Wu-ren.
Fitting, he thought bitterly. And ironic.
He was neither free nor unburdened. He carried the weight of a thousand years. Of empires raised and shattered. Of betrayal still bleeding in his memory. Of a soul that refused to die.
He slept for a while, but it was a vigilant sleep. Even in his newborn state, he maintained a sliver of awareness. He listened to every word his new parents said, noted the layout of their modest home, measured the quality of their spiritual roots whenever they channeled even the slightest bit of qi. They were poor—not just in coin, but in cultivation.
The Jin Clan was small. A branch family living in a rural province called Yunhe. Far from the central heavens, farther still from the cultivation sects that ruled over the inner domains. Here, resources were sparse, spiritual qi was thin, and danger came not from grand cosmic beasts, but from mundane problems: borderland bandits, wild wolves, failed crops.
In his former life, he would not have even stepped foot in such a place.
But this was his starting point. He accepted it.
He had begun with less once before.
He had once clawed his way from a slave pit in the Ashen Desolation to the peak of the Immortal Sky Throne. If he could rise from that, he could rise from this.
On his third day of life, Wu-ren accessed his soul core for the first time.
It was like groping through darkness, searching for a familiar door in a burned-out palace. His core had once shone with divine gold, pulsing with the energy of the Heaven-Sundered Sutra. Now, it was cracked and gray, like a dying ember. Still, it was there. A lesser man would have wept to see his immortal legacy reduced to ash.
Tian Yao only narrowed his infant eyes and began to plan.
This body is weak. The meridians are narrow, the spiritual roots unbalanced—Fire and Earth dominant, but without stability. But the soul is intact. That means I can repair the foundation, slowly.
He began to circulate what little ambient qi he could draw in, using an ancient breathing technique designed for those recovering from soul injury. The technique itself was simple—far beneath his previous level—but it was stable. Safe.
First, I must stabilize the core. Then rebuild the meridian flow. Then reform the spiritual roots to be compatible with my cultivation path.
It would take years.
But I have time. For the first time in centuries... I have time.
And yet, time came at a humiliating cost.
He had not truly understood the fragility of mortality until he felt his own waste warm beneath him, and was powerless to stop it. There were no talismans to purify his body. No heavenly flames to cleanse him. Only cloth and crude herbal paste, applied with care by hands too kind for the world he once ruled.
So this is what it means to be helpless again, he thought one morning, as his mother softly hummed and washed his soiled bottom. He clenched his infant fists in silent frustration. He who had once burned sects to the ground now soiled himself twice daily.
He hated it.
The smells, the wetness, the indignity.
And the air! Stale and thick. In his divine palace, every breath had carried fragrant medicinal qi, drawn from the clouds themselves. Now, he inhaled dust, animal dung, and the scent of sweat from overworked bodies. The spiritual energy here was meager, laced with impurities. Drawing qi into his lungs felt like sipping mud.
Mosquitoes bit him. Actual insects dared pierce the flesh that once housed divine marrow. One left a welt on his temple that itched for hours.
I am Tian Yao, he seethed. Not some piglet to be swatted by bugs.
But the body was not yet his to command. Not truly. His soul strained against the limitations of flesh, but he endured. As always, he endured.
Weeks passed.
He grew quickly. His control over his infant body improved faster than any child should manage. By the third month, he could focus his eyes, roll over on command, and mimic simple hand gestures. His parents were astonished.
"He's... special," Mu Qinglan whispered one night. "Do you think... do you think he might be blessed?"
"Maybe," Jin Yao replied cautiously. "But if so, we keep it to ourselves. No one needs to know. Not the clan, not the neighbors."
"You think someone would try to take him?"
"In this world? Absolutely."
Tian Yao—no, Wu-ren—smiled inwardly. His father was no fool. Weak, yes, but perceptive.
He began to observe the clan from the cradle. The Jin Clan numbered no more than fifty members. Most were farmers, hunters, or low-level cultivators who had failed to break into the Qi Gathering Realm. A few elders had modest power, perhaps reaching the peak of Body Forging, but none held genuine authority outside the province.
And yet, even among the humble, power dynamics persisted.
There was Jin Han, the eldest son of the current clan head—ambitious, resentful of the poverty that shackled their bloodline. He spoke often of rising beyond the borders, of proving himself to the outer sect recruiters who passed through every few years.
There was Elder Zhu, an old man with cloudy eyes but sharp ears, who served as the spiritual advisor and held more influence than the official head.
Then there were the outsiders. Merchants. Wanderers. Bandits posing as pilgrims. Wu-ren caught snatches of their conversations when they visited the village market. Rumors of sect wars. A dying dynasty. New alliances forming in the central lands.
He filed every name away. Every event. Every potential threat.
He was an infant, yes. But he would not be caught unprepared again.
He remembered the betrayal.
The memory came to him in a fevered dream.
He stood atop the Sky-Scorching Platform, thunder cracking above, immortal lightning cascading down from the heavens. His robes were torn, blood streaking his arms, but he stood proud. His general knelt before him, eyes lowered.
"Your orders, my Emperor?"
And then the blade came.
Not from the general. From his side. His disciple.
"Forgive me, Master," Shen Lian whispered.
The pain was not in his body, but in his soul. He remembered staring into those eyes and seeing no remorse. Only ambition.
Then came darkness.
A heartbeat.
A cry.
One evening, as twilight stretched golden fingers across the mountains, Jin Yao carried Wu-ren outside for the first time.
The child's eyes drank in the view: fields of rice swaying gently, distant foothills veiled in mist, a sky tinged with colors that made even Tian Yao pause. He had seen divine palaces rise above clouds. Had looked down on a thousand realms. But this?
This was peace. Honest, fleeting, mortal peace.
I will not grow soft, he reminded himself. But I will protect this. If only for a while.
Jin Yao pointed to the distant ridge. "That's Mount Wuzhen. They say an old beast sleeps there, guarding a spring of true qi. No one's ever proven it, though."
"Maybe our Wu-ren will be the one to find out," Mu Qinglan said, joining them with a smile.
Wu-ren closed his eyes.
He would climb that mountain. Sooner than they thought.
And when he did, the beast would either bow...
Or bleed.
He had been Tian Yao, Sovereign of the Nine Heavens.
He was now Jin Wu-ren, child of dust and ash.
But whether by blade, will, or cultivation, he would rise again.
And this time, no betrayal, no god, no fate itself would stand in his way.