Chapter Three: Reincarnation and a Life of Bliss

For the past fifteen years, Lu Wu had woken every morning with a smile.

In the world he had once come from, his schoolwork had been nothing to boast of. Fortunately, he had a talent for painting, and his family was well off, so he enrolled in an academy of fine arts.

But the good times did not last. In the year he graduated, his parents went on a trip and were both killed in a car accident, plunging him into a long spell of gloom.

He drifted through two muddled years, and only when he finally pulled himself together did he realize that without his parents’ shelter, he was truly nothing at all. Thankfully, the house and savings they had left him kept him from starving during those dark days.

And then society gave him a brutal beating.

No matter how well you painted, if no one backed you, you would live worse than a dog. On the other hand, if someone was willing to champion you, then even if your paintings looked like a pile of dog shit, people could still praise you to the skies. Besides, his painting skill, though impressive among students, was still far from that of a true master.

Having finally faced reality, he was forced to change careers and enter the film and television industry, where he did computer-based post-production image work and some simple programming.

After three years of struggle, just as he was beginning to make a little name for himself in a small circle and could even pick up odd jobs worth tens of thousands, when life seemed to be taking a hopeful turn, his body failed him. One night, he died soundlessly upon his keyboard.

Perhaps it was resentment; perhaps it was luck. He did not disperse completely. Instead, he became a wisp of spirit, somehow crossing the boundaries of time and space and joining the wandering horde of beings beyond the world.

The demons beyond the world sounded impressive, but in truth they were just a pack of losers without even proper undergarments, roaming the void day after day with empty stomachs. Whenever they found any world, whether they could beat it or not, they would rush up like mad dogs to bite a chunk out of it. Even if they could not kill the enemy, it was fine so long as a few of their own died in the attempt.

And among those demons beyond the world, he was a champion of poverty.

Most of those beings at least had bodies. He did not even have that. And among the ones who had no body and were left with only spirit, he was the lowest of the low.

Still, there was a benefit to being so insignificant. When the demons beyond the world invaded a world, the others were busy fighting and dying up front, while he could sneak in behind them unnoticed. Or rather, he was so weak that even if he was noticed, no one cared.

But crossing the membrane of worlds still injured him somewhat. In a dazed blur, he became a spirit dwelling within another being.

A venerable elder to guide the hero? He did not have that sort of ability. But as a mere observer, that was fine too. At the very least, it was much better than wandering the void.

His host was a fierce man. To avenge his father, he rode with halberd and blade, cutting through armies to take the enemy general’s head.

This fierce fellow had bled himself nearly dry, his body shattered beyond recognition, and yet he had forcibly driven his already dead flesh into violent motion with nothing but a single surge of battle will, hacking down enemies as though alive. Such a thing could never have happened on Earth.

After vengeance was complete, the host had likely fulfilled his final wish. His three souls dispersed, leaving behind only the body and an undying will to fight.

Thus, with the aid of a cultivation sect’s spirit-convergence array, and using the host’s undying battle will as a bridge, he gathered the essence of countless battle souls from the battlefield, mixed it with yin energy, and in utter confusion condensed a pseudo-primal spirit known as the Battle Will Primordial Spirit.

This was incredible. He had vaulted straight into the rank of a primal spirit expert. A pseudo-primal spirit was still a primal spirit in terms of level, only it lacked the support of talismans and divine arts, existing merely as a mass of energy bearing will, like a person without hands or feet.

That glory lasted less than a second before he was seized by a magical artifact known as the Banner of Myriad Ghosts of the Grand Heaven, or rather, drawn into it, becoming its artifact spirit.

He was quite pleased with that.

At last he had a body, and never mind whether it was human. At least now he could move, and the might of the Banner of Myriad Ghosts of the Grand Heaven was by no means comparable to a human body. If its full power could be unleashed, shifting mountains and filling seas would be trivial.

And then something else went wrong.

By taking possession of the banner, he had effectively given the Banner of Myriad Ghosts of the Grand Heaven an artifact spirit.

When a treasure awakens, how could it remain ordinary?

With a thunderous roar, the banner’s seventy-two earthly fiend restrictions merged into one, and yin reached its extreme and gave birth to yang, evolving into a heavenly astral restriction. Then it drew down heavenly tribulation.

Heavenly tribulation was terrifying beyond words.

Unlike the kind depicted in immortal tales, where lightning came bolt after bolt yet still left a sliver of hope, the true tribulation was endless. Its strikes poured down like a tidal waterfall, directly forming a sea of lightning, clearly determined not to stop until you were dead.

He was certain he could not endure it. All he could hope for was another chance to cross worlds.

Yet Heaven did not entirely abandon him. From somewhere in the underground cavern, a decree of the Yin Celestial Sovereign suddenly sprang forth, absurdly self-sacrificing as it drew the wrath of the tribulation upon itself.

By the time that decree was blasted apart by the lightning sea, he had already been driven to desperation and detonated the Nine Nether Altar beside him, opening a passage to the Nine Nether.

After becoming the artifact spirit and taking control of the Banner of Myriad Ghosts of the Grand Heaven, he somehow understood the origin of heavenly tribulation. It was the mechanism by which heaven and earth eliminated the viruses within their own bodies. There had never been any talk of leaving a sliver of life.

There were only two ways to survive it.

Either make heaven and earth believe you were beneficial to them, like a probiotic, so they would let you off in a token gesture;

Or escape from this heaven and earth before the tribulation killed you.

Of course, if you could overthrow the entire world itself, then the tribulation would not even dare come near you. That was what people called proving the Dao through force.

Heaven and earth were also cowards who bullied the weak and feared the strong.

But setting aside the fact that the newly ascended Banner of Myriad Ghosts of the Grand Heaven was still far inferior to an ordinary primal spirit cultivator, even if a primal spirit cultivator advanced further and attained pure yang, he still could not contend with heaven and earth themselves.

Perhaps only true immortals who had completely clarified and perfected their path, enough to found their own sect, or even Dao ancestors who had united with the Dao itself, could stand against heaven and earth.

So he had only one choice: run.

And fortunately, the Nine Nether Altar itself was a companion artifact to the Banner of Myriad Ghosts of the Grand Heaven, naturally under Zhang He’s control. Only then could he command it to self-destruct and forcibly open a road leading to the Nine Nether.

But the passage he opened was a little too violent, a little too extreme, and directly connected to the Yellow Spring.

The Yellow Spring was the source and destination of all sentient beings in the cosmos, able to link every world within this universe. In western fantasy worlds, it was also known as the River Styx.

The true waters of the Yellow Spring can wash away spirit and soul, returning the information of life to its original source.

Things like Soup of Forgetfulness or Water of Unburdening were all made by diluting the true waters of the Yellow Spring into Yellow Spring balefire, then refining them through all manner of processing.

Yang numbers are seven, hence the seven great true fires.

Yin numbers are six, hence the six great true waters.

The true waters of the Yellow Spring are one of those six great true waters. Even primal spirit cultivators and divine deities of heaven and earth would be in terrible trouble if tainted by them. How much worse for him, who had plunged into the Yellow Spring itself to flee for his life.

Fortunately, he was no longer human, but the Banner of Myriad Ghosts of the Grand Heaven.

With the banner’s body as an outer shell, and more than ten thousand battle souls standing in front of him as sacrificial shields, he managed to hold on for a moment in the true waters of the Yellow Spring. Even so, he could only watch helplessly as one battle soul after another was seeped through by the baleful aura and washed clean to a blank slate.

In just a moment or two, even the core of the Banner of Myriad Ghosts of the Grand Heaven—the Nine Nether Mysterious Pool that linked the Nine Nether and drew forth its mysterious astral force—began to show a faint yellow tint.

Just as he was about to be completely purified, he suddenly spotted a whirlpool-like black vortex within the Yellow Spring waters and hurled himself into it to save his life.