《Primordial Evolutions》


 Glossary (Rewritten, so spoilers and only applies to the rewrite)

    Cultivation: Pretty much self-explanatory, but I will explain this term for those who are reading a Wuxia/Xuanhuan/Xianxia (all 3 different variations of Eastern Fantasy that use this) for the first time so you can understand. Cultivation is basically how people in an eastern fantasy gain power. They absorb the power of the world around them and take it for their own or use it depending on the way they are cultivating. It is a much more level based power system compared to the western fantasy''s soft-magic system. A more detailed definition is in italics below:


    Cultivation (ÐÞÁ¶ xi¨±li¨¤n) (ÐÞÕæ xi¨±zh¨¥n) (ÐÞÐÐ xi¨±x¨ªng) (ÐÞÏÉ xi¨±xi¨¡n) ¨C the process of improving health, increasing longevity and growing powerful. This is accomplished by cultivating</a> Qi</a> and training in martial & mystical arts. In many of these novels, the ultimate goal of cultivation is to become an Immortal</a> or attain godhood.


    Levels: My cultivation system has 3 paths and each path has 3 Evolution has 3 Realms within them with each realm again having 3 stages. Each stage has 5 levels called | Early | Intermediate | Late | Peak | Master;with the Master level being a special level that is not required if you wish to break through to the next stage. The Master level simply strengthens your foundations, so it is best if you can achieve this level at every stage possible. Using maths, this means that the maximum levels of cultivation for each path is 135. This means that there is a total of 405 levels of cultivation.


    The Three Paths: This is a modified version of the typical three paths of cultivation ( Essence/Body | Energy/Qi | Divine/Soul ) as is commonly used in books like Martial World.


    The Path of Essence/Body Cultivation: The cultivation of the physical body. This path has NO form of external energy like qi used. External energy is only used for cultivating the physical body/your essence and will not allow you to suddenly use qi because it is for tempering purposes. Each Evolution in this Path will purify your body to link it to one of 3 states. The names for the realms of Essence Cultivation are:


    Foundational:


    Mortal: | 1. Marrow Refinement | 2. Bone Refinement | 3. Blood Refinement |


    Houtian: | 4. Tendon Refinement | 5. Muscle Refinement | 6. Organ Refinement |


    Xiantian: | 7. Sense Refinement | 8. Physique Refinement | 9. Purification |


    Immortal:


    Ancestor:


    Lord:


    King:


    Deity:


    Emperor:


    Monarch:


    Sovereign:


    --------------------------------------------------------------------------


    The Path of Energy/Qi Cultivation: The cultivation of your internal energy. In this Path of Cultivation, instead of using the Natural Essence of the world to temper your body, you absorb it and take it as your own. The 3 Evolutions in this Path of Cultivation are each related to unlocking and linking your Lower, Middle, and Upper Dantians.


    Foundational: The Earth Dantian


    Mortal: | 1. Qi Gathering | 2. Qi Infusion | 3. Qi Refinement |


    Houtian: | 4. Essence Formation | 5. Essence Infusion | 6. Essence Refinement |


    Xiantian: | 7. Meridian Refinement | 8. Dantian Refinement | 9. Purification |


    Immortal: The Sky Dantian


    Ancestor:| 1. Qi-Gathering | 2. Qi Infusion | 3. Qi Refinement |


    Lord:| 4. Essence Formation | 5. Essence Infusion | 6. Essence Refinement |


    King:| 7. Meridian Refinement | 8. Dantian Refinement | 9. Purification |


    Diety: The Heaven Dantian


    Emperor:| 1. Qi-Gathering | 2. Qi Infusion | 3. Qi Refinement |


    Monarch:| 4. Essence Formation | 5. Essence Infusion | 6. Essence Refinement |


    Sovereign:| 7. Meridian Refinement | 8. Dantian Refinement | 9. Purification |


    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


    The Path of Divine/Soul Cultivation: The cultivation of your soul. This path tempers your Spirit, your Soul, and their mysterious powers. The 3 Evolutions will bring your Soul and Spirit closer to the Dao. The 3 Evolutions and their realms are:


    Foundational:


    Mortal: | 1. Spirit Sensing | 2. Spirit Gathering | 3. Spirit Refinement |


    Houtian: | 4. Spirit Well | 5. Spirit Spring | 6. Spirit Lake |


    Xiantian: | 7. Spirit Sea | 8. Spirit Ocean | 9. Purification |


    Immortal:


    Ancestor:| 1. Soul sensing | 2. Soul Strengthening | 3. Soul Refinement |


    Lord:| 4. Soul Cleansing | 5. Soul Covergement | 6. Soul Shaping |


    King: | 7. Soul Formation | 8. Soul Avatar | 9. Purification |


    Diety:


    Emperor:


    Monarch:


    Sovereign:


    _______________________________________________________________________________________


    Energy:


    Natural Essence: The natural power of the world. When absorbed and made into someones own internal energy, the natural essence becomes qi.


    Qi: Qi is simply the natural essence of the world being absorbed and made into your own energy.


    Qi-Essence: A higher, more refined version of Qi, is made by absorbing higher purity natural essence and undergoing the same process used for qi.


    Prime Essence: The highest grade of natural essence possible, is incredibly hard to sense, absorb and refine due to its incomparable purity. Often called the Essence of the Dao due to the fact that it is impossible to get the prime essence that does not have an attribute.


    Spirit Energy: The Power of your spirit. This powers everything related to your spirit and soul.


    Attributes: Attributes are what happens when you absorb a particular kind of natural essence that corresponds to a particular Dao. Prime essence is always attributed. When you use techniques, laws, concepts or weapon concept (of any of the 3 levels) that are of the same Dao as attributed essence you refined into attributed qi/qi-essence then it will greatly enhance every aspect of the move.The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.


    _______________________________________________________________________________________


    Techniques and Arts:


    So this section of the glossary will cover all the basic descriptions for techniques and the various types I will have.


    Cultivation Art: I know that this is common knowledge for those who have read any cultivation based eastern fantasy, but I should still include this. A cultivation art is a way to absorb the Natural Essence of the world and take it as your own. Different levels of cultivation arts have different requirements and different effects. For the Path of Energy and Essence Cultivation.


    Martial Art: This is also common knowledge, but I still want to clarify what this means for my book because it may be different to other books. In this book, a martial art is an art that teaches you the martial way. The martial way is of combat. Cultivation is different from martial arts. Cultivation is for ascending and increasing in power, while martial arts are ways to utilize the power you have.


    Divine Art: Divine arts are different from martial arts and cultivation arts. Unlike the two types of arts above, divine arts cover everything needed for the soul''s cultivation and how to utilize that power. So in a way, divine arts are like a complete combination of cultivation and martial arts for the soul.


    Meditation Art: An art that allows you to meditate while cultivating and when you are musing upon the Dao. Meditation is beneficial for breaking through bottlenecks, comprehending laws and improving your laws.


    Attunement Art: A very rare type of art which is entirely for the comprehension of laws. These arts attune you to a specific Dao. This allows you to have an easier time comprehending laws from that Dao and sensing things related to that Dao. Almost every attunement art has adverse effects, such as restricting your ability to sense other Dao.


    Combat Art: Combat arts are a form of martial art that is entirely focused on the path of essence cultivation. They have no use of qi and usually are for armed or unarmed combat.


    _____________________________________________________________


    Levels of Progress:


    For all the various kinds of arts, they have certain benchmarks of completion. These benchmarks are seperated into a certain amount of Realms, Layers and the 5 stages of progression of a layer (in order from biggest to smallest). An example would be an art that contains 2 realms, each with 4 layers. This means that the total amount of bechmarks (including the 5 stages per layer) is 20. Layers are named in order from earliest to latest progression as:| Initial | Minor | Intermediate | Major | Perfection |


    ___________________________________________________________


    Grades/Ranks of arts:


    Scroll: A scroll is the lowest form of arts.


    Book: A book is the lower-middle tier of arts.


    Manual: A manual is the upper-middle level of arts


    Scripture: The highest form of art. Extremely rare to find. This type of art is required to be able to guide an entire path of cultivation from the lowest level to the highest level to be classified under this name. There are also different grades of Scriptures. They are called 1st, 2nd and True grade scriptures for how many paths of cultivation they cover (it is 1, 2 and 3 paths respectively for the 3 grades btw).


    ________________________________________________________________________________


    The Dao and Laws:


    This section is entirely dedicated to all things related to the Dao and personal enlightenment.


    Dao: The Dao are the forces behind the working of the world. The Dao is different from laws because Laws are simply understandings of what you can sense of the Dao.


    Laws: Laws are comprehensions of the Dao. They can be either Conceptual Laws or Natural Laws.


    Concepts: Concepts are aspects of Laws that you gained through meditation on the Dao. The strength of these concepts when compared to the laws can vary based on the strength of the law/laws the concept was made of. When a concept reaches a strong enough level, it becomes a Conceptual Law.


    Conceptual Law: A conceptual Law, unlike the natural laws, has no strict ranking based on the strength of the law. However, unlike with natural laws, conceptual laws depend entirely on your own comprehensions.


    Natural Laws: Natural Laws are governed by a very strict system of the strong laws suppress the weak ones. The natural laws follow the Dao, therefore the Dao supports your comprehension of the natural laws with the ability to comprehend the next level of that law. (for example, the Law of Life is descended from the Law of Creation, therefore someone who has comprehended the Law of Life to the peak can begin to comprehend the Law of Creation with less trouble than others who haven''t)


    Weapon Heart: Essentially your own Conceptual Law specific to a certain weapon. You are in charge of making this Weapon Heart, but it all depends on your own comprehension of your chosen weapon/weapons.


    Weapon Dao: The name of your weapon heart''s conceptual law when has evolved to become its own mortal Dao.


    Weapon Soul: The next level after a weapon Dao, the weapon soul is when you give your weapon Dao life, or it gains sentience on its own. A weapon soul is capable of cultivating its own unique path of cultivation, able of growing stronger with you. It also infuses every weapon of its type that you use, giving them great power.


    _____________________________________________________________________________________


    General Terms:


    This will be terms like Dantian and Meridians.


    Dantian</a> (µ¤Ìï d¨¡nti¨¢n) ¨C literally translates as ¡°Cinnabar</a> Field¡± or ¡°Elixir Field¡±. Refers to the region in the body where a person¡¯s Qi</a> is concentrated. There are technically three dantians, but these novels simplify the concept and only use the lower dantian (located three finger widths below and two finger widths behind the navel). In my book, there are going to be the 3 Dantians because it conveniently allows a simple way to do theEnergy/Qi path ofcultivation. The 3 dantians are named the| Earth (Lower) | Sky (Middle) | Heaven (Upper) |dantians. Their locations are, | The navel | The heart | The forehead (in the brain) | respectively. Do note that they are not visible and are within the body.


    Meridians</a> (¾­Âö j¨©ngm¨¤i) ¨C the network of vessels/channels in the body through which Qi flows. Like blood vessels</a>, but for Qi instead of blood. The meridians link the 3 dantians and the acupoints together.


    Qi Circulation (ÐÐÆø x¨ªngq¨¬) ¨C the act of controlling Qi to flow from the dantians, through the meridians, and back into the dantians in a cycle. The purpose of this varies between novels, but usually, it helps replenish stamina, purify the Qi, or strengthen the meridians.


    Insight (²ÎÎò c¨¡nw¨´) (¶ÙÎò d¨´nw¨´) ¨C related to enlightenment</a>. Cultivators usually gain insights by meditating, engaging in life-or-death battles, or going out into the world to experience new things. These insights are often needed in order to master techniques or advance to higher stages of cultivation.


    Internal Demons (ÐÄħ x¨©nm¨®) ¨C literally translates as ¡°Heart Devils¡±. Rather than standard demons or devils, these are a practitioner¡¯s negative emotions and other mental barriers which hinder their training/cultivation. Internal Demons, in some cases, can even attack the practitioner from the inside, and failure to adequately resist them may result in Qi Deviation.


    Qi Deviation (×ß»ðÈëħ z¨¯uhu¨¯ r¨´m¨®) ¨C also known as Qigong Deviation</a>. Literally translates as ¡°to catch fire and be entered [possessed] by devils¡±. A state wherein the cultivation base becomes dangerously unstable, causing internal damage to the body and symptoms of psychosis. People who succumb to their Internal Demons, who practice cultivation/martial arts incorrectly, or who rashly use forbidden arts are all at risk of falling into this state.


    Bottleneck (Æ¿¾± p¨ªngj¨«ng) ¨C the term for when cultivators figuratively hit a wall in their training and it suddenly becomes incredibly difficult to proceed. When they reach a bottleneck, cultivators may require new Insights, the aid of medicinal pills, or even harsher training in order to make a Breakthrough (Í»ÆÆ t¨±p¨°) and successfully bypass the bottleneck.


    Impurities (ÔÓÖÊ z¨¢zh¨¬) ¨C usually described as a smelly, black substance which is secreted from a cultivator¡¯s skin when they reach new cultivation stages or consume special medicinal pills. The result of the body purifying itself and expelling the waste.


    Spiritual Sense (Áéʶ l¨ªngsh¨ª) ¨C also known as ¡°Consciousness¡± or Divine Sense (Éñʶ sh¨¦nsh¨ª). An ability possessed by cultivators to scan their surroundings (far beyond the limits of their ordinary 5 senses</a>) with their spirit. The distance/total area they can scan corresponds to the strength of their spirit. Also used in some novels to remotely control magical items such as Flying Swords.


    Killing Intent (É·Æø sh¨¤q¨¬) ¨C a murderous aura which emits from a person when they desire to harm someone. People who have experienced bloody battles and/or have already killed others tend to have much stronger Killing Intent than an ordinary person. Experts may be able to disguise their Killing Intent, as well as intentionally release it as a form of mental attack.


    Weapon Intent: This is similar to killing intent, except that it is separate from killing intent and will depend on the level of their weapon heart/Dao/soul. It will give a different feeling for different weapons. For example, sword intent makes people feel as if they are could to be cut swiftly. Bow intent, on the other hand, makes the target of the intent feel as if they are in the sights of an archer. Like killing intent, this intent once it reaches a certain level of strength, can be used to directly kill people.


    Of course, it cannot be a good W/Xx/Xh without an interspatial ring or some form of storage. So, I gave the book what is below and also 2 different methods which I won''t spoil.


    Interspatial Ring (¿Õ¼ä½äÖ¸ k¨­ngji¨¡n ji¨¨zhi) ¨C a magic ring with a pocket dimension inside it. With a mere thought, the owner can store items inside it and retrieve them at will. Depending on the novel, there may be some restrictions ¨C for example, the size of the storage space might be limited or the ring might only be capable of storing certain types of items.


    _________________________________________________________________________________________


    Links:


    Pretty self explanatory, has links i used in the making of this glossary. these links also have more details. Do note however, that unless it is in the book, i doubt there will be anything about more in-depth information like the Eight Extraordinary Meridians since I am just making them clear from birth for convenience.


    General W/Xx/Xh terms and info:


    https://immortalmountain.wordpress.com/glossary/wuxia-xianxia-xuanhuan-terms/


    About the 3 dantian:


    http://taichibasics.com/three-dantians/

 Prologue

    Prologue: The boy called Jing Guanyu


    Jing Guanyu


    I breathe deeply, searching the world around myself earnestly. I try to sense the invisible force that I know surrounds me, the spiritual power. I know that once I grasp this elusive spirit power, I shall finally embark on the path of Divine Cultivation. This is my only option, the paths of Essence and Energy Cultivation being blocked by my own innate physique. Although I have the 3 Dantian, I have had no meridians at all since birth. As for Essence Cultivation, despite the fact that my body is perfectly fine when compared to the bodies of those weaklings from the mortal Realms when matched up to the other residents of the High Heaven Realm, my body is anything but fine. Crippled in the words of all but my parents, I know that there is no way I can survive the intense physical training required to begin on the path of Essence Cultivation using the techniques of this realm.


    After over 4 hours of diligently attempting to sense the spiritual power surrounding me, I sigh and open my eyes. The loving, but expectant faces of my mother and father greet me as I open my eyes. Upon seeing my parents, the slightest hint of a frown mars my face, silently admitting the result of my attempt to cultivate. When my parents see that slight frown, they let out near inaudible sighs. Despite their attempts to prevent me from hearing, I manage to hear them. Staying silent, I wait for my parents to say something, looking at anywhere but my parents¡¯ faces. Although I look like I am 13 years old physically; I am still only 8 years old due to our lineage growing physically at an accelerated rate like every other clan with a bloodline in the High Heaven Realm. This means that I still am easily influenced by failure. After a few moments quiet, my mother finally breaks the silence.


    ¡°Yu¡¯er, could you sense the spirit power of your first spirit contract?¡± she asks kindly, attempting to use it as a way to help me get over my failure. I shake my head from side to side in reply, indicating my inability to sense the spirit power of the first spirit contract. That is how the path of Divine Cultivation works, there is a maximum of nine spirit contracts the cultivator has to sense. Each cultivator¡¯s spirit contracts are different and only able to be sensed by themselves. This prevents a senior from guiding them and making the breakthroughs in Divine Cultivation easy. Once the cultivator has sensed the spirit power of their first spirit contract, the spirit will send a soul avatar to reside within the soul realm of the cultivator. This soul avatar, a split piece of the spirit''s soul, will permanently reside in the soul realm of the cultivator after opening it for them. Once the soul realm is opened by the spirit, then the cultivator has begun upon their path of Divine Cultivation.


    After that, if the cultivator can connect with any more spirit contracts is all determined by them. The difficulty to sense your next contract will usually rise exponentially for each contract made. Some people, however, may have only a single possible contract and another cultivator may be able to make nine contracts! However, the quantity of contracts isn¡¯t the most important aspect of these contracts. The most crucial part is the quality of the spirit; the strength of the spirits innate Dao it was naturally born with. The spirit will also automatically boost your comprehension ability of that particular Dao just by being in your soul realm. If a cultivator that has 5 spirit contracts and they are attributed with 4 of the 9 elements from the Elemental Dao and the last spirit is attributed to the Dao of the Sword fights another cultivator with 3 spirit contracts of higher quality, like all 3 being from the Supreme Dao then the latter is going to win easily. Quality of the spirits is the most important factor of the spirit contract aspect of Divine Cultivation. It has been 5 years since I began my path of Divine Cultivation. Usually, the first spirit will be found after you begin 1 to 3 years, depending on the grade of its innate Dao.


    ¡°It¡¯s ok son, I am sure that the spirit that was chosen to contract you will be from the one of the higher level Supreme Dao!¡± That¡¯s right! I thought after my father said that. As a general rule, the longer it takes to make your first contract, the higher grade of Dao that spirit has. The longest time recorded for a cultivator to contract a spirit was 4 years, which was the current patriarch of our clan and my great-great-grandfather. The first spirit he contracted was a Supreme Dao spirit ranked among the lower area of the Supreme Dao ranking. Due to the natural laws of the universe, the cultivator always contracts his spirits in order of weakest to strongest. Spirits can also be innately born with a Law from a Dao. The current Patriarch¡¯s first spirit contract was with a spirit that was innately born with the Chaotic Space law! This Law is a high ranking Law that is conceived from a combination of some aspects of two Primordial Dao, the Dao of Chaos and the Dao of Space. This Law is able to beat any Dao that isn¡¯t of the Supreme grade. Although it is strong, since it is condensed from a single aspect of the Dao of Chaos and a single aspect of the Dao of Space it cannot compete with even the weakest Supreme Dao due to the fact that the Supreme Dao are entire Dao, not a mere combination of some smaller aspects of two Primordial Dao. Our clan, the Jing clan is a clan that specializes in the various aspects of the Dao of Chaos. Almost every spirit a member of our bloodline condenses has an aspect of chaos within it.


    ¡°But dad¡­. It has been 5 years since I began to cultivate on the path of Divine Cultivation. You know my meridians are non-existent and my body is innately weak¡­.¡± I reply meekly, still looking anywhere but the faces of my parents.


    ¡°Son, it¡¯s ok. We know what the clan¡¯s stance is on resource distribution, they have never and won¡¯t ever give you resources to assist you in your cultivation. Neither will they ever give you the medicine required to heal your innately weak body. None of that matters. We will love you and assist you in every way possible so you can live the best life you can no matter how low your cultivation is; even if you are nothing more than a mortal, unable to cultivate. You have been cultivating and training for 12 hours every day, no matter what happened. Isn¡¯t it time to let go? Why do you still try to cultivate? Do you not realize that even if you cultivated, the clan will never truly accept you? Why?¡± my father questions me in a gentle, yet intense way. I look up and see a sadness deep within my father¡¯s eyes. My mother is silently crying, looking at me with sadness and pity.


    ¡°That¡¯s why,¡± I said. A determination boils up from deep within my heart, a resolution that has been simmering there for 5 years. This determination changes me, makes my back straighter, my eyes meet my parents as I continue to talk. ¡°That is why I still cultivate. You two care so much about me, do so much for me; I cannot give up. No matter the pain and the ridicule I shall face for my choice, I will never submit to the desire to give up! That is why I cultivate so that even if I fail every time, I can feel worthy of your love!¡±


    Silence greets my determined declaration. The meaning of my words finally forced itself through the shock of the emotion and strength my voice carried. I didn¡¯t sound like a na?ve 8-year old boy anymore. In the ears of all three of us, I sounded like a general trying to rally his troops before a war. The determination and strength my words carried even shocked me. There was almost a minute of silence before my parents came to their senses.


    ¡°Oh, Yu¡¯er! How you have grown! I hope you can, no, I know you can achieve great things once your body is strengthened and your meridians are constructed. Very well, go train and cultivate as you like. We shall no longer hinder you, and if you need help with anything, just ask us.¡± My mother finally spoke, surprise and joy emanating from her every pore. Bowing, I walked out the door, a self-confidence and determination exuding from everything that is me.


    *          *          *          *          *          *          *


    Jing Muyu


    I watched as my son walks out of the room, emanating a fiery determination to succeed as he goes to train. After he has left, I share a look with my husband, Jing Heng. His expression of joyful surprise mirrors my own. I never expected that our Yu¡¯er would have such a reason for being so persistent in his cultivation over the past 5 years. It has been very hard on him these past few years. I break the still and quiet atmosphere.


    ¡°It is such a shame. Our Yu¡¯er is not able to cultivate anything but the path of Divine Cultivation. If only he was not crippled, I am sure he would shock the entire High Heaven Realm.¡± My husband smiles sadly and replies.The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    ¡°No, as much as it pains me to say this, I think him going through this is necessary. If he hadn¡¯t faced this hardship, then how do you think his will would be so strong. Talent only gives people a head start in cultivation. Those who lack a will that is strong will find themselves eventually stopped on their path, unable to advance.¡± I frown as I angrily rebuke my husband. ¡°You think it¡¯s necessary that he has gone through so much suffering? You think it is necessary that he will go through this pain and suffering for the rest of his life? So what does a strong will mean when he will be even more crippled once he breaks through to the Immortal Evolution of Divine Cultivation? You know as well as I do what you have to do to break through to that realm. Although he can eventually continue to cultivate, his innately weak body and lack of meridians will only weaken his soul once he reaches that realm. Having a strong will makes things easier in the Mortal realms of cultivation, but the minute he enters the Immortal realms of cultivation, he will be weaker than even a 7<sup>th</sup> Stage Xiantian Energy cultivator. That is just the Immortal realm, even if he defied the heavens and broke through to the mythical third realm, he will likely suffer a completely crippled soul.¡± Jing Heng simply smiles complacently in reply to my stern tone.


    ¡°If our boy is crippled, but has such extraordinary potential, then it is our responsibility to make sure his potential will flourish.¡± With a jolt, I stare intensely at my husband, surprised but not daring enough to voice the thoughts he just did. ¡°What do you mean by that husband?¡± I ask calmly, feigning innocence. Jing Heng laughs and says ¡°You know very well what I mean. A Primordial Rebirth pill, the only pill that would work for sure on his body and meridians, will cost several billion contribution points. If we donate that alchemy scripture we received as a gift, then we will only need to do enough missions to earn 5 million, a fairly achievable number to reach before Jing Guanyu turns 13.¡± My face darkens instantly, a frown scrunching up my face. As I stare intensely at my husband, I breathe deeply in an attempt to calm down. After a few moments, I calmly warn my husband about the danger of the alchemy scripture leaving our hands.


    ¡°That scripture was from those two, if we offend them by giving away their gift, then not even the strongest in the High Heaven Realm can save our clan. Besides, you know very well that the scripture they gave us is the only thing keeping Yu¡¯er still here. Those two very well know the greedy nature of the clansmen. If it wasn¡¯t for the fact that the scripture can only be passed on via soul transmission willingly by its holders, then the clan would have stripped it from our brain and abandoned Yu¡¯er.¡± Jing Heng starts laughing heartily. As I look at him in confusion for almost 30 seconds, he finally stops his laughter. He is still smiling broadly when he says


    ¡°Don¡¯t worry about offending those two. They themselves told me that the Primordial Rebirth pill is the only pill that would cure our crippled son in the entire High Heaven Realm! How do you think I know for certain that only the Primordial Rebirth pill would work? They specifically told me that the technique they gave me was for this purpose and that I would know when the time came to use it to exchange for a Primordial Rebirth pill. Besides, the pill doesn¡¯t work unless the person taking the pill has finished maturing, so until Guanyu turns 18. A lot can happen in 8 years and if we really have to, we can trade it and get a lower realm clan to look after him until he is mature and has taken the pill. I am sure he will be talented enough to rise to this Realm quickly enough, and probably even ascend to the Realm above the High Heaven Realm.¡±


    Only after my husband has thoroughly explained his plan does my trepidation recede. Now smiling, my husband and I walk over to the training hall to let Yu¡¯er know that we shall be absent most of the time from now on. As we are walking over, I think to myself. ¡°With his diligence for cultivation and his determination, Yu¡¯er makes the perfect cultivator. If Yu¡¯er really does recover from his innately weak body, then he shall truly become a powerhouse of this Realm. If he manages to reconstruct his meridians, then I fear that even this Realm will become beneath his talent.¡±


    *          *          *          *          *          *          *


    Jing Guanyu


    I breathe heavily, the wooden training sword in my hand dipping down the slightest margin. Noticing my slip-up immediately, I put down the sword and go through a short, but extremely intense punishment drill before getting up and picking the sword up again. My body is shaking in exhaustion, but my sword is still being held steady. Stepping into a large array, it lights up, creating several beings made of energy holding swords. Readying my stance, a few seconds later the training dummies charge towards me. Utilising all of my meager agility, I weave through the group of 5, dodging their weapons and parrying them when I need to. I never block their attacks completely, always redirecting them just enough to dodge or just outright dodging them. Seeing an opportunity, I land a lethal hit on one of the dummies. With not even a flash, the dummy simply vanishes. This training array will dissipate a dummy after it receives a lethal strike, more focused on training the user¡¯s defensive ability and seizing opportunities in the heat of the moment. It is my favorite sword training method out of the various training methods I could use simply because it trains your technique more than raw strength.


    Due to my weak body, I cannot cultivate any Essence Cultivation Techniques. If I had meridians, I could cultivate my Essence if I was careful enough because the path of Energy Cultivation will naturally strengthen the body due to the inevitable leaking of qi from the meridians and dantian. Once my body was strong enough, I could begin to start Essence Cultivation. However, since I have no meridians on top of my innately weak body, this means I have to resort to the ancient method of limit-training. This training method requires a will of iron and a determination strong enough to ignore your bodies warnings to break through your limits. Since I am crippled, I don¡¯t exactly need to do extremely intense exercise like normal Essence Cultivators. Usually just pushing my limits and breaking them while doing my sword training will be enough to train in the limit-break method.


    Finally, one of the dummies manages to nick me as I attempt to dodge, unable to redirect his weapon due to my out of position sword and fatigue. The array instantly powers down. Although I have to connect with a lethal strike to dissipate a dummy, I have calibrated the array so that even the barest touch of a dummies blade to me will stop the array. This is because my current style of fighting is more focused on evasion and sudden lethal strikes. If I got even scraped by an Essence or Energy cultivator, their power will surely do severe damage, enough to allow them to easily kill me afterward. I don¡¯t bother learning how to fight Divine Cultivators since they would just send a soul attack and disintegrate my soul so there is no point. Thus, the purpose of my fighting style is to not get hit and end it in a single strike; because trying to fight an endurance battle against other cultivators is suicide with my weaker body and lack of energy.


    Grabbing a cloth and some wood oil, I start to methodically rub down and polish my training sword. When I am done, I walk over to my personal rack after putting the wood oil and clothe back in their place. I then gently place my personal training sword back to its spot on my weapon rack. Smiling to myself, I grab my training bow from its place on my rack, testing the draw and making sure the arrays engraved onto it still work satisfactorily. My parents taught me how to use a sword and a bow. My father is a very strong swordsman, so he obviously taught me how to use a sword. My mother, on the other hand, is more of an archer, so she taught me the bow. However, all they taught me was the basics and how to teach myself. They never taught me any of their techniques and even got angry when I attempted to copy their techniques.


    ¡°A truly strong swordsman is one who fights the way that suits him best.¡±


    Those were the words of my father when he discovered that I was attempting to copy one of his techniques. Those words have stuck with me since then, as it is one of the few times that my ever-cheerful dad ever showed a truly serious expression. Whenever Jing Heng was serious, it was in your best interest to listen, lest you be put at a disadvantage in life. As I was doing my stretches designed to cool me down from sword training and ready me for my bow training, my parents walked into the training hall. They were not wearing their training gear, so I stopped my stretches and walked over. When I reached them, my mother suddenly hugged me tightly. After releasing me, she saw my confused expression and laughed quietly. My father smiled and then his expression turned serious. After a few coughs to get my attention, I noticed his expression and waited for him to speak.


    ¡°Son, your mother and I need to fulfill our obligations to the clan. We have many missions to do, so we shall not be at the clan territory often. We will be gone for at least a few months at a time and as such we shall not see you often. Continue to train and cultivate as you so desire. One thing you must listen to, however, NEVER leave our residence. No matter the circumstances, do not leave our residence. Although the clan will not act openly, it is almost certain that they shall attempt to discretely abduct you to ransom for something they want from us. This is the biggest reason that we never let you out on your own and I expect you to follow that rule while we are gone. Goodbye son, we will see you sometime in the next season.¡±


    After my father had said his serious part, there was a very emotional goodbye that lasted a good quarter hour before my parents finally left. When they did, I allowed myself a short break, before getting up and starting my stretches.

 Chapter One

    Chapter One: The First Contract


    Jing Guanyu


    5 years later


    *Twang Swoosh TING*


    I pant heavily as I draw my training bow once more. As I am drawing my bow, an arrow made of weak energy from the ambient qi is created. Releasing the string without hesitation, the arrow leaps away from the bow and straight into the centre of the target. Repeating the process an uncountable number of times, I fire arrows at the training targets for the archery training part of the training halls array. The array creates spheres around the size of my two fists that are blue with a red sphere around a quarter the size of the blue sphere in the middle. The array then sends these targets whizzing around me in all directions except below me, because that¡¯s the floor. As time passes, the blue spheres start to vary in size and speed; the red spheres always being exactly a quarter the size of the outer sphere of blue. When my arrows strike a sphere, both the arrow and the sphere disappear with a *ting*.


    Every single one of my arrows hits the red center sphere of each target I shoot at. Although I am not hitting every target, I still have to hit a certain amount of targets every minute for the array to continue. This value also increases by a percentage of the previous amount required every minute. After almost an hour, I miss the center sphere by a few mils and hit the blue outer sphere. The array instantly powers down, having been set to do that the moment I didn¡¯t hit the required amount of targets in a minute or didn¡¯t hit the red sphere of a target. Regulating my breathing in a practiced fashion, I check over the arrays and give the bow some after-use maintenance. I always do this after my sword training and bow training sessions, it keeps my practice gear in top condition and gives me something to do for 5 minutes while I cool down slightly before my stretches. While doing maintenance on my practice bow, I reminisce about the past five years.


    It has been five years since my parents first started accepting missions again, and since then they are barely here for a week every season. I think they have only stayed at the residence for more than 2 days around 5 to 10 times over the past five years. However, since that day, I haven¡¯t let anything or lack of something get to me. I still train with such an intense schedule that even the guards in our residence flinch when they walk past the training hall. Despite training so intensely for 5 years, I haven¡¯t neglected my Divine Cultivation in the slightest. I train and cultivate with a fiery determination that hasn¡¯t gotten any weaker since the day it was ignited. If anything, the fire of determination has gotten hotter due to my lack of progress in the path of Divine Cultivation and the slowing down of progress in my physical training.


    Despite the lack of progress, I still remain calm, the self-confidence gained from discovering what I am going to work towards helping me in this regard. The longer it takes me to breakthrough to the first realm of Divine Cultivation, the better my first spirit contract will be. The stronger my first spirit contract is, the stronger all the rest of my contracts are probably going to be. I have told myself these facts countless times whenever I feel even the slightest twinge of impatience or irritation. Besides, I know that another reason it is taking so long is that I have absolutely no support of pills or concoctions that can help strengthen the soul or my sensory abilities. The development of my soul is completely due to my own hard work and effort. Although my soul isn¡¯t as strong or as sensitive as other people my age due to the lack of supportive medicines; my soul¡¯s foundation is as solid as possible. After all, even the best alchemists and heavenly materials still have impurities; and when it comes to the soul, even the slightest impurity will noticeably affect you in the long-term.


    While lost in thought, I unconsciously go through my entire routine of stretches for after training and have sat down in a meditation position. Slowly, I start to actively control my breathing, slowing it down; starting to breathe in the nose, waiting a few seconds before breathing out the mouth in a steady pattern. Although this is unnecessary to do when attempting to sense the spirit contract¡¯s power around you, it is a habit and also brings my mind an improved clarity. As I meditate, I begin to search the surrounding area with my soul in the method described to me by my parents. Eventually, after an hour, I start to think of the Dao of Chaos. Although neither my parents or I were certain of my first spirit contract being a Dao of Chaos related spirit, there was no downside to learning the methods since they work on just about every Dao, just not as effective. Chaos is a mixture of everything, so of course, it would be better to use it than just blindly feeling around for the spiritual power of my first spirit contract.


    After thinking of this, I started to get lost in the comprehension of the Dao of Chaos. Although it was a slow and arduous process, the Dao of Chaos was one of the 7 Primordial Dao¡¯s and as such, it was worth it to try to comprehend even if I end up with no chaos attributed spirits. Without realizing it, I lost track of time while ruminating, hours have passed by in a flash.


    ¡°The Dao of Chaos is a Primordial Dao that has no opposite. Due to its nature, it encompasses a little bit of every other Dao in existence, even its other fellow Primordial Dao. This makes it both extremely versatile and very unpredictable by nature.¡± As I was meditating on the Dao of Chaos, I suddenly came to an enlightenment. ¡°If the Dao of Chaos is, by nature, chaotic and unpredictable, then why am I using a technique to search for it. Techniques are methodical, the exact opposite of the Dao of Chaos.¡±


    At this instant, everything fits into place in my mind. Abandoning the method that I have been using while attempting to sense the first spirit realm¡¯s power, I spread my sense with no purpose. The moment I do this, I sense it. I sense the chaotic power of the first spirit contract around me. Reaching out, I try to grasp it with all my power. When I did, I grasped it. The power of my first spirit contract. At the same time, I feel a suddenly influx of all the surrounding and incomparably pure power of my spirit contract rush into my body, disappearing seemingly into the void. As the power disappears into the void, I feel a sudden rush of clarity. I feel like I can sense every crack in the floor below me in an area 20 metres around me in every direction. My soul realm has awoken and with it, I am now a Divine Cultivator.


    *          *          *          *          *          *          *


    Yai Zia


    I am at home, relaxing and eating dinner with my family, when the imprint I put on one of my soul avatars goes off. It means that the boy who I am a potential contract for is going to sense my contract power around him within a couple dozen minutes, giving me just enough time to prepare. ¡°Heh, so the boy has finally sensed me. Took him long enough. Then again, he is in a pretty bad position. Even a heaven sent genius of the Primal Dao Realm would take 15 years or so to sense my spirit power in the same situation, so I suppose it is understandable.¡± Letting my wife and son know of what¡¯s happened, I walk through my mansion into my cultivation room. As I walk into the room, a powerful set of arrays activate. In the room, there is a pile of various heavenly materials lying in a heap on the floor. Cracking my knuckles, I use my spirit power to lift up the ingredients. Using my power to refine each of them individually, the process takes a few days. Finally done, I fuse the ingredients into a pure spirit body using my spirit power. Smiling to myself, I wave my hand and a portal to a weird space appears in front of the spirit body. After the spirit body walks through the portal, I walk out of the cultivation room, the set of arrays deactivating when they detect me leaving.


    Although I spent almost a week in the cultivation room, one of the arrays in the room speeds up time by just under 1,500x. This meant that to the outside world, I have only spent approximately 7 minutes in the cultivation chamber, despite being in the room for 7 days if the time is judged by my bone age. Walking back to my family at the table, I continue the conversation I was having previously with my family as if nothing happened. The method I used to create the spirit body I sent to the boy¡¯s location to enter his now opened soul realm was one officially created by the ruler of the Dao Origin-Realm. It is like a powerless version of my that will only be detectable by the one I make the contract with unless it chooses to show itself.


    When we get assigned Divine Cultivators to form a contract with, we are usually required to assist them with knowledge as much as possible. A way this can be interpreted is in giving them all your insights into the Dao as most of those lower level weaklings that call themselves Dao-spawn do. I, however, contrary to the popular opinion of guiding the contracted; believe that in terms of the Dao, the cultivator should be given free rein, only helping them gain opportunities to comprehend the Law or Dao I specialize in. To do this, I need to observe the future contract¡¯s life and discover his personality to figure out how best to help them walk the furthest along with their chosen path. This method of teaching requires a large amount of time and effort put in by the ¡°spirit¡± being contracted, but this method usually either produces a powerhouse of some sort or the cultivator lacks the ability to seize the opportunities that the teacher can give them.This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.


    ¡°Well. With that, my part is done. My spirit body will only give him the opportunities to learn, if he takes those opportunities or not is up to him. Now that I think about it, the other 6 all teach the same way as me¡­. Could it be planned by the one in charge of organizing that boy¡¯s spirit contracts? Well¡­ whatever. What happens will happen.¡± With that thought, I completely forget about my ¡°contract¡±, leaving it to my spirit body as I drink some wine and bond with my family.


    *          *          *          *          *          *          *


    Jing Guanyu


    ¡°Urghhh¡­. What happened?¡± I moan as I start to regain consciousness. Or as my soul does, my physical body still in a meditation position in the training hall of my parents¡¯ residence. Opening my eyes, or whatever my soul uses to see, I look around me. The place is complete chaos. Dozens of different environments all packed together like a jigsaw puzzle. I am on the top of a mountain in a burning, yet freezing cold swamp with thunderstorms roaring above me. Around 5 metres in front of me, there is a man standing there. Dressed in a simple, but entrancing silver robe, the man has a solid muscular build and looks to be around 6 foot 3 inches tall. Noticing I am awake, the man turns around.


    ¡°Gasp!¡± I let out a breath of air in shock. The man has a face that is constantly changing. From extremely handsome and masculine faces all the way to wart infested faces of ugly women. ¡°Yep, obviously my contract has some aspect of the Dao of Chaos within him. However, what could the other Dao or Law be with it?¡± I think to myself after a few seconds. The spirit just stands there, a calm smile on his face, watching my expression change and my body unconsciously flinch as his face changes rapidly. Still smiling, the man speaks for the first time. ¡°Well, although your reactions are less¡­. exaggerated and far more humorous to observe, I guess I should set my appearance to that of its actual one?¡± I start nodding my head as fast as I can. This makes him laugh and his face slowly starts changing into that of a handsome, if normal looking man. His physical body height and build don¡¯t change however.


    ¡°Thank you,¡± I say simply. After a few seconds of silence, the man speaks again. ¡°So¡­ Ahhh¡­ I guess I am your first spirit contract. I will admit, this is actually the first contract I have been in so¡­ uhh¡­¡­ please be gentle, young lord.¡± ¡°What the actual fuck is up with this guy! He keeps changing personality and its damn annoying. Were there just 3 different personalities in 2 sentences?¡± My thoughts run rampant in my head as the man¡¯s face seems to fall slightly. ¡°Sorry, I will revert my personality back to its original one. Just had trouble adjusting in time, you did breakthrough quite suddenly,¡± the man said with a slightly apologetic tone in his voice. My jaw drops so much I think it hits the floor. ¡°You can read my mind?!¡± I ask, slightly incredulous. At my question, the man smiles and says ¡°Of course I can. Although I have no actual power, this being a spirit body, I still have my comprehension of the Dao. Even if the Dao of Chaos is unsuited to things like reading minds, or souls in this case, the Dao of Chaos is all about having everything just mashed together. So that means the Dao of Souls will be mixed in. There is a limit to this, however. If you were to reach around the 3<sup>rd</sup> realm in Divine Cultivation, then I wouldn¡¯t be able to do this.¡±


    ¡°Ohhh ok. That explains it.¡± I reply. After a few seconds silence I open my mouth to speak, but the spirit beats me to it. ¡°Now I know what you are going to ask. No, I will not directly teach you my Dao. Unlike most spirits, I tend to prefer the style of teaching that focuses on teaching my students to self-develop and comprehend their own path. I will help you with anything I can, however, I will NEVER give you anything directly. If you need to do something that doesn¡¯t directly require me to do anything for you, that is fine. You can visit my zone within your soul realm whenever you like to comprehend what you can. You may be confused and not know what I mean now, but you will see later.¡± I thought as I nodded in reply. After nodding, a seemingly awkward silence is present between us. After almost a minute has passed, I cough a few times to get the spirits attention. When he looks at me, I take a breath and ask him what I have wanted to know the whole time.


    ¡°So¡­. What is the Dao or the Law you were born with? Am I really the first contract you have ever had? What will you help me with if you will not directly transfer your Dao? How does the contract system really work, because it seems that you are more than just a spirit?¡± When the spirit hears the multitude of extremely important questions, he chuckles lightly as he answers. ¡°I was wondering when you would ask that hahaha. Well, I am innately born from the Dao of Chaos. As for my race¡­. I am of the race known as a Chaos-spawn and my name is Yai Zia. More specifically, I am a Dao-spawn born of my parents who were both also innately born with the Dao of Chaos. A Dao-spawn that is born of a high-grade Dao is called the name of the Dao it is innately born with, then the word spawn follows after. So I am a Chaos-spawn. As for experience, you are truly the first one I have taught. That is for a few reasons which I cannot explain, it will be detrimental to your growth. Helping you will be both more direct and also very indirect to your growth depending on your outlook on it. I cannot answer how the contract system works, but suffice to say, I am more than a mere spirit.¡±


    I fall silent as I digest his words. The spirit, or Dao-spawn I should say, gave me almost five minutes to digest the information he gave me. ¡°Holy shit! I actually got a spirit with the complete Dao of Chaos as my first spirit. Although he is of the Dao of Chaos, a Dao that truly has no strengths or weaknesses, he must have incredible knowledge and skill with his naturally endowed Dao of Chaos.¡± I think, mostly shocked about the fact that my first contract spirit is of the Dao of Chaos. I mean sure, I expected a spirit of the middle rankings of the Supreme Dao as my first spirit given how long it took me to sense it, I didn¡¯t expect to directly get a complete Primordial Dao as my first spirit. ¡°Which begs the question, what on earth is a Dao-spawn? I always thought the contracts were just spirits of powerful demonic beasts. I guess I am too weak to know yet¡­. He did say he would be detrimental to my growth if he told me anything more than what he has told me so far.¡± After a moment¡¯s thought, I open my mouth and politely ask the spirit a few questions.


    ¡°Yai Zia, I didn¡¯t know there was a race called Dao-spawn that existed. Why is it that people from even the High Heaven Realm don¡¯t know of your existence?¡± The spirit looks at me and answers calmly. ¡°Simple, because no cultivator who originated in the High Heaven Realm has even encountered a cultivator who has even heard of my race except for myths. The High Heaven Realm is not as powerful as you think, they are actually only around the middle of the rankings out of all the Realms known currently in terms of talent. As for you, your talent would be ridiculous even in the Dao Origin Realm, the Realm I originate from.¡± I looked at the spirit, surprised at how bluntly he dismissed the talent of the High Heaven Realm¡¯s cultivators, yet complimented me so highly very casually. ¡°Then, how high ranking are you in comparison to other spirits?¡± I ask timidly, feeling a bit of apprehension at the seemingly domineering name of his realm of birth. ¡°Compared to the spirits of the High Heaven Realm or my Realm of birth?¡± the spirit smirks as he replies, his expression showing an unintentional disdain in his voice when mentioning the spirits of the High Heaven Realm. Feeling far more apprehensive than a few seconds ago, I open my mouth.


    ¡°Of your Realm of birth, please. If the High Heaven Realm is not even one of the stronger Realms talent-wise, and you are comparing me to those of your realm of birth, then isn¡¯t it pointless to compare you to spirits of the High Heaven Realm?¡± Yai Zia¡¯s eyes widen slightly before he starts laughing heartily. ¡°Very well then, compared to those races that participate in this contract tradition in my Realm of birth, the Dao Origin-Realm, the Dao-spawn are rank number 1 no matter what kind of Dao-spawn they are. This is in the Dao they specialize in as a whole. Judging particular aspects of a Dao; like the extreme power aspect of the Dao of Yang, then we are only around the 3<sup>rd</sup> place. So to put it simply, our knowledge of the Dao we are born with has no specialization in that Dao. Speaking honestly, if it wasn¡¯t for the Dao-spawn, there would not be a clear number 1. Sure there are individuals of each race who classify as better teachers, but the ranking is basically just a ranking of the average comprehension of all the individuals in each race. There are also differences in the directions of each races comprehensions. An example would be a Golden Crow. They are primarily focused on the Dao of Yang, but they are more focused on the heat and pure power aspects of yang. Due to this, they also have ridiculously high insight into the Dao of Fire. So if judging generally, a ranking based purely on the comprehension of the Dao of Chaos, the Ai-Hwa race would be tied with the Primordial Qilins if you exclude the Chaos-spawn. Individually, even among the Chaos-spawn, I am certainly the one with the highest comprehension for my age. To sum it up, the rankings are a bad representation of a race¡¯s comprehension of the Dao they are ranked in. It is better to ask a spirit for their general rank among their Realm. In that case, I am undoubtedly number one when focusing purely on the Dao of Chaos on a whole. That is comprehension wise though. As a cultivator, I am a little weaker than most of the old monsters. Congrats kid, you just got one of the strongest chaos attribute experts in the entire Dao Origin Realm as your first contract.¡±


    Silence greeted his declaration of superiority. Realising I was standing rigid in shock, he laughed loudly. Breaking out of my shock, I look at him laughing and acting unlike his apparent strength; And I go into shock again.

 Chapter Two

    Chapter 3: Jing Jiao


    Jing Guanyu


    Suddenly, my soul leaves my soul realm, making my body jolt back into activity. After a few seconds, I open my eyes, shock still lingering in them. After telling me about his race and their strength; Yai Zia had made me sign the contract quickly because apparently my body couldn¡¯t be kept in its semi-active state for much longer without sinking into complete inactivity, or the death of my body to put it bluntly. From what he said, he was informed that the first entry of the cultivator into their soul realm was the equivalent to turning their body into hibernation. Too long in the soul realm, the first time and they won¡¯t wake up even when the soul leaves the soul realm. The so-called spirit contract was simply a soul contract stating that the spirit will teach me to the best of their abilities and that I as the student in the contract, will simply have to help the spirit in the future as long as it isn¡¯t life-threatening or something impossible to do, like have a beginner alchemist refine a thousand heaven-defying pills within a year. That is also on the condition that I am able to reach a high enough realm of cultivation to provide that help, if the cultivator is unable to help, then that condition doesn¡¯t apply.


    After making me sign the contract as quickly as possible, Yai Zia immediately sent my soul back to my body. Now his spirit body is residing within my soul, allowing him to speak to me whenever he needs to. Smiling, I send my now slightly stronger spirit sense within myself, sending my spirit sense into my soul. Upon detecting my spirit sense, Yai Zia smiles and waves at me. After a few seconds of looking through my body to see what exactly is wrong with it, I gasp in surprise. There is not a single meridian in my body.¡°What in the world?! Where are my meridians?! No wonder it is impossible for me to do anything in the path of Energy Cultivation.¡± I think to myself as I stare in shock at my body¡¯s strange lack of meridians. The strangest part is that my body itself doesn¡¯t even have space where the meridians would be. It looks like my body really was born without them.


    ¡°Speaking of body, what is up with my body. Why is it so weak that it compares to those of the Mortal Realm despite the fact that my parents have a bloodline that grants us a stronger body than even the average High Heaven Realm resident. It isn¡¯t strange that my parents don¡¯t even allow me to attempt any of the Essence Cultivation techniques we have here if I have this kind of body. Also, since buying cultivation techniques from a lower Realm is considered shameful to the extreme, there is no way the clan would allow my parents to purchase one from the Mortal Realm even if they could swallow their pride as High Heaven Realm residents.¡± With a sigh, I put those thoughts to the back of my mind as I get up and start to leisurely get the cramps out of my body with slow stretches. My parents aren¡¯t back yet, though they should be here sometime this week.


    As I walk to the training hall, the array for detecting visitors goes off. With a slight frown marring my forehead, I change my route and walk to the entrance of the living complex I live in with my parents. We are quite isolated from the other members of our clan, so very few people come here unless it is important clan matters. The only people that come here that aren¡¯t elders are a group of clansmen my age. Like most people 13 years old, although they are more physically mature than lower Realm mortals their age, they still retain some of their childish personality. They haven¡¯t come by to get their usual satisfaction of acting like they are above me in recent months, so I was kind of expecting them to come by sometime soon. Still frowning, I change my route to walk to the entrance of the complex. With no surprise, I see a group of 5 people around my age. All are considerably handsome and have an arrogant air about them. The airs of a group of genius¡¯ from a powerful clan, which they are.


    ¡°Hello, what can I help you with Jing Jiao?¡± I ask neutrally, having some respect in my voice. Although he is an arrogant prick, the star of our Jing Clan, Jing Jiao certainly deserves respect for his cultivation talent. Making a contract with slightly lower than middle ranked Supreme Dao spirit, it is one of the strongest first spirit contracts a member of our clan has made in a century. He is hailed as the top talent of our Jing Clan in 200 years and even I admit that he truly deserves such a strong spirit as his first one because he has a truly heaven-defying cultivation talent in the paths of Energy and Divine cultivation. Although his body cultivation is only in the Initial Blood Refinement, he is already of the 1<sup>st</sup> stage of the Houtian realm in both his Energy and Divine cultivation.


    ¡°Heh, I just wanted to talk to my dear friend that is crippled from birth and happens to have the worst talent in Divine Cultivation in the history of the clan. Oh, wait it is the worst talent in ANY form of cultivation in the history of the clan. Please pardon me, I forgot that small detail. So, how is like being such a piece of trash Jing Guanyu?¡± The star of our clan, Jing Jiao asks me arrogantly, laughing at his own insults. Shrugging to myself, I reply neutrally, using calm but fairly vicious words. I really am sick of this guy, although I don¡¯t talk or anything to him, let alone see him more than once or twice a year; he always feels the need to be an absolute dick to me. Of course, I would get pissed off at him.


    ¡°It¡¯s great, I mean, I just condensed my first spirit. Turns out that it doesn¡¯t even deem itself on a weak enough level compared to the spirits of the High Heaven Realm to even be compared to them. He also said something about the people in the High Heaven Realm lacking the talent to even be able to make a contract with one of his bastard sons.¡± I knew that although Yai Zia didn¡¯t say anything like this, I could see from his expression and tone of voice, that he truly disdained the so-called ¡°Heaven-Defying talents¡± of the High Heaven Realm. Besides, he would probably say the same thing to Jing Jiao if he met him and deemed himself low enough to actually speak to him. While I was thinking about this, Jing Jiao¡¯s face turned nearly purple with rage. With a face twisted in an ugly expression, he yelled at the other 4 following him.


    ¡°Cripple this bastard! No, he is already crippled actually, so better yet, grab him and follow me. We will go see the elders and let him show them the so-called ¡°talent¡± of this crippled bastard.¡± A frown marring my face, I willingly let Jing Jiao¡¯s friends grabbed me. Even if I wanted to, I wouldn¡¯t be able to resist, so what¡¯s the point of resisting. Smirking to myself, I remember the parting words of Yai Zia before he sends me back to my soul. ¡°Don¡¯t worry about them killing you due to your talent. I can sense your parents are around half an hour away, even for trash such as you, they cannot kill or cripple you without undergoing a trial. Though when you show me them, be prepared for some trouble. They won¡¯t harm you, but it won¡¯t be nice. Do not fear though, no matter what they do, I will do everything I can to help you. After all, it is not your fault that you got assigned me to be your first contract spirit.¡± He had said as he waved his hand and sent me back to my body.


    It was because of Yai Zia¡¯s words that I even had the confidence to say such words. Otherwise, I usually wouldn¡¯t even speak a single derisive word to Jing Jiao even if I had balls bigger than my head. Despite only meeting Yai Zia once, I could already tell that he was reliable and I could see the care he had for me. He had confirmed it himself, when he was assigned to me, he had started watching me to determine my personality and how best to guide me. From that, it was obvious that he approved of me as a person as well as of my talent, though I don¡¯t think I have any talent. As I am ¡°escorted¡± to the elders, I am lost in thought ¡°Just why does he think I have talent? I am crippled body wise and have no energy system in my body. The only thing I am remotely talented in is the path of Divine Cultivation. However, I doubt the spirit contracts would be judged purely on Divine Cultivation. Even I know that just focusing on one path of cultivation will eventually cause you to be unable to advance any further.¡±


    *ooof*


    My thoughts are interrupted by an insidious elbow to my ribs. I turn to my left, looking darkly at the goon of Jing Jiao that is on my left, he simply smirks and nods towards the front. I look where he is indicating, seeing that we are about to enter the conference hall. Currently, Jing Jiao is talking to the guard at the front, pointing to me and explaining something. The guard looks at me, surprise and derision in his face before he enters the hall. After a minute, the guard opens the door and indicates for our group to walk into the hall. Walking in behind Jing Jiao, I can see that all the elders of our clan are in the hall. They must have been in one of their weekly meetings when Jing Jiao disturbed them. Now, they were all looking slightly irritably at me as I walk in. However, when they notice the fact that I seem to have a Divine Cultivation, their faces twitch in surprise slightly.


    Although I may have only the most rudimentary cultivation, my senses were quite good from the many hours of meditation I did every day when trying to begin my path of Divine Cultivation. This allowed me to see these slight twitches of the elders¡¯ faces, which usually would require someone with a cultivation of the peak of the 1<sup>st</sup> realm in Essence cultivation to notice if they focused all of their attention on the face of one of the elders. It was clear that they weren¡¯t expecting this. Waiting in slight amusement, Yai Zia suddenly sends me a mental message from my soul. ¡°Kid, from here on is where you should tread carefully. If you get killed before showing my existence, then that¡¯s your bad luck. I cannot come out of your soul unless either you want me to or you are unconscious. Try to be as polite as possible please.¡± Sending a mental nod of affirmation, I wait for Jing Jiao to finish his surprisingly eloquent speech which boils down to, ¡°The previously crippled kid said he had made a spirit contract while being an arrogant prick to my heaven-defying talented self.¡± It was definitely biased towards giving the elders a negative impression of me, not that he needed to in the first place.Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.


    ¡°Hello Elders, I am sorry to disturb you, but I carry some very great news. The previously talentless and still crippled Jing Guanyu has finally made his first spirit contract. This now allows him to embark on the path of Divine Cultivation. Not only this, apparently the spirit he condensed is so powerful, that it even ¡®doesn¡¯t even deem itself on a weak enough level compared to the spirits of the High Heaven Realm to even be compared to them.¡¯ In Jing Guanyu¡¯s own words. Truly a great talent, our Jing Guanyu is. Therefore, seeing the extreme arrogance and over-confidence of my fellow clan member, I felt that I had to announce such amazing news to all of my respectable elders. Please forgive my intrusion into your meeting.¡±


    ¡°Oh really. Since you phrased your request so eloquently Jing Jiao, we shall see this ¡°great talent¡± known as Jing Guanyu for ourselves.¡± The elders were all smiling in anticipation of the shame I would receive. Ever since I was discovered to be crippled, no one in the clan except my parents even remotely cared about me. Not even my grandfather, one of the 4 grand elders of the clan even spoke to me, let alone was nice to me. Feeling anticipation, I smiled politely as I respectfully bowed and answered the elders. ¡°Very well then great, respectable elders. I shall reveal the spirit that I have made a contract with.¡± So saying that I allowed Yai Zia to release his spirit body. Spirit bodies, despite having absolutely no power at all, are completely invulnerable. Due to the way they are made, they are completely incorporeal and thus immune to physical damage. Given that is was a death wish to attempt to dissipate the expert''s spirit body via a soul attack, these spirit bodies are practically unkillable.


    Emerging from my body, Yai Zia is smirking arrogantly as he announces his identity.


    ¡°I am a Dao-spawn of the Dao of Chaos. I am sure that your spirits will know of my so-called rank, even if you don¡¯t. Why don¡¯t you come out dear little spirits? I wish for you to announce me yourselves since even explaining my strength will be assisting these old geezers in their comprehension of just how high the heavens are.¡± After saying that, each elder had from 4 to 9 spirits emerge from their bodies, looking at Yai Zia in shock. The elders, upon seeing the shock on the faces of their spirit contracts, felt that something wasn¡¯t right. Their thoughts were proven as the spirits of everyone in the room, even the ones in the top 100 of the High Heaven Realm Spirit Ranking kowtowed to Yai Zia. One of the elders, in shock, finally regained his voice enough to ask one of the spirits to explain.


    ¡°Sp-Spirit, can you please explain what is happening. Why are you all kowtowing to another spirit? You have said that even the number 1 on the ranking wouldn¡¯t received your kowtows!" The spirits, as if realizing that their contracts were looking on in confusion, got up from their kowtow. The most knowledgeable of the spirits, stepped forwards as he explained.


    ¡°Although we do not need to kowtow to the number 1 spirit of the High Heaven Realm¡¯s spirit ranking, to someone of the power of senior over there, even kowtowing is only barely enough respect considering that we are in spirit form. He is from the Dao Origin Realm I believe if I can read the fluctuation signature his spirit body is emitting. I also suspect that he is one of the stronger races of that Realm, though I am not certain. Senior, what is your race? We were not paying attention when you announced it. We only came out because we felt the presence of someone from the Dao Origin Realm.¡± The spirit asked extreme respect bordering on fanaticism colored his voice. Although he didn¡¯t speak in an extremely respectful manner, it was only the middle and lower Realms that truly put emphasis on such things as titles. The higher Realms¡¯ experts only really expected a tone of respect since no one really cared much for respectful and flowery speech.


    With an arrogant smirk, Yai Zia answered in a bored tone. ¡°I guess since you were so respectful, I can repeat myself. After all, I have a reputation to upkeep as one of the most respected experts of the Dao Origin Realm. I am a Dao-spawn with the Dao of Chaos as the Dao that spawned me, my name is Yai Zia, though I expect that no one of the High Heaven Realm or their equivalent spirit Realm will even recognize the family name, let alone my identity.¡± At the announcement of his race, every spirit¡¯s face in the room dropped. When he spoke of his attribute, even more shock went through the hearts of the spirits in the room. There was also confusion in their expressions. They had never heard of a Dao-spawn being of the Dao of Chaos. Dao-spawn that they had heard myths of were usually one of the Elemental Dao, but it was because any higher grade Dao-spawn were myths even in the Realms far above the High Heaven Realm. With the confusion still on his face, the representative spirit turned to the elders and hesitantly started to speak.


    ¡°well¡­. It seems that he is of the Dao Origin Realm. We have heard of the Dao-spawn race; they are probably the strongest race when looking at just their chosen attribute. We have never heard of a Dao-spawn bloodline with the chaos attribute, so he might be fooling us race wise, though the fluctuations he gives off are the ones specific to the Dao Origin Realm spirit body creation technique which means he is definitely of the Realm he claims to be.¡± The elders all looked on in shock. Suddenly, they all started looking at me with admiration and also greed. The senior-most elder grabbed a communication talisman and lit it up. After sending a message to all the strongest of our clan, he then commands some elders to take me to a room in the main palace and to station two high cultivation guards outside my room for my protection. As this is happening, Yai Zia resubmerges into my soul, smirking as he sends me a mental message. ¡°Well kid, now you are for sure not going to die. Unless they kill you for some reason, then even I can¡¯t help you. Either way, be prepared.¡± Hearing the message, I get confused at the warning at the end. Replying as best I can because I am still not used to using my soul''s voice, I ask Yai Zia what he means. ¡°What do you mean, prepare yourself?¡± My only reply, however, is silence. Feeling a strange sense of apprehension take over, I start to walk a little tensely.


    Noticing my tension, the elder escorting me to my room smiles as he says ¡°Now, Jing Guanyu, there is no need to worry. You will be fine, we are just asking for the grand elders¡¯ and the Clan Patriarch¡¯s opinions on the outstanding matter of your amazing talent in Divine Cultivation. We will notify your parents as to what is happening when they return.¡± For some reason, this causes me to relax physically, but the agitation in my mind only gets worse. I have a strange premonition that the attention I am getting from the clan; isn¡¯t the kind of attention I want. Arriving at my room, the elder opens the door for me. Walking in, the elder smiles and says ¡°Well, because you have such amazing talent, the elders all fear for your life is taken from the other clans to eliminate a potential threat. Therefore, we insist that you stay in your room until the grand elders and the patriarch have made their decision regarding what we are going to do. I hope you understand this Young Lord Guanyu.¡±


    Hearing his words, the bad premonition is realized. ¡°I am trapped here now!¡±  I think as the elder shuts the door gently. I can hear the elder talking to the guards outside, instructing them to prevent me from exiting the room I am confined in. With a sigh of resignation, I lie down on the bed provided and begin talking to Yai Zia again. ¡°Yai Zia, have you got any advice for me?¡± ¡°Yes, I do actually. Just stay put. If what I think is going to happen, the best and only situation you can hope for that won¡¯t affect your future cultivation would be imprisonment.¡± ¡°Huh! What do you mean imprisonment is the ¡®best and only situation¡¯ Yai Zia!¡± ¡°I am not going to tell you why that is only if things go the way I suspect they will. They likely will, so you will soon understand what I mean. When that happens, I will tell you what we are going to do.¡± ¡°How do you know what is going to happen?¡± ¡°Simple, I have not only observed you since your birth, I also have been observing your clan. In fact, until you were 5, most of my time was spent observing your clan, only having a tiny piece of my sense attached to you just to see how you were doing.¡± ¡°Oh. Well, since you have told me to stay put, I guess I better stay here. Do you want me to cultivate?¡± ¡°No, instead, I want you to meditate.¡±


    ¡°HUH! But I have already made a contract with you! Why would I need to meditate even more? Isn¡¯t it better to strengthen my soul power?!¡± ¡°Sigh. Not at this point and in this situation. Instead, the best course would be to meditate and attempt to comprehend the Dao. You have an outstanding perception, but the Dao of Chaos is the hardest Dao to comprehend, due to its nature of containing everything. Even the other 6 Primordial Dao are within the Dao of Chaos. I guess that technically the Dao of Chaos is the broadest Dao in existence. Thus, it is required to meditate on it twice as much as if you had one of the other primordial Dao. Besides, the higher comprehension you have of the Dao of Chaos, the easier it will make any other Dao you attempt to comprehend because of the same reason I mentioned just before.¡± ¡°Oh ok. Any particular way you want me to meditate?¡± ¡°Actually, yes I do. Try to meditate this way. It will help you focus on the Dao of Chaos more. It will be hard to do but please try.¡± As Yai Zia said this, I received a mental imprint from him. The imprint opened itself and a profound meditation technique started to brand itself into my memory in a gentle fashion.


    As I read it, I was surprised. The technique was so profound that it was nearly incomprehensible. At this moment, Yai Zia sent another mental message, giving me some advice. ¡°This is a meditation technique for more effective comprehension of the Dao of Chaos. Try to remember your current insights into the Dao of Chaos. It will help you understand this profound technique.¡± Listening to his advice, I attempt to remember my comprehension of the Dao of Chaos. Unknowingly, as the thoughts I had earlier that allowed me to connect to the spirit body of Yai Zia flooded my mind, I meditated the way described in the meditation technique. Soon, unable to sense the passing of time, hours had passed. Yai Zia watching me the whole time, a smile of contentment on his face.

 Chapter Three

    Chapter Three: Failed Coercion


    The Clan Hall


    Meanwhile¡­


    The Elders Hall was filled completely to the brim. Every single elder of the Jing Clan that could make it within half a day was here, all of them discussing their opinions and knowledge about the reason for the meeting, Jing Guanyu. The 4 grand elders were also in discussion. All these high-level cultivators, waiting for one man, the patriarch of the Jing Clan. The 4 grand elders all had varying opinions on what they think they should do about this matter. One of them wanted to just outright kill Jing Guanyu, having never liked the cripple and also to use it as a message to his parents regarding the withholding of a certain alchemy technique. Two of them were of the opinion that they should force Jing Guanyu to obey their wishes, cultivating in what they want him to, for their own purposes. The last grand elder, Jing Guanyu¡¯s grandfather, wished to simply leave Jing Guanyu as he is now. His reasoning is that even if they put in resources to help Guanyu cultivate, he will likely be crippled in the soul due to the other young cultivators of the Jing clan anyway.


    ¡°Pfft, so what if he has a spirit contract which is apparently at the peak of the Dao Origin-Realm, that place is simply a myth, even for the True Heaven Realm, let alone our High Heaven Realm. His spirit is probably just a Realm above ours, from the True Heaven Realm and deciding to simply mention a myth to intimidate our less experienced elders¡¯ spirits into thinking it was from the Dao Origin Realm. I say we should just kill him, he is likely going to be killed anyway and this will send a message to his parents. The damn traitorous couple, not giving such a good gift to the clan. I wonder why they got given that damn gift anyway, it even has special soul guards preventing people who haven¡¯t got the true permission of the holder to read it.¡±


    ¡°To be honest, we all know about that boy¡¯s origin right?¡± a grand elder said, various grunts of affirmation being voiced in reply. ¡°Then why isn¡¯t it possible? Why are we actually surprised? Considering his parents got such a gift because of the favor they are doing, as well as the deal we made with those two, then why are we surprised about the fact the spirit he contracted is apparently from the mythical Dao Origin-Realm?¡± At the Elder¡¯s words, grunts of agreement with the comment were voiced by the other 3 grand elders. As another one opened their mouth to state their opinion, they suddenly detected the presence of the patriarch about to enter. Shutting his mouth, the grand elder, like everyone else in the room, respectfully bowed as the patriarch walked in. The patriarch was a tall person, standing at just under 2 meters tall, he was a large and well-built man. Layers upon layers of hard muscle covered his body, giving him a barbaric look. This man was the strongest of the Jing Clan and was ranked 7<sup>th</sup> among the experts of the High Heaven Realm.


    The patriarch had an aura that commanded respect. His aura was so strong that as he flew to his throne, everyone, even the grand elders had bowed deeply in respect involuntarily. When he sat down, everyone in the room slowly straightened their backs, waiting for him to allow them to sit. The patriarch, seeing everyone waiting respectfully for him, gave an arrogant and domineering smile as he waved his arm while saying ¡°You may all sit.¡± The elders in the room sat down after he gave his permission for them to sit. The smile on his face disappearing, the patriarch sat for a moment, before asking.


    ¡°So, what has happened that requires the convening of every available elder.¡± One of the elders, upon hearing the patriarch¡¯s words, stood up and bowed as he spoke. ¡°Great Patriarch, the young clan member known as Jing Guanyu has successfully made his first spirit contract.¡± Seeing the patriarch frown in annoyance, the elder continued flusteredly. ¡°The spirit he contracted claims to be from the Dao Origin Realm. The spirits of the elders there at the time confirm this, saying that the technique used to create a spirit body from the Dao Origin Realm gives off a particular spiritual emission. This emission being detected clearly by all of them upon emerging from their contract¡¯s bodies.¡± The patriarch, when he hears that the spirits of the various elders had confirmed the claim, raised his eyebrows slightly in surprise. With the tone of slight surprise in his voice, the patriarch asks the opinion of the grand elders.


    ¡°Grand elders, what is your opinion on this matter?¡± The first of the 4 grand elders, stands up as he says ¡°Patriarch, I believe that this boy will only be trouble. His talent will certainly gain the attention of the Sect we are subordinated to. They will likely do anything to get this boy to become their disciple. Since we will almost certainly resist because he will bolster our clan¡¯s strength in the future; then we are likely to suffer heavy losses at best, while still losing the boy eventually. Such a risk is not worth it; therefore, my opinion is the extermination of the potential threat known as Jing Guanyu. This will also have the added effect of sending a clear warning and statement to his parents that we will not take any more defiance on their part when it comes to the alchemy technique.¡±


    The patriarch nods slightly, before indicating the next grand elder to stand up and state his opinion. The next grand elder stands up, bows and then speaks. ¡°I believe that we should leave the boy to his own devices. If the Sect wants him, then they can have him. If he stays here, even if we give him resources, he is crippled in the body and has the complete inability to cultivate the path of Energy Cultivation. This makes him a Dual Divine-Essence Cultivator. They are the weakest of the dual cultivators and thus, even with his obvious future spirit contract potential, at most, he will be able to match a True Cultivator such as yourself. Besides, even if we let him live, the other clan members of the younger generation will likely kill him. You know as well as we all do that the younger generation hates the cripple known as Jing Guanyu and will hate even more since we might be putting in an effort to grow him. Therefore, we should just leave him to his own devices.¡±


    As soon as the grand elder finishes his speech, the last two of the grand elders stand up. Both bowing, the more senior of the two starts to state his opinion and reasoning behind it. ¡°We both believe that we should grow this genius. However, we should make him cultivate only what we want him to cultivate. I believe that it is worth the effort to grow him and considering his origin¡­¡± At this point, the grand elder looked pointedly at the grand elder that wanted to kill Jing Guanyu. ¡°¡­ then killing him would only earn their ire. That is something that we cannot afford.¡± Having said their part, the last two grand elders bow again before sitting down. The patriarch is silent while seemingly lost in thought. With a sudden twitch of his body, the patriarch stands up and announces his decision.


    ¡°I believe that the option of killing him is unwise. Even though we are uncertain of if those two would make good on their promise, it is better to be cautious for the safety of our clan than risk inviting annihilation. The option of letting him be is also a bad choice. What if he is taken in by the Sect and they restore his physical body. We all know that despite being crippled, the boy has an extraordinary talent for any form of cultivation just by looking at the fact that he got such a powerful spirit. The spirits tend to get picked based on the talent of the person if they are at their best. If the Sect sees that talent and even decides to take a gamble and restore his body, meridians, and dantian, something that is possible I might add; then we could all possibly be annihilated in the future, or at least be in the dislike list of a true powerhouse that would likely become the strongest in the Realm. Therefore, the only option left is the last one. To grow the boy, but force him to be completely subservient. Due to the agreement with those two, however, we can¡¯t force the boy, or the protection they gave him will activate and kill whoever attempts to force him. So, we must coerce him into it, giving him a cultivation technique that is outstanding, but able to cause him to have no option except to obey us. You are all also forgetting the most important fact, if the boy did make a contract with a so-called Dao-spawn, then wouldn¡¯t that be the only chaos attribute spirit he contracts? Remember that the way spirit contracts will work, spirits that cultivators contract will never be weaker than a previous one if they are of the same attribute. Doesn¡¯t this mean that since his first spirit is one of the strongest spirits in the Dao Origin Realm for the attribute of chaos; which I am inclined to believe given his origin, then wouldn¡¯t the boy at most only contract another chaos attribute spirit if we are incredibly lucky?¡±


    At the patriarch¡¯s calm reasoning and knowledge, all the elders start whispering among themselves. The patriarch raises his hand, causing the elders to all stop speaking. ¡°I have made my decision. The boy shall be grown by us. We shall make him cultivate the ¡°Chaotic Contract Scripture¡±, forcing him to only to be able to contract with spirits related to the Dao of Chaos. Due to this cultivation technique that originated from the Dao Origin Realm itself, then it surely will be able to defy the spirit contract system which they created. This is my decision. Grand Elder 3, you are the grandfather of the boy, go make him cultivate this manual¡± The patriarch announces. After he hands over the ¡°Chaotic Contract Scripture¡± to the 3<sup>rd</sup> grand elder from his interspatial ring, he dismisses everyone while leaving the hall.


    * * * * * * * * * * * * *


    Jing Guanyu


    ¡°There you go. Good job kid. That is enough meditation for today. Get some rest now.¡± Yai Zia said as I slowly opened my eyes. It has been almost a week since I had been imprisoned by the Jing Clan. Since then, I had discovered their ¡°kind intentions¡± of helping me grow.This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.


    "Hey Yai Zia, wher are my parents? They were apparently only 30 minutes away when I first met the elders. What happened?" Yai Zia, looks suprised for a breath of time before answering.


    "The clan gave them an apparently urgent mission the minute my origins were revealed. They will be back, it was just to buy time for them to force you to their will. You were meant to be already tied to the clan, but you showed a far stronger willpower and guts than they expected."


    "Oh ok." I thought about it a bit. It made sense, removing the biggest weakness in their plan was essential for them to suceed. Those two would probably just take me and leave. My parents were on the stronger side of the elders, in fact they were both part of the disciplinary wing of the Clan. This meant they had to be stronger than most on their level. Since they are very well respected in the Disciplinary wing of the clan, the people sent to hunt us down if we leave would try catch us, but they would not use everything at their disposal. Thus the plan was divide and conquer. Since it was failing, the clan was getting desparate.


    The clan had already attempted to use subtler methods of forcing me to be tied to the clan. The day after I was imprisoned, my grandfather, the 3<sup>rd</sup> grand elder came over with a cultivation manual called ¡°Chaotic Contract Scripture¡± which was an apparently heaven-defying manual. After leaving it for me and saying that if I reach the peak of the first stage, then they will fix my crippled body; my grandfather walks out of the room, closing the door behind himself. Taking a look at the manual, I consult Yai Zia for advice, who actually was just about to warn me about the manual¡¯s dangers himself. The conversation we had then was interesting, it had finally allowed me to know what was going on.


    * * * * * * * * * * * * *


    ¡°Kid, do not cultivate this manual no matter what you do.¡±


    ¡°Why shouldn¡¯t I Yai Zia. It actually seems very powerful.¡±


    ¡°Well, it is a truly heaven-defying scripture, but in a bad way.¡±


    ¡°What do you mean?¡±


    ¡°Well, yes that scripture is excessively powerful I will admit. However, it will force you to only be able to make spirit contracts with spirits related to the Dao of Chaos.¡±


    ¡°Ohh. But is that really such a bad idea considering how strong it is?¡±


    ¡°OF COURSE IT IS! Although that Scripture may give you absolute supremacy against those of the same Dao as you, if you meet someone that counters you, you are pretty much useless. Besides, considering the nature of the Dao of Chaos as the perfect all-rounder, then as long as someone cultivates another Scripture of the same kind, then you can¡¯t do anything. If they cultivate an offensive one, at worst they will force you to retreat, at best they will kill you instantly if they cultivate the ¡®Destructive Contract Scripture¡¯ which focuses on the extreme offense of the Dao of Destruction. If they cultivate the ¡®Creative Contract Scripture¡¯ then no matter what you do, their defense shall be invincible compared to you, even if they are 2 stages below you!¡±


    ¡°Ohh ok. Cultivating this would have that effect on my power¡­ Then no way will I even look at it from now on.¡±


    ¡°And besides, the other 6 spirits you will contract are all of different Dao if I remember correctly. All of which are on the same level as me when it comes to their Dao.¡±


    ¡°REALLY!!! If you said that in the first place, then why would I have even thought about cultivating this?!¡±


    ¡°I didn¡¯t mention it straight up because I wanted you to make the decision without knowing who your other 6 spirit contracts are going to be. I told you, I shall not tell you what to do, I will only give you the options.¡±


    ¡°Thank you, Yai Zia,¡± I say, gratitude flooding my voice. The spirit body of Yai Zia floating around smiles warmly as he replies.


    ¡°No problem kid. Just remember, although the options are up to you; I will, like the other 6 will, use all my knowledge to give you all the information you need to decide your own choice on your path of cultivation.¡±


    ¡°Thank you.¡±


    ¡°Again as I said, it is no problem. I quite like your personality and besides, which master wouldn¡¯t be almost crying with joy every morning if they had someone with the same potential you do.¡± Again, Yai Zia mentions my potential. With a slightly confused look, I ask Yai Zia what he means.


    ¡°Yai Zia, what do you mean ¡®someone with the same potential I do¡¯? I am crippled in the body and have a physique with no energy system.¡±


    ¡°Hahahahaha¡­. Kid, you will have an energy system when you are healed. You simply don''t know because of the nature of your bloodline and physique. You are not crippled, in fact, the only reason your body is weak is due to the nature of your special physique. The Primordial Rebirth Pill is used for 2 reasons. The first is because it is the only pill that is condensed with chaos attributed essence of a certain type and the second is because it contains an extremely large amount of energy within it which you will need in the future. Besides, being unable to cultivate anything but the Divine path before you turn 18 has its own benefits. It has also helped you improve your sensitivity to the Dao to a ridiculous degree. There are a lot more benefits than just that, however I won¡¯t speak of them until we can talk without being watched by an expert in the Dao of the Soul.¡±


    ¡°Ok, I trust you wholeheartedly Yai Zia,¡± I replied, seriously meaning it. In this week of imprisonment, Yai Zia has been the one keeping me from falling into the mental trap of isolation. My food even gets delivered via spatial formation. The Jing Clan are truly trying to isolate me from anyone else. They really are determined to force me to cultivate the Chaotic Contract Scripture. Although the Scripture is apparently of the highest rank, the ¡°True Scripture¡± rank and a ¡°Complete¡± Scripture; meaning it will cover all 3 paths of cultivation, this Scripture will completely restrict my future development to just the Dao of Chaos. From what Yai Zia has seen, this scripture is treated as the holy cultivation scripture for our entire clan, even though the Dao Origin-Realm has one for all seven Primordial Dao and the nine Elemental Dao.


    The clan is really trying to put the pressure on me, constantly insisting for me to cultivate the Scripture whenever I have the chance. Luckily, my parents are due to return at any minute and the clan has at least promised me to allow them to see me before I have to make my decision. They haven¡¯t told me the punishment, though Yai Zia assures me they won¡¯t kill me no matter what. Despite his consolation, I am still very nervous, stressed and almost a breaking point mentally. It is extremely hard to endure such complete solitude for a week. Apart from Yai Zia, not even a single peep comes out of surroundings. I think they have used arrays to completely soundproof this room. Since I was imprisoned here, I have been eating, sleeping and meditating on the Dao of Chaos. I am following a strict schedule that has been created by Yai Zia in order to maximize my comprehension of the Dao of Chaos without over-meditating, something which reduces the effect of meditation due to adapting to the more intense sensory sensitivity that is common when meditating. Although Yai Zia gave me this schedule, he said it was up to me if I choose to follow it or follow my own.


    I am beginning to see what Yai Zia meant when he said he shall do everything in his power to help me, but it is up to me as to how and if I use that help. Finishing some light stretches to prevent muscle deterioration, I lie down on the hard bed and fall to sleep. The next morning, I wake up to the noise of the door opening. Looking up blearily, I see my parents standing in the doorway, tears in their eyes upon seeing me. I stand up, tears forming in my eyes as I rush into their arms. Since even before that day I had told them the reason I cultivated, the day I had made my vow, my parents had wholeheartedly done everything they could and more to help me achieve my goals. I had a debt to them so deep that even a lifetime of love and the gifting of a whole realm to them wouldn¡¯t make me feel like I had repaid this debt. I repaid it in the only way I could, by working hard and never giving up.


    With a gentle smile on their faces, my parents hug me back. After a few minutes, we release each other, before sitting down on the bed and talking about what has happened while they were gone. After hearing about the spirit I had contracted as well as what Yai Zia had said about my potential, my parents exchanged a weird glance and smiled knowingly. Inwardly curious, I withheld myself from asking and continued to explain that I was practically imprisoned until after I met with them. Then, after our meeting was done, I would have to make my choice. Cultivate the Clan¡¯s Chaotic Contract Scripture, or face the punishment of defying the patriarch¡¯s orders. My parents, hearing this ultimatum, frowned and my mother spoke.


    ¡°Yu¡¯er, this is a very heavy ultimatum to lay upon considering how young you are. Although we will not make this decision for you, we will support whatever decision you make regardless of whether we approve of it or not.¡± Hearing my mother¡¯s words, tears start to flow again as we once again all hug, the warmth of my parents seeming to heal the mental and emotional wounds from the week of complete isolation. After all, I was only a 13-year-old boy. Even if I had experienced years of bitter emotions I still had human interaction in my life. Even if it was negative most of the time, human interaction was still what it was. I am not like those 100,000-year-old monstrous cultivators who could spend a 1000 years in solitary cultivation just to gain the smallest insight. With a determined glint in my eye, much like that fateful day 5 years ago, I look proudly at my parents and say.


    ¡°I shall accept their punishment. For otherwise, I would be forced by the Clan. I have already been forced by the heavens to not cultivate Essence or Energy so I shall not lose my ability to cultivate the Divine how I wish to. If I have to be imprisoned for a millennium, then so be it. I shall.¡±


    * * * * * * * * * * * * *


    ¡°You are defying my command?¡± The large, imposing man that is the patriarch of our clan is looking at me quite calmly. However, I can sense the rage buried underneath that calm exterior. The man who looks like a barbarian berserker has the emotional control of royalty it seems. With a sigh of resignation, the patriarch passes his judgment.


    ¡°Very well, since you wish to defy me, then you shall forever be halted on your path to cultivation. You shall be completely isolated. You shall be forever young until you submit to my will.¡± After saying so, the patriarch began to approach me menacingly. A pressure enveloped my body. Not just my body, but the bodies of everyone in the room. I was completely frozen, the only things allowed freedom was the circulation of my blood and my thoughts. As I watched the patriarch¡¯s hand slowly descend upon my chest, I give him a defiant gaze filled with so much determination, that even the patriarch halts his hand for but a Nano-second. Although he immediately continues, I notice it. With a determined frown on my face, my eyes send a fiery message fuelled by my desire and determination to fulfill what I vowed to do. ¡°No matter what you do to bar my path, I shall pass it. No matter how thick the wall in front of me, I shall pierce it. No matter how you seal me, I shall break it. Even if the very heavens themselves cripple me to the point I can do nothing but become a retard, I! SHALL! ACHIEVE! MY! VOW!¡±

 Chapter Four

    Chapter Four: Imprisoned


    Jing Clan Patriarch


    ¡°What scary eyes. It would be in the best interest of the clan if I to use my full strength and comprehension to seal him!¡± Was the only thought in my head as I began to seal the boy¡¯s soul. I gave him 9 seals, one on the bottleneck between each of the remaining realms. The final seal of the nine seals went onto the barrier between the 9<sup>th</sup> stage of the Foundational Evolution and the 1<sup>st</sup> stage of the Immortal Evolution. While doing so, I couldn¡¯t help but stare at the boy¡¯s eyes. Such a strong a determined gaze, it actually makes me fear for the future if he is ever given a chance to cultivate properly. Luckily, I am sealing his soul cultivation, the highest he will ever go will be the Peak Mortal Spirit Sensor. Unless he submits to me, that is.


    After sealing the boy, I use my soul power to knock him unconscious, not damaging him at all. Seeing his eyes roll back into his head as his body collapses, I release a breath of tension I didn¡¯t realize I was holding. ¡°It is done. He is sealed,¡± I think to myself as I toss the boy¡¯s body to his grandfather, giving him instructions.


    ¡°Take him to prison room 72, I had the elders prepare the arrays to hold his body¡¯s aging and growing functions in stasis over the week we gave him to make his decision. That will make it impossible for him to cultivate Essence even if he wasn¡¯t crippled. Since he also doesn¡¯t have an energy system and the formations tinker with the natural Dao in the room, he is unable to cultivate energy or comprehend the Dao to unseal himself either. Just dump him in the room. Give him enough food to stay healthy, but I don¡¯t want it to be anything more than necessary, in both quantity and quality. Ok.¡± The grand elder I instructed nodded, flying to the prison area of my Jing Clan¡¯s territory. Turning to the boy¡¯s parents, I walk over and speak to them about the finer details of his imprisonment. Although people call me harsh, I know what it is like to both be a son missing his parents, and how it is like being a parent with their son in danger. For all my anger at the boy refusing to become strong, I would never cause the mental breakdown of a kid that hasn¡¯t even grown hair on his balls.


    ¡°He will be imprisoned until he is willing to submit to my will. I will allow you a visit every decade at this time. I will allow you a visit in around an hour, and every visit will be for a maximum of a single day, starting at the same time you enter the cell. You may bring him food, though any spare will be taken away upon the end of the designated visit time. These are the best conditions you are getting so don¡¯t bother trying to get better ones. In fact, if you try, I will half the visit time and double the time in between visits; making it half a day visits every 2 decades.¡± I smirk slightly as I see the defiant brat¡¯s parents open their mouths before shutting them after hearing my final words.


    I then walk away, preparing the guard roster for in front of the brat¡¯s prison cell. Although I know his cultivation has a ridiculously weak limit, I know that one pair of clan members would attempt to break him out if I don¡¯t sufficiently powerful guards. As I am organizing the guard roster, I still have on thought in the back of my head.


    ¡°What if he escapes and we can¡¯t find him?¡±


    *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *


    Jing Guanyu


    After the patriarch knocks me unconscious, my soul is brought into my soul realm. There, I see Yai Zia smirking at me as he laughs ¡°Heh, you damn kid. That is some guts you got staring at an Immortal Lord level expert like that. Truly a good kid.¡± I look at him, confused as to why I am in my soul realm when I am mean to be unconscious. ¡°How can I be in my soul realm while unconscious?¡± Hearing my questions, Yai Zia laughs heartily before answering.


    ¡°hahaha¡­. Well, the soul realm is like a little space in your soul that your soul and spirit sense can enter whenever you want. It becomes more important during the second and third Evolution of cultivation, but that is a few too many millennia away for you to know."


    I am being imprisoned after having my Divine cultivation bottlenecks reinforced and sealed, so I really don¡¯t have time for these confusing thoughts. ¡°There will be plenty of time after I escape and start to try become a true expert to learn such things,¡± I tell myself as I wait for Yai Zia to say something. Finally, Yai Zia sighs and tries to comfort me. ¡°I am sorry Jing Guanyu. I know how stressful this is for you, but you made the decision yourself and I promise I will help you get out of this completely fine. No, I will make sure you get out completely fine, no crippled body and able to become an Essence, Energy, and Divine Cultivator. To allow you to become a True Cultivator so strong that even this High Heaven Realm will have to bow down at your very name.¡± Looking at me, I can see a glint of determination now in his eyes. With a confident smile, I reply in kind. ¡°What, you are going to make sure I will become like that even though it will make no difference? Whether I can cultivate Essence and Energy or not won¡¯t make a difference. I will still become strong enough to make the Jing Clan bow down to my might and for my parents to be repaid for their kindness.¡±


    Looking at each other, the determination in our eyes mirror each other. After a minute like this, Yai Zia finally opens his mouth and speaks. ¡°You actually can embark on the Energy Cultivation path as well as the Essence Cultivation path. You just need to do one more thing, that is to take the Primordial Rebirth Pill. As for your meridians, don¡¯t worry about them because you can solve that issue before you start cultivating.¡± In reply, I simply nod. Despite the fact that Yai Zia said he would only give the information on my options and let me choose my path, he knows that no matter what, this would be the path I would choose. Therefore, he skipped the whole ¡°so what is your choice¡± part of his teaching routine.


    ¡°Ok, I overheard that your parents are going to be able to visit in an hour for around a day. We need to plan a course of action with them during that time. Come here, let us discuss our part and when your parents arrive; we will all discuss this together and make a plan.¡± Saying so, Yai Zia and I begin our plans to escape the prison cell I am trapped in. Neither of us talked about the seals on my body, Yai Zia being confident in my determination and tenacity to overcome that obstacle. Meanwhile, I was confident in Yai Zia¡¯s stunning breadth of knowledge. Thus, we simply planned. Discussed ideas and slowly, a plan was formed for how we would escape.


    *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *


    Jing Muyu


    As I walk to the prison cell the Jing Clan is keeping my son, I think of how he stood up even to the patriarch of our clan. My son had denied one of the strongest cultivators of the entire High Heaven Realm so he could walk his own path. I can still see that resolute, straight and yet small back as he stood in front of the entire hall of elders. In front of such pressure, he proclaimed his own will, even though he knew that he would suffer for it. Such determination and strength of will made me truly happy for him, yet also truly angry at the clan which forced him to hold so much on his young shoulders. Arriving at the cell my son was residing in, I grabbed the hand of my dear husband, Jing Heng as we walked into the cell.You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.


    Sensing the nature of the arrays in the prison cell, I almost exploded in rage. If it wasn¡¯t for the warm and comforting hand of my husband, I would have already been on a rampage despite the impossible odds stacked against me. Looking around the cell, I saw my son in a strange meditation position as he waited for us. Upon noticing our arrival, the spirit body of his spirit smiles and seems to send a mental message to our son. Almost instantly, my son¡¯s eyes snap open as he gets up and walks towards us. I am surprised to the depth of my soul right now. Despite the near-calamitous situation that has befallen my son, he still has a calm and confident smile on his face as he stops in front of us. With a slight grin, he speaks.


    ¡°Come, mother and father. I have something I wish to talk about with you.¡± After saying so, he walked towards the middle of his cell. It was quite the spacious cell considering that he defied the patriarch¡¯s command. Usually, people that disobey the patriarch will be in a 1.5mx1.5m square cell which is extremely claustrophobic. ¡°I guess he didn¡¯t want my son to have a mental breakdown. He sure is pushing the edge of a mental breakdown though, I guess he wants Yu¡¯er on the edge of a mental breakdown. That would make it easier to make Yu¡¯er submit considering Yu¡¯er has no wish to submit.¡± I think as we sit down on the cold stone floor of the cell. Smiling at us, the voice of our son penetrates our minds.


    ¡°Calm down, Yai Zia is facilitating mental communication between us. He swears it will not get detected. Just talk in real life like nothing suspicious is happening and we should be fine.¡± Hearing our sons mental message, I start to speak to him in real life, worrying over him like any mother should. Even though I was truly worried for my son, I knew that he needed support, not a mother stressing over him. So, while we were conversing in real life, Yu¡¯er was explaining the situation via mental communication.


    ¡°During the time since I have been locked in this cell, Yai Zia and I have come up with a plan to get out of here. However, we need outside help to escape as well as a particular pill in the possession of our clan so I can cultivate the three paths of cultivation.¡±


    ¡°You mean the Primordial Rebirth Pill correct? We know that this is the only pill in the High Heaven Realm that can heal your physical injuries. We have a way to get it, though it will be hard to do without the patriarch detecting us.¡± Jiang Heng answers mentally. While in real life, he is laughing at a joke that I had made about Yu¡¯er¡¯s new spirit contract being extremely high class. Back in the mental discussion, Yu¡¯er replies to Jing Heng.


    ¡°Yes. That is the pill. If I can get that and manage to escape successfully, then even I if am abandoned in the lowest Realm, apparently, it won¡¯t affect my cultivation at all. If what Yai Zia claims is correct of course.¡± The conversation continues like this for the entire 24-hour period. The 3 of us keeping up a physical conversation while the 3 of us and Yai Zia communicate mentally. After that, a plan is established to begin the escape in a millennium. Yai Zia had claimed that Yu¡¯er will be ready to escape at best after two thousand years, though it depends on his comprehensive ability. After saying our tearful goodbyes, in real life, of course, my husband and I leave. Although we were worried about our son, we can tell that no matter what, he will achieve what he desires.


    *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *


    Jing Guanyu


    I watch my parents walk away, a calm and determined exterior hiding the inner sadness in my heart at the fact that I will not see them for a decade. Although they were rarely home the past five years, they were still home a total of a month or two each year depending on how many missions they took and how difficult they were. Now that I know that they took these missions all for the reason of being able to give me a Primordial Rebirth pill, it made me feel even worse. My parents went to so much effort to help me achieve my desires, and yet I ended up burdening them even more than before.


    Even though they already have enough to purchase the Primordial Rebirth pill, they cannot do it openly like they could¡¯ve before. Purchasing this pill without the patriarch discovering before it is too late is almost five times harder than actually earning the money to get the pill. This thought tore through my heart like a hurricane, showing no intention of stopping. Yet, despite the ravaging power of the hurricane of emotions that is within my heart, my Heart still beats strongly and my Will still burns strongly. My heart rejects the self-pity and the negative emotions, telling me to do something about it while my Will gives me the strength to do something about it.


    This determination, this desire for my family to truly have peace, is what is fuelling me strongly still. After 5 years of extreme, lonely and painful training; this power of desire is still pulling me more powerfully than ever towards my goals. Yai Zia, seeing my emotions with his spirit sense, smiles upon seeing how strongly I resist the negative emotions in my heart. With a grin on his face, Yai Zia says ¡°Come kid. Let us find a way to get past those nasty little seals hey.¡± Smiling at Yai Zia¡¯s attempts to cheer me up, I nod and mutter ¡°thank you¡± as we walk over to my new meditation spot on the cold floor of the cell.


    Sitting down, I look at Yai Zia, waiting for him to start the conversation. With a slightly awkward smile, Yai Zia starts to speak. ¡°Well, the seals are very powerful but exceedingly simple in nature. Although they would be a cake-walk to my true self, to you, they are extremely challenging obstacles you must overcome. There is no way for you to overpower them with force, only someone of the peak of the next level of Divine Cultivation would be able to even scratch them and the tiniest scratch would alert the Jing Clan patriarch. Therefore, you will need to use a technique, or in this case, your comprehension of the Dao of Chaos to unlock these. I must say though, your patriarch has absolutely no talent in seals. Even if his spirits are as weak as they are, he should at least be able to force you to get to half his cultivation level as well as his level of the Laws of Chaos before being able to slip through the seals. However, that only applies if he is able to place all his comprehensions into the seals. Unfortunately for him, he isn¡¯t even able to put a quarter of his comprehension of the Dao of Chaos into these seals. Thus, despite the exponentially increasing nature of cultivation, the seals get exponentially weaker the fewer comprehensions the sealer is able to place within the seal. This exponential decrease is by several factors higher than the exponential disparity the difference in cultivation gives; thus our current situation." After saying so, Yai Zia sends a mental imprint to me.


    As I open it, I discover it is an art that apparently enables the cultivator to attune their senses to a particular Dao. In this case, it attuned me to the Dao of Chaos. The attunement art was truly extraordinary, the higher someone¡¯s perception and comprehension abilities, the better they were enhanced when it came to the Dao the art attunes them to. Looking at Yai Zia in shock, the spirit in question begins to chuckle as he says ¡°Seriously, stop looking at me like that. Everyone in my Realm has one kind of attunement technique like that they train in. That one just happens to be the best one for the Dao of Chaos and just happens to be able to act as a merger for up to 6 other attunement arts of the same type. It¡¯s all a coincidence that I have this one you know. It isn¡¯t like I prepared in advance guessing all your spirits are going to be different attributes.¡±


    As I look at Yai Zia disbelievingly, I suddenly burst out laughing. Unable to control myself, I start laughing and crying at the same time. For some reason, seeing the person in question ¡®defend himself¡¯ because he had what he was claiming as one of the best comprehension enhancing techniques was absurdly funny. This was especially so knowing that he was a Dao-spawn of the Dao of Chaos and from the mythical Dao Origin-Realm. It wasn¡¯t even a question of whether he would have this art, it was whether he was willing to give it to me or not that mattered!


    Finally calming down, I smiled as I begun to train in the technique. With a smile to myself, I thought ¡°Jing Clan, for all that you have caused my family to suffer, you shall be repaid in kind!¡±

 Chapter Five

    Chapter Five: Breaking the First Seal


    Yai Zia


    ¡°Well kid, it¡¯s almost time for your parents to visit again,¡± I said cheerfully when the kid came out of his meditation. From the calm smile on his face, I could tell that he finally had completely attuned himself to the Dao of Chaos. After 70 years of hard, grueling and lonely meditation the kid has finally attuned himself to the very peak he could with this attunement art until he gains a new Dao to comprehend. This art was incomparably profound, even for the highly talented cultivators of the Dao Origin-Realm, it usually would take around 60-100 years depending on how good the personality of the cultivator matches up to the nature of the Dao of Chaos. For someone like Jing Guanyu, whose personality would be more suited to one of the more dominating Dao¡¯s like Yang or Destruction; this is a very surprising result for me.


    ¡°And not only did he completely attune himself to the Dao of Chaos in 70 years, he also has made significant progress on his state of mind. Despite having no one but me for 7 decades, his will is just as strong as ever, if not even stronger due to this tempering caused by isolation from the world and other people.¡± I thought deeply as the kid in question, Jing Guanyu, opens his eyes with an expression of happiness. However, it is not an expression of the childish and na?ve happiness of before he was imprisoned.


    ¡°His emotions are far more mature than before, his mental state has slowly been getting colder and more indifferent.¡± I thought as he had still had that small grin on his face, the only indication of an increase in happiness would be the extra light shining in his now slightly fathomless eyes. The kid has always been a handsome child, but now he has a solemness and gravitas in his bearing. Despite still looking the same as he did at the beginning of his imprisonment, the kid seems to look more mature, due to the tempering of his mental, emotional and spiritual states. The kid stands up slowly, doing his stretch routine that is so familiar to the both of us, that we could probably do it in our sleep even if we suffered amnesia.


    ¡°How long?¡± the kid asks me, obviously asking about his parents. Jing Guanyu has even become more taciturn since he was imprisoned. That¡¯s only to be expected, however, isolation can do strange things to people¡¯s mind, body and soul. Answering calmly, I continue to ruminate over how the kid has changed in the short 83 years of life. From a kind, gentle and relatively quiet boy; to the boy with an indomitable will and determination; to the calm, collected boy possessing an even stronger willpower and determination far exceeding the previous two phases of his life so far.


    ¡°They will be in around 6 hours or so.¡± Hearing my words, Jing Guanyu¡¯s smile gets slightly wider as he replies. ¡°Well, in that case, I will just practice that unarmed combat art you taught me as a way to keep my mind, body, and soul calm.¡± After saying so, the kid walked back to the center of the room and assumed a relaxed stance. After a breath of time, he started to slowly and leisurely move around. Although his movements looked seemingly random, someone who is familiar with combat will notice the hidden potential each of the movements has and just how difficult it is to coordinate all the muscles in the body to truly use this combat art. I had given the boy this art because it emphasized maintaining the inner-calm of the practitioner at all times. It is called the ¡°Calm Sea, Immortal Virtues¡± and is among the best of the combat arts I have for him.


    This choice so far has been proven to be a great choice as it has helped Jing Guanyu remain calm and also has given him a way to defend himself after the escape has been enacted. What would happen if he had landed in the middle of a battlefield or in danger when he escapes to the lower realms? There would be no time to teach him a combat art for self-defense, so to teach him one now was a win-win situation. It helped him maintain his inner-calm in this isolation and also taught him one of the stronger beginner level combat arts I have in my possession. My actual body had meticulously studied everything possibly required during the time he was waiting for the kid to begin his path of Divine Cultivation so he would be ready for when Jing Guanyu did become a cultivator. The spirit body was simply a powerless copy of the real body, thus it has the knowledge and comprehensions of the real body.


    As I watch the kid slowly train, I wonder at what the future will bring for him.


    ¡°heh. After he escapes of course.¡± An unbidden thought sounds out in my head, replying to the contemplative thought.


    * * * * * * * * * * * * *


    Jing Guanyu


    ¡°Yu¡¯er!¡± A voice yells out in joy as a beautiful woman rushes towards me. With a wide smile, I open my arms and hug her as she leaps into my embrace. It is my mother, Jing Muyu, here for the decadal visit. Strangely enough, my father isn¡¯t here, though Jing Muyu just parses it off to the empty air with something about looking for an artificer for a new weapon. After an hour or so of reminiscing, we start to talk about my progress so far. My mother turns very serious at this point, listening to me carefully.


    ¡°I have managed to finally achieve complete attunement of the Dao of Chaos just a dozen hours ago. I will have to start meditating on the Dao of Chaos so I will be able to disengage the first seal.¡± I inform her. However, the calm and contemplative expression makes me seem like a child trying to be serious with my still immature features. Seeing the childish appearance, Yai Zia and Jing Muyu can¡¯t help but start making weird faces as if they were trying to keep quiet. When I raise my left eyebrow at them in confusion, they both start laughing loudly. After a few breaths of time, the pair of parental figures finally show their maturity by quelling their laughter. Jing Muyu, still nearly giggling, answers my unvoiced question.


    ¡°I am sorry Yu¡¯er. You just looked like such a child just then. It reminded me of the time when my husband and I went on our first mission. Your expression was just like the one from back then.¡± While my face was still contorted in slight confusion, Jing Muyu and Yai Zia continue to make plans; showing their maturity as they quickly act like nothing happened. Deciding to forget what happened to avoid unnecessary confusion, I ask about the progress of our plans on their side.


    ¡°How are things going on your side mother?¡± Jing Mu smiles brightly as she replies.


    ¡°Things are going great, Jing Heng is actually in the process of completing the trade for your Primordial Rebirth Pill and the conditions of the trade are fair. Once the trade is done, we will be unable to give anyone else the technique for a millennium.¡± Upon hearing her words, Yai Zia also grins and puts forth his opinion.


    ¡°That is a good deal. I think it will take Jing Guanyu around 2000 years or so to finish everything. What? The attunement gets exponentially harder to progress in the more Dao are infused into the art. Remember, it can have a maximum of six additional Dao infused into the art and for each extra Dao added, the difficulty will get exponentially harder. Especially considering what your other 6 Dao are going to be like.¡± Yai Zia was forced to add a few additional sentences to explain his reasoning because of the dark look I gave him. Hearing his explanation, I simply nod my head and return my attention back to my mother. Jing Muyu, still warmly smiling, answers positively upon hearing the opinion of Yai Zia.


    ¡°2000 years or so and you two will be ready?! I thought this escape would take five thousand years at the minimum¡­ After all, comprehending the Dao of Chaos enough to break those seals while still imitating the seals¡¯ energy signature is very hard.¡± I nodded my head in agreement at my mother¡¯s words. Yai Zia had eventually managed to make me understand just how high of a comprehension I would need. Yai Zia smirked, unconscious of the arrogance within his smirk when he heard Jing Mu¡¯s words.


    ¡°2000 years just to gain those insights? No, to gain the required insights will at most take another 350 years or so considering how sensitive he is to the Dao of Chaos. He also only needs to get to a certain level and he will naturally be able to undo all of the seals. The only thing that would prevent him from undoing all of them the instant he has the comprehension; is the sheer amount of spiritual energy required to condense enough of the Laws of Chaos to undo the seals. This is considering how hard it will be to make his foundation¡¯s solidity high enough to achieve this without resources. Either way, although we will be ready to escape at that time, we will likely delay this for up to another 2000 years if we have to.¡± The words of Yai Zia caused a frown to appear on my mother¡¯s beautiful face.


    ¡°That is a very fast estimation. Are you sure Yu¡¯er will be able to do it in that time?¡± my mother asks skeptically. Yai Zia just grins knowingly as he answers.


    ¡°Well¡­¡­ He could do it in 1000 years, but he would only have the requisite comprehension of the Dao of Chaos. The 2000-year estimation is if a miracle happens and the kid encounters no bottlenecks in the other things I have planned for him to do in here before the escape. At worst it¡¯ll take nearly 10,000 years for him to achieve all that with a barely passable result. If he wanted to have everything completely perfect, at worst he would take nearly 20 millennia to do it all.¡± At Yai Zia¡¯s answer, my mother¡¯s mouth drops in shock. It was for a good reason, although technically people who have achieved the Immortal Evolution have an infinite lifespan; The rigors of life will always eventually wear away the soul and will; causing cultivators to lose their desire to live. This is one of the demises cultivators can face during their journey to the peak of cultivation. In the High Heaven Realm, the longest time a cultivator can live without losing their will to live is from 10,000 to 100,000 years depending on their Divine Cultivation level. Divine cultivators would usually live longer due to the fact that their soul, and thus their soul and will is far stronger than an Essence or Energy cultivator.A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.


    ¡°10,000 years is enough time to cause quite a few Immortals to lose their will to live!¡± I think to myself as my mother regains her composure. Once she has calmed herself, she then speaks calmly, but incredulously to Yai Zia.


    ¡°Over 10,000 years at worst! You do realize that by the time that he has escaped, most of the current immortals will be dead?! What would be the point of escaping then?¡± Yai Zia simply widens his grin when he hears Jing Muyu speak. I also open my eyes from my quiet thoughts and give Yai Zia my full attention. I am also interested to know the answer to this question. Yai Zia simply smirks and starts to leisurely fiddle around with his appearance as if he was bored. After a minute of doing this, he notices a glare directed at him from my direction. Turning around, he sees me staring at him with a glare, demanding him to answer the question with my eyes. With an exaggerated sigh, Yai Zia finally answers slowly.


    ¡°10,000 years is not as bad as you think. Everyone in your clan cultivates along the path of Divine Cultivation and one of the other two paths usually. Even if a clan member of your clan becomes an Essence or Energy Immortal, their soul is still strong enough due to their Divine Cultivation to allow them at least 30,000 years to live. That is also excluding people like the patriarch, who is a True Immortal who is at Immortal Evolution with all three paths currently. He would likely last 500,000 years or so at best and half that at the worst. Given that Jing Jiao is a talent on the same level as the patriarch, he will also survive this time period. There would only be no point in doing this if it would take 50,000 years or more to do everything since the patriarch would likely just either forget it or have found a ¡®true talent¡¯ to nurture that is apparently on the kid¡¯s level.¡± With a nod of understanding, both my mother and I finally understand the thought process of Yai Zia in this aspect of the plan.


    After Yai Zia has explained this, the three of us continue to speak care freely until the time is up. Once my mother has departed, I look at Yai Zia and ask him something which has been on my mind for the past 7 decades.


    ¡°Yai Zia, how am I supposed to meditate on the Dao of Chaos to comprehend the Laws of Chaos when the arrays prevent me from doing so?¡± Yai Zia simply looks at me for some reason, before bursting into laughter. This time, it takes him quite a while to regain his composure. When he does, however, he is still smirking at me.


    ¡°Hahaha, you forget who and what I am. I am a Dao-Spawn of the Dao of Chaos. I myself am literally a body made of the Dao of Chaos that happened to gain a soul. If you want to meditate on the Dao of Chaos, just meditate on my within your soul realm. I may not be a real body condensed of the Dao of Chaos but I still maintain my knowledge and comprehensions of the Laws of Chaos. Besides, this spirit body is structured the exact same way my original body was formed by the Dao of Chaos. With a living being born of the purest prime essence of the Dao of Chaos, how can you not meditate on it?¡± My mouth drops open in surprise. Seeing my shocked expression Yai Zia starts to laugh at me heartily.


    ¡°Well kid, back to work. You got 300 years of comprehension to do. Best start it now heh heh heh.¡± With a joking glare at Yai Zia that was betrayed by my eyes, I proceed to the center of the room and begin to meditate.


    * * * * * * * * * * * * *


    Jing Heng


    ¡°Have you got the pill then?¡± I ask almost eagerly to the man standing in front of me. This man is the biggest prospective purchaser for the alchemy technique given to Jing Mu and I in anticipation of this kind of situation. The two cultivators had told us that this technique was only for the purpose of gaining a Primordial Rebirth pill for when my son was 18. This man was the legendary Alchemical Immortal, an Immortal alchemist and the greatest in the High Heaven Realm. Even he was extremely interested in such a technique, easily willing to trade it for a Primordial Rebirth pill. Right now, we were doing the trading of the technique for the pill. Since the technique was what was being sold, the Alchemical Immortal, knowing my reputation, handed the Primordial Rebirth over to me with no hesitation.


    After signing the contract and receiving the pill, I immediately grabbed a jade slip while I initiated the copy and record function inbuilt into the mental imprint the technique was stored on. The mental imprint then immediately replicated itself, including the technique, as it transferred the copy onto the jade slip. Once done, I respectfully gave the jade slip to the eager Alchemical Immortal who thanked me.


    ¡°Thank you Jing Mu. Here is a communication talisman so you can contact me if you need to. You are a fine man, let us keep in touch.¡± As the Alchemical Immortal said this, he handed me a tough talisman made of the skin of a strong demonic beast. The talisman already had the talisman signature of the Alchemical Immortal upon it and I smiled widely with joy when I received it. Getting the pill for my son and becoming an acquaintance of the Alchemical Immortal; today was a great day for me. Bowing politely, I lead the Alchemical Immortal to the door of the inn room we used for the transaction. It was an inn I often frequented due to it being owned by a family that my wife and I had saved on an adventure once.


    The inn itself, while not luxurious or opulent, had a modest but quality feel to it. Everything within it screamed of aesthetic simplicity; this simplicity was what made the inn seem high quality in its own way. Being here would not arouse the suspicion of the patriarch. The only thing which would be mildly suspicious was the fact I visited during the time we can see my son, but my wife and I have pretended to be estranged due to differing opinions on his situation at the moment. Given that I have pretended to want my son to submit to the patriarch, my son and I also being estranged would be natural because of his stubborn disposition. The Alchemical Immortal had completely disguised himself using all of his knowledge as a master of pills and won¡¯t be noticed by anyone.


    This whole plan has been intricately planned and slowly advanced over the 7 decades of Jing Guanyu¡¯s imprisonment. I am happy that the trade succeeded, though I still maintained my calm, alert posture as the Alchemical Immortal left. We had pretended to be old friends who met on one of the many missions that had been undertaken by my wife and I over the years. Once the Alchemical Immortal left, I then spent the remainder of the time before my planned return to enjoy my time with the family that I had once saved.


    * * * * * * * * * * * * *


    300 years later


    Jing Guanyu


    ¡°Well kid, are you ready?¡± Yai Zia asks me as I open my eyes. With a smile, I nod my head as I slowly stand up. The past 300 years have been nothing but meditation, sleep, and training in various different combat arts. After I had achieved mastery of the first combat art, the ¡°Calm Sea, Immortal Virtues¡±, Yai Zia had taught me a wide variety of different combat arts. He gave me 7 other combat arts that were supposedly the ¡°most supreme of their kind¡± in his words. They were wildly varying with each being focused on a different style. The 7 combat arts were each about balance, domination, insidiousness, elusive, control, aggression and defense.


    Each combat art focused on one of these ways of fighting with the ¡°Calm Sea, Immortal Virtues¡± combat art focusing on being composed and versatile with no real form of fighting. Despite my hard work, I had only mastered the dominating combat art to the minor stage of the first level and gotten to the initial, beginner most stages of the other 6 combat arts. Although I was still working hard, Yai Zia had told me that the 7 combat arts he taught me were among the most supreme of the Dao they followed. The combat arts had no instruction on their Dao, Yai Zia having removed those parts, but I could still guess what the 7 combat arts Dao¡¯s were.


    ¡°I suppose I know what the other 6 contract¡¯s attributes are going to be. It is just a matter of which one I will be making the contract with.¡± I thought to myself as Yai Zia started explaining the process I would need to take and some things to watch out for during the procedure. With a slight sigh, I let these thoughts flow away like a leaf in the wind as I focus on the task at hand. Nodding to Yai Zia, I then sit down and start to use my comprehension of the Dao of Chaos to make my spirit power have the attribute of chaos. This took almost a week, upon the completion of which I immediately cast the spirit power into my soul to find the first seal.


    With a slight smile on my face, I find the first seal. While I am studying the seal meticulously, Yai Zia appears next to me with his customary grin on his face as he quickly evaluates the seal according to the standards of the Dao Origin-Realm.


    ¡°Well¡­. It would be a miracle if this was judged as mediocre in any random village in the Dao Origin-Realm. How can a seal this weak and so¡­ Unrestrictive? It is like sticking a table in front of your door and saying it is a high-security lock. I mean sure, it would work for a while, but eventually, some cultivator is just going to punch the door and table into wood chips while waltzing into the house. I don¡¯t even know how the High Heaven Realm can consider this seal as good, let alone as one of the heaven-defying sealing techniques it is considered as.¡± I simply continue to focus while ignoring the disdainful rant of Yai Zia. I had adapted to his derisive evaluations of anything related to the High Heaven Realm over the past 370 years. He would say practically the exact same thing each time, to the point where I had to ignore it or I would say things which shouldn¡¯t be said.


    After a month, Yai Zia and I start to discuss the seal and what we have comprehended from it just to be sure that I know the method of unsealing my path of Divine Cultivation. The unsealing of the path of Divine Cultivation was the easy part, the hard part was making sure that the now ineffective seal still emitted it signatures so that the patriarch of the Jing Clan wouldn¡¯t be aware of the fact that I unsealed one of the seals.


    Time dragged on as we continued to slowly and laboriously, unseal my path of Divine Cultivation.

 Apologies and Unexpected Problems

    Hey everyone, I know it has been a while and you were all expecting a chapter either yesterday or 8 days ago (cant remember lol). I just want to apologise because i ran into some unexpected problems. Its nothing serious, just a problem with the wif. As you know I am boarding to attend college and the dorm is attatched to a college (not the one i go to tho </img>) and thus since i dont wanna fork out an extra $30 a month for wifi, I just use the school wifi. But this blocks practically everything, even RRL.


    Now i have always got around this blocking using VPN for both phone and computer. But for some reason, since Sunday night (like 72 hour or so ago) the vpn for my computer broke.Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.


    All of them did, half of my usual vpn extensions couldnt even load the extension. Now either the school fixed vpn or my desktop updated and fucked something. I am currently trying to think of a solution and yes i have already thought of uploading chaoters via phone (like this one), but thats my last resort cos it is a bitch to get this stuff from desktop to phone to royalroad .


    So I am attempting to solve the problem and I apologise for any delays with chapters that have and will possibly occur. Do note that i am already half done with the chapter that was originally due yesterday which i stopped writing halfway due to trying to a. Fix the vpn and b. Doing urgent homework.


    Ok, I got class in 1 hour and 39 minutes and it takes ~20 to get to my school. So i gotta go get ready. Sorry bout the delays, hope you stick with me cos that would make me feel absolutely amazing