The martial world was smaller than I remembered.
Narrower. Meaner. A husk - withered and shriveled by the same entropy that gnawed at my bones for centuries. The sky hung low and gray, bleeding into gray mud. Even the mountains, once proud cages for titans - stood dulled and worn, their jagged peaks had been whittled down to ragged stumps.
The world has been devoured by time and neglect.
The camp reeked of rot and despair, it was a festering stew of filth that soaked into the ground like a blight. The sour stench of body odour mingled with the sickening sweet decay of maggot infested meat left to bake under the morning sun.
I kept my breaths short and shallow, after reforming my broken core to the mortal realm I found myself needing to breathe again. But the repugnance was overwhelming and I struggled to hold back from gagging on the air.
It was clear that the gods had spat on this place, on these people.
I forced my eyes open, it felt like sand was being dragged under my eyelids. They stuck, crusted thick with centuries of sleep. My vision was still fogged over as my eyes adjusted to the light, I could make out shapes but details were still a blur.
I tried to move.
The weight of the chains had gone, but their memory was still etched into my body. Leaving behind raw aching wounds in their place, I found myself wondering if I had died once more in that fleeting moment.
Despite having reformed a core in my dantian, I had returned to the mortal realm. The beginning stage of cultivation. My body hadn't yet fully recovered and the slither of strength provided by the newly created core paled in comparison to what I had been used to.
I looked down.
My hands first. My fingers were brittle like dried twigs, swollen at the joints, crusted with blackened earth. Nails thin, curling like the delicate shell of an insect. My wrists were adorned with rings of blackened scabs, the ghostly marks of the chains that had been branded into my flesh.
I flexed my fingers slowly, fighting through the agonising stiffness. Every muscle and tendon burned with memory.
Laughter shattered my silent reflection. A harsh contrast to the quiet world around us.
The men had gathered in a circle around an open fire, built from scrap wood and bleached bones. Judging from their ragged outfits and barbaric nature they had to be bandits.
Twelve, I counted.
Some gnawing hungrily on charred bones, picking at what was left of a carcass like vultures. One leaned against a broken wagon wheel, draining a skin of foul smelling alcohol, dribbling half of it down his front. Others snored in a pile of sacks. Another squatted near the fire, twirling a crude blade restlessly.
I catalogued them, a butcher inspecting the spoils of a hunt. Sorting through bone and meat, deciding what to eat and what to throw away.
I was bound again. Not by chains, but by a thick cord. Knotted at my ankles and covered in blood and bile. Crude.
Insulting.
I twisted once. The cord bit into my skin and held firm. I recalled a time when my skin was as thick as iron, when even blades would fail to cut me. I would have to start again from the bottom, even a rope was enough to tear into my flesh.
My neck protested as I continued to scan the camp, aching and stiff like a weathered hinge. My skin was stretched and pale, like brittle porcelain over hollowed bones. Black veins webbed beneath the surface. I could no longer remember my own reflection, but I didn't need to see it to know what I would find - sunken eyes, lips drawn back over teeth like a skull's grim mockery.
I didn't need to see myself to know how much I had lost.
My senses continued to return in slow waves, as if they were developing for the first time.
I began to regain my taste, sour and stale. Copper emanating from my cracked lips.
I summoned the refreshing bliss of water, the fire of the Jade Emperor's wine. Nothing. Everything had been stolen away.
Sound was last to return in clarity. The muddied booming of voices was replaced by the quiet of the world. No birds sang, no insects hummed. Just the crackles and hissing of the fire.
I closed my eyes, drawing inwards to gather myself and assess my body.
My core, once blazing like a small sun, was now a gaping wound. Its newly formed replacement was at least flawless and undamaged, despite being a shadow of its predecessor.
I proved it gently, twinging at the touch. Like poking at a bruise, it was still raw.
I drew a breath. The cold air scraping against my lungs, an aching tightness in my chest as my lungs pushed against my ribcage.
It was faint, but I could feel my body drawing in internal qi from that one breath. Muddied and impure, but I could work with that.
My core stirred sluggish, obedient to my will. It warmed my belly, tensing as it pumped the slither of qi through my body like a failing heart. It was shallow, but real. For the first time in a long time, I didn't feel like a corpse.
Movement at the edge of the camp.
Two men approached. Larger than the rest, but their cultivation was pale and patchy, like pus oozing from an old wound. Even in my youth a single glance would have been enough to shatter their spirits, but now they were curiosities.
Heads bent low, they were arguing over some petty grievance.
One of them jabbed a finger in my direction.
The other grinned cruelly, a jagged smile through rotten teeth.
The first spat, wiping his face on his arm as he stalked towards me.
I feigned sleep.
A boot smashed into my ribs, an insult but nothing more.
I didn't flinch.
He barked at me in a crude dialect, their language was rough, but his intent was clear.
I opened my eyes slowly, making the struggle a show as the crust in my eyes felt like shards of glass. His face loomed over me, a lazy eye, scarred cheek and breath thick with decay.
I met his gaze and let him see the hollowness within.
"Shit. A fink he's blind." He muttered, turning to his companion.
The other shrugged, rubbing the side of his club down his arm, leaving a greasy smear.
I studied them both, barely even worth conscription. Insects compared to the men I had once commanded. Their stances spoke of violence, but not true challenge. Lazy and untrained.
The one with the club would be the first to die.
"Get up!" He barked. The club cracked across my thigh, sharp and stinging but trivial.
I staggered to my feet. Emaciated, I was taller than both of them, but I hunched low, shuffling like a wounded dog.
They shoved me toward the fire. The others looked up from their drunken revelry. Hurling various insults I couldn't translate yet.
They forced me down onto my knees in front of the flames. I stared into the fire, looking for its pulse. The qi here was thin, thinner than I remembered, but the flames still beat weakly.
I inhaled deeply, feeling the faintest connection sparking until it flickered and died.
Another man stepped forward, their leader I surmised. His armour was the most complete of the ragtag bunch, with a ring on his finger that housed the smallest piece of jade. He walked with a limp and the confidence of a man who had never been denied.
He knelt, face close, he smelled of cheap tobacco and spoiled beer.
He reached out and grabbed the back of my head, looking over my face with a wicked grin.
"You know why we pulled you out?" He asked, his voice rough.
I remained silent.
I still hadn't grasped their language, but based on the odd word, tone and inflection I could get the gist.
"You're a foreigner. And they sell for a pretty penny." He barked.
I could feel the jade in his ring resonating behind my head, it was pulling in the ambient qi. My memory must have lapsed, jade is a natural conduit for energy. But this moron wore it as a bauble, ignorant of its purpose.
That which was coveted by alchemists and martial masters, was now reduced to the flubbery fingers and treated as a trinket. In my age, it was used by formation masters and embedded into spiritual arrays, feeding entire temples with earth qi.
Without thought I reached out for it behind my head, all I need is a sliver of energy. It resisted, slippery and stubborn. But I gathered enough to send a wave of warmth curling down my arm.
The leader jerked back.
"What do you know, he has some fight in him!" He laughed heartedly. Some of his men laughed nervously, others turned to look at what had happened.
He slapped me with the back of his hand, but I held my reaction in.
He spat into the fire and stormed off, barking orders at his minions.
The men resumed eating, drinking and chattering, but their gazes were wary. I suppose I had moved up on their estimations, from insect to vermin.
I was thrown back into a canvas tent.
I sat there, gazing out at the camp. Studying their names, faces and their movements. How they kept their weapons, who watched the perimeter and who turned their back.
I remembered the cowards and the brutes.
Biding my time and taking the opportunity to gather my strength.
I reached inwards to cultivate, refining the qi I had absorbed into my core. Testing the pathways to my meridians.
I really was back at the bottom of the cultivation ladder.
No wonder I felt frail.
The mortal realm was the beginning of every cultivator's journey. Above it stood the qi gathering stage, the body tempering stage, the foundation establishment stage.
Each a mountain I needed to climb again.
The only meridian I could get any response from was my lungs. My pathways weren't blocked, but the other meridians would need to be unlocked.
It burned in my veins, painful but sweet. Like using a muscle you had forgotten.
For hours I sat motionless, circulating my qi to refine it. I hadn't necessarily opted to use the Demonic Emperor cultivation technique, but it was the cultivation method I used before ascending to godhood. It was akin to breathing, even after all this time had passed.
An infamous breathing method I evolved from my ancestors, devouring qi from man, beast and even the earth itself. Turning it into raw power, volatile and untumable to the weak willed. But it wasn't a power like the orthodox sects, it was a hunger. An insatiable force that allowed me to climb the heavens.
Eventually one of the guards closest to me dozed off and the other wandered around on his patrol.
The camp had grown quieter, sleep and drunkenness dulling their senses.
I splayed my hand on the ground.
The ground pulsed with a slow rhythm, I could feel the earth's breath.
It was faint, but it was there.
This was not the world I had ruled over as the Heavenly Demon.
Not even close.
I closed my eyes.
But it was enough.
My core responded to my lust for strength.
It grew warmer as my qi gathered in my dantian.
It was almost time…