The Void Breathing Art had been Kai's masterpiece, created after he'd achieved the Transcendent Realm. In his previous life, he'd thought it could only be practiced at the highest levels of cultivation.
He'd been wrong.
The technique didn't require power—it required understanding. Understanding of the Void itself, the space between spaces where all potential existed.
Kai had that understanding now. He'd touched the Void as it unmade reality. He'd felt it trying to preserve him, to preserve Yuhan.
*The Void remembers,* he realized. *It knows me.*
He began with the simplest breathing pattern, drawing in ambient spiritual energy. Then, carefully, he adjusted the circulation path to include the five Void Apertures—points in the body that only awakened naturally at Soul Transformation Realm.
Pain lanced through him as the first aperture resisted. It was like trying to open a rusted lock, forcing pathways that had been sealed since birth.
*I've done this before,* Kai reminded himself. *I can do it again.*
He pushed harder, compressing spiritual energy into a needle-thin stream and driving it into the aperture below his heart. The pain intensified, white-hot agony that would have made his younger self scream.
But Kai had been tortured by demon lords, had his meridians shattered and rebuilt, had his soul torn apart by Tribulation Lightning. This pain was nothing.
The aperture burst open.
For one terrifying instant, the Void itself flooded into his body—infinite, eternal, utterly lethal to anything mortal. Reality bent around him, the room's edges blurring as if seen through water.
Then his instincts kicked in. Muscle memory from a thousand years of controlling this exact energy. He shaped the Void into a thread, guided it into his dantian, and watched as his nascent core ignited.
Black as the space between stars, shot through with veins of silver light.
A Void-Aspect Core.
But something was different this time. As the core stabilized, Kai felt an echo—another presence touching the Void somewhere distant. Another consciousness that resonated with the same frequency.
*Yuhan.*
He was out there, somewhere in the Three Realms, also rebuilding his cultivation. Also preparing for what was to come.
And somehow, through the Void that connected all things, Kai could feel him.
The sensation faded after a moment, but the knowledge remained. They were linked now, in a way they'd never been before. The Void had sent them both back, and in doing so, had tied their fates together even more closely than in their previous life.
*Good,* Kai thought, opening his eyes as dawn light crept through his window. *This time, I won't let you sacrifice yourself for me.*
*This time, I'll be strong enough to stand beside you.*
*And this time, I'll tell you what I should have said a thousand years ago.*