The Great Dao is a silent thing. At the pinnacle of the Ninth Heaven, there is no wind, no sound, and certainly no heat. There is only the Law—the cold, crystalline structure of reality that Gu Yan had spent ten million years unravelling until he finally became the hand that wove it. To be a Sovereign is to be everything, and to be everything is to be, in essence, nothing at all.
When the consciousness of the One Who Reigns returned to the world of dust, it did not arrive with the blare of trumpets or the shattering of space. It arrived with the sting of salt.
Drip.
A single drop of sweat rolled down a forehead, bypassed a soot-stained eyebrow, and stung an eye.
A single drop of sweat rolled down a forehead, bypassed a soot-stained eyebrow, and stung an eye.
Gu Yan—now "Chen Er"—blinked. The sensation was sharp, annoying, and utterly magnificent. He had forgotten that eyes could sting. He had forgotten that skin could itch. He had forgotten the heavy, claustrophobic weight of a physical heart beating inside a cage of bone.
"Chen Er! You brainless brat! Are you daydreaming again? The bellows! Pull the damn bellows!"
The voice was like a rusted saw cutting through dry wood. It belonged to Old Man Li, a man whose skin was the color of cured leather and whose breath smelled of cheap tobacco and fermented grain. To any cultivator, Old Man Li was a flicker of a candle in a hurricane—a life that would extinguish in a few decades and leave no mark on history.
To Chen Er, he was the center of the current universe.
"Coming, Master," Chen Er replied.
His voice was hoarse, the vocal cords untrained and thick with the dust of the forge. He reached out with a hand that was calloused and scarred, gripping the wooden handle of the massive bellows. In his previous state, he could have exhaled and created a star-consuming fire. Now, he had to use his triceps, his back, and his breath.
Heave. Whoosh. Heave. Whoosh.
The charcoal in the pit responded. It glowed a dull, angry orange, then shifted into a bright, searing yellow. The heat hit his face, singing the fine hairs on his arms. It was a crude, primitive heat. It wasn't the refined Essence of Sun-Fire; it was just the combustion of carbon.
It was perfect.
"Keep it steady!" Old Man Li grunted, lifting a glowing slab of pig iron with a pair of long-handled tongs. "This plowshare won't forge itself. The Widow Zhang needs it by tomorrow, and if we miss the spring tilling, I'll be eating my own boots for dinner."
Chen Er watched the iron. His "Spirit Sense" was buried so deep within the folds of his soul that it was effectively gone, yet his eyes—mortal as they were—still retained the wisdom of eons. He saw the impurities in the metal. He saw the structural weakness in the way the grain of the iron shifted under the heat. A single thought from him could have transmuted this pig iron into Peerless Divine Steel.
He did nothing.
Instead, he focused on the rhythm. The clack-clack of the bellows' valves. The rhythmic tink-tink-tink as Old Man Li began to hammer, shaping the metal into a tool meant to turn the earth.
This was Green Bamboo Village. It was a humid, unremarkable pocket of the Southern Border, tucked away between two mist-shrouded mountains that the local legends said were sleeping dragons. To the great sects of the world, this place was a void of spiritual energy, a wasteland. To the people living here, it was the whole world.
As the sun began to dip below the horizon, casting long, bruised shadows across the dirt floor of the smithy, Chen Er felt a deep, aching fatigue in his shoulders. It was a dull throb, a signal from his nerves that he had reached the limit of his current physical shell.
He leaned against the wooden post of the forge, wiping his face with a rag that was more grease than cloth.
So, this is 'tired,' he thought. A faint, almost imperceptible smile touched the corner of his soot-streaked mouth. It is much heavier than I remembered.
"Stop grinning like an idiot and go fetch the water," Old Man Li snapped, though there was no real malice in it. The old man tossed a copper coin onto the workbench. "Buy a jar of the 'Old Willow' brew on your way back. My joints are screaming louder than you are."
Chen Er picked up the coin. It was cold, dirty, and held the faint scent of a hundred different hands. It was the smallest unit of currency in the Great Liang Empire. To the Sovereign who had once owned mountains of Spirit Stones, this copper coin felt like a treasure.
He stepped out of the smithy. The air outside was cooling, smelling of damp earth and the green, sharp scent of the bamboo forests that gave the village its name. He walked with a slight limp—a remnant of a childhood fall that the 'original' Chen Er had suffered. He didn't heal it.
He walked into the gathering dusk, just another mortal among millions, heading toward a cheap tavern to buy mediocre wine for a grumpy old man.
The Great Dao was silent. But the crickets in the bamboo were very, very loud.
The walk from the forge to the center of Green Bamboo Village was exactly four hundred and twelve paces. To Chen Er, whose internal sense of space was once calibrated to the distance between star clusters, this walk was a novelty. He felt the unevenness of the packed dirt under his thin-soled cloth shoes. He felt the humidity of the Southern Border clinging to his skin like a damp shroud.
The village tavern, "The Drunken Bamboo," was a leaning structure of weathered wood and thatch. It was the only place in the village that stayed lit after the sun dipped below the peaks. As Chen Er approached, the low hum of mortal voices drifted out—a messy, chaotic sound of laughter, grumbling, and the clinking of ceramic bowls.
He stepped over the threshold, his head slightly bowed. In this life, he was a "half-wit" apprentice. To attract no attention was his primary goal.
"Yo, look who it is! Little Er, has the Old Man finally worked you to death, or are you just here to smell the wine you can't afford?"
The voice belonged to Fat Uncle Liu, the tavern owner. He was a man whose belly seemed to be trying to escape his grease-stained apron, and his eyes were perpetually narrowed as if calculating the exact value of everyone in the room.
Chen Er held up the copper coin. His voice was slow, mimicking the rhythm of a man whose mind was as sluggish as the village river. "Master... wants the Willow Brew. A full jar."
Fat Uncle Liu snatched the coin, biting it instinctively to check its purity before tossing it into a wooden till. "A full jar? The Old Man must have finished that plowshare for the Widow Zhang. Sit, sit. It takes time to draw from the bottom of the cask. Don't just stand there like a wooden post; you're blocking the light."
Chen Er moved to a dark corner, settling onto a bench that creaked ominously. He sat perfectly still, his hands resting on his knees. To the casual observer, he was a tired boy staring at nothing. In reality, he was a Sovereign drinking in the "flavor" of the room.
At the center table, three farmers were hunched over a plate of salted beans. Their faces were etched with deep lines, the "Dao" of hard labor written in the calluses of their hands.
"The Magistrate's men came by the west field today," one farmer whispered, his voice thick with anxiety. "They're saying the Spring Tax is going up by ten percent. Ten percent! My youngest doesn't even have shoes for the mud, and they want more grain?"
"It's because of the war in the North," another replied, shaking his head. "They say the Immortal Sects are fighting again. When the gods move, the ants get stepped on. Our grain isn't going to the Emperor; it's going to feed the horses of the cultivators."
"Quiet, you fool!" the third hissed, glancing around nervously. "If a passing 'Immortal' hears you calling them 'gods' with that tone, he'll turn this whole village into a charcoal pit just to cleanse his ears."
Chen Er listened. The "Immortal Sects" they spoke of were likely just low-tier Spirit Gathering practitioners, barely a step above mortals, yet to these farmers, they were the arbiters of life and death. He found the irony exquisite. He had once wiped out entire Sects because their Ancestors had looked at him with a hint of disrespect. Now, he was sitting in the dark, listening to men worry about the price of grain caused by the "gods" he used to command.
A shadow fell over his table. It was a young girl, perhaps sixteen, carrying a tray of empty bowls. She was the tavern owner's daughter, Liu Mei. She had a simple, clean beauty—the kind that would fade after five years of marriage and three children, but currently possessed a certain rustic radiance.
She looked at Chen Er, her eyes softening with a pity that would have been an insult to his true self, but was fascinating to his current role.
"Are you hungry, Little Er?" she asked softly, sliding a small, cracked bowl toward him. It contained two leftover steamed buns, cold and slightly hard. "My father won't miss these. You look like you haven't eaten since the winter."
Chen Er looked at the buns. They were made of coarse flour, probably mixed with husk. To a Sovereign, this was filth.
He reached out, his soot-stained fingers trembling slightly—a physical reaction to the hunger his mortal shell was genuinely feeling. "Thank... thank you, Sister Mei."
He took a bite. The texture was rough, the taste bland and yeasty. It was the taste of struggle. It was the taste of a life that had no grand ambitions beyond the next meal.
As he chewed, he realized that for the first time in an eternity, he wasn't eating to replenish "Origin Essence" or to satisfy a ritual. He was eating because if he didn't, this body would wither.
"Here's your wine, brat! Tell the Old Man if he wants it cheaper next time, he can bring his own jar!" Fat Uncle Liu shouted, slamming a sealed clay jar onto the counter.
Chen Er stood up, tucked the remaining bun into his tunic, and took the wine. He bowed his head to Liu Mei, a gesture of "mortal" gratitude, and walked back out into the night.
The conversation in the tavern continued—the farmers arguing over copper, the drunkards singing off-key, the daughter dreaming of a life outside the village.
To Gu Yan, the Sovereign, these were the sounds of a flickering flame.
To Chen Er, the Apprentice, these were the sounds of his world.
As he walked back to the forge, the weight of the wine jar in his hand felt more "real" than any Heavenly Treasure he had ever held. He had a master to serve, a bun in his pocket, and a creaky bed waiting for him.
He was perfectly, beautifully, insignificant