The small wooden cabin sat on the lawn just outside the Lotus Palace grounds, modest and unassuming. Ten square meters of living space, barely enough for a bed, a small table, and a cabinet for his few possessions. But it had been home for longer than Nova cared to remember, and as he stepped through the doorway, the familiar simplicity felt oddly comforting after the chaos of the past night.
The morning sun was just beginning to crest over the eastern mountains, painting the sky in shades of gold and amber. Light streamed through the single window, warming the wooden floor and casting long shadows across the room.
Nova stood in that patch of sunlight and closed his eyes, letting the warmth wash over him.
For the first time in what felt like forever, he felt... hope.
His body no longer ached with the weight of impending death. His meridians hummed with spiritual energy instead of lying dormant and useless. The seventh stage of Qi Refining—a realm he'd never dared dream of reaching—was now his reality.
"If this old candle could truly reignite its flame," Nova murmured to himself, opening his eyes to stare at his transformed hands. "That would be wonderful."
But even as the words left his lips, doubt crept in.
His spiritual veins were still trash—barely half a proper First Grade meridian. His comprehension ability remained as mediocre as it had always been. One breakthrough didn't change fundamental limitations, didn't suddenly grant him the talent he'd spent centuries lacking.
"What a pity," Nova sighed, the moment of hope already fading. "Miracles don't favor the unfortunate."
This opportunity was totally by accident, and the only reason he advanced to this stage was because of the sect leader cultivation realm and the cultivation technique she practiced, it would be almost impossible to find another person with the same requirement. And even if he did, they probably wouldn't want to sleep with him.
He turned away from the window and moved to his small table, setting down the jade scroll and storage ring Luna had given him. The scroll seemed to glow faintly in the morning light, its surface covered in intricate engravings that spoke of ancient power and profound mysteries.
The Primordial Yin-Yang Fusion Scripture. Yang portion.
A Late Supreme tier technique when practiced alone. Early Primordial tier when both portions were cultivated together through dual cultivation.
Nova had memorized the technique ranking system from his years of reading in Luna's library:
Yellow → Black → Red → Purple → Earth → Sky → Heaven → Supreme → Primordial → Dao → Origin → Eternal → Chaos
Most outer sect disciples practiced Yellow or Black tier techniques. Inner disciples had access to Red and Purple. Core disciples received Earth and Sky tier methods. Only elders and the Sect Leader possessed Heaven tier techniques and above.
And here Nova was, a mere servant, holding a Supreme tier technique in his hands.
The absurdity of it made him want to laugh.
"Well," Nova said to the empty room, "I suppose I should at least try to understand it."
He sat cross-legged on his sleeping mat, holding the jade scroll carefully. With a deep breath, he pressed his consciousness against the scroll's surface, activating it.
Information flooded his mind.
Diagrams of meridian pathways twisted through his consciousness—complex, intricate patterns that made his head spin. Text appeared in flowing script, describing cultivation methods and energy manipulation techniques that seemed to dance at the edge of comprehension before slipping away entirely.
Nova's enhanced memory from his Qi Refining breakthrough dutifully recorded every word, every image, storing them perfectly in his mind.
But understanding? That was another matter entirely.
He read through the opening passages, his brow furrowing deeper with each line.
"The Yang essence must resonate with the fundamental frequency of Solar principles, drawing upon the primordial fire that exists in the spaces between reality..."
What did that even mean?
"Circulate the energy through the Meridian of Ascending Dawn, allowing it to gather at the Solar Palace before distributing through the Eight Gates of Celestial Harmony..."
Which meridian was the Meridian of Ascending Dawn? And what were the Eight Gates of Celestial Harmony?
Nova pressed on, forcing himself to read further, but it was like trying to decipher a foreign language written in symbols he'd never seen. His photographic memory held every word, every diagram, but his comprehension—that vital ability to actually understand what he was reading—failed him completely.
After what felt like hours but was probably only thirty minutes, Nova set the scroll down with a frustrated sigh.
"Alas," he muttered, rubbing his temples. "My comprehension ability is still trash."
Of course it was. One breakthrough didn't suddenly make him a genius. His spiritual veins were still defective, his natural talent still abysmal. He could memorize the technique perfectly, but executing it? Understanding the profound principles behind it?
That required something he simply didn't possess.
Nova stared at the jade scroll, feeling a familiar helplessness settle over him. How many times had he sat in Luna's study over the years, reading technique manuals and cultivation texts, only to find himself completely lost? His enhanced memory let him remember everything he read, but it was useless if he couldn't actually understand any of it.
"Three hundred years," Nova whispered. "Three hundred years, and I'm still the same mediocre fool."
He reached for the scroll again, determined to try one more time. Maybe if he just focused harder, pushed his mind further—
The world tilted.
Nova blinked, suddenly feeling dizzy. The room swam in his vision, edges blurring and distorting. The jade scroll slipped from his fingers, clattering onto the table.
"What...?"
His head felt heavy, consciousness beginning to fog. Nova tried to stand but his legs wouldn't respond. His body felt distant, disconnected, as if someone had cut the strings attaching him to it.
Poison?
The thought flashed through his mind with crystalline clarity even as darkness crept in at the edges of his vision.
The Sect Leader.
Of course. It made perfect sense. Luna had given him the technique and resources, sent him away with kind words and promises. But she'd also been mortified, ashamed, desperate to erase what had happened between them.
What better way than to simply eliminate the witness?
A delayed poison in the jade scroll. Something that would activate when he touched it with his consciousness. Clean, efficient, untraceable.
She couldn't take the embarrassment of dual cultivating with her servant, Nova thought as his vision went dark. Couldn't bear the shame of it. So she decided to kill me after all.
He wanted to laugh at the bitter irony of it. One night of hope, one glimpse of a different future, and now...
Nova's body slumped forward, consciousness fading rapidly.
So this is how it ends.
The darkness swallowed him whole.
But death, when it came, was strange.
Nova expected nothing—the void, the end, whatever lay beyond for transmigrators who'd wasted their second chance at life.
Instead, he found himself... elsewhere.
His eyes opened—or something like eyes, because he wasn't entirely sure he still had a body—to an impossible sight.
Infinite space stretched out in every direction, black as the deepest night but somehow not empty. Stars filled the void, billions upon billions of them, each one a point of crystalline light that seemed to pulse with its own internal rhythm. They didn't just shine—they sang, each star producing a note too faint to hear but somehow felt in the depths of his being.
Nova's consciousness floated in this starlit expanse, weightless and untethered.
"What..." His voice—if it could be called that—echoed strangely in the vast space. "What is this?"
He tried to look down at himself but found the concept meaningless here. He was awareness without form, consciousness without flesh. Yet he could still think, still perceive, still exist in some fundamental way.
Am I dead?
The question hung in the infinite dark.
But if this was death, it didn't feel like he'd imagined. There was no peace, no judgment, no river to cross or gate to pass through. Just this endless expanse of singing starlight and the profound sense that something was about to happen.
Something that would change everything.
A sound cut through the silence—sharp, clear, utterly foreign yet somehow familiar.
A voice.
But not a voice like any Nova had heard before. It was mechanical, precise, stripped of all emotion and inflection. It seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once, resonating through the starlit void itself.
[CONDITION MET]
The words appeared in Nova's mind more than his ears, burning themselves into his consciousness with undeniable certainty.
[INITIATING AWAKENING SEQUENCE]
"Wait—" Nova tried to speak, tried to understand, but the words kept coming.
[ANALYZING HOST PARAMETERS]
[SOUL STRENGTH: MINIMUM THRESHOLD REACHED]
[ENERGY CATALYST: CONFIRMED]
[BLOODLINE RESONANCE: DETECTED]
[PHYSIQUE SYNCHRONIZATION: BEGINNING]
"What are you talking about?" Nova's consciousness spun in the void, trying to orient himself, trying to make sense of the cascade of information. "What's happening? Who are you?"
The mechanical voice didn't answer his questions. Instead, it continued its systematic progression, each statement falling like a hammer blow against the fabric of Nova's understanding.
[ACCESSING LATENT GENETIC MEMORY]