On a certain spring afternoon in the city of Redster at the roof of the Rageberg mansion, a cute, two-year-old boy could be seen sitting patiently. The boy had long black hairs and sea-green eyes. The eyes were particularly attractive on the boy. The maids of the castle were usually charmed by those beautiful eyes on that cute face. This child was the youngest heir of Rageberg family - Michael Rageberg.
On the day of the blessing ceremony, Michael woke up later to attend the banquet in the arms of his father. Since that day, Michael spent his time cultivating the Styx Soul Incarnation Scripture and well, being a baby. During this time, Michael spent most of his time around his mother and the maids of the family. He also spent some time with his father every night after the Duke came back from the court. During the early few days, he was also accompanied by his older brother and sister, both of whom usually teased him by pinching his cheeks. But later, his brother had to return to manage the army while his sister returned to the High Priest to learn further cultivation. Due to the divine strength blessing, he was abnormally strong for a baby. Thus, all in all, his childhood was a happy one, if one ignored the constant pain in his soul due to his cultivation.
Soul cultivation was inherently different from body cultivation. Body cultivation required absorbing energy in the body, usually in the form of food or medicine. Then refining the energy through constant exercise, meditation and martial arts. Soul cultivation required absorbing energy from heaven and earth. Thus, if one did not have a blessing to make energy absorption easier, it was almost impossible to cultivate the soul in Aterna. In fact, the energy of the Aterna plane environment was not much. Thus, the energy could not be felt by most people and even those who felt the energy, were usually very slow in cultivating the soul. This was why soul cultivators were found very rarely in Aterna. While Michael did not have a blessing to feel the environment energy and even if he was a previous immortal soul expert, it should have been impossible for him to cultivate normal cultivation manuals. But the Styx Soul Incarnation Scripture used energy from the underworld, the death energy in the surroundings. The death energy was used only in evil arts in the Aterna plane. For the Atrexia Kingdom that was a part of the Empire of Light, there was too much death energy in the surrounding. While normal people would not be able to feel this energy and the energy also decomposed after some time to revert to the plane laws, it was quite abundant for Michael to practice his cultivation.
After cultivating continuously for two years, Michael was already at the peak of the Mortal Soul stage. He was collecting more energy in his preparation to breakthrough to the viscous soul stage. Since the time Michael had been sent back, he was constantly thinking about how he should proceed to hamper the invasion of devils. The invasion would start 50 years later according to his past life memories. But he could not be sure. Besides, even if he kept on cultivating for 50 years straight, he would not have the power to stop the invasion. There were too many devils and they had experts beyond what existed on the Aterna plane. The highest level of cultivation in the Aterna plane was the immortal level for both body and soul cultivation. Michael suspected that the devils knew how to cultivate to later levels as well. After all, the power he saw from the devil experts was definitely beyond the immortal level. Even if he reached the immortal level in both body and soul in just 50 years, an impossible feat, he would still not be able to do much against a planar invasion.
This had bummed and frustrated Michael. He had almost given up hope! But, he would not give up that easily. After all, why did he come back? Was it not to stop the invasion? Thus, Michael decided that he needed to unify the plane. He needed to become a torch that would make the entire plane follow him. Whether by politics or power, he would use everything to prepare the plane for the invasion. But doing such a thing was easier said than done. After all, he was just a two-year-old boy. All his influence came from his family at the moment. And that influence too was limited to the Atrexia kingdom. Even his father was a minor character in the politics of the empire of light, let alone the entire plane. And his father was a saint! So, Michael decided to make a plan. A plan to become the hero that could lead the plane to war against the devils. Doing all this alone was definitely impossible. He needed support from the entire plane. For that, the first requirement would definitely be personal power. As long as he could gain sufficient power, his words would be heard. After all, in Aterna, the strong were respected by every race.
The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.
According to Michael's plan, he needed to reach the viscous stage before three years of age when he would start physical body cultivation. It should be noted that improving cultivation became harder the higher one went. While he almost flew past the mortal chapter in soul cultivation, mostly due to his abnormal diligence and abundant death energy, it would be much slower in the viscous soul stage. Thus, making a breakthrough earlier would be helpful later. Also, he had to reach the peak of knight stage of physical body cultivation before he was 10 years of age. At that point, he would have enough power to be admitted into the prestigious Light Tower, the main academy of the light empire.
Light tower was a symbol of power in the light empire. The light empire was a collection of kingdoms of some major races of the plane - the elves, dwarves, humans and the beasts - being the major forces of the alliance. The elves and beasts were more powerful individually and in terms of their experts but did not have a huge population like humans. The dwarves though not very populous or powerful individually, had many grandmaster artificers who could build magical artefacts. Thus, their power was not to be underestimated either. The humans were basically the main cannon-fodder supplier of the empire's army.
The light empire was not the sole empire in the plane. The dark races had their own alliance as the dark empire. The neural races also had their own alliance. Then there were several races that did not join any alliance like the god-beasts. It was due to this fragmentation that the devils could easily invade the plane. The races did not see eye-to-eye even when they were part of the same empire. Thus, when the devils invaded, none of the races helped another and the plane was conquered one by one. The light tower was an institution of the light empire that housed the experts of the alliance. Here, many experts joined to learn different cultivation arts or different combat arts to increase their power. The tower also took in a few young children every few years to groom to be future pillars of the empire. These geniuses were on a different level than the others. Right now, only the youngest prince of humans had been admitted into the tower in the past many years.
Michael wanted to join the tower so that he could take on a powerful and influential expert as his master. If someone like the headmaster of the tower supported him, he would be able to extend his influence taking his support. After all, the headmaster was the greatest expert in the light empire - the elf by the name of Karslon Dumbledore - an immortal expert in body cultivation and a perfect expert in soul cultivation.
Thus, Michael had the initial phase of the plan ready and was already executing it. As he thought about all the things that he had to do, he could feel a huge burden on him. While in the middle of cultivation, a maid came to the roof searching.
> Maid : My god! Young master, please don't hide on the roof. All the servants of the mansion are going crazy trying to find you. If Madam knew that we had lost you, all of us would loose our jobs.
>
> Michael : Roof. Like.
>
> Maid : Yes, yes. I will bring you after lunch. But, promise me not to come here alone in the future.
>
> Michael : Ok!?
As the maid led Michael back to the mansion, he could not help but feel depressed. While in the womb, no one disturbed his cultivation but after being born, more often than not, he would be interrupted. After all, no sane person would believe that a child of two years age was cultivating!
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Karslon Dumbledore was in his study looking through a few historical texts when his secretary entered with a bunch of documents.
> Secretary Dariff : Headmaster, the time for recruiting the young ones is about to arrive. Maybe we should send the official letters to the empires to prepare their young geniuses.
>
> Karslon : Hmm, oh! it's that time already. Yeah, you go ahead and do it. Set the date 5 years from now. We will hold the examination a bit earlier this time. I have managed to find some leads and would go into secluded cultivation for a few years after that.
>
> Dariff : Okay headmaster. I will get on to it.
On the same day, official letters were sent to the kingdoms of all races and smaller tribes as well to prepare their geniuses for the day. As the winds were blowing in the plane, Michael was also diligently preparing to write his own legend.