"Since ancient times, every being that has embarked on the path of cultivation has had one impossible, overarching goal. Immortality.
Not a single practitioner, human or otherwise, has ever doubted that along the Great Path they walk, one will eventually reach the threshold of immortality. This would mark their rebirth into a true unparalleled existence. Although throughout the long annals of history there has yet to be recorded of such a cultivator ever existing, this belief still holds strong throughout the long eons.
The higher ones cultivation grows, the more they fear the infinite-void of after death. Naturally, all such cultivators are scared of simply ceasing to be after years of practice, consuming rare resources and walking the path of bloodshed and competition in order to make a name for themselves. Yet ultimately, all will eventually re-enter the never ending cycle of reincarnation.
After the body dies, the soul leaves the 'Thousand Worlds' also known as the 'Outer World' and enters into the Halls of 'Reincarnation'. There, the cultivation that one had painstakingly and endlessly strived for in life will wither into nothing. Then, the soul is cleansed of all impurities, memories, and anything that it has experienced while within the Thousand World. The soul enters the 'Reincarnation Pool', and emerges anew.
this cycle would not end unless all life ceased to exist, and as far as anybody knows, this cycle has no beginning, and no end." - Unknown, on the 'Cycle of Reincarnation'
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Hall of Reincarnation (location unknown)
The ‘Hall of Reincarnation’ exists in a completely unknown location, in an entirely unfindable dimension of massive scale. The ‘Hall of Reincarnation’ is where all souls come from, and eventually return to, once they have lived through a cycle of life in one of the many worlds that exist in the ‘Outer Worlds’ realm.
All souls once returning to the Hall of Reincarnation will go through a thorough cleansing to return them to a perfectly pure and pristine condition, before continuing on their journey, returning to the ‘Outer Worlds’, and beginning a new cycle of life. Endlessly and through all of time has this been the way of things. This process was done completely on its own, and seemed to be a part of the natural flow of life in the Universe.
However, at the same time, there had been a soul which had existed for millions of cycles, completely untouched by the ‘Cycle of Reincarnation’. This soul had never actually gone to the Outer World. This is not because it found a way to avoid this, and had reached the apex of all cultivation. No! This is because this soul was an incomplete one from the very beginning, it simply could not pass through the Hall of Reincarnation at all!
For an absolutely immeasurable amount of time this soul had been tortured, cursed to know of its fate, but be powerless to act to change it. After existing for countless eons it had actually developed self-awareness. Eventually it had begun to form memories and experiences of its own, and therefore had even developed its own hopes and dreams for the future. However this soul, being incomplete, simply wasn't able to proceed through into the ‘Outer World’.
In the beginning of forming its own consciousness, it knew instinctively that it was unique. For one, this soul could freely move around in the ‘Hall of Reincarnation’. It could also observe everything around it, and most importantly, it could study and learn. After studying for millennia, it came to the conclusion all on its own that it was incomplete, defective even. This conclusion eventually led to another, much more shocking one. That was, this Hall of Reincarnation was simply not natural! For if so, how could an imperfect and incomplete soul such as itself possibly exist when every other one was apparently normal.
It believed this due to the fact that almost all souls would initially return to the Hall in a much larger and stronger condition, but would become much smaller and end up resembling every other soul exiting the cleansing. What was really happening was that something must be taking the residual energy that the soul had before their cleansing. It wasn’t simply a cleansing, it was a harvesting!
This was knowledge that no other life form from the ‘Outer Worlds’ could possibly be privy to. Without being able to study the ‘Hall of Reincarnation’ themselves, one would naturally believe it to be absolutely perfect. But it was not! That could only mean one thing. Someone was once strong enough to actually create an entire cycle of Reincarnation for an entire Universe. In terms of cultivation, only someone touching the apex could do such a thing! This soul suspected that this was an imitation Hall of Reincarnation made up from an immense amount of souls taken from what should be the true cycle of Reincarnation.
Because of this realisation, although it had never had a body in which to truly experience emotion, it came to know hate. Hate for the one responsible for its creation. Hate for their negligence, and carelessness in leaving it in this condition, for not ever completing, or even destroying it, as this incomplete life was one of suffering. How could someone who was so strong, so absolutely incredible as to be able to actually develop their own cycle of Reincarnation be so negligent as to allow for its existence to go unchecked. This soul was aware of a greater world, one with many other conscious lifeforms and myriad different existences. Yet it was trapped in the dark, far away from it all, and was simply unable to ever interact with it.
So this soul committed itself. It continued to study, to learn. All for one day breaking out of this Hall of Reincarnation, entering and experiencing the great ‘Outer World’, and to one day, stand above this fake ‘Lord of Reincarnation’ and make them pay!
For many millennia it studied in the ‘Hall of Reincarnation’ with all its being, learning about the processes that ran the ‘Hall of Reincarnation’ in order to attempt to pass through by itself. Eventually, through many trials and errors, it came up with what it believed to be the only method available to it. It decisively teared itself clean apart into two, and sent half of itself into a passing soul who was on the verge of leaving the Hall and entering the ‘Outer World’. This of course was absolutely huge gamble for it. If something went wrong, the half could be lost in the ‘Outer World’ for all of time and the already incomplete soul would be further damaged. This, based on the assumption that it could even latch onto a leaving soul in the first place. The scariest part was, as the soul was split, both were independent parts from then on, unless they could reunite.
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However, shockingly, it had worked! The half of its soul which it had sent out, leeched off of a full soul that had already undergone a cleansing, entered into the ‘Outer World’ as a newly created life, and actually lived for a whole life cycle. It had finally experienced a whole life, even if it had yet to have its own body in which to do so! A huge success! Not only this, but upon returning to the Hall after the cycle had ended, it was able to tear itself away from the host soul before entering the cleansing, reunite with its other half, and even fuse back together!
The soul managed to retain the entirety of what it had experienced while in the ‘Outer World’, it had actually continued to be untouched by the cleansing which all other souls experienced. Shockingly, upon fusing back together, it discovered that not only had it retained all of its experiences, but also, it was ever so slightly larger and brighter than before. This was a change of not even a percentile of a percentile, but nonetheless it was an improvement! This furthered its belief that this Hall of Reincarnation was a fake. How else could it continue to survive after blatantly stealing away a lifetimes worth of energy.
Following this, after using some time to digest all that it had learned, the soul took even further risk. It once again split itself in half, then one half into several smaller pieces of different sizes. Taking the same action as last time, it sent its soul parts to leech off a number of souls. This time, it tested out how much soul was needed as a leech in order for it to successfully remain aware of itself, and bring back all the experiences from its time in the ‘Outer World’. This resulted in losing some smaller parts of its soul, as they were in fact unable to un-fuse before experiencing the cleansing, however this was a risk it willingly took after learning it could grow stronger as the other soul pieces successfully returned. So the loss, while temporarily harmful, was worth it in the long run. After all, it had already existed for millions of years. Having to spend a few more to recover in order to study and learn was all worth it.
This then continued for countless millions of years. Over this course of time, the knowledge this soul had collected of the ‘Outer World’ could be said to be peerless throughout all time. It had lived beside an enormous amount of individuals as they rose and fell, throughout many different ages and eras. It experienced many different types of life, from those of humans, devils, the fey, half-humanoid life such as sea demons, elementals, and even the common lives of demonic beasts. Any life form that could cultivate in any way, shape or form, a part of this soul had travelled alongside it in life. This happened with each life form, many thousands of times over. It had turned out that all cultivating creatures had the same soul structure in the beginning of their lives.
It eventually concluded that the ‘Outer World’ was a realm completely separate to that of the Hall of Reincarnation, as not a single life form it travelled with was able to learn anything about the Hall whatsoever. At most, they could study the souls of themselves and those around them to come up with their own theories. Their knowledge of souls was pitiful in its opinion. None would ever realise they were being used throughout their entire lifetime as another beings energy cultivation source.
Over a great length of time the soul had grew closer and closer to becoming whole. Each time a part of its soul returned to the original, it would become many times firmer. It had long ago shockingly mutated, becoming much brighter and more resilient than other souls, likely due to its experience tearing and reforming itself countless times over. It could be said to be a peerlessly strong soul, now it simply needed to grow to an appropriate size.
Most of the time the soul fragments that had leeched away would silently hide as it experienced a life, in order to study the various aspects of living on the planets of the ‘Outer Worlds’ realm. However sometimes, if its host became strong enough before death, it would forcefully sustain their life and then take control of the host soul, a skill learned through much trial and error, and would make the host hide away in secret locations. During these times, it would also try and leave clues about the ‘Realm of Reincarnation’ and the Hall within, hoping to make some sort of an impact on cultivators, and to test out some theories it had came up with.
Throughout its millions of lives it experienced through leeching, it came to know that there were at minimum, nine hundred and ninety-nine worlds. It learned many paths of cultivation, discovered many hidden secrets of various powers, laws and abilities. It hid away many dying cultivators, as well as their fortunes, in order to leave itself some treasures once it could return as itself. This was done as many times as possible on each of the worlds it could, to increase the chance of finding them once it could arrive on a world with its own body.
Eventually, the time came. After a soul piece that was attached to a particularly strong cultivator whom lived for many thousands of years returned, the piece fused with the original and the soul that had spent eons as an imperfect and incomplete soul, finally became complete.
Finally, after uncountable millennia, after experiencing many millions of lives as nothing but a leech, a mere fraction of a soul living off of a host body, finally, it became whole. The soul had invested everything it had for this. The final act now was to attempt to leave, although based on its time studying the make up of the ‘Hall of Reincarnation’ was confident it could do so. At this time the soul went into meditation. It spent what it calculated to be a thousand years reviewing all its knowledge and experiences of the ‘Outer World’; compiling its theories, ideas and beliefs of the various laws directing life in the ‘Outer Worlds’, and thoroughly created what it believed to be a peerless method to rise to the top of all Cultivation.
After all, who else had the same amount of time spent studying life in the ‘Outer World’? It was impossible for other souls who came to the Hall of Reincarnation to even retain the most basic of memories. It turned out that being incomplete had become the biggest assistance to the soul. Now it would act to rise to the very top of everything!
The soul acted, fusing into another soul that was about to leave to the Outer Worlds realm. This time, it was going in its entirety. The only thought this soul had now, was to find the maker of the Hall of Reincarnation, and demand answers! If it wasn't happy with those answers, it would do all in its power to kill the ones responsible for it being here!
This was the soul’s mission. Chasing the creator of this fake ‘Hall of Reincarnation’. Chasing after Reincarnation!