Alex was ready, he had been preparing for this for the past few decades and it was finally time. There had been a few road bumps along the way, a fire here, an explosion there, they even once had to prevent the destruction of a planet in the mortal plane after Alex had accidentally teleported there, disrupting the planet's space enough to cause it to begin collapsing. But innovation never came easy, and the planet wasn’t destroyed in the end, and the kingdoms could rebuild, maybe there would be some social reform as a result, it was always good to think positively.

But enough sidetracking, Alex was sitting in the middle of the ritual circle, and as soon as he began to infuse it with chi there would be no turning back. They had tested this ritual a lot, but never with a God King, it could go wrong. There were safety measures in place and an emergency vessel for his soul just in case, but uncertainty was ever-present.

Stealing his resolve Alex began.

Chi began to flow out of his body, it flowed throughout the ritual circle filling every line with at least a little of his own chi. Once the circle was primed with his chi Gaia released the chi stored in the crystals surrounding the circle. Alex did have enough chi himself to power the ritual, but the two had been worried that if something went wrong, he wouldn’t have enough chi left to do anything. So they had these crystals to power the ritual, which together contained the equivalent of three Alex’s worth of chi, always better to have extra than too little.

As time passed Alex began to feel his soul peel away from his body. Each of his meridians was carefully disconnected from his soul one by one. It was a long and tedious process where one mistake could cripple Alex for years, but this was not something new. The process of removing a soul was created and refined long ago, it was still dangerous, but with an expert managing the process the risk was minimal. The real danger would begin once his soul was fully detached.

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After of few hours of precision work, Alex’s soul was separated from his body. Normally at this point in a soul ritual, you would shove the soul in the new vessel, connect the new meridians, and be done, but that was not what they were doing, Gaia now needed to find a mortal host for Alex’s soul and place it in without breaking the body or soul.

So the search for the host began, the process needed to happen as soon after the new host died to have the highest chance of success, because of this, Gaia couldn’t have looked for a body while the first stage of the ritual was taking place, not to mention the danger of splitting her focus during the ritual.

She searched the mortal planes for a suitable host. There was no way to filter out the candidates that didn’t meet the criteria from the options being presented to her so she had to go through them each individually. It was no surprise the first few thousand options were from poor families trapped in no-name villages. The mortal realm was filled with undeveloped planets with a disturbing child mortality rate in the lower classes. She doubted that even if Alex took over one of their bodies he would be able to make it far. People did not stay in those villages because they wanted to. No sect would accept them no matter their talent, and finding a job in a city was near impossible. Without luck on his side, Alex would either die from malnutrition or live a relatively short life as a farmer barely making ends meet.

After 1,000,000 options had gone by she was starting to get fed up. The highest-status individual she had come across was the fourth son of some random blacksmith in a moderately large city. Alex had argued down her requirements for a host quite a bit to allow for a bigger challenge but at this rate, she may have to lower them a bit more just so they wouldn’t run out of chi, one crystal was already empty, and the second was barely half full, if she couldn’t find someone would it be better to stop the ritual. No, it wasn’t yet time to start thinking about that, she still had time left and could use her own chi if necessary to add a couple of hours to the ritual, maybe she should open up the options to females, Alex said he didn’t want to change genders but she was sure he would get over it, and it would be pretty funny, maybe once we are almost out of chi.

A few hours had gone by and still not a single decent option had presented itself. Gaia was beginning to wonder if there was an issue with the ritual itself, wealthier individuals usually had arrays protecting their houses, and even low-ranking nobility in the mortal realms would at least have some to protect against spying. Her being so many realms above the mortals should be enough to render their protection useless but maybe the ritual wasn’t properly benefiting from this.

While Gaia was beginning to think up possible solutions that wouldn’t cause any issues a potential candidate passed through her mind, one that wasn’t so bad. She gave the potential host a longer look, a decent background, not the worst planet, sure this one was not at the top of the social hierarchy but that is what Alex wants after all. Also after how long it took to get this option the chances of another suitable choice showing up were slim. The third crystal was almost out and the remainder of the ritual would have to be powered by her own chi.

So Gaia began the third and final stage of the ritual. Stealthily opening a tear in space she sent Alex’s soul to his new vessel.

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Alex hovered calmly above his old body. If he really wanted to he could move around and even use some techniques, but that would be counterproductive. In this part of the ritual he just had to wait for Gaia to find a suitable host body. It shouldn’t take that long, even after all of the concessions he had made regarding the status of his new body, Alex believed that with the size of the mortal planes and the speed at which Gaia could process data, it should only take fifteen to twenty minutes, maybe an hour if she decides to be extra picky.

Five hours later and nothing, it wasn’t painful to be separated from his body but it sure was uncomfortable. Not having limbs felt weird, it felt like he had phantom limbs that were just out of his control, every now and then he would even feel an itch on his arm, on instinct he would try and scratch it only to remember he had no arms. What made this extra weird was that he couldn’t remember the last time he just had random itches as that was a mortal thing gods didn’t experience.

Of course, those phantom itches were minor and could be ignored, what really threw Alex off was the lack of sensory organs. All cultivators possessed senses separate from the five mortals have, and these extra senses were related to the soul, but even in godhood you most often used your five mortal senses, just enhanced by chi. However, without sensory organs, Alex could not feel, see, taste, smell, or hear like normal. He could of course mimic all five senses but it just wasn’t the same, and that unnerved him. Hopefully, this will be over soon. What was even taking so long?

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He had many conversations with Gaia about not being too picky when choosing a body but now he was worried that she was going to ignore his wishes. Alex knew that she was doing this for his sake but what was the fun if things were too easy? He had the nerve to tell her to just choose someone and get this ritual over with. But that could distract her, which would not be wise. Also, he had no mouth to talk to, and Gaia’s mind was sealed from telepathy so she could focus. He could vibrate the air with chi but with his luck, he would hit the perfect frequency to shatter all the crystals before he could figure out how to make words. So he waited, hoping that whatever life Gaia chose would be an interesting one.

Then it happened, one second he was floating peacefully, and the next he was being hurled through a rift in space.

Plummeting through the void Alex could only smile with glee, well not smile he had no mouth, but he was excited nonetheless. He would have a mouth again soon enough anyway and if all worked out the rest of the body would be attached to that mouth.

After a few minutes of flying through the void, which was likely not even a second in the real world, another rift opened and his soul flew through. Immediately on passing through the tiny rift in space his soul collided with the body of some human on some planet in the mortal realm. As soon as his soul began to be connected to the new body his knowledge began to leave him. Alex didn’t yet know what all he would forget, he didn’t even know if he would remember enough to know that he had forgotten certain things. But all of that was for later the first thing he needed to do was make sure no one suspected he was a different person from this body's original purpose, and then he needed to find out who that person was.

Alex opened his eyes slowly, the crystalline lights of the room hurt his eyes so he squinted them to relieve the discomfort, and on some instinct left in this new body, he began to cry. As soon as he began crying Alex heard relieved voices all around him. The people standing around him seemed both excited and surprised that he was crying, he kept hearing, “he’s alive, he’s okay” and “I thought we had lost him there”. Alex was happy that no one seemed to suspect anything. Looking around the room he noticed that while it wasn’t a hobble it was still far from what he would consider luxurious. The crib he was in was made of plane wood, the room was lit with small luminescent stones, and the walls were mostly unadorned with only the sconces that held the luminescent stones acting as decoration. There were two windows which showed it to be sometime during the day, Alex couldn’t gauge more than that as his crib was placed against a wall without either of the windows. Around him were five people, the first was a middle-aged man wearing what looked to be a military uniform, he had pitch-black hair, dark blue eyes, a clean-shaven face, and the build of a soldier. He was the only man in the room and given that military men didn’t usually watch random children, he assumed the man was his father. Next to his father, holding his arm and crying, was the woman Alex believed was his new mother. She had long blonde hair that was tied up into a single braid, golden eyes, and a slim build that suggested she either never saw combat or cultivated a yin-heavy nature. She wore a loose-fitting silver dress that looked designed for comfort rather than utility or fashion. The other three in the room were all maids, each wore the same black-in-white maid dress with full-length sleeves and high collars. The fact that three maids were attending to him pointed to his social standing being rather high, but the lack of decoration in the room made him question that, maybe they were here temporarily to help with a newborn, or were the only three servants in the entire house. It was too early to draw any conclusions and he would likely learn that before knowing it became important.

While Alex was lying in his crib debating what he should do next he heard one of the maids speak, “Ah, it looks like the young lord is done crying, hopefully, he will recover from whatever was making him cough so violently. Even though he is acting like normal, we should keep a close eye on him. Betty go grab a bottle of milk from the kitchen, the mistress is in no condition to be breastfeeding right now”. “I’m alright Amanda, you don’t need to worry about me, we should do what is best for Arthur” said the woman believed to be his mother. “I understand mistress, but you haven’t slept in over a day, you need some rest, if you want to stay in here I can have someone drag a bed in for you” The maid retorted.

It seemed that Amanda held a higher position among the maids as she was the only one to talk, Betty and the other maid had just stood silently, probably waiting to be told to do something. Soon Betty returned with a bottle, picked Alex up, and began feeding him. Alex or Arthur as he was now known, began drinking, he needed to eat as a mortal, and a healthy diet was crucial when advancing through the lowest realms.

The other maid whose name turned out to be Lauren, was sent to fetch a bed for his mother to sleep on. His father left shortly after saying something about a meeting with his officers. Once the bed arrived, carried by two men wearing servant clothes, Betty, who had been feeding him, passed his new body along with the milk to his mother and left to take care of chores. Amanda left soon after and he was alone with his new mother slowly drinking some milk.

While he drank Alex decided to search his memories to see what he had forgotten. He first tried to remember his insights into concepts, but unsurprisingly he couldn’t remember anything about any concepts. The comprehension of concepts was key to advancing through the higher realms and a mortal body simply lacked the capability to grasp them. He did however remember what concepts were, why they were useful, and could even feel deeper detail that was just outside his reach. Given the chance, he could likely relearn these concepts faster than a normal person. He also checked his knowledge of alchemy, he had never been a true master of alchemy, but that was compared to others of the Zenith Plane, in the Mortal Plane he would be considered a master of the craft. When trying to remember recipes he came up short, Alex could remember the names of pills or elixirs but not what he needed to make them and how the process of making them would work. For example, he remembered the Zenith Flame Pill, a relatively simple pill used to help someone advance through the God King realm by providing pure and condensed Zenith fire chi. While he could guess that he would need some source of Zenith fire chi to make the pill, any other part of its production was lost to him. However, much like the concepts he felt like the information regarding the production of the pill was just out of reach, maybe if he saw an ingredient or read a more detailed description he would be able to produce the pill. But considering Zenith chi would kill him if he tried to manipulate it with his current body, it didn’t currently matter if he could make the pill, he would need to start with mortal pills if he wanted to do alchemy.

This trend continued as he went through all his skills. Some knowledge he already assumed he would lose, chi techniques and ritual circles were prime examples. They were knowledge that was often restricted from reaching the lower realms and wouldn’t even be useful until he reached higher realms. Some things he was surprised he remembered, battle tactics, mortal martial arts, and the names of various plants and natural treasures were all things he had thought would be lost to him. Finally, there were a few things that he couldn’t remember that he had thought would remain, many of these things were minor but one major bit of knowledge he lost was on the operation of artifacts. Sure he knew it involved chi manipulation but even mortals in the first stage of the origin realms could use artifacts. Hopefully, this would come back to him quickly, life was a lot easier with a bunch of cheap artifacts like chi pens, or communication tablets, assuming this world even had such things.

Unfortunately, he was getting tired, this was the body of an infant after all and they needed a lot of sleep. I was annoyed though, he hadn’t finished going through all his memories yet. Alex also needed to gather information and formulate a plan for how he would act in the future. But all of that would have to wait, as his new mother slowly rocked his little body in her arms he felt his consciousness slip away as he fell into a deep sleep.