Prologue
My life had been an eventful one, full of fortuitous encounters, bitter rivals, great loves and greater friendships. Miracles of cultivation not seen before in the realm I now ruled, a realm so much higher than that of my birth, that my birthplace was smaller than the smallest basic piece of existence in comparison. Magical Beasts roamed the gardens, protecting my property, allowing only the servants and my wives and children entry.
I had pierced the mysteries of the Divine, advanced further along the path of Cultivation than the vast majority of my peers, though the final levels eluded me, and always would. Not starting with a proper Divine cultivation method made you limited - even if you were able to do what most couldn't and have a mythic level alchemist make you a new body.
Proper cultivation cultivated the soul as well as the body, and it needed to be done properly from the start, only during the low mortal levels could one's cultivation be truly restarted, in order to take maximum effect. It's the reason that despite plenty of cultivators in the various universes reaching the "divine" level, able to live eternally unless killed, the Heavens weren't overrun with deities. Because we still died.
Cultivating the soul though, was forbidden. Forbidden beyond all other techniques. Not that it mattered, as no one would be able to figure out how without having divine level knowledge in the first place, and no demi-god (the term for us "Divine" cultivators who weren't yet True Gods) as going to just hand that knowledge to a mortal - that was forbidden as well, even if we were able to get past our own jealousy enough to do so.
No, Heaven had decreed that the only way for a new True God to ever be born was with one's own efforts. Anyone who knowingly defied this decree? Would find their soul banned from the River, unable to reincarnate, their soul devoured by the great serpent that lived there.
Soul destruction was a powerful enough punishment that no one tried in living memory, even the living memory of the eternally young demi-gods. This led to the truth behind "fortuitous encounters". Every young cultivator who found an "incredible cultivation method" that was of divine level? It was never intended for any "successor". No, those were left by us demi-gods, hoping that our future incarnation would find them and use them. Divine cultivation methods, specifically attuned to our own souls. If any of us did ever find it, we'd be telling only ourselves, and thus not breaking the commandment. If another found it instead, well, it certainly wasn't by choice, was it? A clever loophole, it was thought, until the difficulty of actually doing so became apparent.
Why the difficulty? Because even the greatest divine method would lose potency when given to a different soul than the one it was designed for, leading to us all being stopped at demi-god instead of becoming true gods like Yama, Fuxi or Nuwa. In my youth, I had also once dreamed of reaching the true heavens, and becoming eternal. I'd created a customized cultivation technique guaranteed to let me reach divinity, and tailored to my own immortal soul in such a way that becoming a true deity was practically assured, if I wasn't killed first. Funny thing? I no longer wanted to find it.
The odds were astronomical anyway, not only did you have to hope you were born on one of the worlds you actually had managed to successfully hide your secrets on (and there were so many worlds that even if you left a hidden repository on every one you'd ever managed to visit, the odds were infinitesimal that one of them would be a world you reincarnated in) but you also had to deal with multiple other factors as well.
Time was the big one. Did anyone really know how long it took to reincarnate? If they did, they weren’t telling. Sure, all demi-gods knew the basics, that the longer you lived, the more memories your soul had to purge, the longer it would take for you to be reborn. Power as well, your soul had to be reborn at normal levels for your species. The more powerful you were, the longer it took for that power to dissipate. But no one knew for sure, and who knew how many lives it would take for you to be reborn into a world where your legacy was hidden?
Even indirectly, time was still a major factor. The lengthy periods of time involved meant that your hidden treasures could be ransacked by looters, mortal cultivators were often searching for “ancient legacies” to claim for themselves, not realizing that by doing so they were harming their own ability to ascend, as they would either die in the attempt, or succeed and end up using a cultivation technique not suited for their particular soul. Even if they knew, many would accept it anyway, as simply being able to reach any divine rank, however limited, was more than they would likely reach without such a boon.
Not only this, but the mortal worlds were notoriously unstable. Earthquakes, tornadoes, volcanic eruptions, all these and more natural disasters were a fact of life and all could destroy your hidden treasures, or at the least make them much more difficult to find. Add in the constantly shifting terrain, and the fact that you wanted your legacy hidden away so that only you could find it, and the exact mix of circumstances required for you to find your own legacy in a future time was… Well, no one had succeeded in a very, very long time, if ever.
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This was why I hadn’t bothered to go back to my own hidden legacy and destroy it – even those who wanted to find their legacy in a future incarnation never did, and I’d decided not to try. Besides, I’d gone through all that effort of creating it, I may as well let someone benefit from it, even if it wouldn’t be me. Perhaps it would be found by some young cultivator with dreams of ascending, and it would help them on their path. Realistically, it wasn’t like they’d have a shot of even getting close to the divine ranks without some special trick, so even though it’d keep them from true ascension, it was better than anything they’d have normally.
It was time, I’d decided. Time to return to the cycle of life and death, time to let the whims of fate take hold of me once again. I wanted to try new things, not to be stuck only doing what I’d unintentionally pigeonholed myself into by merit of my cultivation method’s unique interaction with my soul.
God of Swords, God of Alchemy, Fire God, Water God, etc. All of these titles that mortals thought so much of were nothing more than failures. Better failures than most, but failures nonetheless. People so hyper specialized that they could only do one thing exceedingly well. True Gods only specialized because they chose to, not because they needed to. They were able to be and do whatever they chose, and so instead of being limited, they were able to focus on what they enjoyed rather than having to make the most of what they had. Limited only to what their soul demanded, and that wasn’t really a limitation, as everyone liked what their soul wanted. How could you not, when you quite literally were your soul?
This was the chief reason I was unhappy – my soul wanted it all, wanted everything. It didn’t want to specialize, and so I didn’t want to specialize. I was uniquely suited to be a jack-of-all-trades, and so I couldn’t accept not being such. Sure, I’d never be the absolute best in anything, but I’d be a dab hand at anything.
Every one of my companions, assuming they were equally talented but more specialized, would be able to best me in their particular field. This meant forming a group would still be of use, but the difference in ability would be minimal, so I’d be able to replace any one of them as needed in most situations for general issues.
Becoming a demigod had been limiting in ways I’d never imagined. It crystalized your cultivation, in such a way that you could no longer deviate from it. Mortals were versatile, able to change as often as the winds if they so desired, though it often came with setbacks. But gods? No, gods were unchangeable, able to grow, but only in the ways they’d already begun.
And so, I decided, it was time. Time to put off this life and try for another, perhaps this time my soul wouldn’t be crying out in despair despite the mass wealth and ability I’d achieved, trapped in a cage of my own making.
I hadn’t bid my family farewell, instead only leaving a note so that they couldn’t talk me out of it, like they had so many times in the past. It was a sort of unofficial custom really – everyone knew if you talked about dying instead of just doing it, that you were looking for an excuse not to, and so they did their best to talk you out of it. Well, I was talking no longer.
Standing before the River of Souls, I contemplated its nature. The River Sanzu, Vaitarna, Gjöll, Hubur, Lethe, and Styx… so many names various worlds had given it, all these and more, but its function was the same. The river that flowed before the Underworld. There were specific ways to cross, different worlds having their own methods of avoiding the True Death that awaited those who sought to cross without proper protection, but I was a demi-god. I needed no permission, no ritual, nor aid. I only needed to choose.
So long as I sought to cross, to die and be reborn, instead of attempting to remain, or to dare to reach within and alter the souls inside, the river’s guardian would leave me be. For this was a being feared even by the gods, a being who could end any who sought to interfere with the cycle of life and death. Some said the guardian was a True God who’d chosen to take up this duty, others that it was beyond even them – an incarnation of the finality of death itself. If the True Gods knew, they weren’t telling, and that in itself said enough about how dangerous angering this being could be.
So despite the temptation, despite the chance to alter the fate of any soul of my choosing, the chance to aid those who had once been my mortal family, my friends, even my now dead mortal lovers from before I’d ascended… I didn’t even try to look for them. Instead, I simply took a final, shuddering breath, and stepped directly into the waters of forgetfulness, leaving all I knew behind.
Would I live and die as a normal mortal? A mere farmer or warrior in some lord's armies? Would I once again be a cultivator and reach for the heavens, only to fail? Or worse, to succeed and eventually be dissatisfied over time as the limitations of my cultivation warred with my soul's desire?
If anyone were to ask me, I would honestly hope, with all my heart, to simply remain mortal - albeit as a cultivator, and not as a normal person, their lives sucked! But seriously, I'd only be satisfied if I could explore many different things, not pin myself down into herbalism, alchemy, or a single element specialization or whatever.
Well, only time would tell.
And thus, my thoughts left me, flowing like the river I now lay in, as my soul began the process of shedding all power and knowledge from my now previous, life, in order to be born anew.
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