“What in the Seven Hells?” Curo was startled as he looked around himself. He was inside a giant egg and although it was an egg, it was extremely big. As he scanned his surroundings, he felt weird. His body felt extremely strong but there were some weird sensations he had never felt before. Then, for the first time, he looked down at himself and was immediately dumbfounded.

His mind blanked from what he was seeing, he was covered in scales and instead of hands and feet, he now had extremely sharp claws. In terror, he tried to move the unusual sensations from before and discovered that he now had a long tail and a pair of wings. As he was there dumbstruck, he felt as though he had forgotten something.

He could remember everything he had done in his nine thousand years of life, how it had ended, how he had met the man when his Persona was supposed to disappear. However, when he tried to think back to the memories he had inherited from the First to Seventh Life, he couldn’t remember anything. As he went through his memories, he felt a sudden change in the environment.

The Qi inside the egg had increased by several times. As it was extremely comfortable to be bathed in this Qi, he slowly closed his eyes as his body slowly absorbed and gathered the Qi on his own. Curo spent several days worth of time slowly observing the way his body absorbed his Qi and using his naturally high comprehension talents alongside his nine thousand years of accumulated expertise, he slowly started modifying the way the body absorbed the Qi.

It didn’t take long for him to be able to absorb ten times more Qi while making it four times more pure and refining it in half the time. This route of Qi circulation was what benefited his body the most but at the same time, nurturing and purifying the Soul.

Even though at the moment this was the best way to circulate his Qi, he didn’t stop researching this way of Qi circulation. He closed his eyes as he immersed himself in familiarizing himself with the Qi circulation, the benefits it brought and at times, testing out some other routes for circulation. Although not all of the paths increased the benefits, he could take the failures and learn from them. Since he had no idea how long he would be stuck in this egg, or rather, what the hell he was even doing inside this egg, he focused on refining his body as he remembered the young man’s words.

Since at the moment he couldn’t leave this egg and until now, nothing had appeared to tell him what was going on, he had no other choice but to wait. However, to just wait for an undefined amount of time was something that would drive a person insane. So to keep his mind from going insane, he did the only thing he found peace in: Train. As he trained, he also familiarized himself with the way cultivating worked wherever he was. It wasn’t the same as it was in his previous Realm.

Here, there wasn’t Foundation Building and such. Here, the process of building foundation was expelling impurities from their bodies and strengthen their bodies. After ones body reaches peak potential, they create a Core. This Core was similar to Core Formation from his memories but it was also a bit different.

This Core was more like a Qi Kindling that was condensed from the accumulated Qi. The purer the Core, the more power one could exhibit. The number of these Cores wasn’t limited to one but to ninety nine, the same as Qi Kindling’s! Curo had no idea how he knew all of this but somehow, this information seemed to come from his Soul. The more Curo learned, the more thoughtful he became. This situation was extremely weird. He was supposed to disappear and his Soul was supposed to enter the Cycle of Reincarnation but instead, he woke up in a dragons body with a Soul that was several times stronger than he had had at his peak.

No matter how one looked at it, it was all extremely weird. As Curo slowly pondered on what was going on, he couldn’t help but think that it had something to do with the young man he had seen. However, he had no way of exiting this egg or even sending his divine sense out of this egg. He had tried several times to break the shell however no matter how much clawed, bombarded or cursed at the shell, he had no way of getting out of here.

He had not even managed to put a scratch on the shell. To escape form here, Curo needed to train strong enough to escape this Egg. He had a feeling that after he escaped from the egg, he would get answers to all of his questions. Now that he had determined to break out, he poured his whole heart into training. Since there was no day or night in the egg, he had no idea how much time had actually passed. As he kept cultivating, he kept improving his Art, upgrading his body and expelling more impurities as he kept creating more and more of these Cores.

In the beginning, these Cores were murky black with almost half of it being greyish. However ,as more and more impurities were expelled from his body and the more he kept perfecting his Art, the Core turned more and more black. As Curo stood inside his mind, he was surrounded by ninety eight pitch black Cores. These Cores were of varying sizes but each of them was pitch black without any sign of impurities what so ever.

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

Curo took a deep breath and the air in front of him started cracking as huge amounts of Qi started gathering there. Curo stared intently at the little ball of pitch black energy that was gathering in front of him. Soon, the pitch black ball took shape and after a bit of time passed, it slowly stopped absorbing Qi from the surroundings as it turned into a fist sized Core. Curo let out a deep breath as he stared the Core with a serious gaze.

When the Core had finished forming, Curo’s eyes opened wide as he suddenly felt a change in his surroundings. When Curo opened his eyes, his mind had returned to his body and quickly flew towards a certain spot in the egg. When Curo arrived, he was astonished but his eyes narrowed as he looked at the crack on the egg wall. Curo then gathered all of his Qi into his tail as he started ruthlessly slamming his tail at the crack, making it bigger with each hit. Seeing this, Curo’s eyes started releasing a hint of happiness. At last! He would be able to escape from this prison of an egg.

As he smacked the egg wall, the cracks alongside it spread further and further until one hit finally managed to create an opening out of it. Curo immediately gathered all of the Qi towards his head as he rushed out through the opening. When he finally exited the egg, he let out a deep roar from his Soul. This was genuine happiness of being able to escape that solitary prison. After seeing the blue sky, he jubilantly floated around, taking in the fresh air.

After calming down from being able to escape the egg, did Curo finally look at his surroundings and it was only then that he discovered that he was inside an enormous courtyard. When he looked down, he saw a boulder sized broken egg that was covered in pitch black scales and standing there in the courtyard, were twelve people. They all had smiled on their faces and Curo’s eyes narrowed as he looked at them.

When he saw one middle aged man in white robes, he felt that he was extremely familiar but he couldn’t remember from where. If Curo still had First Life’s memories, he would recognize this man as the prophet that gave him the prediction: First paves the Path, Second to Seventh fortify the path and Eight Reinforces Ninth. As Curo cautiously looked at the twelve people next to the egg, the white robed man let out a small laugh as he waved his hand and said, “Come down, I believe you have a lot of questions little friend. I will answer all of them now.”

Hearing this, Curo’s eyes turned cold as he slowly descended. He had not wasted any time trapped inside the egg, he was more familiar with this body than with the one he previously had. The amount of control he had over this body was several times higher as he could practically move each scale individually if he wished. As he descended he floated a bit farther away from them. When everyone saw it, they just smiled wrily as they had expected it.

No one said anything about it and the man coughed once to clear his throat before he started, “First of all, I apologize for the late introductions. My name is Long Shao.” Curo nodded his head and stayed silent. The man let out a small hollow laugh as he continued, “Well, let me address question you want to ask the most first: No, you are not dead. We made a trade with the Heavenly Seas Realm Will for your Persona. Then to keep your Persona from collapsing, we didn’t have time to explain anything to you as we had to quickly fuse your Persona with the Dragon Soul inside the egg.”

He then shook his shoulder lightly as he helplessly said, “Once your Persona fused with the Soul, we had no way of reaching inside the egg to communicate with you.” Hearing this, Curo nodded his head and looked calm. However, his mind was in turmoil as he thought back to what the man had said: They had traded with a Realm Will for his Persona…. There was only one question inside his head right now and he involuntarily asked, “Why would you do that?” The man waved his hand and a small table appeared on the grass, as he gestured for Curo to sit down, he himself, with the eleven other people sat down and took out wine cups.

Curo’s eyes flickered as he also floated down to the table. The man poured everyone some wine and also put a wine cup in front of Curo as he continued, “This story will take a long time to explain. To explain it all perfectly, so that there would be no confusion, I need to start from countless years ago…. From the time when this Plane was one huge Plane instead of countless fragmented Realms.”

He then had a distant look as he looked a his cup and said, “How about you turn into your human form?” Curo’s eyes flickered as he pondered on what the man had said. His mind was in complete turmoil as he felt like this was all a dream. He had known that there were countless Realms out there but that they all used to be a part of one single Realm…. How big was that Realm?

More importantly, what in the Seven Hells had to happen for such a big Realm to be fragmented into such tiny little Realms?

Curo then said with a sheepish voice, “Then I will have to ask for senior to lend me a set of robes.” The man’s hand paused as he smiled and conjured a set of robes similar to his own and the eleven other people. However, these robes were black instead of white. Curo then turned into his human form and to no ones surprise, he looked like he had before he had died. Curo quickly donned his robes and sat down at the table.

The man then took a big mouthful of wine before he said, “Once upon a time, countless years ago, this vast Plane was one big mass and was governed by the Heavenly Emperor. However, after a long and bloody war, our Plane was fractured into the Four Celestial Realms and countless Normal Realms.”

He then took a sip from his cup again before he continued, “During the Fall of the Plane, the Heavenly Emperor used that last of his power to created a protective shield that sealed the fractured Plane. The four entrances and exits to the Plane are the Four Celestial Realms. It is our duty to protect these Four Celestial Realms: The Celestial Phoenix Realm, The Celestial Tortoise Realm, The Celestial Tiger Realm and our own, Celestial Dragon Realm.”