I couldn’t remember hardly anything at all about myself or my life back on Earth. I’d never forget the giant hand descending from the sky, scooping out the entire planet’s worth of Souls, being turned into a pill and being carved with a cultivation method. Beyond that, it seemed like only short term memories at the time of the event imprinted themselves upon me. I had some basic concepts, like, I knew what those buildings were that I could see while staring up at the sky. I knew what cars were, roads were, sidewalks. I’d been standing at a crosswalk on the way to… a store or something.

I remembered I was a man. Middle aged. Married. Kids. My partner, my children, my friends? I’m not sure whether I’m ashamed to admit, they didn’t seem to have gone through my mind during that moment. Their names, faces, exactly how many there were, did I have an ex, were my kids old enough to be moved out or did they live with me? None of that. Likewise, knowing what a car is doesn’t mean I know how cars work. What made them move? No clue. Tires, I got. What tires were made of, don’t got.

In the beginning it had bothered me a lot. I’d cultivated, rather I’d tried to cultivate, to distract myself. Knowing that you’d forgotten basically everything about everything and had it forcibly replaced by someone who just wanted to eat you later? Yeah, not fun. Playing with environmental Qi had been fun though. For a long time that was the only thing I could do that actually resulted in something noticeable. Namely, I could notice the Qi moving along the surface of my spherical bod. That’s right ladies, I’m round, smooth, and rock hard all the time. Total package.

Because I started with a mostly blank slate in near total sensory depravation, starting the breakthrough into Nascent Soul realm had been an overwhelming experience. I’d suddenly formed a Spiritual Sense. It wasn’t as vibrant as the physical senses. No. It was so much more. Physical senses were dull in comparison. Given though that my only physical sense was a very weak one of temperature and pressure on my surface, and given that the range of my fledgling Spiritual Sense was only ten meters or so at the dim stretch of it?

Riding in Terra’s body was absolutely overwhelming. Her senses were effectively Mortal right now. They’d been not much better before she’d managed to ‘eat me’. All hopped up on my very pure, Nascent Soul level Qi? I’d been able to see a beetle burrowing into a tree from half a mile away. I’d felt the currents of the air on my skin with such detail, and my mind had worked so quickly, that even without Spiritual Sense I could reconstruct the flow paths and vortexes created by my movement through the air.

Oh and the taste! Terra it seemed, had way more sensitive sense of taste and smell for some things than I think humans normally had. Then again, smell and taste was only a tiny part of my memories. Still, it struck me as quite potent. Particularly the earthy, plant smells. Smells of predators. The scat of a bear. The martin that was back and angrily chattering along with the squirrels it would normally be hunting, protesting this now sleeping person occupying their branch. The piney smell of the huge conifer was almost too much and yet incredibly soothing all at once.

He couldn’t see much right now. He’d retracted his Will, his Qi, his Soul, everything except his Spiritual Sense. His Crystal Qi Core? His Soul? They were still there. Occupying, in impossible cultivation bullshit magic, the exact same space as her fragile Dantian, yet also a totally different space. Operating on different wavelengths, physically overlapping but not physically contacting.

He knew from the cultivation knowledge carved onto his surface that this was a contradiction that should have existed in himself too. The Dantian was anchored, yes, to the physical body. The Soul was not, truly. The Soul ‘rode’ along, but it could be, with shocking ease, separated. Like by some gluttonous fat ass Immortal. He didn’t have a physical body though, as a pill. His cultivation method involved anchoring the Qi and his Dantian to the pill body, the physical form of his Soul that he’d been forced into.

Normally, such a connection only occurred after the Nascent Soul realm, when the Dantian and Soul were fused, the Fused Soul realm. The first true Immortal realm, because the body no longer exists separately from the Soul, nor the Soul separate from the body. They became instead one and the same. A Nascent Soul could cultivate, poorly, without a body. It lacked Meridians. It lacked the ability to have a true Dantian. It was just like him.

Until now. Now he had a body, a Dantian. He just couldn’t use it without breaking it. Not without toning down his Will a lot. Which was a problem, because it turned out that everything he’d done so far, the method he’d practiced, all of it required a massive exertion of Will. Now he suspected that it was specifically designed to train his Will early and hard rather than allowing it to grow linearly as his cultivation grew. That was why when he took over a body, a gentle flex nearly destroyed it. What was intended to just be a small widening and clearing of the debris as he leapt from the cave had become a small explosion of earth. He’d tried to fly fast. Like, car fast. Instead he’d exceeded the speed of sound.

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When he’d exerted his aura on that group of Foundation Establishment cultivators, he’d known he could pressure them. He was, after all, two major realms beyond them. The lackluster sense of resistance though had shocked him deeply. If he’d pushed as hard as he could, he could have simply ripped the cultivation elements right from their bodies.

He should be overjoyed to have such power. Instead it made him think of a certain fat Immortal. Crushing those weaker than you like ants was actually not that satisfying. Not when you remember being the ant. Not when you still were the ant. Thinking of how easily he could snuff out Cultivators that Terra was resolved to do anything, up to and including killing herself, to avoid? Cultivators she felt powerless to actually fight against?

He searched her memories, the surface ones he had access to. It was mostly the flight, her being scammed on a job and learning that instead of participating in a hunt, she was going to be the hunted. She’d realized something was wrong when the Sect members had arrived instead of the usual ragtag rogues or Mortals she’d usually be working with. Sects always meant something bad, when you had Beast blood. They didn’t observe the same conventions or restrictions when it came to the privacy of independent Cultivators. A Sect might just force her to prove she was human.

Then they’d confirmed they knew. Told her to run, run as fast as she could. What they would do to her, use her for, as a filthy Beast blooded.

I admired her though. She’d considered suicide a last resort, yet even at what seemed like a guaranteed end, she’d never reached for the little utility knife on her belt. She’d never tried to bite her own tongue, or forcibly rupture her cultivation. The last would have been excruciatingly painful, but it would have rendered her useless as a Furnace. They would likely have killed her out of anger. She would die within days due to exposure if not. Such a drastic reaction was not like dismantling your cultivation to rebuild it. It would cause almost full body paralysis, in most cases.

Now she slept. Her cultivation had very nearly ruptured. That’s why she’d been in so much pain before I pulled back. It hadn’t though. Her body was whole, though her Meridians were reduced to metaphorical ashes. Her Dantian was intact, such as it was. The state of it was no fault of mine. Still, she slept soundly. The abrupt reduction in pain and the return of control had sent her into a deep sleep. A sleep she had desperately needed.

I’d forcibly repaired so much of her body in the flight, but that wasn’t a true replacement for food and rest. She’d be physically weakened for some time. If she survived the experience though, it would be effective body tempering. Yeah. That fat bastard had inscribed a whole path of Body Cultivation right alongside the Spiritual Cultivation I’d been practicing. Can’t practice Body Cultivation without a body though! Not that it was really my body though, was it?

I wasn’t really planning on taking it over, was I? No. I’d even told Terra as such. I could have tricked her. Still could, technically. Guide her, build a better cultivation base. Get her to at the peak of Foundation Establishment, just to be sure there was a strong enough base for me to take over. I could guide her to merge naturally with my cultivation, for her Soul to be seamlessly consumed into my own. She’d never even know it.

But I would. I wouldn’t be any better than that fat Immortal that destroyed my entire world. I couldn’t remember them, but my partner, my children, my friends and family. They were all out there. Maybe eaten already. Maybe still struggling to cultivate, hoping, desperately hoping just to survive. Maybe having destroyed themselves intentionally. Souls were the real deal though. Back at Earth, there may or may not have yet been formed a Heaven. If it existed, so did the cycle of reincarnation. If it didn’t exist, our Souls would dissolve to strengthen and build up the Spiritual Qi until a Heaven would form. Either way, not really lost.

Get eaten though? Shred your Soul apart? One gave your energies and your Soul, your everything, to the consumer. The other broke them down into raw environmental Qi. You didn’t even get to contribute towards establishing a Heaven to save the Souls of others, in the future. No legacy. No purpose, except as food for someone or something else.

I couldn’t get back the individual I was, nor those I’d been connected to. Maybe though, just maybe, I could build up Terra. Maybe others. Make a body for myself. Maybe. Just, barely, maybe.

We could hunt ourselves a fat Immortal.

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Eh, who was I kidding? At least we could have a good time and make a real go at it before we all got eaten. Really piss the fat ass off. It sure beat giving up! Plus! Even though she was asleep, Terra was just experiencing so many sensations! I was already having the time of my life!