Ten thousand mortal lifetimes ago, he had been but an individual warrior, toiling under the auspices of Heaven, striving to honor ancestors and gods alike as war raged across his homeland. Many others fell to his blade and skill. He had trained to the peak of his strength and won some minor accolades from the commanders of his people for his daring.

Finally, the small recognitions had piled up and he was presented with a great prize. The weakest of the energy pills, crafted to align a mortal body with the energies the gods of his world, husbanded for their greatest endeavors.

Taking the pill set him alight, drove the fury of combat and strength into him along with igniting the fires of the dantian inside him. No longer would he be a simple warrior of his little people, he would be a proud cultivator that dominated the battlefield! The gods walked the greater cosmos in their battles, but he would stride the mortal lands in their name and rise as their servant.

But the Heavens truly had a sense of humor, as he found himself back among the weakest of the people. Cultivators of the Initiate Realm were barely more than mortal among even the weakest of those who walked the path to Heaven. And the qi of the world was highly regimented, filling the soul only slowly. Greater accolades in combat and bravery were required to have the land offer up its energy to strengthen him. All the while the land greedily drank in their own cast offs.

Many of his peers were those that suppressed the weaker around them instead, feeding on their cultivation to hasten their own. The only rule as laid down by those above was to not destroy someone’s cultivation completely, as that was the fastest way to anger the Heavens.

But he grew in the sparse space afforded, fighting the battles that would gain him the most strength and drive his enemies before him. He did not steal from the cultivation of those who became junior to him as he grew, for their weakness was not something he wished to include in himself.

The great city-masters and lords of the regions noticed him as his strength grew. Neither content nor growing when defending the people, he was instead sent to be among those who conquered new land. He eventually rose beyond the near mortal Initiates and began striding ever forward into the higher realms.

It was once he neared the entrance to Heaven, a dozen mortal lifetimes later, that he learned of the true nature of his world. The land could not support those who would leave it behind. Much like those who preyed on the weaker of his near mortal time, the draw of the earth upon his cultivation grew greater with each step up the mountain to Heaven he took.

And at that peak, he found he would have to take back from the world to lift himself into Heaven. He was reminded of the voracious hunger of the world’s qi. How much was natural and how much were those in his place taking, just on a wider scale than the lower Realms?

He wanted Heaven, he wanted to walk among his gods, but his soul was that of a being who had conquered his enemies, drove them before him. Found worthy enemies that drove him to the limits of his strength.

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He could conquer his world, bend it in its entirety to him, yet that would require Divinity himself, not just to walk among the Heavens.

So instead, he turned in on himself and conquered his own energy. He ascended to the Heavenly Realm upon his own soul, and found only more of the same as his world was. Instead of lower realm cultivators fighting for mortal purposes, those in the Heavenly Realm fought for the direct approval of the gods, to be given a greater feast of the energies of the world.

Turned aside by empires and Heavenly Sects alike, he turned to building his own soul’s strength through formation and alchemy, defining his Dao as one who conquers the strong, not feeding from carrion among the weak.

And it finally came to the point where stepping into the realm Divine was possible, but no amount of his own effort would suffice. For his soul had grown in size and strength that it must have a Heaven to rest upon. It was then he discovered the qi of the gods of his world shaped the Heavenly Realm, and thus shaped the earthly Realms, in their own likeness. And his burgeoning divinity was nowhere near the strength to conquer the dozen cultivator gods, some of whom had their divinity resting in multiple Heavens.

And so he turned to formations once more, invoking the same Rite that other burgeoning Divine Realm cultivators invoked. Echoed through his Dao, the Rite of Ragnarok. Bring me to a world with a Heaven that will support my cultivation. That both my Way and Dao will find pleasing.

~~~

He refused to sup upon the essence of a world unworthy of his conquering, so why an entire world of mortals? The Rite used his own Dao, tasted of his own cultivation, to resonate with the Dao of the universe to find, within its infinite reaches, a world that matched. To fail after invoking the Rite was to accept the loss of multiple realms of cultivation at a minimum.

The first possible answer lay in the weapons the mortal used. Something easy at hand that could harm a cultivator, required a second realm to even appropriately react to it. A world that produced mortals such as this must have a soul of such strength that it would be a great fight against its Heaven.

But the Heavenly Realm did not exist here, the mortal earth did not support anything. As he expanded himself across the world and into its center, he found it. Wounded nigh unto death, shattered and broken. This world’s soul had taken a divine strike before it even found itself. The tower broken enough that even the mortals strayed from it and did not speak a single world’s language.

He knew of the flows of qi in the world such that fixing this world’s soul to at least the third realm would take less than a revolution of this planet around its star. But to impose such a change upon the planet would impose such a change upon the mortals. And if this world answered to his rite, then it would be much more beneficial for the people of this world to remain themselves and strengthen his return, instead of becoming much like those he had left behind.

~~~

In a world devoid of cultivation and no singular language imposed by the world’s soul, it only took a moment to hold his soul up against not only the fragments of the broken, but also against the deeply slumbering souls of these mortals. And so very, very few used the echoes of their soul instead of tearing their soul apart for power.

His own soul and qi already surrounded them and for those who tore themselves apart, his energy served as a cover for the damage they did. But enough damage and their soul would collapse, leaving a body that had no attachment to their greater self.

The girl was interesting, questing in her own way. He hadn’t noticed when the world’s soul had finally stitched itself together that his command for life reverberated into them as well.

But she was bound and determined to harm herself climbing mountains when she hadn’t taken the step off the first hill.