Chapter 1 - The Boy Without a Core

The city of Tiannan, located in the SkyStead continent. The SkyStead continent is the only landmass on the entire planet, the rest is covered in an endless sea. Tiannan City is the capital of the Tiannan Empire, one of the two great empires of the continent, the other being the Hong Dynasty.

In the city of Tiannan resides a boy no more than twelve years old. He was currently being beaten by a group of children.

“Trash!”

“Scum!”

Hurls of insults are directed towards him. He does nothing to protect himself, he’s rather used to this sort of treatment.

“You bring shame to our family you cripple!” A boy who looked about the boy’s age says before kicking him square in the ribs. The other boy falls to the floor, wheezing. However, he neither says anything nor does anything.

“Xiao Tiannan, we shouldn’t…” One of the boys behind the domineering boy hesitantly starts, very respectfully.

“Yes, I know. We’ve only beat him up where his clothes will cover him, so it’s fine! This coward wouldn’t tell anyone, he knows what would happen if he did” Xiao Tiannan glares at the boy on the floor.

Xiao Tiannan was used to the boy never responding to his provocations and beatings but it still pissed him off. He spat at the boy on the ground, got in one good kick for measure and left with his lackeys in tow.

They boy on the floor was called Astler and he was an adopted son of the Tiannan family. He was technically the brother of the boy who just beat him up and spit on him.

The boy slowly rose to his feet, clutching his stomach with one hand.

One day, he’ll regret this. Astler vowed to himself. So what if he couldn’t cultivate right now, that didn’t mean he’d never be able to. When he did finally start cultivating, he’ll shoot so far in front of Xiao Tiannan that his intestines will turn green.

Astler had been painstakingly trying to build his cultivation core for years now. Normally one is able to build their cultivation core by their 8th birthday, from this it was easy to see how below average Astler was. Even the average talents of his age group were already in the 5th stage of the core realm. Xiao was actually considered a peak talent and was actually in the 9th stage of the core realm. He just needed to break through the bottleneck and he would be in the 1st stage of the martial realm, where real cultivation is said to begin. This was when the elders of the Tiannan clan would bestow cultivation skills onto him and he’d begin training on the path to becoming a Legend.

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A legend was said to be the peak in the entire cultivation world. In the entire SkyStead continent, there were only two Legend Realm cultivators. One was the ancestor of the Tiannan family and the other was the ancestor of the Hong family. The two peak powers in all the land. From this it’s easy to see how powerful this realm is. Neither dares to face each other in combat, as neither is completely confident and if either were to lose, their entire Kingdom would be slaughtered and annexed by the other.

If another legend rank were to appear, the power structure would inevitably shift and either family would prevail or an entirely new power would emerge.

The leaders of both families desperately wish for another Legend rank and so a great deal of resources is pooled into schooling and training for the youngsters of their family. If one were to be talented, it didn’t matter if one was the lowest servant of the family, they would immediately jump to a new level of respect. Inversely, if one were to present poor talent, their position, no matter how high would immediately lower to one worse than dog shit.

This was the situation for Astler. He was actually the adopted son of one of the Chief Elders of the clan, that’s why even Xiao Tiannan only hit him where marks wouldn’t show. Yet, he was treated worse than dog shit by the other members of his clan because of astonishingly low talent.

What Astler really couldn’t stand was the way people would treat his father. His adoptive father was named Mao Tiannan and he was in the 1st level of the Profound realm, the level before the Legend Realm. Only 3 people in the entire clan had entered this realm. They were the 2 other Clan Elders, with the only Legend realm expert being the Clan Leader.

Despite his awful talent and the shame and disgrace brought by Astler, Mao Tiannan had never once treated Astler in contempt and had actually started to dote on him even more. Because of this, the other elders of the clan treated Mao Tiannan with blatant contempt for having such a poor son.

Mao Tiannan could be said to be the only person on the continent that Astler actually cares about and for his sake especially, Astler trained every single day to try and enter the core realm.

Astler went to the forest outside of the city to train. Truthfully, this was a dangerous place, however, to him, it provided a sense of comfort and relief. If he trained in this city after all, he would probably be mocked and beaten up. The sense of oneness with nature in the forest and the comforting sensation he would get when he trained was the only real joy he had.

The forest he trained in was actually known as the forest of death. This was because many beasts called this forest their home, the further in you went, the more dangerous beasts you would encounter. Even in the very outskirts, you would encounter Core beasts and you wouldn’t have to travel far to find Martial beasts either.

To Astler, this place felt like home. He would sometimes encounter Core realm and Martial realm beasts in the forest, but they would never notice him. He was surprisingly good at noticing his surroundings and staying hidden.

He’d travel a kilometer in. A fact which would greatly shock those that mock him in his clan, as no one even in the core realm would dare to go so far in and peak martial realm experts would limit themselves to such a distance.

At this distance, resides a small cave. Inside of the cave, the passageway is too narrow for most beasts, but small enough for Astler’s twelve year old body to squeeze through. The passageway opens up in to a fairly large room. Dozens of different gems glisten, embedded in the walls.

Astler had found this place by accident when he was exploring about the previous day. It felt extremely comfortable and Astler felt like it had some benefit to his cultivation. So he made the decision to practice his cultivation here today.

He sat down in the center of the room, eyes closed and began to sense the different clusters of energy around him. He wasn’t sure why, but the energy density here appeared to be far greater than anything he had seen before. He began to absorb this energy directly into his core. The apparent effects of this room were immediately clear as a surge of powerful energy from assorted elements hit him all at once and swelled into his core.

One by one, the gems embedded into the walls starts to disintegrate as if all the energy was being used up. For about an hour this state continued until there were no more gems left.

Astler opened his eyes and smiled. His core had finally been formed!