In this realm of creation, cultivation has been held as a sacred art and act of communion with the immaterial Pruhasa since the dawn of creation when the demi-gods, the immortal limbs of the God-head, first descended upon the newborn world following the advent of the cardinal concupiscence of the God-head, detaching themselves from the God-head, Vishnu Zurvan, like the limbs of Starfish cut off from the main body, desiring to grow bodies of their own but only able to eternally emulate an effigy of the primordial. It was the demi-gods, now styling themselves as proper, “Gods,” as they walked among their mortal followers, who first disseminated the first disciplic sessions of tutelage concerning the secret arts of neidan and waidan to the chorus of infinite souls that had been born from the creation of the world, and of all those souls who’d received the disciplic lessons of the gods about one-fourth of those souls were inspired to take on material forms and attempt to dwell in the barren, uninhabited below, becoming known as jivatma, marking the first breaths of humanity in the newborn world.

And when the kenotic-minded gods took for themselves a quarter of humanity to change in their own image and consummate as concubines the art of cultivation changed as well. For the first time ever in all the world, cultivation was used as an art of martial prowess as kenotic-minded gods waged war against their henotic-minded counterparts, with mankind caught between blood feud of the gods, leaving only two quarters of humanity unchanged by either side. Eventually, even as the gods, having been incapacitated like the limbs of a starfish diced too small to be able to regenerate in a feasible time frame over the course of their own petty war, fell into immortal slumber, the fate of the remainder of mankind was left hanging in the balance, as the seeds of deep-hearted rivalry and even disgust, had been sown into the hearts of the widowed concubines of both the henotic and kenotic gods.

But Fate is a fickle thing, for it is neither a rigid course, nor is it subservient, but an entity nearly equal to mankind in of itself, and in this world of dueling desires Fate can always be coereced to change. Or at least, so the disciples of the so-called, “demon king,” believed.

Many moons and many a century after the cardinal catharsis of creation and the hubris fueled fall of the demi-gods, many a human kingdom had fallen as well. It was in the interim of the fall of one such kingdom, that a local lord resolved to try and solve the paradox of dueling desires for himself. In the interim of the fall of the western tetrachate of Fulin, as the eastern senate’s delegates tried and failed to spearhead a peaceful transition of power brigands began to infest the lands and warlords reigned supreme as each one fought to dominate not only his own fate, but the fate of his former peers as well. In a world where anything is possible given enough of ever elusive materials such as, “time,” and, “resources,” in a world like that of the so-called, “martial world,” where cultivation had reigned as king since the time of the demi-gods and secret sutras and rumored plemoras of faux-immortality abounded, how could it be that Fate itself could remain free? If two dueling desires, born of equal dreams of the heart, were to clash with one another, how many would have to be sacrificed? How much does it cost for honed skill to overcome natural talent?

It is said that these questions weighted heavy on the mind of the lord Redivivus, a slave boy who’d bought his freedom with his earnings as a legionnaire in the bygone days of the western tetrachate, who’d been elevated yet again to a peerage by an old platoon mate who would later go on to on to lay claim to the lands in the northern reaches of a region called Ichaivalia as warlord. When his lord fell in battle Redivivus dedicated the remainder of his life to avenging his friend and liege, and held out against the opposition forces for another half year. Even after his death Redivivus' own bannermen and martial disciples resolved to avenge their lord.

On the day of his execution at the order of the new warlord of Ichaivalia, Redivivus commanded his court stenomancer, a master alchemist in his own right, embalm his brain by the power of his stenomancer’s cryogenic magics. In the dead of night, the stenomancer stole away with the corpse of his liege to a forsaken redoubt across the border, wherein the remainder of bannermen loyal to Redivivus' memory gathered as the stenomancer sought to resurrect his liege lord. Despite the fact that in all the realm of creation there has never been such a thing as, “true resurrection,” as it is believed to be a natural, “dharmic trauma response,” that prevents the soul both from being able to desire or to be coereced back into the same vessel twice, there are, however, workarounds. Although the act known as, “necromancy,” the art of the coercion of a soul into the corpse of another, usually done by a bokor, was reviled all throughout the lands that constituted the boundaries of the former western tetrachate, the act of stenomancy, that is the art of mapping the layout and composition of the body with ba-gua trigrams on a stenograph, had been rumored to have positive results in the, “resurrection,” of individuals.

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Deep in an ancient cistern long forgotten beneath the bowels of the forgotten redoubt, the stenomancer prepared to submerge the frozen brain of his liege lord in a grand calcinator. Transmuting the alchemical compounds that had up the muscle and sinew and memories of Redivivus back into their elemental bases according to the periodic table of ba-gua, the court stenomancer began to carve out the sequences, shapes and arrays of ba-gua trigrams that comprised the, “map,” of the mind of Redivivus in a series of braille-like, “broken,” and, “unbroken,” hyphens, like those that made up the figures of the trigrams, across the surface of vivianite tablets, according to the diagnosis of the calcinator. After twelve years of his painstaking task, the Redivivus' trusted stenomancer ordered the tablets in place in a column of three zoetropes; each, “page,” of each zoetrope containing only a single hyphen, so that stacked one on top of the other, the zoetropes would, “spell out,” the corresponding trigram of the mapped layout of his lord’s embalmed brain when read from top to bottom.

Aligning the column of zoetropes against three golden needle mechanisms in control of three counting-dials on an enchanted dial-lock, the stenomancer activated the massive zoetropes with a spell of perpetual motion and watched as each push of the three needles by the braille-like indentations of the hyphens carved out of the surface of the vivianite scrolled the dials on the enchanted lock up by one or two, “ticks,” depending on whether the hyphen was, “broken,” or, “unbroken,” before the needle straightened and the dial would scroll back down to read, “0.” With each combination of, “1s,” and, “2s,” put into the dial-lock, the telekinetic enchantment on the lock would activate and a gate would unlock, releasing an alchemical reagent, corresponding to the elemental trigram represented by the binary sequence that served as the three-digit lock combination, into an vacuum of exogenesis. Inside the boundaries of the vacuum each reagent released would collide with the ones released prior, igniting in a transmutational fusion, each reaction causing the corpusant spell suspended in the vacuum to grow larger and larger.

Within the corpusant flickering silhouettes began to take shape, like shadows dancing in a flame, as old memories of an embalmed mind were alchemized back into existence. Than the shadows of the memories became solid as the corpusant hardened and became tangible muscle and sinew, expanding outward into spongy flesh, a brain born anew! And with the mind came the memories, and with the memories came the struggle and impulses that had raced through the mind of Redivivus during his last moments. But now, here in the safety of the vacuum, there was nothing to restrain his will, no anti-magic inhibiting spells or headsman’s axe, and so when the mind of Redivivus struggled to free himself within the visions replaying in his mind’s eye he found himself feeling disoriented and unable to move or even feel any of the limbs he was still seeing the nightmares of his memories. In an attempt to reorient himself within the fast darkening visions of his mind’s eye, the mind of Revidivus reached out to his sole remaining ba-gua organ, a type of organ in humans akin to that of a catfish’s electric organ except capable of producing and subsequently combining the full spectrum of the eight wu-xing elements instead of just zhen-thunder, his shen dantian, and willed his limbs to regenerate at the cost of his own, unbeknownst to him fully replenished, alchemical reserves. Bone burst from alchemized earth and metal, and blood boiled from fire and water, until the mind of Revidivus had alchemized a new body within the suspension of the exogenisis vacuum!