The sun, a pale imitation of the blazing orb that lit the Upper Realm, cast long shadows across the Valerius training grounds. Dust motes danced in the sparse light filtering through the overgrown trees, illuminating the cracks in the ancient stone paving. Valerius Ren, now eight years old, stood before his father, Lord Alaric Valerius, his small frame dwarfed by the fading grandeur of their ancestral home.
Lord Alaric, a man whose shoulders seemed perpetually bowed by the weight of his family's decline, held a wooden practice sword. His once-sharp eyes, though still proud, now carried a weary glint. "Again, Ren!" he commanded, his voice a strained echo of the booming tones Kaelen remembered from the martial patriarchs of the Upper Realm. "Focus! The 'Flowing Willow' stance requires fluidity, not brute force. You are too stiff."
Ren, or rather, Kaelen, internally sighed. The 'Flowing Willow' was a rudimentary defensive posture, barely worthy of a novice in his past life. Yet, here, it was considered a foundational art of the Valerius family. He executed the movements, his small limbs moving with a deliberate, almost too-perfect precision that often frustrated his father. He was not stiff; he was simply bored. His mind, a vast library of celestial combat techniques, found these motions painfully simplistic.
"Your stance is correct, yes," Alaric continued, circling him, a frown etched on his brow. "But where is the spirit? Where is the qi? The Valerius family has always been known for the subtle integration of spiritual energy into our martial arts. You, my son, feel... empty."
Ren kept his expression neutral, a skill he had perfected over millennia of dealing with lesser beings. "Father, I try. The spiritual energy here is... faint." He chose his words carefully, a truth disguised as a child's observation.
Alaric stopped, his shoulders slumping slightly. "Faint? Yes, it is faint, boy. This entire realm is faint compared to the legends of old. But we must work with what we have! Your ancestors, they could draw qi from a stone! Look at the younger generation of the House of Blackwood, or the Sunstone Clan. Their children, barely older than you, are already breaking through to the first stage of Body Refinement!" His voice grew louder, laced with a familiar bitterness. "While the Valerius line... we struggle to even awaken our spiritual roots."
Kaelen felt a flicker of something akin to pity for his new father. Alaric was a man trapped by his lineage, burdened by a legacy he couldn't uphold. He genuinely loved his family, in his own way, and his desperation stemmed from that love. It was a stark contrast to the ruthless, self-serving ambitions of the Upper Realm, where familial bonds were often mere tools for power.
"I will work harder, Father," Ren said, bowing his head slightly. He would, but not in the way Alaric envisioned. He would work harder on his path, the path of the Demonic Sovereign.
Later that evening, as dusk painted the sky in muted oranges and purples, Ren found his mother, Lady Seraphina, in the fading light of the family's small, neglected herb garden. She was tending to a wilting patch of spirit-nourishing herbs, her delicate hands stained with soil.
"Ren, my dear," she said, her voice soft, a gentle melody that always seemed to calm the tumultuous echoes in Kaelen's mind. She looked up, her eyes, though kind, held a subtle worry. "You've been training hard with your father. Are you well? You seem so... serious, always."
He sat beside her, picking up a fallen leaf. "I am well, Mother. Father wishes for me to strengthen the family."
Seraphina sighed, a faint, melancholic sound. "He does. He carries a great burden, our family's future. But you are still so young, Ren. You should play, laugh more. The world is not just about cultivation and power, even if your father believes it to be." She gently brushed a strand of hair from his forehead. "Sometimes, I fear he places too much hope on you. Our family's spiritual roots... they are not what they once were."
Ren looked at her, a strange mix of his ancient wisdom and his child's innocence in his gaze. "Perhaps... the roots need new soil, Mother. Or a different kind of water."
Seraphina paused, her hand hovering over a wilting plant. She looked at him, a flicker of surprise in her eyes, then a small, sad smile. "You always say the most peculiar things, my little philosopher. Perhaps you are right. But what kind of soil, what kind of water, could that be?" She chuckled softly, dismissing his words as a child's fanciful thought.
Kaelen, however, knew exactly what kind of soil and water. It was the forbidden arts, the dark cultivation methods that had made him the Demonic Sovereign. But he couldn't voice that. Not yet.
That night, under the sliver of a crescent moon, Valerius Ren slipped away to the most secluded part of the Valerius estate: the ancient, forgotten crypts beneath the manor. It was a place of shadows and dust, where the spiritual energy was even thinner, but it offered absolute solitude.
He sat cross-legged amidst the silent tombs of his new ancestors, their names etched into decaying stone. He closed his eyes, his mind a vast, intricate map of meridians and energy flows. He ignored the Valerius family's 'Flowing Willow' and their basic qi circulation. Instead, he focused on a technique he had devised in his past life, a subtle, almost imperceptible method of drawing in ambient spiritual energy, designed for environments where qi was scarce. It was slow, agonizingly slow, but it was efficient.
He felt the minuscule wisps of energy being drawn into his body, guided through his still-narrow meridians, and gently refined within his burgeoning qi seed. The grain of sand in his dantian, the result of years of effort, seemed to pulse with a faint, steady rhythm. Tonight, it grew. Not by much, perhaps the size of another grain of sand, but it was growth.
He was not Valerius Ren, the hopeful scion of a declining house. He was Kaelen, the Demonic Sovereign, meticulously rebuilding his foundation, brick by agonizing brick. The expectations of his new family, the pity of their rivals, the slow decay of their legacy – none of it mattered. All that mattered was the burning inferno of vengeance, the promise of a return to power, and the eventual reckoning with those who had dared to touch his disciple. The seed of vengeance was not just planted; it was beginning to sprout, slowly, silently, in the heart of a declining noble house.