Azrael woke up with someone else's childhood in his head.
It was disorienting. He remembered growing up in London—gray skies, university libraries, the smell of coffee at 3 AM while writing his dissertation. But he also remembered growing up in a small village at the foot of the Celestial Peak—watching flying cultivators in the sky, dreaming of immortality, the smell of his mother's terrible cooking.
Two lives. Two sets of memories. Same name, somehow.
"What are the odds?" he muttered, sitting up on his meditation mat. His body—Azrael Voss's body—was nineteen years old, slightly malnourished, and covered in old bruises from training accidents. "Actually, as a scientist, I should calculate the probability of—no. No, Azrael. You're in a magic world now. Probability is probably nonsense here." (It is when there is plot armor.)
He spent the morning sorting through Azrael Voss's memories like files in a database. Most of it was depressing.
Azrael Voss had been born with terrible cultivation talent. His parents had scraped together everything they had to get him tested at the Celestial Peak Sect's recruitment drive. The elder had taken one look at him and said: "Trash-tier spiritual roots. But his handwriting is above average. We need copyists."
That was it. That was his entire cultivation career. He'd been accepted not as a disciple with potential, but as a scribe.
"Well," Azrael said to the empty cave. "At least we have job security."
Before the system had gone into hibernation, it had dumped a massive amount of information directly into his mind. Cultivation realms, their power levels, the structure of the cultivation world—all of it was now sitting in his brain like someone had uploaded a textbook.
He sorted through it methodically.
The realms went: Body Tempering, Qi Condensation, Foundation Establishment, Core Formation, Golden Core, Nascent Soul, Soul Transformation, Void Integration, and then apparently things got weird after that with Star Convergence and Solar Dominion and a bunch of other cosmic-sounding names.
Each realm had power benchmarks. Foundation Establishment could destroy towns. Core Formation could level cities. Golden Core could devastate provinces. Nascent Soul could shatter countries. Soul Transformation could flatten continents. Void Integration could destroy planets.
"Early Void Integration," Azrael muttered, remembering the system's assessment. "That's the peak power on this planet. Which means... yeah, we're absolutely in the backwater. The system wasn't lying. This place is spiritually depleted."
No wonder it couldn't function here. It would be like trying to run a supercomputer in the Stone Age.
The Azure Sky Continent was massive—roughly the size of Asia back on Earth, if his rough mental calculations were right. It was one of seven continents on this world, which apparently didn't have a proper name. Everyone just called it "the mortal realm" because cultivators were terrible at naming things.
The Celestial Peak Sect controlled the northern third of the continent. They were one of three major powers, locked in a delicate balance with the Crimson Phoenix Pavilion to the south and the Endless Ocean Palace to the east. None of them fought openly because the last great war had nearly destroyed the continent two thousand years ago and the sect masters had shattered the surrounding planets in the solar system, damn, even the one of the 3 moons above them was cracked.
The sect itself was massive—over ten thousand disciples spread across the mountain range. The hierarchy was simple:
Outer Disciples (Qi Condensation Realm): Bottom feeders like Azrael. Did manual labor, copied books, cleaned training grounds, and desperately hoped to advance.
Inner Disciples (Foundation Establishment to Golden Core): The "real" disciples. Got actual training, resources, and respect.
Core Disciples (Golden Core to Nascent Soul): The sect's future. Elders-in-training. Walked around like they owned the place because they basically did.
Elders (Nascent Soul to Soul Transformation): The terrifying ones. Could flatten countries and continents. Most were in closed-door cultivation and hadn't been seen in decades.
Sect Master (Early Void Integration): The strongest cultivator on the entire planet. Could shatter planets if he felt like it. Had been in closed-door cultivation for the last hundred years trying to break through to mid-stage.
Azrael looked around his cave-home. It was carved directly into the mountainside, barely ten feet across. A meditation mat, a desk, some shelves with cultivation manuals and blank scrolls. A small spirit stone lamp provided light.
This was the outer sect's cheapest housing. But at least it was private.
A knock on his door interrupted his thoughts.
"Voss! You in there?"
Azrael opened the door to find a stocky young man in outer sect robes. Memories supplied the name: Marcus Webb. One of the few people who'd occasionally talked to Azrael Voss without treating him like dirt.
"Still alive," Azrael confirmed.
"Good, good. Listen, Elder Feng wanted me to remind you about the Basic Fire Palm copies. He needs them by tomorrow evening for the new disciple batch. You're still on schedule, right?"
Right. The job. Azrael Voss had been assigned to create ten copies of the Basic Fire Palm Technique manual. It was tedious work, but it paid thirty spirit stones—enough for a month of basic cultivation resources.
"I'll have them done," Azrael promised.
"Great. See you around!"
After Marcus left, Azrael sat at his desk and pulled out the reference manual for the Basic Fire Palm Technique. It was a thin book, maybe twenty pages. The technique itself was simple: circulate qi through specific meridians, channel it to your palm, add fire-element energy, and punch things.
Next to it sat a bottle of spirit ink—specially prepared ink that the sect provided to all copyists. It was expensive stuff, apparently.
Azrael picked up the reference manual and started reading.
Something felt... off.
The characters were clear enough. He could read them perfectly. But when he tried to actually understand the technique—really grasp what it was teaching—his mind just sort of... slid off. Like trying to grab water.
He could copy the words. He could write them down. But comprehending them? His brain refused to engage.
"Huh," Azrael said. "That's weird."
He focused harder, pushing his Heaven-Defying Comprehension against the technique manual.
There was resistance. Like a film over the text, preventing deep understanding. Not obvious enough that most people would notice—they'd just assume the technique was hard to grasp. But with his enhanced comprehension, he could feel the barrier.
"They enchanted it," he realized. "The spirit ink. It's not just ink—it's got some kind of restriction woven into it. You can see the text, copy the text, but you can't actually learn from it unless you're authorized."
That made sense. The sect couldn't have every copyist memorizing thousands of techniques for free. Normal disciples had to earn contribution points to purchase techniques. The copyists were just scribes, not students.
Clever.
Unfortunately for the sect, Heaven-Defying Comprehension apparently didn't care about restrictions.
Azrael pushed harder, and the barrier... cracked. Just a little. Like pressing against plastic wrap until it tore.
And suddenly, he could understand.
The Basic Fire Palm technique unfolded in his mind. Not just the surface instructions, but the deeper principles. The qi circulation wasn't just random—it followed a specific pattern designed to heat the energy as it moved. The breathing technique synchronized with the circulation to add oxygen, metaphorically speaking. The hand formation compressed the fire-aspected qi into a small point for maximum impact.
It was still a simple technique. But now he understood why it worked.
"Okay," Azrael said slowly. "So I can bypass their restriction. That's... incredibly useful."
He picked up his brush, dipped it in the spirit ink, and began copying.
His handwriting flowed across the page, each stroke precise and elegant. Azrael Voss had been above average at calligraphy. Azrael Void had been perfect at it—years of meticulous note-taking and diagram drawing had given him an incredibly steady hand. Combined, the result was borderline art.
Each character was flawlessly balanced. Each stroke had exactly the right thickness, the right flow. The spacing was perfect. The overall composition was beautiful.
He finished the first copy in ten minutes.
As he started the second copy, his mind began to wander. With his comprehension bypassing the restriction, he couldn't help but actually think about what he was copying.
What is fire, really? he thought. Here, "fire" is an element. A fundamental force. But what does that mean?
He paused mid-stroke.
Heaven-Defying Comprehension kicked in properly this time.
Fire wasn't just heat. It was transformation. The change from one state to another. Wood to ash. Potential to kinetic. Stillness to motion.
Fire was consumption. It ate fuel and released energy.
Fire was light. It illuminated. It revealed.
Fire was destruction. It broke down complex structures into simple ones.
Fire was rebirth. From ash, new things grew.
"Oh," Azrael breathed. "Fire isn't an element. It's a concept. A law."
He kept copying, but now his mind was racing. The Basic Fire Palm wasn't teaching him to make fire. It was teaching him to channel the concept of fire through his qi. Transform his energy. Make it consume and destroy.
But the technique was so limited. It only touched one aspect of fire—destruction. What about transformation? What about rebirth?
The technique could be so much better.
By the time he finished all ten copies, the sun had set. Azrael stared at the completed manuals on his desk. They were perfect copies, faithful to the original in every way.
But now he understood the Fire Law behind them. Not completely—he'd barely scratched the surface. But he understood it in a way the original author probably hadn't.
"I need to test something," Azrael muttered.
He pulled out a fresh scroll and began writing a new version of the Basic Fire Palm. Same technique, but different structure, with annotations. Small notes explaining the deeper principles. Modifications to the qi circulation that made it more efficient. Adjustments to the breathing pattern that better synchronized with the fire concept.
It took him three hours. When he finished, he had created what was essentially an overpowered perfected version of the Basic Fire Palm technique.
He set the manuals aside and closed his eyes, settling into meditation. He needed to properly integrate what he'd learned.
The Fire Law comprehension sat in his mind like a puzzle with missing pieces. He understood maybe 24% of it—enough to grasp the basics, but nowhere near mastery.
He began the integration process, carefully weaving his understanding of fire into his cultivation foundation. Specifically, into his first layer of Qi Condensation.
The process was delicate. He had to take the abstract comprehension of Fire Law and anchor it into his actual qi, making it a permanent part of his foundation. Like coding a program into hardware.
Wisps of energy began to descend. They came from nowhere and everywhere at once—fragments of the Fire Law itself, drawn to someone who understood it.
The wisps sank into his body, tempering his flesh. His muscles refined themselves, becoming denser and more efficient. His bones hardened. His skin toughened. It wasn't a dramatic change, but it was noticeable.
The wisps sank into his qi, purifying and strengthening it. His Qi Condensation energy became more potent, gaining a hint of fire-element nature.
The wisps sank into his soul, expanding his consciousness slightly and making it more resilient.
The integration was steady, methodical. It would take hours to complete fully—probably until daybreak to integrate all 24% of his comprehension into the first layer.
Around midnight, Azrael's consciousness began to feel strained. Not painfully, but like a muscle that had been exercising too long. Comprehending a Law at his current level was apparently exhausting.
Actually, it should have been impossible. Most Qi Condensation cultivators couldn't even touch Law comprehension. That was Golden Core territory at the earliest.
The only reason he was still alive and functional was because his soul had merged with Azrael Voss's. Two souls combined into one, making it stronger than either individual soul had been. Strong enough to handle Law comprehension without shattering.
"Lucky," Azrael muttered, feeling his consciousness waver. "Very lucky."
He settled deeper into meditation, letting the integration continue on autopilot. His consciousness needed rest.
By dawn, the process would be complete. 24% Fire Law comprehension, fully integrated into his first layer of Qi Condensation.
Then he could start on the second layer.
And eventually, all 3,000 layers.
"One down," he mumbled, drifting toward sleep. "2,999 to go."
His last conscious thought was that a thousand years suddenly didn't seem like that much time.
[END CHAPTER 2]