"In the last and the most crucial step."
In a secluded cave, a middle-aged man refined a pill in a cauldron. There was a unique dragon pattern on the cauldron. It was golden color.A half saint stage artifact which was mysterious stole from the alchemy association once.That middle-aged man controlled the fire by a formation. This formation was unique. In the Tong Xuan Realm the highest ranking of formation was 7th grade while this one was half-stage 8th grade.
Its grade was a bit higher, but this difference made a huge difference between formations power and capabilities. The most unique thing was this formation directly consumed surrounding spiritual energy and gathered it inside the cauldron where the pill was being refined.
The middle-aged person thought, "I, Xu Mingchen, a lone cultivator who had been cast out from his clan in the earlier stage of cultivation because of my weak body constitution, after six hundred years of struggle, finally achieved the peak of the Saint stage. But what next?... There was no answer. In the Tong Xuan Realm this was the limit of cultivation. At that time I had only one hundred and fifty years lifespan. I tried to find methods to increase life, but in this stage of cultivation no one could live more than one thousand years."
"Days, months and years passed like a wave of water. I secluded myself from the world and continued my research on some immortal animal. And after one hundred years, today I finally succeeded."
Xu Mingchen's eyes fixed on the cauldron center; a pill was forming and it was almost in its last stage. He watched every change, every steam, every faint glow. His heart beat with a slow, deep hope. But suddenly...
Boom.
A massive explosion occurred and with its force three hundred Li of area, including the cave and mountain, shattered; dust spread everywhere. Nearby beast groups ran in random directions.
That explosion made a shock wave which spread around four thousand Li. Clans and sects were alerted. Beast groups attacked outside the forest.
In another space portal a child-like body fell, looking like a five-year-old. His face was cute and his eyes looked innocent. He seemed unconscious. But he was not. Inside the body a person thought, "Am I failed? Am I going to die?"
This little child was none other than Xu Mingchen. He tried to collect his scattered memories and felt what had happened in the last moment.
Flashback —
"Almost this pill refined. Huh... My one hundred years of research was almost going to succeed. This pill could help me to break through to the Saint King Stage."
But suddenly the surrounding space started fluctuating. A space crack opened inside the cave near the formation.
"Oh... no, this was not good."
He felt space energy for the first time. That was not the only problem. Suddenly many space cracks appeared in different spots of the cave and began to consume energy, much like the formation which Xu Mingchen had used to gather surrounding energy.
As a result, the formation that he had used to gather spiritual energy for the pill was disturbed and a massive explosion happened.
Likely there was a space crack behind Xu Mingchen. The force of the explosion pushed him through the space crack.
But it did not stop there. Xu Mingchen had been using a Time Path treasure which made his personal time run at 0.99× that of others. Because of the pill refining backlash and the mysterious technique failing, this Time Path artifact reacted strangely — it made his body revert to that of a five-year-old.
Back to the present.
Meanwhile the pill, which was almost refined, still finished refining. Even though there had been an explosion it still completed. Then why had that explosion happened?
Actually what Xu Mingchen had thought — that the explosion was caused by a pill refining failure — was not entirely true. The explosion had happened because of that mysterious pill refining technique. When the formation absorbed some space energy, the energy of the mysterious technique and the formation energy collided and caused the explosion. In the backlash everything happened at once.
In a few moments the pill's aura, which was very dense, spread into the surrounding area. Nearby 7th stage cultivators and beasts went berserk.
Saint stage cultivators sensed the pill energy with their divine sense from far away. A great commotion started.
At the same time, in a space tunnel, the five-year-old body fell. The tunnel was dark, like darkness trying to consume everything.
Small world.
Yang dynasty.
Royal Capital, Yang empire.
Ji Ju city.
This city was well known for one thing: it allowed every citizen to cultivate. Slavery was not allowed here. In the Yang dynasty this was the only place where people with weak constitutions were still given a chance to cultivate.
The city was not very large. It was almost eight hundred Li in area. Another uniqueness was that the city was under a general, not directly under the emperor. Seventy percent of the soldiers of the Yang dynasty were from here.
On that day something strange happened. Suddenly the sky darkened. Clouds gathered as if someone had gathered them on purpose. A space crack opened in the sky and something in dark-blue light came out. It fell like a meteor. A tail of light followed it. In a few moments it struck the northern part of Ji Ju city.
It had fallen on a wooden house. The surrounding area was destroyed by its impact. Dust spread everywhere.
A short time later the city lord — who was actually a general — arrived. His guards cleared the destroyed part of the house. When they checked, they found a child's body, around five years old. It was none other than Xu Mingchen. He was still unconscious. General Ju Tianxuan took him up into his arms. Suddenly the general felt a spiritual fluctuation in the child's body and sensed some weird and terrifying energy.
He examined the child but could not understand anything, even though he himself was in the Immortal Ascension stage, seventh layer. At the same time the child looked very cute. The general decided instantly to adopt him. He declared, "This is a celestial child and our benefactor who is created by the heaven so that he can help us from great calamity." Many people had come to see what had fallen from the sky. The general's sudden announcement shocked them.
There was a small commotion, but it soon quieted. No one could go against the general, except the general's clan elder. But even the elder stayed silent.
General Ju Tianxuan — the first general of the Yang dynasty's emperor — was tall and muscular. His eyes were full of determination. He was the clan head of the Ju family. Even the supreme elder of his clan did not oppose his decision.
The child was taken to the Ju family hall. They cleaned his wounds, wrapped him, and placed him on soft blankets. No one knew the truth yet: that the child once had been a man who had studied for a hundred years to break through the limit of their world. No one knew the time artifact had warped his fate.
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