**Chapter 2: The Fire of Qingmu Village, The Blood of a Childhood Friend**
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A hundred thousand years later, a boy named Gu Xiao was born in Qingmu Village. He had one peculiar trait that set him apart from his peers: he frequently spied on girls bathing, regardless of whether they were from his village or not. This habit earned him regular beatings. Additionally, he had a fascination with playing with girls’ hair, often losing himself in it completely. Because of these quirks, he was practically beaten on sight by everyone in the village.
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When Gu Xiao opened his eyes, his mouth was filled with the taste of blood.
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It wasn’t the agony of his Grand Emperor origin power collapsing during his fall in his past life—that pain felt too distant, like something from another era. In truth, it *was* from another life. In this life, he was still called Gu Xiao, sharing the same name as his predecessor. He was the son of an ordinary hunter in Qingmu Village. Fifteen years old. Qi Condensation Stage One.
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He had one peculiar trait that set him apart from his peers: he frequently spied on girls bathing, regardless of whether they were from his village or not. This habit earned him regular beatings. Additionally, he had a fascination with playing with girls’ hair, often losing himself in it completely. Because of these quirks, he was practically beaten on sight by everyone in the village.
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He possessed a useless spiritual root.
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The village elders said the Gu family boy would likely never reach Foundation Establishment in his lifetime. Spiritual roots were innate; their quality was entirely a matter of fate. At the east end of the village, Su Ning from the Su family possessed a Heavenly Spiritual Root—a peerless genius snatched up by every sect within a hundred miles. At fifteen, she had already reached Qi Condensation Stage Nine. Gu Xiao, meanwhile, had begun cultivating at age eight. Seven years later, spiritual energy circulated through his meridians at less than a tenth of the normal speed. What took others a single incense stick’s time to complete in a full cycle took him an entire hour. Others could convert seventy percent of absorbed spiritual energy; he barely managed ten.
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But Gu Xiao didn’t care.
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He had never dreamed of becoming a grand cultivator. His ambitions were simple: inherit his father’s hunting skills, marry a woman who wouldn’t mind his useless root, and care for his parents in their old age. As for cultivation, reaching Qi Condensation Stage Three or Four would be enough—just enough to be stronger and faster than ordinary mortals, giving him a better chance at hunting, and more opportunities to play with girls’ hair.
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Today, even that humble dream was stripped from him.
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Because Qingmu Village was gone.
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Firelight illuminated half the sky. It wasn’t the sunset; the houses were burning. Gu Xiao lay sprawled beneath the old locust tree at the village entrance, his left leg broken, his ribs cracked in several places. Every breath felt like a knife twisting in his lungs. His vision was smeared with blood, painting everything in shades of red. At this moment, his useless root at Qi Condensation Stage One was utterly powerless—he couldn’t even circulate enough spiritual energy to seal his wounds and stop the bleeding. The energy within him was too thin, too faint to activate even the most basic healing techniques.
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His mother’s body lay just three paces away. Her final act had been to shove him out the door, using her own body to block a wave of black flame. The fire had burned straight through her chest. Her eyes remained open, fixed in his direction. His mother, too, had possessed a useless root—Qi Condensation Stage Two. She had been the village joke for half her life, but she never let anyone mock her son. Whenever Gu Xiao grew disheartened over his useless root, she would pat his head and say, “So what if it’s useless? Your mother’s useless too, and I still raised you this big, didn’t I?”
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His father’s body lay further away, his hand still clutching his iron hunting bow. The bowstring had already burned through. His father had no spiritual root at all—a pure mortal—but he had been the finest hunter within a hundred miles. He had taught Gu Xiao how to track beast prints, read the wind, and set traps. “A poor root doesn’t matter,” he’d say. “Master a craft, and you’ll never starve.” Today, his craft hadn’t been enough to save him. That iron bow, carried for twenty years, hadn’t loosed a single arrow.
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The entire village. Seventy-two households. Over three hundred souls. From the elders at the village head to the infants at the tail. Not a single survivor.
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Only Gu Xiao was still breathing. Not because he was strong, but because that man hadn’t reached him yet.
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That man stood at the center of the ruined village, his black robes whipping in the heat waves. His face was young, barely past twenty, his skin pale as if he’d never seen the sun. But his eyes were red—not from crying, but with irises the color of blood. The hallmark of a demonic cultivation technique.
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Lun Hua.
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People in the surrounding villages knew that name. Demonic cultivator Lun Hua. Foundation Establishment peak. He specifically targeted remote villages, harvesting living souls to refine magical artifacts. The authorities had hunted him for three years without catching so much as a shadow. To a minor village like Qingmu, which didn’t even have a single Foundation Establishment cultivator—the village chief was merely at Stage Seven, his throat crushed the moment Lun Hua stepped through the gates—Lun Hua was calamity itself.
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Calamities don’t ask for your consent. They simply fall.
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Lun Hua raised his hand, and a sphere of black flame coalesced in his palm. He didn’t even look at Gu Xiao. It was just another mundane task: burn this house, kill this waste, move to the next village. He couldn’t be bothered to check Gu Xiao’s cultivation. A useless root at Qi Condensation Stage One was, to him, no different from a mortal. His hand fell, and the black flame shot forward, trailing a long tail of smoke.
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Then a sword flash sliced in from the side, cleaving the flame cleanly in two.
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The halves struck the ground, scorching two charred craters into the earth. Gu Xiao strained to turn his head and saw a figure standing before him. The silhouette was slight, half a head shorter than him. The hand gripping the sword trembled, but the tip remained steady, pointed directly at Lun Hua. A faint cyan spiritual glow clung to the blade—sword qi that could only be condensed at Qi Condensation Stage Nine.
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The figure glanced back, her eyes flicking to Gu Xiao for just a moment.
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It was a face he had known for fifteen years.
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“A-Ning…”
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Su Ning. His childhood friend. The only Heavenly Spiritual Root in the village, a peerless genius standing in stark contrast to Gu Xiao’s useless root. Three days ago, she had just received her admission decree to the Azure Cloud Sect. Come spring, she would depart for the number one sect in the Eastern Domain. The entire village had held a three-day banquet in her honor. The village elder had called it Qingmu Village’s greatest glory in a century. She was supposed to have left that very morning with the senior disciple sent to fetch her.
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She hadn’t gone.
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She’d said she wanted to stay one more night, to keep her parents company. Right now, her parents lay beneath the old locust tree at the east end of the village, just like Gu Xiao’s parents. They would never wake again. She had stayed to keep them company, but they would never open their eyes to see her one last time. And now she stood here, wielding Qi Condensation Stage Nine sword qi against a Foundation Establishment peak demonic cultivator.
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“Don’t speak.” Su Ning didn’t turn around. Her voice was pressed low, trembling with restrained terror. “I’ll hold him off. Run to the back mountain. There’s a hunter’s trail that leads to Qingmu City. Once you’re in the city, you’ll be safe. Lun Hua wouldn’t dare strike there.”
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“You can’t beat him—”
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“I know.” Her voice finally cracked, like the first fracture beneath ice. “That’s why I’m only holding him.”
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Lun Hua stood amid the ruins, watching the sword-wielding girl with mild amusement. The corner of his mouth twitched upward, as if he’d found an interesting toy. His gaze lingered on Su Ning for a moment, then swept past her to Gu Xiao, who lay paralyzed on the ground. The contempt in his eyes was nearly overflowing.
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“A Heavenly Spiritual Root shielding a useless root,” Lun Hua’s voice carried a sticky, oily pleasure. “How quaint. Your soul should forge into a decent magical artifact. As for him—” He glanced at Gu Xiao. “Too broken. His soul isn’t even worth harvesting.”
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Su Ning said nothing. She tightened her grip on the sword, and the cyan glow flared violently. She drove her Qi Condensation Stage Nine spiritual energy to its absolute limit. Her meridians couldn’t bear the overload; blood began seeping from the webbing of her thumb and forefinger.
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The black flames coalesced again. This time, not one, but seven. Like seven burning eyes, they hovered around Lun Hua.
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Su Ning charged.
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Gu Xiao didn’t remember how he stood up. His left leg was broken, so he crawled with his hands. Gravel tore his palms; he felt nothing. His ribs were shattered; every inch forward painted his vision black, yet he kept crawling. His useless spiritual root at Qi Condensation Stage One couldn’t even dull his pain. Spiritual energy circulated through his meridians too slowly, far too slow to heal wounds faster than he bled.
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Behind him came the sound of sword qi tearing through air, black flames colliding with steel, Su Ning’s stifled groans.
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He didn’t dare look back.
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The hunter’s trail began beneath the old banyan tree at the village’s rear. Half the tree was already charred, its trunk blackened, yet its branches still burned. When Gu Xiao dragged himself to the tree, a heavy thud echoed from behind.
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He finally turned.
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Su Ning knelt half-collapsed in the ruins. Her sword was broken. Her right arm hung limp, blood dripping from her fingertips. Her face was smeared with ash and blood. The genius with the Heavenly Spiritual Root looked no different from any dying mortal now. But her eyes still burned, locked onto Lun Hua, refusing to yield. The seven black flames orbited her slowly, a tightening cage.
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Lun Hua walked toward her, unhurried. He didn’t even glance toward the hunter’s trail. A useless root? Let him run. Not worth his attention.
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Su Ning turned her head, looking past the banyan tree at Gu Xiao. Her lips moved. No sound came out, but Gu Xiao understood.
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*Go.*
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Lun Hua’s hand settled on the crown of Su Ning’s head. Black light began to gather in his palm.
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Gu Xiao rolled into the trail. Thorns lacerated his face, his arms, his shattered ribs. The trail was a narrow mountain path carved by beasts, flanked by shrubbery thick as walls. He rolled for what felt like an eternity, until his body slammed against a tree and refused to move further. The physique of a useless spiritual root was inferior even to a mortal who’d tempered his muscles through years of labor. The hunting skills his father had taught him had only bought him a few extra yards.
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Above the trail, toward the village, a pillar of black light pierced the sky.
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Then, silence.
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Gu Xiao slumped against the tree trunk, head tilted back, mouth open, but no sound escaped. Tears mixed with blood and dirt, dripping onto his torn tunic. His consciousness began to fray. Blood loss and agony pulled him toward the dark. His Qi Condensation Stage One cultivation finally burned out completely. Not even a wisp of spiritual energy remained to keep him awake.
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In the final instant before his mind went dark, he heard it—a sound inside his body, impossibly faint.
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Like something cracking.
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Deep within his spiritual root—beneath the ruins that had shown no response for seven years, dismissed by all as utterly useless—something that had slept for fifteen years split open. It wasn’t his spiritual root being healed. That root remained broken. What cracked was something far deeper, so deep that even the Divine Temple’s probes had never reached it.
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An impossibly thin thread of aura seeped from the fissure, fragile as a candle in the wind, yet carrying a pressure that heaven and earth itself dared not ignore. It was the Grand Emperor’s origin power. The sliver of primordial soul Gu Xiao had cast into reincarnation before his fall.
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It had finally awakened.
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But what woke wasn’t Gu Xiao—it was the debt of his past life.
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Gu Xiao lost consciousness. While he lay comatose, that thread of Grand Emperor origin began to bypass his ruined spiritual root, slowly knitting his shattered bones, mending his ruptured organs, stitching his fractured meridians. It was too weak to grant him a rebirth. It could only barely preserve his life. But it did one more thing—it took all fifteen years of Gu Xiao’s memories: his parents’ smiling faces, Su Ning’s back as she raised her sword, the black light in Lun Hua’s palm, every cold stare and bitter resentment his useless root had brought him—and pressed them all into a Fragment of Fate.
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These memories would become a key.
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When he grew strong enough, that key would open a door. Behind it lay one hundred thousand years of past-life hatred, and the debt the Divine Temple owed him.
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And at that very moment, deep within the Divine Temple’s sanctum in the Divine Realm, an embryo of the Heavenly Dao Divine Persona, sealed for one hundred thousand years, trembled faintly. Thirteen pairs of eyes opened simultaneously.
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“The Fate Fragment has awakened.”
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“Location—the Mortal Realm.”
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“No rush. Let him grow. The bigger he grows, the fuller the harvest.”
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*(End of Chapter 2)*
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