Orion Atlas remembered dying.
It was not dramatic.
There had been no final speech, no flashback to every meaningful moment of his life, and certainly no mysterious old man asking him to choose three wishes before sending him to another world.
There had only been a child.
A truck.
And a decision that took less than a second.
Orion had seen the little boy step into the street chasing a bright red ball.
He had seen the truck coming.
He had seen the driver slam on the brakes far too late.
So Orion moved.
He didn’t think.
He didn’t hesitate.
One moment his feet were on the sidewalk.
The next, his shoulder slammed into the child hard enough to send him tumbling toward safety.
Orion remembered hearing screaming.
Then pain.
Then—
Nothing.
At least, nothing until he opened his eyes again.
His first thought was that the afterlife had an unusually large number of blurry faces.
His second was that someone was holding him upside down.
His third was considerably less dignified.
Why the hell can’t I move my arms properly?
Someone laughed.
“It’s a boy!”
A woman cried.
Another voice exclaimed something about the heavens blessing the Atlas family.
Orion attempted to ask what was happening.
What came out was—
“WAAAAAAAH!”
There were many humiliations a man could endure.
Discovering that he had been reincarnated as a newborn and no longer possessed control over his own neck ranked surprisingly high among them.
That was how Orion Atlas arrived in Ikaros.
⸻
The world of Ikaros was not Earth.
Orion learned that fact rather quickly.
Mountains floated.
People flew on swords.
Old men sat motionless for days while glowing mist spiraled around their bodies.
His new mother occasionally lit candles by snapping her fingers.
By the time Orion was three, he had reached the extremely reasonable conclusion that he had reincarnated into some kind of cultivation world.
By the time he was four, he began waiting for his golden finger.
A system.
A divine inheritance.
An ancient ring containing the soul of an incomprehensibly powerful expert.
Anything.
Nothing appeared.
At five, Orion tried saying “System” aloud.
Nothing.
At six, he tried it again while alone.
Still nothing.
At seven, he became desperate enough to whisper—
“Status.”
A passing maid heard him.
For the next three days, the servants of the Atlas residence believed the young master was worried about the family’s social standing.
Orion stopped trying after that.
He instead focused on understanding his new home.
The Radiant Daybreak Sect occupied the eastern reaches of the Azure Sun Mountains, built across a series of enormous golden cliffs that caught the first rays of dawn each morning.
Although it was not counted among the ten supreme sects of the continent, it possessed a long history, several powerful experts, and enough territory that walking from the outer disciple district to the main peak could take hours.
Orion had grown up there.
His grandfather, Cassian Atlas, was one of the sect’s senior elders.
His uncle Rowan held an elder position as well.
His late grandmother, Lyra Atlas, had once been famous enough that even disciples who had never met her occasionally told stories about her exploits.
By every standard, Orion had been born with an enviable background.
There was only one problem.
He could not cultivate.
At eight years old, every child raised within the Radiant Daybreak Sect underwent a spiritual root examination.
Orion remembered that day perfectly.
Children stepped forward one after another, placing their hands upon the Spirit Appraisal Stone.
Earth root.
Wood root.
Dual fire and wind roots.
The occasional exceptional talent caused the elders to smile.
Then Orion placed his hand against the stone.
Nothing happened.
The elder conducting the examination frowned.
He tried again.
Nothing.
Another appraisal artifact was brought.
Nothing.
Three elders inspected Orion personally.
Nothing.
No spiritual root.
No awakened bloodline.
No unusual constitution.
Nothing capable of absorbing the spiritual Essence that saturated Ikaros.
Orion Atlas was, for all practical purposes, mortal.
He had expected ridicule afterward.
He had read enough cultivation stories during his previous life to know how this was supposed to go.
The former genius became trash.
The engagement was broken.
The servants sneered.
The clan elders suddenly developed an inexplicable desire to bully a child.
Then, presumably, Orion would stumble off a cliff and discover an inheritance capable of making him invincible in three years.
Instead, his grandfather had placed a hand on his shoulder and said,
“Then you will find another road.”
His uncle had ruffled his hair.
His mother had cried privately, then spent the next several years attempting to discover rare medicines capable of awakening spiritual roots.
The sect master himself had allowed Orion access to several libraries normally restricted to inner disciples.
The other children occasionally teased him, especially when they were younger.
But nobody dared turn his inability to cultivate into genuine abuse.
Not simply because of his grandfather.
Orion had been born in the sect.
He had played with the children of servants.
Shared meals with outer disciples.
Helped elderly stewards carry medicine baskets even after they insisted they were perfectly capable of doing so themselves.
By eighteen, Orion had somehow become one of those people almost everyone in the sect knew.
He couldn’t cultivate.
But he understood formations well enough to identify common faults.
He knew the medicinal properties of hundreds of herbs.
His theoretical understanding of cultivation was good enough that younger disciples occasionally sought him out when they couldn’t understand something their instructors had explained.
And since Orion possessed considerably more free time than most cultivators—
“Senior Brother Orion!”
Orion stopped walking.
He stood a little over six feet four inches, making him unusually tall compared to most disciples around him.
Dirty-blonde hair hung loosely around his face, tied back near the nape of his neck.
Unlike the flowing ceremonial robes favored by many sect disciples, his pale-gold clothing currently had dirt smeared across one shoulder.
Three outer disciples came running toward him.
The youngest looked panicked.
“Senior Brother, we have a problem.”
Orion sighed.
“How expensive?”
The boy blinked.
“What?”
“Whenever one of you says ‘we have a problem’ with that expression, something expensive has usually broken.”
The disciples exchanged looks.
“Technically…”
Orion closed his eyes.
“How expensive?”
“The irrigation formation for the eastern spirit fields.”
Orion opened his eyes again.
“That’s pretty expensive.”
“It wasn’t our fault!”
“It started shaking!”
“Then Brother Jin touched it!”
“I was trying to fix it!”
“You hit it with a shovel!”
“It was making a strange sound!”
Orion stared at them.
Brother Jin lowered his head.
“In my defense, it stopped making the sound.”
“Because you broke it.”
“…Yes.”
Orion sighed and changed direction.
“Come on.”
The three hurried after him.
“Senior Brother Orion, Elder Fu will kill us!”
“No, he won’t.”
“He’ll throw us off the mountain!”
“He won’t do that either.”
“He threatened to last month.”
“He threatens everyone.”
Orion glanced sideways.
“I once watched Elder Fu threaten a chicken for stealing his breakfast.”
The youngest disciple paused.
“Did it work?”
“The chicken stole half his lunch too.”
The boy nodded solemnly.
“A formidable chicken.”
Orion couldn’t suppress a laugh.
They continued toward the eastern fields.
None of them noticed the group of figures passing through the distant sect gates.
Nor did Orion see the young woman standing at their center.
Long silver hair moved gently behind her despite the absence of wind.
A cyan cultivator’s robe covered her slender figure.
Two swords rested across her back.
And a pair of silver eyes calmly observed the Radiant Daybreak Sect she had heard about since childhood.
Xuan Mei had arrived.
For Orion Atlas, eighteen years of waiting were finally about to end.
He simply didn’t know it yet.
hi guys.
this is my first attempt at this and idk what im doing really.
I based my MC loosely off of Superman.
his powers and all of that stuff are Solar Based.