patreon.com/StarMoon10 for Advance Chapter Chapter 1: (Prologue) Time flies like a white pony glimpsed through a gap; in the blink of an eye, decades have passed since that world-shattering Battle of the Two Emperors.
No one will forget that in that tragic war, which nearly destroyed the entire Central Plains continent, the two newly ascended Dou Emperors of the Soul and Xiao clans each displayed divine prowess and used every available means, finally ending in a mutual seal that left both Emperors wounded.
However, what remains unknown is that these two heroes, who defied heaven to achieve the status of Dou Emperor, consumed the very last of the “Source Qi” of the entire Dou Qi continent upon their advancement.
From that point on, no one in the entire Dou Qi plane could ever again ascend to the rank of Dou Emperor.
In the Central Plains, in the forest near the Double Emperor Abyss, a boy of about ten years old, his face blackened with soot and wearing dirty animal skins and straw sandals, crouched cautiously in the shadow beneath the branches of an old tree.
His eyes, streaked with red blood vessels, were fixed intently on his prey—a small elk he had been tracking for over half an hour.
“Tonight, whether I get to eat meat depends on you!” The boy skillfully drew his bow and notched an arrow.
With a flash of cold light, the sharpened pig-iron arrowhead pierced the air, flying straight toward the somewhat thin elk and accurately striking the prey’s neck.
“Gulu!” Severely wounded and in intense pain, the elk began to run frantically.
“Hahahaha!” With a burst of laughter, the boy, who had been crouching in the shadows for so long, sprang up and gave chase.
As a hunter, he knew that the elk could not run far after being hit; all he had to do was make sure he didn’t lose track of it.
“Mom and Dad will definitely praise me today!” With this thought, the boy’s running pace became even lighter.
Sure enough, after a short while, the thin, wounded elk finally collapsed from blood loss beside a rock, gurgling blood flowing continuously from the arrow wound as its throat emitted a final, twitching groan.
The boy soon reached the elk’s carcass and began skillfully starting a fire, bleeding the animal, skinning it, applying ash, and curing the hide.
His methods of handling the prey were incredibly proficient; one could hardly tell he was only a ten-year-old boy.
After working for quite some time, the boy wiped the sweat from his forehead with a dirty hand, let out a long sigh, and then began to bundle the processed deerskin and venison.
The shadows of the trees swayed as the afternoon sun began to lose its intensity, and orange-red sunset clouds started appearing on the horizon.
Only then did the boy realize that it was already nearing evening.
“Better hurry up, gotta get home and eat meat!” Muttering to himself, the boy reached out to pick up the last hind leg of the deer to hoist it onto his shoulder.
Just then, by the glimmers of sunlight filtering through the canopy, the boy saw something near the deer leg—a red, rectangular object about the size of a palm, looking like a bamboo slip, half-buried in the soil and surrounded by the fresh blood of the elk.
Temporarily putting down the deer leg, the boy curiously picked up this strange object, using the sleeve of his dirty hemp clothes to wipe away the blood and dust, and began to examine it closely.
Suddenly, a strange change occurred.
The bamboo-like object in the boy’s hand burst into a brilliant red light.
With a “swoosh,” the bamboo slip flew out of his hand, floating in mid-air and slowly expanding a spherical energy membrane.
Like a living breath, the entire red sphere began to flash with a blood-red glow.
The boy was momentarily stunned; he had never seen such a thing and stood frozen in place, at a loss.
After a few flashes, the red energy membrane expanded rapidly, instantly enveloping the surrounding area for ten miles.
Moments later, the creatures within the energy membrane began to lose strength and collapse involuntarily; simultaneously, wisps of eerie blood-red light began to emerge from the seven orifices of these creatures.
If a cultivator were present, they would surely realize that the soul power of these living beings was being extracted.
The soul power from ten miles around began to converge onto the red bamboo slip.
With every bit of energy absorbed, the originally deep red bamboo slip grew a degree brighter.
Two hours later, the bamboo slip had turned a dazzling bright red, and the creatures further away from the slip within the energy field began to slowly crawl back up.
The boy, who was closest to the bamboo slip, also slowly opened his eyes after being lost in a groggy darkness for a long time.
Feeling completely powerless, as if he had suffered a great illness, he was too weak even to lift his hand.
He struggled to open his eyes wide to look again at the eerie bright red bamboo slip floating in the air, gurgled twice in his throat, and ultimately lost consciousness once more.
The sky was now completely dark, and the night silently began to spread, quietly enveloping the entire forest of the Central Plains.
At midnight, the piercing red light originally emanating from the floating bamboo slip suddenly went out.
With a crisp “crack,” the bamboo slip split down the middle.
The red energy membrane began to shrink abruptly, its color becoming deeper and deeper, finally converging on the cracked bamboo slip to form a mass of black shadow.
The shadow continuously writhed and changed, eventually transforming into a human shape.
At this moment, the sound of a whistling wind suddenly appeared in the originally quiet night forest, but the sound lasted only a short time before subsiding again.
Simultaneously, that human-shaped black shadow finally grew clearer.
A moment later, a middle-aged man stepped out from the shadow.
He wore a black robe with a bright red border about two inches wide extending from the collar down to the hem.
His black, semi-long hair draped behind him; his eyes were tightly closed, and his brow was slightly furrowed.
His originally handsome face lacked color, looking pale and somewhat sickly, like the exhaustion of a dusty traveler after a night of hurried trekking.
In the center of his forehead was a blood-red diamond-shaped mark.
Clad in black, he looked as if he were shrouded in a black mist, appearing exceptionally mysterious and unpredictable.
The mysterious man stood in the night for a long time before finally, slowly, opening his eyes.
A flash of bright red light that pierced the darkness unfolded from his pupils, but it lasted only an instant before vanishing without a trace.
After several breaths, the mysterious man slowly raised his head, looked at the pale moonlight in the sky, and let out a soft sigh.
He unfolded his divine sense to scan the surroundings and discovered the youth lying on the ground, his life or death uncertain.
After a long silence, he bent down and extended his right index finger to touch the boy’s brow.
A surge of red energy followed his finger from the forehead into the boy’s body.
The boy reacted immediately; his brow furrowed several times, and his arms began to move.
Having confirmed the boy was out of danger, the mysterious man slightly bent his right leg, his gold-rimmed black boots lightly tapping the ground.
With his hands behind his back, he took flight into the air, his long hair fluttering behind him, and in an instant, he disappeared into the vast night.
As his figure vanished into the distance, a voice drifted back from afar: “Three thousand matters of the mortal world?
Dismiss them with a faint smile.” The sparse shadows lay slanted under the faint moonlight.
Peace returned once more to the forest of the Double Emperor Abyss in the Central Plains.
There were no human voices, no bird calls—only the leaves gently swaying in the boundless darkness, as quiet as if nothing had ever happened.