The battlefield of his life had gone silent.
Cheon Ma, the Heavenly Demon, conqueror of the Central Plains and master of the Demonic Sect, sat in stillness atop a mountain peak. His body, once unbreakable, trembled beneath the weight of centuries. His hair, black as the abyss in his youth, had turned to strands of silver. The fire in his red eyes flickered faintly, as though the heavens themselves sought to extinguish the last ember of his soul.
He had conquered empires, shattered martial sects, humbled monarchs, and enslaved dynasties to his will. Men called him the Khan of Khans, the Master of Murim, the True Emperor of the Ming. For three hundred years, he had fought against heaven and earth, clawing his way toward immortality. Yet now, in the cold stillness of the night, he knew the truth: his ascension had failed.
The cosmos had rejected him.
His body shook as he forced his qi to rise one final time, but the flow of energy was sluggish, breaking apart within his meridians. The celestial gates above refused to open, their starlight unyielding. His soul, vast and indomitable, pressed against the fabric of reality and found no passage.
A bitter laugh escaped his lips.
"So this is the end. Not by sword, not by betrayal, not by plague, but by the slow rot of time."
The night wind tore at his robes, carrying his voice across the valley below. His enemies had long perished, his disciples turned to dust, his empire broken by dynasties that feared and worshipped him in equal measure. None dared challenge him in his twilight years. None needed to. Death itself had been patient, waiting at the edge of his shadow, and now it had come.
The weight of centuries pressed down on him. His breath grew ragged. His vision blurred.
In his final moment, he closed his eyes and whispered into the void.
"If the heavens deny me eternity, then I will seize it in another way. Let me be reborn. Let me rise again. Let me carve a world where heaven itself cannot stop me."
And then, darkness swallowed him.
He awoke.
Not in his fortress, not among mountains, not beneath the sky. He awoke in suffocating warmth. His first instinct was to stretch, but his limbs were not his limbs. His body was small, fragile, unfinished. A cramped void pressed in from all sides. There was no air to breathe, only liquid. His mind reeled, yet the clarity of a cultivator remained. He understood, in horror and awe, that he was alive again.
Reincarnation.
For three centuries he had sought the gate of heaven, and in failure he had stumbled upon another path. His soul had not dispersed. Instead, it had been hurled into a new vessel.
He reached inward. Where once torrents of qi raged like rivers, now there was only the faintest spark. But that spark was enough. He drew upon it, carefully, instinctively. Even within this embryonic shell, his spirit cultivated. His soul, vast and ancient, began weaving threads of energy through fragile meridians that had barely formed.
This was his advantage.
Other children entered the world helpless, ignorant, unshaped. He would not. Even as a zygote, he gathered Qi. Even as an unborn child, he honed the embryonic vessel that would carry his will. Every heartbeat was a hammer forging his martial body anew. Every stir in the womb was a stance, a movement, a silent cultivation.
Nine months of stillness stretched before him, and he would waste none of them.
Within the endless warmth, he meditated.
He remembered his failures and plotted anew.
Days blurred into weeks, weeks into months. He marked the passage of time by the rhythm of his mother's heart, by the muffled sound of voices outside the womb, by the shifting tides of warmth and nourishment that flowed into his tiny body. The blood of his mother carried whispers of a lineage old and strange, threads of power he had never known in his previous life. He tasted echoes of warriors and rulers in her essence.
Even in this sealed chamber, he was not idle. His soul refined qi, strengthening bones not yet formed, sharpening senses not yet open. His meridians, fragile as threads, expanded beneath his will. Where other infants would be weak, he would emerge into the world with the body of a cultivator.
And in the stillness of gestation, he dreamed.
He dreamed of empires.
He dreamed of Manila, of islands shimmering in sunlight, of seas that stretched endlessly east and west. He dreamed of Spain, whose steel-armored nobles ruled colonies across oceans. He dreamed of China, fractured yet vast, where his old enemies had once knelt. He dreamed of Mecca and Karbala, of Constantinople and Rome, of Persia and India, of kingdoms that had never known his name but would soon tremble beneath it.
In his mind, he painted maps. He drew the lines of conquest not with brush and ink but with fire and blood.
Las Islas Filipinas. His cradle, his proving ground. A land divided by tribes, faiths, and colonial masters. If he were to rise again, this archipelago would be his first anvil. He would unite it, hammer it into an empire not seen since Genghis Khan.
From there, Asia.
And then, the World.
Yet, as he plotted, he did not ignore his limitations. His past failure had taught him caution. He would not rush toward the heavens. He would not repeat the arrogance of his last ascension. He would master this life step by step, body and soul in perfect balance, until even death itself could not find him.
Sometimes, faintly, he felt emotions pressing from outside the womb. His mother's warmth, her laughter muffled through flesh and fluid. His father's pride, a deep voice rumbling like thunder. They spoke in Spanish, a tongue he had not known in his old life, but already he understood. His ancient mind pieced together words as naturally as he had once learned martial scripts.
He felt their hands rest on the curve of his mother's stomach. He heard prayers whispered for his health, blessings of saints and ancestors. They did not know what kind of soul had entered their bloodline. They could not imagine that within the fragile body of their unborn son burned the will of Cheon Ma, the Heavenly Demon.
The months dragged on, but to him they were a gift. He cultivated ceaselessly. At times, his qi stirred so strongly that his mother felt sudden surges of energy, sparks that left her breathless and awed. Midwives declared her pregnancy blessed, touched by saints. She did not know it was no saint but a demon who grew within.
On the final night, when the ninth month closed, he prepared himself. He was no longer content to merely exist. Birth was coming, and with it the first step into his new world.
His consciousness sharpened like a blade.
"Last time I sought to defy the heavens. This time, I will build a throne upon the earth itself. If the stars deny me, I will make them kneel. This world will be mine."
And in the stillness of the womb,
Cheon Ma—
No.
Miguel de Ayala— waited for the hour of his rebirth.
"Thus Began The Era of Demons."