Chapter 0 — The First Descent
"In the beginning, there was struggle. And in struggle, he forged the path."
The world was still young when Mu-Won was born.
There were no sects. No martial arts. No Pillars. No cultivators.
Only life as it was: raw, violent, short-lived. Beasts ruled the mountains. The sky belonged to the birds. The rivers carved stone into dust. And man? Man simply endured.
Mu-Won was born beneath the shadow of a black mountain that never knew sunlight.
He did not cry when he was born. He simply breathed.
And the world changed.
With that first breath, something stirred inside his bones—a pressure, invisible but undeniable. A warmth neither of blood nor body. Something older than form.
Essence. Qi.
When he exhaled, a gust of wind blew through the cave, though there was no wind outside.
When he touched the ground, it cracked, though there was no quake in the earth.
When he looked at the stars, fire flickered in his eyes.
And when he wept, rare as it was, the heavens wept as well.
They called it Prime Origin Qi—but only much, much later.
For Mu-Won, it was not power. It was pain.
His body twisted. Burned. Shook.
But he survived.
And in doing so, became the first human to hold Qi.
There was no guidance. No scrolls. No elders. No cultivation manuals.
Mu-Won trained not by theory, but by necessity.
He learned to harden his body against falling stone.
To sprint with the wind to catch prey.
To breathe so deeply, he could taste the minerals beneath the earth.
To fall from cliffs and not break.
To fight beasts ten times his size and win not through technique, but will.
He called it the Refinement of Strength.
Then of Flesh.
Then of Muscle.
He mapped the limits of his body—and broke each one, again and again.
Others saw and followed.
Thus, the first Pillars were born.
.....
It came in a dream.
Or perhaps a memory.
Or perhaps the Prime Origin Qi itself calling him home.
A whisper. A pulse. A yearning.
To go deeper. Beneath the mountains. Beneath the roots. Beneath the bones of the world.
To a place no human had ever reached—not even the beasts.
Axis Mundi.
The Origin Realm.
It was not a location on any map. It existed at the very core of the Earth—a place where the elemental forces were not abstract concepts, but living truths. Where Essence and Qi were not drawn from nature but flowed freely, undiluted, and eternal.
He began the descent alone.
He crossed the Seven Deep Caverns of Flame, where fire had voice.
He sank into the Endless Shaft where wind became blade.
He survived the Womb of Stone, where even earth tried to crush him.
He endured the Black Rivers of Death, where no soul returned.
And at the bottom, in total silence—
He found it.
Axis Mundi.
A world within the world.
The sky was stone. But in that stone, a miniature sun burned—not of fire, but Essence itself.
The earth breathed. The waters shimmered with thought. The air sang with memory.
And the beings that lived there were unlike anything he had seen.
Every creature was born at the 9th Pillar.
Martial Emperors by birth.
They needed no training. No struggle.
But they did not grow.
They did not strive.
They simply were.
In Axis Mundi, Mu-Won finally understood the truth:
"Power that is given is static.
Power that is earned is infinite."
He saw beings of perfection—but no progress.
He saw immortality—but no ambition.
And he realized: the Pillars were not just methods of cultivation.
They were steps on a ladder that humans could climb.
Because only humans were born without.
And in that lack, was the seed of divinity.
He carved the truths of the body into stone:
Strength. Flesh. Muscle. Tendon. Bone. Organ. Blood. Marrow. Meridian.
Each a test. Each a trial. Each a triumph.
He named them the Nine Pillars of Body Refinement.
He did not stay.
He left Axis Mundi behind—not because he could not remain, but because he must not.
He returned to the surface, to the struggling, yearning masses.
To teach them the Path he forged.