I woke up to heat, pressure, and something wet on my face.Not sweat. Not blood. Something thicker.
Screaming. Not mine. A woman's, sharp and ragged. The sound of cloth being torn, wood cracking under weight. A flicker of pain—not mine again. My body felt… wrong. Smaller. Lighter. Like being hollowed out and poured into a glass shell.
For a second, I thought the blast hadn't killed me. Maybe I was in a government clinic, shackled to a cot.
But then I felt my hands—or what passed for them. They barely moved. My legs didn't respond at all. My lungs pulled at air like they'd never breathed before. And the air was wrong.
No dust. No chemicals. No rubber smoke or diesel rot.Just firewood. Burnt roots. Metal. Bark.
Nothing hurt. That was the first sign something was wrong. Then I realized. I wasn't injured. I was… new.
My muscles didn't respond the way I remembered. My fingers were shorter. My lungs were smaller. My tongue felt too large for my mouth. I couldn't speak.
I was being born.
Not metaphorically. Not religiously. Biologically. Entirely.
I was not a man anymore. My body was smaller, weaker. My hands felt strange, as if they belonged to someone else.
The woman holding me flinched. She looked at me the way a civilian might glance at a live grenade. No tears. No joy. No warmth. Just wide-eyed silence and damp skin.
"Stillborn," someone muttered behind her.
But she didn't let go.
"He's… looking at me," another voice said. Hesitant. "He's awake."
I was.
I couldn't cry. I didn't feel the need. My senses weren't screaming. I wasn't confused. Just detached. The way you feel when waking from a coma, not sure which year it is, but already scanning for familiarity.
Voices: speaking a dialect I didn't recognize—closer to classical Mandarin, with slurred consonants.Clothing: fur-lined. Primitive stitching. Village-level textile production.
It didn't take long.
I wasn't in India. I wasn't even on Earth.
And this wasn't reincarnation in the sense religious fools dreamed of. I was born again into a world far colder than the one I left behind — a world of spirit beasts, martial might, and bloodlines that crushed weaker souls without a second thought. The Heaven Dou Empire.
Spirits. Soul rings. Martial arts. Beast cores.
I'd heard the terms once. Douluo Dalu. Some Chinese fantasy webnovel I'd skimmed back in college.
Didn't even remember most of it. Now I was in it.
I was born to a minor noble family on the edge of the Heaven Dou Empire. Borderlands. Far from the central cities. My father was a second son with no inheritance. My mother—his fourth wife—bore me as insurance. Disposable, expendable.
Perfect.
Nobody watches a nobody.
They didn't name me right away.
They thought I was retarded. I didn't react to toys. I didn't babble or reach. The nanny gave up. The physician said my soul power was probably blocked.
That kept them from paying attention.
By three, I understood every word they spoke. I knew who controlled which corridor. Which siblings had power, and which had talent but no spine. How everything worked. How spirit power decided who had what. Titles didn't matter. Only cultivation did.
Fine. Then I'd build my power the same way—quiet and steady.
Patiently. Invisibly. Without noise.
At four, I dissected my first bird.
Not out of curiosity. I wanted to see the energy flow. I had no microscope. I improvised with water, reflective glass, and candlelight. I watched how the internal energy—soul threads—left the body within seconds of death. I recorded it. Memorized it. I now understood that spirit beasts were power batteries. Kill, extract, ascend.
Fine.
Killing was already my talent.
At five, they took me for spirit awakening.
No one expected much. My mother didn't bother to show up. The spirit master reeked of rice wine. The crystal didn't shine. It pulsed once—faint, dull—then faded to black.
"No innate soul power," the examiner muttered.
I didn't argue. Just watched.
My martial spirit was a mirror. Not a sword, not a beast. Just a flat black shard, hovering cold above my palm. It didn't glow. It didn't hum. They called it useless. Decorative.
They were half right.
What it actually was: a reflection-type martial spirit. Uncommon. Rare. And in my case—absolutely lethal. It reflected intent. Not light. Not spells. Will. Which meant, if you approached me with hostility, I could amplify it. Twist it. Redirect it.
They never knew. I didn't explain.
I spent the next year collecting insects. Not pets—test cases. I studied predator instinct. Pain responses. I learned how different soul beasts responded to artificial threat. I learned how rank affected will. By six, I could predict how long a beast would resist capture based on its gaze.
I was building data. Building something.
No one noticed. The servants thought I was mute.
By seven, I had my first follower.
She was a slave girl. Eight years old. Mute from birth. Broken spine.
She didn't ask for help, and I didn't offer any. I watched from the courtyard shadows as he kicked her in the ribs for dropping a bowl. No one intervened. The servants looked away. One of the older girls laughed. Her spine was already damaged. She couldn't even stand properly.
I didn't speak to her. Didn't comfort her. I just waited.
Later that night, I added a small measure of powdered root extract—harvested weeks earlier—to the edge of his wine cup. Tasteless. Odorless. Kills in under four minutes, slows the heart until it stops quietly. No gasping. No blood.
He died in his sleep.
She started following me the next morning.
She never said a word. She just sat near me during meals, stood beside me during lessons, watched the door while I studied spirit flow diagrams. No one told her to. She just did.
When two of the family's guards tried to drag her away—said she didn't belong in the main estate—I didn't argue. I walked up behind the lead one and sliced off his finger with a sharpened bone blade I'd carved three weeks earlier from leftover beast scraps.
He screamed. The other froze.
Neither raised their weapon.
They hadn't expected it. No one did.
I was seven years old.
But I was done tolerating another layer of rot. I'd seen how it started—always with small things. One kick. One laugh. One order ignored. Then it spreads. Weakness thrives because no one stops it early.
That wouldn't happen again.
The correction had resumed.
This world is louder. Bloodier. Built around power instead of paperwork. But it's the same. Same decay beneath a different flag. Spirit beasts. Noble clans. Bloodlines passed like property. Rules that only apply to the powerless.
Hierarchy without accountability.
Last time, I cleansed a country.
This time, I'll erase the disease from the root.
I'm going to purge a planet.