A long time had passed since Arin's world first learned to breathe. Seas rolled with calm rhythm, mountains pierced clouds, and forests stretched over the land like veins of life.
But stability brought boredom.
Arin felt it — a stillness that reminded him of the void before creation. Life was thriving, yes, but everything had reached a quiet equilibrium. He wanted to see what would happen if he pushed that balance — just a little.
He turned his awareness toward a vast continent and began to focus the flow of spiritual energy there, compressing it layer by layer.
At first, the results were disastrous.
The trees blackened and crumbled. Rivers boiled, and the creatures that breathed that air fell lifeless. The excess energy tore through their fragile forms like an unseen fire.
Arin waited watching the land slowly heal. Life from surrounding regions crept back — cautious, but determined.
Then, something changed.
New shoots sprouted, thicker and darker in color. Animals returned — but their forms were no longer the same. The new generation grew larger, faster, stronger. Their bones hardened like stone, and their eyes gleamed faintly in the dark.
"They've… adapted," Arin whispered to himself.
He was fascinated. The spiritual energy that once killed now nourished — so long as the creatures evolved to withstand it.
Encouraged, he continued the experiment, raising and lowering concentrations across the land like sculpting invisible terrain. Eventually, his world became layered — a step ladder of energy.
Near the coasts, where rivers met the sea, the energy was gentle, calm — suitable for the delicate balance of common life. But deeper inland, the concentration thickened like mist, saturating the soil and air. There, trees reached toward the sky like giants, and beasts grew massive, their bodies pulsing faintly with light.
Even beneath the oceans, the same pattern appeared.
At shallow depths, small fish darted among coral forests. But in the abyssal trenches, where spiritual energy pooled thick as liquid, monstrous forms stirred — vast shadows that moved through the deep, glowing faintly in the darkness.
The deeper one went, the greater the energy — and the stronger the life it birthed.
Arin watched this unfolding world with quiet pride. "A hierarchy of strength… born naturally."
The pattern reminded him of something — the cultivation stories he once read on Earth.
The idea of mortals tempering their bodies to adapt to higher concentrations of energy. The higher they climbed, the stronger they became.
So he decided to take it further.
He gathered spiritual energy from across the world and made it flow — not aimlessly, but along paths carved through the soil and stone. The energy circulated like blood, forming invisible rivers that pulsed beneath mountains and valleys.
Where these rivers passed, the ground began to shimmer faintly. Minerals changed structure. Ordinary stones became radiant and translucent. Arin examined them closely and discovered that some materials absorbed and held spiritual energy far more efficiently than others.
Among them, silica crystals shone brightest — clear, resilient, and stable.
"These can store energy…" he mused. "Then perhaps they can carry it too."
He watched as natural veins of glowing quartz and crystalline stone formed deep within the earth, quietly gathering power.
Soon, his world had more than just air and water — it had meridians, carrying energy through its body, and cores of crystal that pulsed like hearts.
Mountains thrummed with latent power. Oceans hid beasts the size of islands. Forests whispered with energy that shimmered in the leaves.
Arin had watched his world grow vast and vibrant. Oceans pulsed with life, forests whispered with hidden beasts, and mountains gleamed with veins of luminous crystal. The steady rhythm of spiritual energy flowing through it all felt almost like breathing.
Yet even that rhythm, perfect as it was, began to feel… monotonous.
"Everything here is the same kind of energy," Arin murmured in thought. "Uniform, stable — but dull."
Memories from his old world flickered across his fading human consciousness: cultivation novels filled with elemental energies — fire, water, earth, lightning, and more. Beings who could bend nature's essence through will alone.
"If they could separate one kind of energy into many… maybe I can too."
Driven by curiosity, Arin tried to guide spiritual energy into different forms — attempting to alter its nature through intention alone. He focused on fire first, imagining heat, light, and destruction. But the energy resisted, slipping through his control like liquid mist.
He tried again — for earth, for water, for air — yet nothing changed. Spiritual energy remained pure and unyielding.
He almost gave up.
Then, an idea came.
"What if… the foundation isn't spiritual energy at all?"
He turned his attention inward — to the endless Void Energy that constantly flowed into him. It was raw, untamed, and infinitely adaptable.
He guided a stream of it downward, into the oceans, shaping it with the memory of flowing rivers and gentle rain.
The moment it touched the world, something clicked.
The Void Energy shimmered — and transformed.
A new energy spread through the water, fluid and cool, different from the ambient spiritual energy around it.
Arin froze, stunned. "It… worked?"
Excited, he tried again — this time imagining flame, earth, and wind.
Each time, Void Energy responded, birthing distinct forms:
Fire Energy, hot and fierce, igniting sparks deep within volcanic veins.
Earth Energy, dense and stable, thickening soil and hardening stone.
Air Energy, invisible yet sharp, whispering through the upper skies.
He watched in fascination as these new energies flowed, mingling with the original spiritual energy and shaping the world anew.
But he didn't stop there.
"What about life itself?" he wondered.
He guided Void Energy into a grove of thriving plants. The result was strange yet beautiful — the trees glowed faintly with green veins, exuding warmth and vitality. From them radiated a gentle, nourishing aura unlike anything before.
He called it Life Energy.
When he tried the same with animals, their blood responded differently — boiling with strength and heat. This became Blood Energy.
And when he focused on the remnants of the dead — decaying bodies, broken shells, wilted leaves — the energy turned cold, heavy, and still. He felt its quiet pull and named it Death Energy.
Arin was thrilled. "This world can host endless variations… limitless evolution."
Then thinking of his previous world he tried creating more types like space, time, gravity, he even successfully created spiritual energy of electromagnetic waves, protons electrons.
But then, something went wrong.
Without warning, his connection trembled.
Like his world has unlocked some limit. Across his vast consciousness, he sensed countless pulses of energy shifting uncontrollably. In the seas, spiritual energy spontaneously turned into water energy; in forests, life energy spread wildly. The flow became chaotic.
"Wait—stop!" he tried to will it still, but the process had already begun.
Nature itself had learned his trick.
All across his world, spiritual energy began transforming automatically — oceans thick with water energy, volcanoes burning with fire energy, mountains humming with earth energy. Plants overflowed with life essence, while the decay of death pooled in shadowed valleys.
The balance shattered.
Forests withered, oceans boiled, storms raged endlessly. Countless creatures died — unable to endure the abrupt change in energy that sustained them.
But amidst the devastation… something miraculous happened.
Some lifeforms adapted.
Those who survived the chaos evolved at impossible speed.
Fish in the deep began glowing with bioluminescent scales, breathing pure water energy.
Beasts in the forests grew larger, their hides hard as stone.
Some exhaled fire. Others summoned lightning.
And a few — rare, powerful ones — could manipulate the energy around them, healing wounds or reshaping their surroundings.
Arin watched in awe and guilt as his world remade itself — from a calm cradle of life into a realm of fierce and mystical existence.
"This…" he whispered, "this is what cultivators call a world of elements."
For the first time, his creation was no longer peaceful — it was alive in every sense: vibrant, violent, and endlessly changing.
A world where strength determined survival.
A world that would one day birth gods and monsters alike.