Chapter 1: The Book of Destiny
Prologue: The Silent Voyager
In the infinite tapestry of the cosmos, where galaxies swirled like scattered paint on a canvas of eternal night, an anomaly drifted. It was not a comet, nor a dying star. It was a book.
Bound in a material that drank the light of suns, its cover was blacker than the void between worlds. This Black Book floated through a sea of stars, passing a blazing giant named Surya and a serene, cool orb called Chandra. Its trajectory, guided by a will older than the planets themselves, bent inexorably towards a blue-green world teeming with life—Prithvi, or as some called it, Earth.
It pierced the atmosphere without a sound, a silent speck falling over the nation of India, over a sprawling city, and finally coming to rest, hovering invisibly above a young man on a rooftop. His name was Ayush, and his heart was a storm of righteous fury over a story.
Ayush sat cross-legged under the dimming evening sky, the glow of his mobile phone illuminating his face. On the screen unfolded the epic tale of Douluo Dalu 2: The Unrivaled Tang Sect, but for him, the saga had curdled into bitterness.
He had watched the heroic rise of Tang San, the original legend, with admiration. But this sequel, the story of Huo Yuhao, was different. Page by page, chapter by chapter, Ayush witnessed not a hero's journey, but a puppet's tragedy. He saw the intricate, cruel machinations of the god-king Tang San: how he split his daughter Tang Wutong's soul, orchestrated the sacrifice of Wang Qiu'er, and bound Huo Yuhao with chains of debt, gratitude, and fate, steering his entire life towards a predetermined end.
"He made him a dog," Ayush muttered to the empty sky, his grip tightening on the phone. "A loyal hound on a divine leash. How can a father be so callous? How can a god be so vile?"
This profound, empathetic anger was a unique vibration in the fabric of mortal sentiment. It was this specific frequency that the silent Black Book, now hovering inches from his brow, had been seeking across the light-years. As Ayush stared at the stars, yearning for a narrative where justice was not so perverted, the Book acted.
It did not strike; it merged. With a sensation like a cool droplet falling into the depths of his mind, the Black Book entered Ayush's consciousness,悄然 opening a tiny, nascent Sea of Spirit within him and settling at its core. Ayush merely shivered, attributing it to the night breeze, and went downstairs for dinner, unaware he now carried a celestial secret.
The night deepened. After a meal of simple dal-rice with his mother, Ayush tried to read again, but the stories felt hollow. He succumbed to sleep, his phone dark beside him.
At the precise stroke of midnight, the Black Book stirred within its new harbor. It floated out from Ayush's forehead, a specter of condensed shadow. Before his sleeping form, it pulsed once, a silent command.
From Ayush's body, his soul was drawn forth—a vibrant, luminous essence shimmering with his innocence, his modern knowledge, and most potently, his burning indignation for Huo Yuhao's plight. The Book gently but firmly sealed this pure soul within one of its boundless, cryptic pages, where it fell into a deep, dreamless slumber.
Its primary purpose on Prithvi achieved, the Black Book phased upward through the roof, leaving Ayush's body in a comatose state. It ascended back into the starry expanse, aiming not for a star, but for a fragile, shimmering scar in reality—a Space Crack.
The crack led to the Absolute Void, a realm of nullity where time held no meaning and existence itself was muted. The Book, protected by seals of unimaginable complexity, journeyed through this nothingness. It was not traveling through space, but navigating the layered arteries of Destiny itself.
In the course of its journey, it inadvertently brushed against a fraying strand of fate. From this rupture, a second soul-essence spilled out—not by the Book's design, but by tragic accident.
This soul was not pure. It was a dim, fractured fragment, heavy with the echoes of cataclysm and divine war. It was a remnant of Huo Yuhao—not the boy, but the God-King he would become in a future now lost: the God of Destiny. He had uncovered Tang San's ten-thousand-year scheme, fought a war against the combined might of the Divine Realm, and was shattered. This fragment contained his regressed memories, his bitterness, his hard-won power, and his profound sorrow. Clinging to the Black Book's protective aura, this weary ghost of a future king became an accidental passenger, asleep and adrift.
The Black Book, sensing its destination, tore a new crack, exiting the void over a world lush with primeval forests and thrumming with an energy unfamiliar to Earth—the power of Martial Souls. This was the Douluo Continent.
As it entered the atmosphere, the jolt stirred the future Huo Yuhao fragment. With the last dregs of his fading divine sense, he observed this familiar-yet-along the world. He scanned the land—finding Shrek Academy, sensing the Body Sect, but seeing none of the institutions he himself had built in his timeline. He traced the thread of his own existence back to its source and found her: a pregnant woman, his mother in this reality, Huo Yun'er.
'So... a parallel past,' the fragment mused, a ghost of anguish flickering. He considered attempting reincarnation into the unborn child but immediately sensed another nascent soul already there—the original, destined soul for this life. The fundamental laws of this world, which fiercely favored this "Son of Fate," vibrated with a warning. He was an anomaly, and the plane itself would reject him.
His purpose clarified. 'I cannot stay. I cannot be him again. But I can pave his path.'
Accepting his ephemeral state, the fragment embarked on a final, silent pilgrimage. Using his residual divine power, he moved unseen across the continent like a benevolent wraith, gathering a legendary inheritance for the child to come:
· From a remote auction house, he retrieved the Carving Knife, a tool holding the soul of a dear friend.
· He delved beneath a forgotten ruin to unearth caches of Ten-Thousand-Year Frozen Marrow.
· In the far North, he claimed a pristine Ten-Thousand-Year Ice Lotus, its spirit yet unborn.
· He journeyed to the hidden Dragon Valley, a sealed minor world. There, he battled spectral echoes to collect the remnant souls and mighty bones of the Nine Sons of the Dragon God, and even a fractured piece of the Dragon God's own soul.
· He ventured into the Sun Moon Forest to the Yin Yang Eyes, absorbing their balancing potency.
Every treasure, each a fortune that would take a lifetime to find, was stored within the boundless, azure expanse of his own God-King's Sea of Spirit, which was paradoxically housed within the Black Book that carried him.
His task complete, the world's pressure on him grew unbearable. The future Huo Yuhao fragment, his mission fulfilled, began to dissolve. The Black Book, its secondary purpose served, gently released his weary consciousness, letting it finally disperse into the world's energy, at peace.
Now, it focused on its primary design. It had aligned with the thread of monumental destiny surrounding the unborn child. And it had been loaded with a king's ransom.
Turning its attention inward, it prepared the soul it had carefully harvested—the soul of Ayush. This soul held no memories of divine wars, no bitterness of personal betrayal. It held only a modern perspective, a spark of untapped potential, and that core, defining quality: a profound, instinctive sense of justice and fury against the tyranny of a god named Tang San.
The Book would not fuse the souls. That was impossible. Instead, it would perform a transference. Ayush's pure, slumbering soul would be placed into the vessel of the unborn child.
The silent, cosmic machinery clicked into place. The Black Book approached the humble room where Huo Yun'er slept. As destiny decreed and the Black Book enacted its will, Ayush's soul was gently transferred, settling into its new mortal form.
He would be born as Huo Yuhao. He would carry, hidden within the locked library of his soul, the Black Book and its celestial treasury: the Divine Golden Clock, the skeleton from a Perfect World, the Dragon God's remnants, the Ice Lotus, and all the other collected wonders. He would have no conscious memory of a life called Ayush.
But somewhere deep in his essence, an indelible mark remained. A mark that would one day surface as a strange, fiery empathy for the oppressed, a deep-seated distrust of heavenly manipulation, and a chill, unresolved anger at the very sound of a name he had never been taught to hate:
Tang San.
The story was no longer a tale to be read. It was a life to be lived. And it had just been fundamentally, irrevocably rewritten.
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