1 I: The Boy Who Lived

On the border of the ancient Ironwood Forest with the mighty Soul Empire was a small but healthy piece of land where the Yellow Wood Village was stabilized.

In the peaceful little Village was hidden a very ancient and once illustrious clan of cultivators, but now all it's members lived tending to their lands while completely oblivious to the outside world as a simple village in the middle of a jungle.

Kayla, a middle aged-woman dressed in black fur arrived at the village while carrying over twenty twin-fanged wolves in each hand.

"As expected of the greatest Warrior of our Village." Said the Village chief, a thin old man with long eyebrows.

Kayla placed all the beast bodies on the ground then cleaned the sweat off her forehead. "Phew. It was no problem, just doing my part. Chief, if you excuse me I will be cultivating in my room."

"Fine, Fine." The old man nodded repeatedly. As he was dealing with the only body refinement Warrior in the village, he was in no place to use his authority as chief and could only keep his head low before this woman.

Staring at the distant figure walking away, the old man turned to the other villager. "Why are you all still here, bring the meat to be treated in the kitchen!"

"Yes!" All the villagers helped carry all the beast bodies to the kitchen.

Throwing all the bloody bodies of beasts at the door of the kitchen, soon a youth looking no older than eighteen walked out of the door.

Seeing him, one of the villagers said in a disdaining tone. "There you are, Traitor! Here is the meat Warrior Kayla has brought from her hunt today. Clean them well and store it in the cold room, we'll be expecting a visit tonight."

Without making a sound, the boy picked all the beast bodies one by one and brought them to the kitchen. During the entire time, his expression remained cold as his eyes were filled with a melancholy that shouldn't belong to somebody of his age.

Watching as the boy retracted back in the kitchen, the villagers couldn't hide their disgust towards him.

"Snort*, I can't believe the chief accepted him back after breaking the rules."

"Lob, hold your tongue. It's the former Village Chief you are talking about. It's true he and his father left us to the outside world in our time of need, and then only came back as if nothing happened. However, it's not like he's still going to succeed the position of village chief so I say we let him keep working in the kitchen."

A third villager agreed. "Right. I believe it was already fairly generous of the chief to accept him back to work in the kitchen despite losing all his cultivation. Still, It makes me furious just to remember this waste shares the same name as our founder, Aedan."

The three villagers chat among themselves as they walked away, leaving Aedan to do his job.

Aedan picked one of the knives, took a deep breath, and carefully removed off the wolf's fur. This process took up the time of about 600 Ticks(Seconds).

In his mind, he is the internal map of the beast. Despite being a little hard to cut through the beast's meat without any cultivation, Aedan gritted his teeth and continued.

It's not his first time doing this kind of work, in fact he barely left the kitchen since arriving three months ago, only when it was time to sleep.

As he focused on his work, Aedan recalled some things of the past. Once upon a time, he was a proud member of the yellow wood tribe and son of the former Village Chief. His father was the greatest warrior in the history of the clan. He was famous across all southern tribes that married the princes of the Hu Tribe, a very big tribal clan in the deeper parts of ironwood forest.

One day, a important quest was handed to his father by one of the ancients of the forest. The order was done by one the clan couldn't deny and so their future head of the family and his wife headed in the depths of the ironwood forest only to return years later, with a child.

Aedan was only eight at the time and had no recordation of his past nor his time outside the village.

At that time he believed that the ancient Ironwood forest was everything that existed in this world but it wasn't true. After his mother, Huling, passed away of core disorder and on the following day his father left to never come back.

And in his confusion and innocence's, Aedan who just completed thirteen winters, set out in search of his father.

Yellow Wood Village was built by an ancient family of extensive heritage that secluded themselves from the rest of the world.

By relying on his talent, Aedan made a name for himself in the outside world as a vagrant and a fighter.

Core Formation, Cleansing and Flesh-Soul Unification. Cultivating through these stages was the dream of every single person but only a few could succeed.

Core Formation is composed of twelve layers, each layer must be built slowly with one of the three types of energy.

On the way he made friends and foes, found fortunes, became aware just of how extensive and full of perils was the road of cultivation of which is divided into three major paths, Lifeforce, Astral and Bestial.

Lifeforce was the simplest and most pure energy present in all forms of life. It was best to cultivate this energy in an natural environments full of trees, plants and sea. It's cultivation works by forming the Life Core and using it to constantly refining one's body, improving overall attributes and physique.

Astra is a power directly connected to the essence of the eight Star Gods from whom most races originated from. Through Astra, one can awake unnatural abilities and performs skills that go against nature itself.

Harder to train in that Lifeforce, the Astral path is one filled with mysteries. Drawing energy from the stars to refine one's bloodline was a dangerous method only possible for those with the best talents and insight. In this path, one must follow the instruction in an Astral Canalization Manual to draw the potential within oneself and awake the Astral Core.

If one's bloodline is powerful enough like the ancient royal families, there's a chance for the Core to manifest an Astral Ability leading back to one's origins.

The Bestial is the last one and certainly the most brutal. It requires one to constantly devour beasts in order to form a bestial core.

Among all three, Lifeforce is the easiest to cultivate as it doesn't have any requirements.

And since it was the easiest to begin with, Lifeforce Warriors is without doubt the most numerous but even at the highest level there will still be a certain inferiority when compared to the Astral.

Generally, Lifeforce Warriors start off strong, beating any Astral Warrior in the during all stages of Core formation, but After awakening reaching the Cleansing Boundary, it becomes almost impossible for an Warrior to defeat an Astral Warrior of the same level when he/she completes core formation.

Fifth layer, Sixth Layer, Seventh Layer, Eighth Layer… Through his own effort, He advanced through the layers of the core formation stage as a Lifeforce Cultivator. In four years, he got from the Second Layer to the Eleventh Layer of Core Formation.

It must be known even the strongest lifeforce cultivator the clan only reached the cleansing stage by the age of forty. Yet, he was about to do the same at the age of fourteen!

In his journey and given his talent, he made friends, some who could even be said to be brothers for life.

After all this time he wasn't able to get any information of his father and now, and was instead tricked by a demon and crippled for life.

Without anywhere else to go, Aedan returned to his village, but only his grandpa, the head of the Clan who stood above even the Village Chief accepted him back. To the others, he was nothing but a coward and a traitor.

Aedan of course of his mistakes and tried to pay back his debt by working in the kitchen. The things he felt and experienced had shaken his beliefs and made him look all taste for the joys of life.

Returning to his duty, Aedan noticed he had already done cleaning the bones of the wolves so he brought them to the cold room to be refrigerated and preserved until it was time to be prepared.

Once everything was done, Aedan brought his things with him to a small cottage right outside the village close to a hill.

A couple youths with ages ranging from 9 to 13 ran around the plains to the forest around the Village only to spot a small cottage at the foot of a hill.

Seeing it from close, all the younger boys and girls felt a chill down their spine, some of the most courageous inclined forward the ask the older kids. "Is that the place? I mean where he lives?"

The leader of the group heard the murmuring in the crowd and snorted before speaking full of pride and arrogance. "Of course, this is the place the Chief arranged for him when he returned a few months ago. He used to be the most imported person in the village due to his parent's identities, he was even practiced the All Yellow Scripture reserved only for the core members of the family. Then he left for the outside world only to return as a waste of a person. Even his Life Core was completely gone."

"Yeah! Instead of giving him work, the chief should have killed him straight away." One of the kids nodded with his head and other kids agreed with him.

The only reason they had the capability to cultivate was because of yellow wood art all children of the tribe would get upon in their 6th anniversary, and so they all felt jealous of the grandson of the Village Chief.

In the past, the existence of the tall mountain that was his father, those children would never dare to do anything to him, but now...

Outside the cottage a single youth sat on the ground in front of a pit, he carried a full chicken he hunted himself and hung it over the fire.

He was turning the chicken when a stone flew through the window and hit him in the forehead.

"Ouch!" He grabbed his head in pain, then everything was blurry for a few moments when heard a few screams on the other side of the window.

"Oh shit I hit him!"

"Forget that, we should run!"

Hearing the cry of pain from inside the cottage, they knew the stone had hit him and some of the children decided to run away, but only Arsin, the leader of that group of children, had a nonchalant look on his face.

"Who cares if it hits him, he won't dare do anything now he's trash." Arsin declared proudly as if he had total confidence in his words when he looked forward and saw a figure standing on the grass, wiping the blood stains off his forehead.

"So it was you kids who did that, huh?" Hearing the way this dark-haired youth was speaking to him only made this proud kid even angrier.

Without speaking anything, he raised his hand covered in Vital Force and slapped him on the face. The dark-haired boy flew backwards and crashing on his own cottage.

"Well done!"

"Amazing!"

Hearing the other kids cheering only made Arsin more full of himself as he walked closer to the cottage. The youth was lying on a pile of broken walls when he saw Arsin approaching.

He knew very well some of the villagers carried deep hatred towards him and his father that had vanished.

"You trash! You are just an trash without any Vital Force! You shouldn't even have the right to live near our village." Arsin raised his feet and stepped on him. "Your parents are gone, your friends left you, I'm sure even the Village Chief cares not about you."

Saying that, he stared at one of the kids and spoke. "Bring the Hunting Knife dad gave me."

The boy then walked forward and handed over a small knife with a leather scabbard. Seeing the arrogant this village's Bully was acting, Aedan had a familiar feeling when a piercing pain invaded his brain.

Arsin didn't know that despite losing any signs of vital force, his deep knowledge and experience gained on the outside couldn't be underestimated.

Yet, these sudden headaches would appear from time to time and render him useless.

"Oh no, I can't let it happen right now." Knowing what would happen if he truly snapped, the dark-haired youth tried to contain the pain in his head when his right arm moved by itself, blocking the knife aiming at his leg.

Whoooosh! His hand didn't fully block the knife because he was trying to contain his instincts, though it was able to change its trajectory, making it hit a wooden plank.

Before his eyes, Aedan could see countless people were dragged to a dark abyss and thrown into a huge pile of bodies as golden flames fell from above turning everything to ash.

Arsin tried to pull out the knife from the wood, but a single fist hit in the face and threw him meters away.

After punching Arsin in the face, Aedan knelt down on the ground and started yelling in pain. "Ahhhhh! I'm sorry, I'm sorry!"

At that moment, he could hear the cries of the dead deep in his soul as their bodies ceased to exist leaving only brightly dots floating in the air. Deep in the thousands and thousands of dead bodies extending endlessly, only a single body was left. A female with long light-brown hair scattered on the dirty ground, her body was full of lacerations, but her gaze was empty, staring at the ceiling as if she had her soul forcefully pulled out of her.

Aedan was kneeling right in front of her, sobbing as he held her body. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry... Leee...."

These were the only words he could speak as his face covered in tears. Images of that day when he and another thousand children got into a prestigious sect. Sacred Soul Sect, the top force of the Soul Empire with several experts at the Body-Energy Stage.

But their true purpose was to search for strong and virtuous souls to power their weapons, artifacts and more.

As the wooden cottage collapsed, the fire that was burning inside it spread to the wood. Further evolving into a huge mass of fire that could be seen from miles away.

"Hahahha" Arsin and the other kids were staring at the blazing fire with fear when a laugh echoed in the forest.

A single male walked out of the flames, his body was completely intact other than the blood on his head from Arsin's punches.

"You know, I used to think cultivation was amazing just like you when I was your age, but then I left... I saw true cruelty, the unfairness and how heatless this world really is... You may find yourself to be great but know well that to those outside, you're worth the same as a cripple like me."