1 Chapter 1

*Groan, I slowly open my eyes and find myself sitting in what seems to be a cubicle from the local internet café I frequent. I blink slowly at the PC in front of me as it boots up and wonder how I wound up here.

The last thing I remember was walking up to an apartment complex one morning with a delivery package after parking my scooter at the visitor's spot. I was just walking towards the building lobby when I noticed some of the kids from the neighbourhood playing on the roadside; Such innocence, I thought. No worries or cares and largely unaware of the cruelty of the world yet.

That's when I noticed, a kid no older than maybe 6 misses catching the ball thrown towards him. The ball rolled on to the road and the kid being the clueless brat he is step out onto the road without giving it any deeper thought. Granted it was a mostly residential area with little to no traffic at this time as the early morning rush had passed but that was no excuse to walk into the middle of a road without checking both ways.

Just like that, the worst-case scenario played out as a dump truck was driving down the road at speeds well past the safe limits and about to run the kid over. I don't know what came over me as while the other people around froze up in horror at the event about to unfold, I dropped the package in my hand and in a burst of speed rushed to push the kid out of the way.

There was a horrible squeee of abused brakes and a sickly thud as the truck hit me and I went flying from the force as my body exploded in pain which only intensified as I hit the ground a few meters away and rolled to a stop.

The last thing I saw was the truck driver get off the vehicle and run in the opposite direction of where I lay and the and the kid I managed to save bawling his eyes out on the other side of the road, he seemed a little bruised but overall he was safe and sound. I was barely able to feel any relief at having managed to save the kid's life as my own slowly faded from me and darkness was all I knew before I woke up here.

Just then the PC in front of me finished booting up and the synthetic voice of a digital assistant makes an introduction- "Welcome to the World Transmigration Agency, where Souls of good common people are given a second chance to live the life of their dreams. My name is Jenny and I will be assisting you in this process. You have one hour to finalise where you would like to live your second chance at life, please click on the help icon and use the keyboard or microphone head-set if you have any quires."

Well, isn't that something. I look on as what appears to be a list in the job classifieds is now available on the screen and I do a double take and rub my eyes before checking the entries again as I'm finding this hard to believe. Listed among these entries I spotted some of them advertised taking up roles of popular super heroes, lead characters in movies (both as super star actors and actual life of the characters), fictional characters from books and other media, etc. Well, my mind was blown.

I immediately clicked on the help icon on the corner of the screen and typed out a request for a tutorial or guide of some sort to help me make sense of what I was seeing. Jenny promptly came through and opened up a new window that was a sort-of manual/brochure for all this.

Turns out that those who had some good karma and died from truck related instances had a chance to be transmigrated into another world with some wishes (3 wishes apparently with the first being able to choose how and where I would be reborn); this was just like so many Isekai novels I'd read. I continued reading to better understand what I could expect and started planning for my new life.

'This is so cool.' I thought after reading through most of the introduction as quickly as I could. 'Life as a super slime here I come.' Was my first thought as I typed in my first choice in the search bar above the listed classifieds. All my expectations and dreams were destroyed by the error message that popped up with the words 'This request is invalid!'

'Why…? Why would you deny me this O great and mighty World Transmigration Agency?' I cry out to the heavens and click on the help icon again to see why my request didn't go through. After a couple minutes of fiddling I had an answer, turns out that due there being far too many accidents with animal road kills from trucks and other land transport and the general disregard of humans in their deaths there was some type of karmic restriction on people who died in road accidents. Apparently, humans who die in road accidents are unable to take on a non-human form in their next life- '*sniff, sob… There goes that fantasy as well as any hopes for me getting some special creature bloodlines and powers.'

'Hmm, I could still obtain those benefits by using my two other wishes, have them be like some special encounter or something but it seems like a waste if I can't get it right off the bat. Let us not give up hope just yet, there might still be some loopholes I could exploit here.' I thought to myself and made liberal use of Jenny's help until I got to a work around.

While I was barred from taking up a non-human form right off the bat, the rule for having bloodline legacies was a little laxer. Apparently, one could choose to be born into a line descended from a non-human provided the non-human ancestor was three generations your senior and the subsequent descendants from the non-human all mated with humans, needless to say the bloodline powers would be dormant but there was a good chance of me being able to awaken it on my own eventually. Logically humans and other races wouldn't normally be able to mate but in many fantasy worlds that was very much possible. So, with these new findings I used the filter options on the classifieds to see if I could get something that would catch my eye.

Beyond just having some cool bloodline powers I was looking for something that would give me plenty of leg-room to grow and develop, so basically a world with a robust power system with neigh infinite possibilities. I wasn't much interested in immediately becoming something like Superman as it sort of felt too limited to me and there were way too many obvious and exploitable weaknesses to that. I also didn't want my powers and abilities to be tied to some external source wherein I would be a weakling after being disarmed or disabled.

It certainly didn't help me that I was not aware of most of the things listed here. While I was quite a big fan of a lot of light novels and many fanfictions and read many of them, there were just too many of them out there. It also did not help that according to the introductory page I first read, I would take the place of the MC in the world and not as some other side character or OC.

You know how so many protagonists in media go through numerous life and death situations and seemingly come out of it stronger, well that was only in most cases and in the vast multiverse it seems as there were numerous instances where they actually died. This whole World Transmigration Agency was in part established to ensure the flow of those worlds were maintained in some form with another capable Soul taking up the role of the MC after the original died.

In short, most of the events of canon will take place in some form. There may be some changes and deviations but the key events will occur none the less. So I reasoned that it would be better for me that I go to a world that I know and remember about so I will be better prepared and will even be in a position to take advantage of each event to get the most out of it. With all these factors in mind I kept searching until I found a promising entry in the list.

It was an entry to take the place of Linley from the Coiling Dragon novel, I remember this one very well as this was in fact the first ever web novel that I had read and I had in fact re-read it a couple of times. Unfortunately, this seemed to put me quite late into the story, it had me take up Linley's place during his stint in the Plannar wars in fact. That was too far in for my tastes leaving little to nothing for me to do so I didn't choose it but it gave me an idea so I decided to use the filter option to see if there were any other options for me in the same universe. I now had a bunch of options to look over and I sped through them as the counter on the bottom corner of my screen showed me I had only 20 minutes to finish up before I was thrown off the deep end to some random place.

I looked for the earliest point in the story I could go to, ideally in Linley's formation period so I could make the most out of it. The way I see it that way there would not only be more opportunities for me but also less chances of my change in behaviour being noticed. Hang on, talking about being noticed by the locals wasn't there that one mention of other powerful beings being able to read minds there or something, I distinctly remember Beirut being able to read the minds of even Saint level combatants. I quickly look up on that with Jenny and I am relieved to know that not only will my mind be protected from forced invasions and scrying as such but I will be able to keep most of my memories and personality intact. I will forget minor details such as my name and other personal details but since I was an orphan since before I could remember not to mention single, my personal life was not something I was going to miss anytime soon.

With that settled I finalised on one instance at the very start of the story that I could enter, that point in time where Linley was running to save his little brother Wharton from being crushed by a boulder when the Saints Dillon and Rudi quarrelled on the outskirts of Wushan township. Looks like in one of those instances Linley did not walk away from that incident with a minor concussion and becoming the iconic Coiling Dragon ring's owner but instead had his head crushed and died. I still double checked some of the details to make sure it was based on the book cause honestly; I thought the manga kind of ruined it.

Now that I had chosen the world to transmigrate to and the time I would arrive at, I set out to finalising my two additional wishes. The wish list opened up after I set my transmigration destination and for my first wish I requested a more flexible cultivation route, I had read up on a couple more of IET's works like Swallowed Star, Desolate Era and Stellar Transformations after Coiling Dragon and frankly I thought they had more potential to get to the top without overly being reliant on luck. Honestly, I felt a little frustrated knowing that the most I could achieve on my own in the Coiling Dragon verse was a High God Paragon, a soul mutate if lucky but still any Sovereign could trample all over me without giving me a chance.

I did not want to be constrained like that despite knowing that Beirut had saved most of the Sovereign Sparks of the Four Divine Beasts and had them stored in the Necropolis of the Gods. I remember that the Stellar Transformations technique itself being a new path in that universe and how it bypassed their regular cultivation route to reach even higher and I definitely wanted that and let's face it the Laws were pretty much a form of Dao if not the same thing. I waited for the PC in front of me to process my wish and while the outcome was not entirely what I wanted, it was not completely depressing either.

First of the good news, there was no restriction on me to only follow the standard cultivation path of the Yulan Continent. The bad news was that I couldn't directly just obtain high level techniques so no OP or one of a kind super cheat like the complete Stellar Transformations. *Sigh, there goes that plan, well let's take a step back then. Can I at least get the beginning steps of these techniques or maybe some other techniques? I especially focused on body tempering techniques as I remember that being a very important requirement for future progress and without being able to cultivate Qi in the initial stages this could serve as a work around.

I typed in my new wish again and waited for the system to respond. After less than a minute of processing I got a reply that I could be happy with, I was able to obtain the initial steps for the Stellar Transformations- from the complete set of Trans-Heaven Diagrams right up to the formation of the Nebula- along with a large list of low to mid-grade body tempering techniques. Moreover, since Stellar Transformations was incomplete, I was able to choose one other technique from the list of body tempering techniques and it would still only count as one wish.

I immediately choose the incomplete Stellar Transformations as I was confident in being able to complete it myself even with my limited knowledge of Astronomy and Astro-physics. For the body tempering method, I picked one that was called the Blood Essence Refinement Manual, this would help me strengthen my body even if I would not be able to refine any Qi before awakening as a Dragonblood Warrior. More importantly I didn't want to constrain the body to any single element, I could probably figure out some elemental based body refinement methods later myself.

I now had two wishes down with one to go- one was used to determine where I would end up after transmigration and the second got me an awesome cultivation technique. For the last one I requested for some sort of gamer system assist that would help me keep track of my progress and stop me from making any mistakes along the way. That was a complete bust as any form of external assistance was forbidden, even embedded AI smart chips in the brain was not allowed.

With those possibilities ruled out I started to wonder if there was anything else I could wish for to strengthen myself that I did not have confidence in obtaining by myself later on. I drew a blank and with only about ten minutes left I decided to see if I could use a wish to strengthen other people around me. I was very much looking forward to get to know Delia and was quite disappointed that her strength was limited due to fusing with another's Godspark, if I had my way no one in my immediate family and friend circle will resort to that method. Either they work and obtain that strength themselves or they live out their lives with only what they have, granted I will help teach them to the best of my abilities but at the end of the day if they want power, they will have to earn it.

That wish seemed to be possible as long as it was within reason of what was available and possible in that plane. A few more minutes of searching around for more information on what I could give Delia I finalised on having her be a member of the Tigerstriped warrior clan, in the original story this clan was only ever mentioned in passing with no members being named. This way I used my wish to have Delia and by extension her brother Dixie be members of this clan from their mother's side, the wish sort of made it so that her mother's family was attacked generations back and the clan had fractured with only a few weaker members surviving and their legacies lost.

Seeing the possibilities here and seeing as I still had 5 minutes of time still available, I sought to check if I could alter my wishes to something better and if not at least obtain more information on the world I would transmigrate to. I was sort of able to manipulate stuff a little so that as one of the members of the four supreme warrior clans ourselves, the Baruch clan had a copy of the training manuals of the other 3 clans as well as a sort of fail-safe in our alliance between clans. I was unfortunately unable to prevent the kidnapping and eventual sacrificing of Linley's mother Lina Baruch by the Radiant Church as that event seemed to be a key component of that world.

Finally in the last couple of minutes I decided to check out the status of all living members of the four supreme warrior clans, frankly I kind of found it appalling that the story was not developed much on that front as I thought that a story of Linley bringing the four clans together and uplifting all of them in an alliance at least on the Yulan Plane would have been awesome. I got the exact details of the Armand brother's location before the goons of the Radiant Church got to them, hopefully I'd be able to help them before they lost their first spouses and children.

I was also kind of surprised to find out that Jenne and Keane along with their mother were lost members of my own Dragonblood warrior clan unaware of their legacy. As for how that even happened, it seems as though the ancestral war-blade Slaughterer was not the only thing that piece of shit Baruch ancestor sold so long ago. No wonder Keane was unable to train as a warrior despite being from the militaristic O'Brien Empire and having a decently powerful warrior as a butler of sorts from a young age. Definitely need to find a way to help those guys too somehow rather than leave them at the mercy of the Jacques family, I mean I intended to help them out before but now that I know that they are also Baruch clan members my resolve increased drastically.

Just as I finished going over all the details there was less than 15 seconds left for me here so I quietly waited and digested all the information I had found and started to make a rough plan of action. The timer eventually reached zero and the floor under me opened up under me and I experienced falling into pitch darkness for an indeterminate amount of time before a circular portal opened up below me and I found myself high up in the skies of the Yulan continent, above Wushan town to be exact.

I appeared to be a semi-transparent ghostly wraith of how I used to look before dying as I continued falling towards the ground. I spent a moment to bask in the breath-taking view I had before my focus was drawn by a new sensation that I had never felt before. I don't know if it was breathing fresh un-polluted air or just the feeling of being wrapped up in a warm breeze as I didn't really have a physical body to experience those sensations but it felt just like that. I closed my eyes and focused on what I was feeling and numerous bright colourful specks of light seemed to surround me, they were even going through me and even circulating in me a bit.

It took me only a few seconds to figure out that these were the natural essences of the seven elements and four edicts as I could distinctly tell there were 11 different types of coloured spots and they each had a unique aura that I could use to identify them by. I was confused for a couple of seconds as I wasn't sure if I was able to feel all this due to my natural talents, my spirit state, the side effects of transmigration or simply due to my prior expectations of knowing what to look for in this world. Either way I wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth and started to actively focus on these coloured specks and sort of gathering them towards me, I sort of entered a trance as I pulled more and more natural essence into myself and started to ponder on their properties and nature.

I was so lost in my ponderings that I failed to notice that my speed of descent had slowed down drastically due to the sheer concentration of the natural essences surrounding me and slowing my fall. Where before my speed of descent could be compared to a normal human body falling from the sky, now it was like I had a parachute open or better yet I was actually just an incorporeal entity that weighed barely more than a feather. Unfortunately, my impromptu meditation session was interrupted by a dis-embodied voice from the Heavens announcing the following- "Warning! Inconsistency in Transmigrated Soul's journey encountered. If Soul does not enter into the body of one Linley Baruch within the predetermined window of original Soul exiting the body, the Transmigrator's Soul will be banished to Purgatory."

'Voice of the Heavens say what now?!' I exclaim in shock as I open my eyes and notice for the first time my snail's pace of descent. I immediately panic after hearing the consequences of failing to merge with Linley in due time and I sub-consciously use the natural essences around me to push me towards the ground at a faster rate than before my meditation session. Soon I was rocketing to the ground and towards a large estate in the middle of a town by following some instinctual pull that was guiding me to my intended destination.

I was now able to see the events described at the start of the book clearly, rocks of various sizes from fist sized to car sized were raining on the town below that was caught up in the battle between two Saints. People were scrambling to find shelter in a panic and I was able to see a small brown-haired kid running towards a smaller brown-haired kid in a bid to push him out of the way of a falling boulder that would surely turn the latter into meat paste. I had a brief flash-back of how I died and that lapse in attention cost me time as the older brown-haired kid was hit by the rock after successfully managing to save his brother.

In a panic I increased my speed even more to rush to the scene as fast as possible, as I was nearing my destination, I was able to see Linley's Soul that looked just like him if a bit transparent and ghostly, float out of his body with his eyes closed as if he was unconscious. Judging by my speed I thought I would make it in time but I may have still miscalculated something.

Normally in such cases, the new Soul would obtain the original Linley's memories as they slowly passed each other, the original would release his memories in what most would classify as their life passing by before them in a flash before passing on and I would absorb these memories prior to taking over the body. In this case however I was going too fast in fear of being late and sent to purgatory so, I ended up crashing head first into Linley's Soul that had just exited his meat-suit and we both fell back into his body.

Can't really say it was a pleasant experience for either of us as the force of impact damaged both our Souls quite a bit causing us immense pain. Linley, the poor kid's Soul was rudely and painfully roused to consciousness. Both of us felt tremendously weak and were moaning as we felt a pain that was impossible to describe as our Souls themselves were injured severely.

What with me being older and being a bit stronger than Linley spiritually and my tolerance to pain being built up over a harsh life as an orphan I was somewhat able to regain a modicum of control over myself before the kid. Now being able to focus on other things besides the pain I saw the little chibi Linley Soul weakly moaning in pain and my big brother instincts from back in the orphanage kicked in and I sort of- crawled- up to the kid and lifted my arm to gently rub his head while murmuring sweet nothings to him. It was the least I could do, I remember the original Linley from the books I'd read and quite admired him. Dare I say that his strong, determined and caring character had even inspired and motivated me in my younger days.

Eventually Linley's cries reduced and his breathing became steadier as he got his bearings again, the pain certainly didn't reduce that much as I was still feeling it too so that only went to prove to me again how strong and determined he was. He blinked his innocent brown eyes a bit more to clear the tears that had gathered there and raised his head to look around a bit before asking me- "Where am I? Who are you? Is Wharton safe, where is he?"

I had to hand it to him as despite all that happened, he still deeply cared for his little brother more. Looking at his worried expression I answered him- "Relax, your little brother is safe and sound, you saved him." I assured him.

"That's a relief." He answered back with a sigh before looking at me in a curious manner that only an innocent little kid could do.

I took that as a que to continue and move the conversation along- "As for where we are… we are in your mindscape, I think…" I answer in an unsure voice as even I'm not sure where exactly this is, I remember falling into the grievously injured body of Linley so chances were, I was right with my guess.

Linley continues to look at me curiously as if he were pondering my words. Feeling the awkward silence stretch uncomfortably I decide to continue the conversation by trying to answer his other question and introduce myself at the same time- "Well, hi I guess. My name is…" then I drew a blank as I couldn't remember my name. Before I could fully panic with an existential crisis, I remembered that I would forget all my personal details after transmigrating so I forced myself to calm down.

"…How can I understand what you are saying? We are clearly not speaking the same language." Linley breaks the second awkward silence after I'd frozen up and I did a double take after understanding what he said. Damn, the kid was sharp, I just cottoned on to the fact that I clearly understood what he said despite for all intents and purposes it sounded like gibberish, my mind sort of automatically made sense of his words.

"I uhh… I'm not sure." I reply while scratching my head and look around a bit to take stock of the situation some more, now that I'm able to focus past the pain. Both of us seem to be in a blank white borderless space and in our ghostly Soul forms, though our forms seem to be flickering with static and we look like we are badly injured; like we got hit by a truck or crushed by a huge boulder or something.

I release a sigh before taking a deep breath to get my bearings and look at chibi Linley again who is also toughing it out and bearing the pain as he looks around as well. I make a decision to come clean with him so I decide to share all the information I have with him partly because there doesn't seem to be anything else to do here, but mostly because I had this feeling that we were kind of stuck with each other and keeping secrets would only be detrimental to us.

"Linley right, listen here for a moment." I start the conversation again and get his attention before continuing- "There is no easy way to say this but you are… no, you were about to die and I was sort of meant to take your place." He looked suitably aghast at that revelation but was surprisingly calm when I continued my explanation of who I am and let me tell you right now what a pain it is to introduce yourself to someone when you yourself don't remember your name anymore. Suffice to I did a good job, well I thought I did at least and Linley took in all I said like a champ, even my knowledge of future events and the truth of his mother's death only seemed to make his determination to succeed in his goals shine brighter.

At the end of my long lecture, he only had a couple of questions- "What happens now? Will I really die?" he asked me.

"No, I don't think either of us will die right now. I am not really sure what happens next but I can assure you we are not in danger of dying; this feels way too different from what I felt when I died before." I reassure him and we return to looking around in awkward silence some more.

"Argh.. this is so frustrating. I hate this waiting around with nothing to do… Ouch, ow ow ow." I flail around in frustration and soon regret it as that seems to aggravate my injuries.

"Can we get better? When will I wake up? My family must be really worried about me and there is so much I still need to do, especially after what you've told me." Linley asks me after I calm down some.

"Look kid, all this… it's entirely new to me so in all honesty 'I don't know' is going to be my answer to most of your questions. I'm flying by the seat of my pants as it were and hoping for the best. While I believe our Souls can heal with time and you will eventually wake up, I have no idea when that will happen or even if the fact that I'm also sharing your body currently will have any effect." I honestly reply while rubbing my fore head.

"Is there any way to speed up the recovery process at least. I want to wake up as soon as possible." He enquires further with a bit of hope after digesting what I'd said earlier.

"Hang on let me try something first." I reply to him before closing my eyes and trying to remember that feeling I got while meditating and gathering the natural essences of the world to me. Soon I slipped back into that ethereal state of being and I could feel the natural essences again and like before I started to pull them towards myself but this time, I focused on imagining them being absorbed into me and healing me.

It seemed to be working as the pain was reducing at a phenomenal rate now. I was unfortunately interrupted from meditation again when Linley loudly voiced out his concerns- "Aaaahh…What's this? What is happening now?"

I opened my eyes to see what made my new friend so worried and I was shocked to see the completely blank white space we were in before now has many multi-coloured specks of the natural essences floating in it as well. In fact, the concentration of these specks is denser near me and oddly enough Linley's form seems to be flickering even more and is sort of being absorbed by me much to the kid's panic. I stop meditating immediately seeing the kid's panic, while I felt great when I was absorbing the natural essence, I did not really want to consume Linley.

"What was that? What did you do?" He asks me again once his form stabilizes some more and he's calmed down some.

"Sorry about that, I didn't know that would happen. Anyway, I was just checking if there was any way to speed up our recovery like you asked. It sort of worked as I started to feel better rapidly but unfortunately as you just experienced, it seemed to be not so good for you." I explain after apologising to him first.

"Can you… teach me how to do that too? I mean if it was making you heal faster it could help us heal and get out of here." He requested of me.

I'll admit I was tense, if I teach him how to do what I was doing there is a good chance… no a 100% chance of me experiencing the same thing he was going through when he tries it out. The main issue now is if I trust him enough to not take advantage of this and just consume me in turn. I have an intense internal debate over what to do as Linley looks at me with a somewhat wary, somewhat expectant look.

"*sigh, ok kid I'll teach you, but I want you to promise me you'll stop when I tell you to. What you experienced did not look pleasant in the slightest and I'd rather not experience that. Don't worry though as I promise you that I will also not do that again, I hope both of us can get through this. I'm putting a lot of trust in you here kid, don't let me down." I respond finally. I know this may seem foolish and dangerous on my part as I am giving Linley who is by all rights a complete stranger so much power over me but my instincts are telling me to take the chance.

I then begin teaching and walking him through the steps of what I did to enter a meditative state as a starting point and wait on the side to see how it goes from there. While he is trying to imitate my actions to start meditating after the lesson, I start pondering to myself over what made me decide to take this risk in the first place.

First off it did not sit right with me to not share with him and just devour him. While I may not have been some benevolent saint (saint by earth standards) with a bleeding heart dedicated to charity, humanity and all that fluff, I was not some deranged psychotic fiend either and something told me that if I went through with devouring chibi Linley, I would change on a fundamental level into something unsettling.

Secondly, while we were complete strangers to each other I had at least read about the kid's character from the story and he was a very innocent, trusting and morally upright person. He would definitely not take advantage of someone and hurt others without just cause especially now as he still hasn't gone on that eye opening trip to the mountain range of magical beasts or had his heart broken by Alice.

Lastly, this can even be considered an extension of the previous points but Linley was a very loyal person to those he trusted and considered family and friends. There was almost nothing he wouldn't do for you once you had earned his trust so this was a chance for me to earn it and again it did not sit right with me to kill an honest chap like him in cold blood.

So, I calmly waited for quite a long time for Linley to get meditation down. He seems to be taking a lot longer than me but then again, I was more experienced as a grown man in my early 20s who had attended the many mandatory meditation and yoga classes in the orphanage of my past life. After what seemed to be an hour of waiting I both saw and felt the natural essences be drawn to the kid though surprisingly or unsurprisingly only those essences of earth, wind, fire and a smidgen of water seemed to be pulled into him. I let it go on for a while still as I wasn't really feeling any adverse effects yet and I was curious for the full experience at least once.

It was sometime later still that I started feeling slightly dizzy as well as a little exhaustion and a slight suction force that was pulling me towards the kid. "Alright that's enough kid." I called out to rouse Linley from his meditation, I was nowhere near in as bad a state as the kid was in when he roused me from my meditation but what I was feeling was unpleasant enough. Moreover, after having experienced both situations now I had a slightly better understanding of what was happening as well as ideas to try out next.

"You were right, that did help. It felt like it took a lot longer though but I could feel myself getting better and the pain was reducing very fast, but are you alright though?" He eagerly shares his experience but is still kind enough to enquire about my wellbeing seeing as I look paler and am breathing heavily. Yeah, that right there is why I decided to trust him, he was way too nice to backstab me or anyone else for that matter.

"I'm ok, just a little out of breath, but that was an interesting experience and gave me some new ideas to try out." I reassure him and I could see the brief flash of genuine relief on his face when he heard I was alright before it morphed into fear and worry upon hearing I had new ideas.

"Hahaha, relax kid it won't be anything dangerous to you or me… well mostly." I reply with a sheepish tone towards the end while scratching the back of my head before deciding to reassure Linley some more after seeing his still dejected look- "Well, I guess it would be better to discuss this now rather than later. Listen kid, I'm going to be doing a lot of experiments as there is a lot I want to try out and research but if you at any point feel hurt or you think I'm doing something wrong, please let me know and I will stop right away. Ok." I tell him with a serious look on my face and he responds with a nod and a tentative smile.

"So, what do we do next?" he asked me after a while.

"Well now that you've also experienced the wonders of my method of meditation, tell my about your experience. Just looking at you meditating gave me some insights on how it was different from mine but I want to hear your input on it." I tell him.

He nods his head before telling me- "Right, it was difficult at first and I didn't know if I could do it as it was taking me so much longer but, in the end, it was just like how you described it to me. There were many colourful specks that helped heal me faster when I absorbed them into me. Only… there were fewer around me I think, there were only four colours and not the many different varieties as you described or saw when you were meditating. Also, not all the four coloured specks were in equal amounts, the yellow and bluish green ones were the most followed by the bright red ones and there were very few blue ones." He described his experience.

"That's right, I also only saw four of the natural essences corresponding to earth, wind, fire and water flock to you. If that was either due to some innate limit of yours or due to your lack of knowledge, I don't know but it is something we can test and verify so that will be among our first experiments but first let us see if we can improve on your first attempt." I explain my own points of view to him before I start on giving him an impromptu science lecture on the properties of his four affinities based on the knowledge from my old world.

I then ask him to try meditating again while urging him to take the time and seeing if he can observe some of the properties of the elements I had described as he was absorbing them. As a hint I told him to focus on those properties that give the elements more strength or those that have a nurturing and healing aspect as he absorbs them like the bright intense power of a flame, the shear strength and vastness of the earth, skies and oceans, the fires reducing old worn-out things to ash and the ash nurturing new growth, the earth's vitality that supports so much life upon it, the water's gentle nurturing and supporting life and the wind's embrace enabling life, sustaining and enriching us with each breath.

The time he spent to enter the meditative state now was not only shorter but also the amount of natural essence he drew to himself and their effects on both him and I were more pronounced. He was healing at a visibly faster pace than previously and I was feeling faint and tired more quickly, I held out for a time to let him get a hang of it before calling out to him to stop.

"That was incredible, I feel so refreshed almost like I was never injured. Are you ok though?" He asks at the end seeing as I look worse than I did after his first time meditating but there is also a spark of admiration and respect in his eyes as he looks at me now.

"Yeah, don't worry, I'll be fine. Just give me a moment to catch my breath." I say as I sit down to recover a bit before continuing- "That was good though, much better than your first attempt I must say. Not only were there more of the elemental essences flocking to you but their effect on your recovery were also greatly improved so we can safely say that part of the experiment was a resounding success. Now for part two, I will teach you about properties of the other 7 natural essences and I want to see if you can feel them out, but I want you to keep in mind that though you did not feel them before does not mean they are not there. There are many things in the world one may not be able to see or has directly experienced but that does not mean that they are not there, more over if you still face some difficulties focus on the essences you do feel and see if you can spot the effects the other unseen ones have on them. I will also give you a simple explanation of how the different elements may interact with one other so try to use that as a reference when trying to spot the other seven essences."

He begins meditating again after listening to another lecture on my part, this also gave me much needed rest as there seems to be some strange phenomenon that weakens one of us proportionally to the others strengthening from meditating on the laws. This time Linley spent the longest time yet while meditating and though he was quickly surrounded by the four laws he had an affinity for, he persisted and didn't absorb much, this in turn allowed him to continue meditating without affecting me much. This verified another theory for me, one of us is only weakened when the other absorbs a great deal of natural essence. I think that some of our own Soul essence gets pulled in along with the stream of natural essence and gets absorbed into the other and that is what is causing our problem.

Anyway, with Linley given more time and no real need to hurry as I don't tell him to stop, he relaxes further and puts his complete focus on meditating. After what seems to be hours later, I notice new coloured specks corresponding to different essences also become visible and gather near Linley. It takes a while and is a slow process as Linley also frequently wakes up from the meditation sessions in excitement about his progress and also asks me for more pointers on what to look for. Eventually he is able to gather essences from all 7 elements and 4 edicts and he looks beyond pleased.

I also didn't sit around and waste time while Linley was meditating, I spent that time going over the 3 Trans Heaven diagrams that were imprinted into my memory from my transmigration wish. Each of the diagrams had a human silhouette performing a set of kata or dance like movements, there were 36 stances in each diagram making up a total of 108 and that reminded me that the number 108 had a lot of significance in these works. I made a mental note to keep that in mind as I also remembered Linley's later signature gravity technique was based around this number too and it might help me out later in making something unique to myself.

"Yeah, I think you've got the hang of meditating on the laws now. Let's now focus on what we need to do next, we can't spend all of our lives here after all." I rouse Linley after I see that the kid has managed to successfully gather all 11 elemental essences of this universe to a satisfactory level. I was also growing tired both literally and metaphorically as his meditation weakened me despite him not actively absorbing the essences, I'm just thankful he stopped whenever I asked and allowed me to rest.

"Ok, what do we do next? Do you have any ideas that could help both of us fully recover and I can go back to my family?" He asks with an eager face. He is fully trusting of me now, where before there was a slight bit of caution despite the admiration, he had for me. I really hoped to God it won't be like one of those things where one of us has to kill the other to survive, I am honestly wishing with all my heart that we can both make it out of this in some form or the other.

"Alright, so here's the plan; now that you are also capable of somewhat matching me during meditation, I thought we could try out doing it together at the same time to see what happens. Don't look at me like that, it's not just us going back to what we were doing." I say as he looks at me strangely, like I just stopped him doing something just so I could tell him that the next step was to continue doing the same.

"But what good will that do us, I mean it certainly helps us recover faster when we do it but the other is weakened too much as well right?" He decides to voice out his issues anyway.

"There is a very good reason I want to try this. First of all, what we have been doing so far is only one of us meditating at a time so we have no idea what will happen if we both are meditating at once. Second, I did not want to try this before as we were not quite at the same level before and there was a risk of one of us completely consuming the other. Granted it was mostly me consuming you." I explain to him.

"That could happen? What else could happen? Are there any other risks, what are you not telling me?" Linley asks as his face pales after learning of the dangers of what could happen, what we could do to each other.

"Relax, as I said before I don't want to hurt you and even if you do get injured unintentionally, I will stop immediately and we'll try something new after helping you heal. Anyway, the risk of one of us completely consuming the other is very small, the chance of both of dying is even lesser. In fact, there is a very high chance of both of us strengthening and healing per my observations. Even if that does not happen, as long as we stay synchronised with each other we may both kind of fuse into a new entity that is the sum of both of us with neither being completely dominant. Either way I can promise you that we'll be in it together, there is a whole wide world out there filled with wonder and opportunity waiting for us, I just ask you to trust me as much as I trust you." I tell him and we look at each other for a while in silence.

"Ok, let's do this. Just in case though, if something goes wrong and I don't make it; promise me you will help my family. Look after them and help me fulfil my wish of bringing the Baruch family back to its glory days and most importantly make the Radiant Church pay for what they did to Mother and find a way to free her and get her back home to us." Linley tells in such a solemn tone that has no business coming out of a 7–8-year-old brat.

"Do it yourself kid. I will tell you right now that you better not get into this with doubts or second thoughts, show me the strength of a true scion of the Dragonblood warrior clan." I encourage him while also kind of admiring his resolve. I am kind of in awe of his strength already but I will be damned before I encourage the kid to just let go of everything and sacrifice himself.

We both start meditating unaware of what was about to unfold and that once we start, we wouldn't be able to end it until the whole thing comes to a close. For once we started to gather the natural essences of the 7 elements and 4 edicts we felt a big difference, we were not weakened due to the other's meditation like before but we both felt or bodies being drawn towards each other inexplicably. Both of us were roused from our meditative state and though the process seemed to slow down a bit it showed no signs of stopping at all.

"Well, can't really say this was out of my expectations really *sigh." I release sigh towards the end after observing the new development, it's not the worst-case scenario, not even close but it's not the best one either, according to me at least.

"Do you know what is happening now? It doesn't feel like I'm dying or anything and it doesn't look like you are either so that's a good thing, right?" Linley asks. He can also instinctively tell that what is happening is not life threatening to either of us per se but he wouldn't say no to more information either.

"Remember what I told you could happen before we started this, well it looks like the second-best option of both of us merging and being equal parts of a new Soul is happening right now." I explain before adding- "I really wish we could have stayed as individuals but it seems as though one body cannot have two complete and different Souls within it. Let's just get back to meditating and speed this process along so we can get out of here sooner." I end my piece and we both get back to meditating and the fusion process speeds up again.

It is an odd experience to be sure, it sort of feels like Linley and I are the two stars in a binary star system and the natural essences are like the cosmic particles being drawn to us as we revolve around each other. I must say though the amount of the essences we have managed to draw to ourselves is way more than even the sum of what we had drawn while meditating individually. We lose any sense of time- what little we had- and enter a trance, sort of like an enlightenment really as the concentration of the natural essences around is steadily increasing.

Little did we know that we had truly lucked out and the many improbable things that needed to happen for this phenomenon to occur just so happened to be met. First off just the amount of Spiritual or Soul energy required for this to happen would not be available in just one person and even if they somehow had high innate Spiritual strength from birth, they would not be able to bear the stress unlike in the event of there being another Soul to share the burden with. The two Souls should also be fairly close in terms of potential (this had not initially been the case but our individual meditations had sort of enabled us to draw on each-other's Soul a bit and we had sort of equalised) and each should also be trusting of the other for the fusion would not happen otherwise.

Next was the requirement of the participants being able to draw upon all the 11 types of natural essences in this universe, there were very few people who had this talent and fewer still had the patience to develop all of them as they would usually only focus on 3 to 4 laws at most.

Another factor being that the participants must have in their possession a decently powerful Soul protecting artifact to reinforce their Spirits and the Coiling Dragon ring though being damaged was a true Sovereign level Soul protecting treasure and fulfilled this requirement after soaking up some of Linley's blood when he got injured and bonding with him and by extension me.

Lastly the participants should not have had any prior training in Qi, Mageforce or the Laws as this process would lead to a Soul mutation that would enable the Mutated Soul to freely use and combine all 11 natural essences. Normally the chances of success for even a 2-way Soul mutate were low and the chance only got lower with each new Law being added, the crux of this issue lay in the strength of the one undergoing the process prior to mutation. The stronger one was and the more they had trained in Qi, Mageforce or even the Laws themselves the lower their success rate of surviving the mutation without any super divine treasure's help as they had already adapted to having the natural essences be separate, the sudden shift and sheer magnitude of change from the different essences combining would rip the Soul of the one undergoing the mutation to shreds.

Theoretically the only way for one to even try fusing all 7 elements and 4 edicts was if they were initially a blank state in terms of cultivation and were in some way, shape or form aware that the universe was naturally made up of the interactions and fusions of all 11 essences with only their concentrations varying slightly depending on locations sometimes. Only then could this process we were undergoing even begin, so yeah, we really lucked out big time.