In the Empyrean Realm, the Azure Dragon Clan did not rule from a palace of gold, but one of living jade. Towers spiraled towards the heavens like ancient trees, glowing with a soft, internal luminescence. Rivers of pure, liquefied spiritual Qi flowed through courtyards, nurturing celestial herbs that chimed softly in the breeze. This was the world Jian Feng, age five, knew. It was a world of warmth, safety, and boundless wonder.
His mother, Su Liena, a woman whose grace could tame the wildest of beasts, sat with him in the Pavilion of Whispering Leaves. Her fingers, elegant and fair, guided his small hand as he held a brush. On the parchment before them was a single character: 'Dao' (道).
"It means a path, my little dragon," she said, her voice as gentle as the river's flow. "It is the path of the cultivator, the path of the stars, the path of the world itself. To understand it is to understand everything."
Jian Feng, with the simple earnestness of a child, focused intently. He could already feel the Qi of the world around him, a comforting warmth that listened to his will. His parents and the clan elders praised him as a prodigy, a child with a spirit born for cultivation. His father, Jian Tianlong, the reigning Patriarch of the Azure Dragon Clan, had once laughed, his voice booming like thunder, stating that his son's soul was so strong it could likely glimpse the Grand Daos before he even lost his first tooth.
Life was a paradise of gentle learning and familial love. It was this perfect peace that made the schism, when it came, so terrifying.
He was in the clan's Great Library, a vast repository holding millions of jade slips. He had been drawn to a small, unremarkable scroll case in a forgotten corner. The moment his tiny fingers brushed against the ancient wood, a storm erupted in his mind.
It was not a storm of Qi, but of information. Images, sounds, and feelings from an entirely different existence crashed into his five-year-old consciousness. He saw towers of metal and glass that dwarfed even the clan's palace. He saw horseless carriages moving at impossible speeds. He saw a world without spiritual energy, yet teeming with complexities he couldn't fathom. He felt the life of a man—a strategist, a master of data, a manipulator of systems—who had lived and died in that strange, Qi-less world. The man's final moments were a blur of regret, a life spent in the shadows, winning games for others but never building anything truly his own.
The sheer volume of a full lifetime's memories, filled with cynicism, logic, and cold calculation, threatened to shatter his young soul. It was a deluge of alien concepts trying to drown the innocent consciousness of the boy named Jian Feng. For a moment that stretched into an eternity, two identities warred for control.
But the soul of a cultivator, especially a prodigy of the Azure Dragon Clan, was not so easily broken. Instead of shattering, his soul began to absorb. It treated the foreign memories not as a poison, but as an impossibly complex text, and it began the arduous process of comprehending and integrating.
Then, the miracle happened. As the analytical mind of the Earth strategist merged with the prodigious soul of the cultivator's world, a new perception was born from their union. The world around him dissolved.
The towering shelves of the library, the jade slips, the very air he breathed—it all unraveled into a tapestry of infinite, shimmering threads. He saw the emerald threads of Life Dao pulsing in the ancient wood of the shelves. He saw the silver threads of Order Dao that held the building's structure in perfect harmony. He saw the faint, golden light of Heavenly Dao Merit clinging to scrolls written by virtuous ancestors. Looking inward, he saw his own body with impossible clarity: the sea of Qi in his dantian, the flow of blood, the beating of his heart, all governed by this same intricate web of laws.
This was the birth of the Star-Chart of a Myriad Daos. It was not a gift from some entity. It was him. It was the product of his two lives fusing into something greater than the sum of their parts.
When Jian Feng opened his eyes, the storm was gone. The library was just a library again, but he could feel the threads of Dao just beneath the surface of his normal perception, waiting to be observed. He was still a five-year-old boy, but his eyes, the color of twilight jade, now held the depth of a man who had lived two lifetimes.
His mother found him sitting silently, a profound aura of enlightenment surrounding him.
"Feng'er?" she asked, her voice laced with concern and awe. "What happened?"
The boy looked up at her. He saw the vibrant emerald threads of her life force, and woven through them, a brilliant, dense aura of golden Merit, more than he had ever seen. He saw the deep, unconditional love she had for him represented as a gentle, unbreakable bond of karma.
The mind of the strategist took over, processing the situation with cold, swift clarity. Revealing the truth was foolish. It would cause panic and confusion. He needed an explanation that fit this world's logic.
"Mother," Jian Feng said, his voice still that of a child, yet carrying an unshakable certainty. "I was reading the character for 'Dao'. And for a moment… I think I understood it."
Su Liena's eyes widened, and she rushed forward, checking his body for any signs of spiritual deviation. Finding none, only a spirit that was now as deep and placid as a sacred lake, she felt a tremor of pure joy. An enlightenment event at such an age was unheard of. It was a sign from the Heavens themselves.
As his mother held him, Jian Feng made a silent vow. In his last life, he was a tool, a mind used by others. He had built nothing, left no legacy, and died with regret. Now, he had been given a world of tangible power, a loving family with immense resources, and a perception that could deconstruct reality itself. He would not make the same mistake.
He would build a foundation so solid that the heavens themselves would tremble. He would master every realm, understand every law, and stand at the absolute pinnacle. This time, he would not be a player in someone else's game. He would become the one who set the board.