Xi Lu lived a normal and happy life on earth, growing up surrounded by family and friends and in a safe and stable household.
There wasn't really anything more he could wish for, at least that was what he thought as he was sitting in the back of the 4 seater, his brother beside him and his dad in the front driving, his mum in the passenger seat.
As his brother joked around next to him he cracked a slight smile, truly content with life.
The only thing Xi Lu wanted that he didn't really have at that moment was a girlfriend.
Sighing to himself he thought,"Yeah, a cute girl I could bring home and show to my parents, that would really complete everything honestly."
As his smile got even wider as he thought of this, Xi Lu was rudely awakened from his blissful dreams in the worst possible way.
Hearing a car horn blaring out Xi Lu looked up just in time to see a van running a red light, and careering straight into the back left corner of his family's car, him being seated on the back left seat.
Feeling an intense crushing pain, Xi Lu's vision faded to black, with him not having fully comprehended what had just occurred.
"No way, am I actually... dying? Not what I thought it'd felt like honestly, I feel a bit like I'm, I'm floating?"
As Xi Lu faded into unconsciousness, his left side of his body having been completely crushed, he seemingly felt himself becoming ethereal and weightless, as if he was floating out of his body, almost as if he was ascending into the sky.
As the screams of his mother and brother, and the shouts of his father slowly faded into the background Xi Lu began to stop even feeling pain, instead feeling purely weightless and as if he was transparent.
"I feel as if I'm high as fuck, holy shit, is this what dying feels like? Damn, it doesn't even seem too bad..."
The feeling was so intense, that Xi Lu passed out fully, while being immersed in a feeling of bliss rather than pain.
And just like that Xi Lu departed blissfully from his life on earth, while in the meantime his family members continued to scream and try and resuscitate Xi Lu, unaware he had already completely departed from the Earth.
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"Is this heaven then? I know I died but I didn't expect the afterlife to look like this."
Xi Lu looked around him, surprised by what he saw, or rather the lack of what he saw.
He had awoken standing up in a seemingly infinite white void, with absolutely nothing present.
It was silent, scarily so, however Xi Lu seemed terrifyingly calm, almost as if he expected this scene after his death.
The strange thing was, Xi Lu himself felt as if he had finally returned to his home, like a fish returning to water, as if he was meant to be here.
As soon as Xi Lu acknowledged this feeling, the infinite void underwent a change.
Space itself seemed to twist together, folding in itself as if it was congealing to form something.
And form something it did.
In front of Xi Lu six seemingly identical paths formed, however they were heading in six separate directions.
At this time Xi Lu heard a booming voice, seemingly emanating from the void itself.
"You possess a mutated Six Paths soul. This means that over your past reincarnations on Earth you somehow managed to attain enough positive karma to cause your soul to mutate. On earth cultivation is impossible because of the sparse Qi, of the 3000 Lower realms it is the only one where the inhabitants are unable to cultivate at all."
The voice paused for a moment before continuing, Xi Lu being confused and shocked by what the voice was talking about.
"However, the inhabitants of Earth, if they gain enough positive karma over their reincarnations on Earth will have their souls mutate into Six Path souls, which gives them not only the ability to reincarnate into one of the other 3000 Lower realms, but also will imbue them with one of six incredible fortunes, each of which are unique, depending on the choice of the person with the Six Paths soul. Moreover, depending on just how much karma the person gained they may be able to select even more of the Six Paths' abilities for themselves when they reincarnate. The most one person has ever taken is 4 paths worth of fortune, which in and of itself allowed them to become incredibly talented and be able to fight a great realm above their own from the Qi Condensation stage."
Hearing this Xi Lu was absolutely shocked.
Not only was there an afterlife, no rather there was an unbelievably wide universe filled with unimaginable things, and the few people who came from Earth and made it to the realms where cultivation was possible had incredible innate advantages due to the so called Six Paths souls they were imbued with.
"If I'm correct, cultivators are similar to those described in the Wuxia and Xianxia novels on Earth, right?"
Xi Lu attempted to throw out a question to the voice from the void, not truly expecting an answer, however the voice responded saying,
"Correct. While cultivation on Earth is impossible due to there being a complete lack of Qi, certain members of the human race on Earth have experienced so called moments of enlightenment, seeing visions of true cultivators. Many of these visions served as inspiration for some of the classical mythology on Earth, or those so called Wuxia and Xianxia novels."
Xi Lu was truly shocked now. It appears that across his past reincarnations on Earth he had managed to gain enough positive karma to escape the cycle of death and rebirth on Earth, and supposedly gain access to the true wider universe, the universe of cultivation.
Despite this, Xi Lu was still incredibly unsure about what exactly reincarnation into one of the 3000 Lower realms constituted, however if Earth was merely one of these Lower realms and there were 2999 others that meant the universe was far wider than everyone on Earth had ever imagined.
Aside from this, based on Xi Lu's knowledge of cultivators from mythological stories and the novels he so enjoyed to read on Earth, worlds where cultivation was possible would certainly be far grander and vaster than Earth.
Having thought this far and composing himself, Xi Lu began to feel excitement, unlike any sense of excitement he had ever felt previously on Earth, almost akin to pure lust, for his next life.
Even on Earth, who didn't dream of being truly powerful, rich, or famous?
And in a world where cultivation was possible the ability to gain power, wealth or fame would only be magnified to endless degrees.
The possibilities were simply endless compared to a life on Earth.
Upon finding out that in his next life Xi Lu would have the chance to cultivate he felt as if he had already become a frog that had left its well, a bird out of its cage.
Until this point in his existence, over countless past lives and reincarnations he had been caged, and now he was truly free and unfettered.
Letting out a long and unrestrained laugh Xi Lu once more turned his attention to the six paths in front of him.
"So these six paths will decide my fate in the next life. That voice said that each path will grant me a unique type of fortune for my next laugh, I wonder what it meant by that."
As if the voice could read Xi Lu's mind it continued describing the six paths in front of Xi Lu to him.
"These six paths are respectively the Hungry Ghost Path, the Asura Path, the God Path, The Demon Path, the Myriad Self path and finally the Mortal Path. As I said before depending on which path you take, you will receive a different fortune for yourself in your next life."
The voice paused for a second before continuing.
"Starting from your left, the first Path is the Hungry Ghost Path. This path will grant you the ability to absorb and refine the cultivation bases of people you kill, assimilating them into your own cultivation base allowing you to make your foundation more firm, and also cultivate at a speed unattainable by the vast majority of cultivators in the wider universe. It also allows you to assimilate and use the unique traits of beings you kill, which will be incorporated into your own physique, increasing your natural talent and battle abilities. Moreover in battle you can devour the energy of your opponents with your left hand and fire it out again in a refined and stronger form out of your right hand, provided that the energy is not too powerful and overloads your body while you are channeling it through from your left hand to your right hand. Next is the Asura Path, which will allow you to be able to unleash an Asura domain within which your enemies will be slowed down and beset by illusions of a bloody battlefield, as well as have their movements slowed. This domain will allow you to completely suppress those at the same cultivation level, and will still have a certain effect on enemies even if they are at a higher cultivation level than you."
The voice paused here for a second, allowing Xi Lu to process this information
Based upon his knowledge of cultivation and how it was portrayed in the novels he enjoyed, these abilities were already absolutely incredible.
Continuing onwards the voice said:
"Next is the God Path, this path allows the user to emit a crushing pressure from their body which will immobilise anyone at the same cultivation realm as you and effect even those who are at a higher realm than the user, and in general this path allows you to have incredible perception when it comes to the Dao. Next is the Demon path, which allows you to have a will and Dao heart which are absolutely unshakeable, as well as bestowing upon you a unique type of body known as the Sacred Demon body, which allows your body to possess more Qi than cultivators at the same level as you, as well as making you incredibly physically strong and increasing your defences, once more allowing you to fight above your realm against cultivators you would encounter."
After listing these two the voice paused once more before continuing onto the final two.
"The Myriad Self path is incredible in that it allows one to imbue any natural object which is able to or has developed its own spirituality post natally, with their own Qi and turn it into a clone of their original body with talent equal to the original body but apart from that its abilities and attributes will depend entirely on the thing used as the base for the clone. The clones formed from the Myriad Self path's power can fuse back into the original body allowing the main body to gain the added abilities of each clone for as long as that clone fuses with the main body. Finally there is the Mortal Path, the most mysterious and inscrutable of the Six Paths, this Path simply bestows incredible luck and a grand fate upon the user. This luck is ethereal and can not be sensed, however it will cause the possessor of this path to have a blessed life with incredible lucky chances and incredible fortune on their path of cultivation, however there is still a chance that the possessor will die obviously, otherwise this path would be without a doubt the most impressive, however even so the ability to change one's fate and cause your luck to increase will have countless benefits for your path as a cultivator."
Xi Lu was speechless. All these abilities truly were incredible, any one would allow a cultivator to possess incredible talents and the ability to fight opponents above their cultivation level or possess unbelievable cultivation speed.
And according to what the mysterious voice said there was even a possibility that a person could gain the power of multiple of these paths, with one person in the past having even gained four of these abilities at once.
"Senior, how do you test your karma and find out how many paths are available to you?"
"Most people will only receive one path, only around one in a thousand people are able to gain two, one in one hundred thousand will gain three, and only one ever has gained four abilities. Even over the billions of years the Earth has existed for only 210,789 people have gained the requisite Karma to gain the Six Paths soul. Of these people two have gained three paths' abilities, while around 200 have gained two paths, the rest have all only gained one path. This should show you how hard it is to gain more than one path's ability, so don't get your hopes up."
Xi Lu was shocked by these figures, not least because while 210,789 people seemed like a small portion of hundreds of billions of humans, this still meant that hundreds of thousands of people from Earth had been able to become cultivators over the years that the Earth had existed, and all of them would possess their memories of their last life on Earth and this Six Paths soul reincarnation.
This meant that Xi Lu himself would have the ability to possibly even meet people from his homeland of Earth in his next life!
This thought made Xi Lu burn with even more fervour for his next life, dreaming of creating a sect where he could act as a beacon for those who had reincarnated from Earth, creating a base for those brethren from his homeland.
Thinking this far Xi Lu was even more determined to gain as many of the strange and powerful Six Paths' abilities as he could, so as to allow himself to become a truly peerless figure in his next life.
As Xi Lu pondered all this, the monotonous voice which had remained monotone for the entire duration of his speaking so far, responded with shock evident in its voice to Xi Lu.
"I have just checked your karma, and you've accomplished a miracle, something I haven't seen in a billion years. Hmph, an unremarkable brat like you who would've thought. You've gained enough karma over your lives to gain four paths' worth of abilities!"
Xi Lu seemed to detect, was that, a hint of shock and... resentment?
It appeared as if the seemingly unfeeling voice was shocked and annoyed at Xi Lu having gained enough karma to gain four paths' worth of abilities.
"F-four paths. No idea what I did but fuck me it must've been incredible. Out of the 200,000 odd people selected to reincarnate I'm one of two people ever to gain this much karma at a minimum. What the fuck did I do because I certainly didn't do enough to accumulate this much karma in my most recent life."
Letting out a laugh of absolute joy and raucousness, Xi Lu was in shock and ecstasy, completely unexpectant of this result, as the vast majority of people merely gained one path's abilities as innate talents in their reincarnation into the worlds outside of Earth, however he had unexpectedly gained four, the second person ever to gain this many paths' abilities.
Seemingly grumbling, the voice broke Xi Lu out of his reverie asking,"So then, what paths will you choose to gain in your reincarnation into your next life?"
Broken out of his reverie Xi Lu began to properly think about his choice, as he knew it would directly and deeply effect his next life.