In voluntate mea ad verum aquilonem intellectus procedet.
In voluntate mea ad verum aquilonem intellectus procedet.
In voluntate mea ad verum aquilonem intellectus procedet.
Those words kept repeating in Zoran's mind. It rang in his subconscious, waking him from the deepest slumber. He opened his eyes, something he didn't think was possible.
A blinding light greeted his eyes. Was this the Alpha God? The last thing he saw was the Alpha God's descent–could he have survived that?
An impossible scene rejected the possibility. White noise from a crowd filled his ears: with murmuring and muddled conversations that could only come from mortal men.
His eyes finally adjusted to the light. A group of strong but thin men littered the entrance of a cave. They wore old and dirtied sleeveless shirts. Zoran understood why. Coal and grime was expensive to clean every day, and for miners who barely earned enough for food, cleanliness was a luxury only the rich could afford.
There was an assortment of men: from the young, the old, and the foreigner. Despite their differences, there was one thing in common: their exhausted faces.
These were miners, Zoran was sure of it.
'Where am I?' Zoran asked himself. Was this the afterlife? But the unpleasant smell of sweat and hopelessness told him this was not the heaven that promised eternal happiness.
Zoran realized he was asking the wrong question. How was he alive? The Supreme Beings' Universal Laws should have ripped him apart from the very fabric of reality. Yet here he was alive and well.
He examined his body. His Yi energy was still gone, as he expected. But something was wrong. He was weak, weaker than a teenager who had barely eaten anything since birth.
Everything was gone: his perfectly sculpted muscles, his sturdy veins that could withstand hotter than magma blood, and even his indestructible bones that were stronger than adamantium.
Despite this, there was a burning vigor surrounding his body. It was akin to that of a teenager, just brimming with potential.
'This is impossible,' Zoran thought.
He examined the cave closely. It was familiar. He recognized the distinctive stalactites on the entrance. It formed fangs like that of a dragon with its mouth wide open waiting for its prey to enter its den.
A befitting name of Draco's Cave was given to it. He knew this place. This was where he spent a few years as a miner, earning money to start his cultivation journey.
Tall pine trees surrounded the cave, with violet vines connecting the trees into one big ecosystem. It had a vanilla scent, which only served to retrieve the memory from his brain a lot easier.
This forest was destroyed in the great Sun and Sky war, reduced to ashes. Yet Zoran experienced its natural vitality with such clarity that he could not denote it as a simple dream.
'Was this possible?'
Zoran ran to the nearest lake just a few trees away from the cave. He ran to the wooden fishing pier and looked down at the clear water.
All he saw was a youthful man in his teens, with his cheeks sunken in and eyes looking straight back at him. This was Zoran when he was at the cusp of adulthood, having not yet experienced the joys and sorrows of cultivation.
It was possible. He had gone back in time to the start of his never-ending and ultimately fruitless journey to stand at the top of the cultivation world.
'How did I go back?'
In voluntate mea ad verum aquilonem intellectus procedet.
In voluntate mea ad verum aquilonem intellectus procedet.
In voluntate mea ad verum aquilonem intellectus procedet.
Those frequent and unrelenting words kept interrupting his thoughts like waves crashing into his mind. He could not control it, but it was not invasive. Was it his subconscious?
"Hey kid! We're entering the cave!"
An old man at the age of retirement reached out to Zoran. He gave the old man a nod and promised him to catch up later. The old man responded with some warnings of the cave, the pitfalls, and the deadends.
Seeing Zoran ignore his words, the old man shook his head. He was not there to supervise, but nonetheless gave some advice. He didn't want to see young kids dying. After all, dead ends and pitfalls were not the most frightening part of the cave.
Zoran had to organize his thoughts. He promised to enact his revenge on the Supreme Beings; he was not the forgetful type.
But his current state was nothing less than paper against a storm; death was his only outcome. Even if he recovered his strength from before, he could not kill all the Supreme Beings.
He learned that although those gods were antisocial, when it came to Zoran, they were more than willing to set aside their pride to deal with him together.
He had to get stronger than before. Powerful to the point that he could stand against all the Supreme Beings at the same time and triumph; he knew it was a lofty dream.
With his knowledge of the future and his muscle-memory mastery of all the cultivation systems of the Supreme Beings, it was no mere dream, but an inevitability.
His first goal was to buy a cultivation core. Cultivation was like a tower; the better the foundation, the better it could withstand harsh loads.
Cultivation was not meant for humans, but for beasts. But human's greed led them to discover that they could consume a beast's core and obtain inhuman powers.
The stronger the beast, the stronger the cultivation core. Its price was also proportional to the strength, which was why Zoran persevered in the mines despite its horrible conditions and meager pay.
He was a miner for most of his life, and knowledge came from experience. There was no miner better than Zoran for he had achieved a keen eye for spotting intricacies in the cracks and textures of the mines.
He remembered that a few diamond hotspots were discovered in the mines. If there was anyone who would find them, it was Zoran.
His goal was to unearth the treasures in the mines and use it to procure a strong cultivation core. This would be his starting point.
He entered the mines and borrowed a steel pickaxe from the entrance. It was rusty from the humid air, another impediment that made work harder in the mines.
The cave was lit up with a relic of the past, a simple oil lamp. In the future, even the poorest slums had access to electricity or light stones, but this place had neither. It was stuck in history due to one thing, money.
Renovating the mines cost a lot of money. And the Primordial Sun Dynasty was a gathering of corrupt and cheap lowlifes who spent their budgets on lavish parties. As expected of the Alpha God's dynasty.
Zoran made his way through the maze-like structure of the mines. Some passageways were only accessible by crawling through it, inducing claustrophobia to the weak-hearted.
It was second-nature to him. He knew all dead-ends and all hotspots.
A large space opened up to him, the size of a colosseum. Darkness shrouded the ends of the walls and ceilings as if the light itself was afraid of touching it. The temperature dropped a few degrees, creating vapors with every breath. He reached his destination.
He examined the floor, watching for cracks. When he found one suitable, he followed it till he reached the walls. This was the hotspot for gems and ores.
Zoran swung his pickaxe, sending pebbles at his face. He remained unfazed. His focus was on swinging until it became monotonous, as if he was in a trance.
In this state, Zoran's mind wandered. He thought about the Supreme Beings, his game plan for cultivation, and the possibilities on how a person could go back in time. Then, his thoughts centered on the words ringing in his mind.
In voluntate mea ad verum aquilonem intellectus procedet.
He kept repeating it, hoping to find clarity on why it haunted his thoughts.
Then something inexplicable happened.
He saw a shining white light on the center of the rock. It blinked at Zoran, tempting him to hit it. He rubbed his eyes; it was not dirt in his eyes nor was it an illusion.
He hit the light, and when he did, the rock burst into a million pieces. The boulder was reduced to dust. It was not his strength, for he had none. It was not his pickaxe, for it was dull and rusted.
It was the shining light.
His mining knowledge knew of this phenomenon. Once in a blue moon, a miner could hit an ore in a specific way and destroy it in a single swing. It was called the critical point.
Nobody knew how or why this happened, even in the future. Zoran looked around the wall and saw countless shining lights on the wall, like the star-riddled night sky. He almost saw a constellation.
"Are those critical points?"
His mind raced on the reasons why this happened. 'Was it those words that I repeated?'
The words of a certain goddess of the Sky rang in his mind.
"Words are stronger than you think."
Could those words have unlocked this power in Zoran? Was this the cause of his regression?
Then, these words rang in his mind.
First Law of Power unlocked