"Who are we if not fish, struggling against the tyrannical flow of fate? But what choice do we have? If we don't swim against the current, we'll never accomplish anything, right?" 

Muffled shouting in response reverberated in a cramped cellar as a young man no older than nineteen hovered over a tied-up man old enough to be his grandfather.

The elderly man struggled against the bindings holding him down, tears in his eyes, as he continued to beg for his life through the gag in his mouth. But no matter how hard he begged, the young man would never listen to his requests, much less undo the bindings. 

The young man chuckled before he wagged his finger and said, "Your crocodile tears won't work on me, gramps. There's no escaping what's going to happen, so just give up and accept your fate with a little bit of dignity. Or don't; it'll just make it more entertaining for me." 

"You know, you've developed a pretty nasty personality as of late," said a gruff-sounding voice. "I told you to be careful, didn't I? Too much Demonic Qi and it will rot you from the inside out. Also, your monologue made you sound like a serial killer who catches old people for fun." 

The young man scoffed at the criticism and began to move his hands, performing a series of complex hand gestures. The chains binding the elderly man down began to glow and the muffled begging turned into howling and screeching that would have made any common mortal wet themselves in fear, had they not fainted from the abrupt rise in spiritual pressure. 

The facade put up by the elderly man quickly faded as his body began to contort and bulge in unnatural ways that the human body could not. His flesh melted as a puddle of fat and grease began to pool down on the floor, not unlike a human candle.

"God... the smell. It's bad enough watching the transformation, but the stench truly is from hell. Do they not have soap in hell? Being a demon is a punishment unto itself," said the young man before he raised an ancient, raggedy talisman in the air. 

"I call on you, my Master! Smite this foul demon and bring justice to the world of the living!" 

Without further ado, the young man slapped the talisman onto the bloody demon's head with a hard thunk. The instant the talisman touched the demon's head, the demon was engulfed in a flash of golden light and disappeared. 

What remained of the former victim was a thin thread of red Demonic Qi handing in the air along with the battered talisman. The majority of the Demonic Qi was drawn into the paper talisman and vanished; what remained was the young man's spoil of war. 

The young man shut his eyes and began to draw his thoughts inward as he focused on his breathing.

Whereas any ordinary cultivator could have absorbed the meager strand of Demonic Qi in a half-second with no difficulty whatsoever, the young man had to seal off all his senses and concentrate solely on his Spiritual Sense to feel the thread and slowly nudge into his body. 

Minutes passed in total silence as beads of sweat poured down the young man's exhausted face. Were it not for the dark bags under his eyes and the sickly, pale complexion of his skin, one might've thought of him as slightly handsome. But as he was now, he looked more like someone with a half a foot in the grave. Or the son of two good-looking corpses, perhaps. 

Eventually, the young man persuaded the strand of Demonic Qi to enter through his left index finger; the sensation of Demonic Qi running through his finger was unbearable. It was as if he had plunged his finger into a frozen lake in the middle of a snowstorm.

He unconsciously grit his teeth as he forced the strand through his arm until it arrived at a blocked spirit meridian. The frigid chill in his arm grew stronger as the strand of Demonic Qi until all the young man could think about was the possibility of losing his arm to frostbite in the middle of summer. 

He had no time to lose. Now that he had guided the strand where it needed to be, the young man began to move the strand of Demonic Qi.

Threading the strand of Demonic Qi through the spiritual meridian was akin to threading a needle, except for the fact that if he took too long, the Demonic Qi would dissipate and all his work for the past week and a half would go to waste. 

Fortunately, it wasn't his first time threading the needle. In the last six years, he had successfully managed to open three out of his thirteen spiritual meridians.

If he could open one more spiritual meridian, he would finally be able to draw enough ambient Spiritual Qi to begin his journey as a cultivator. 

His brows furrowed; his impatience was affecting his concentration. Six years! Just to open four spiritual meridians!

His older brother and younger sister had finished opening their thirteen spiritual meridians when they were in their early teens! He was nearly twenty and he had only managed three so far! 

For what it was worth, most people completed the Body Tempering stage in their preteens before they applied to join an immortal sect. The young man's siblings weren't geniuses; at best they were a bit talented.

No, the problem lay with the young man struggling to open his fourth spiritual meridian. 

This pitiful fellow's name was Loufis Dawnflower, the middle child of the Dawnflower clan. For all the good fortune Loufis had experienced in being born as the son of a minor noble clan, he had not been blessed with a suitable body for cultivation in the slightest. 

Most people were born with clogged or blocked spiritual meridians, but more often than not a fair amount of them were open at birth. It was a matter of pedigree and luck that decided how many spiritual meridians a person would have open at birth. 

But to have all of opened or closed at birth? That was a rare affair indeed.

People who were born with fully opened spiritual meridians were treated as children blessed by the Heavens who were destined to become legends of their generation. 

Historically, those who were born with closed spiritual meridians never became cultivators. In fact, they usually died shortly after birth, or resulted in tragic miscarriages. If they did survive, they lived short lives and were more frail than ordinary mortals. 

"For every newborn blessed by the Heavens, there must also be another poor soul that is beloved by Hell at birth." 

That proverb had become a personal motto of Loufis ever since he understood what it meant. 

Against the wishes of his parents, siblings, and the rest of the Dawnflower clan who wanted him to live a safe, quiet life at home and spend the rest of his remaining days being pampered like a flower that might wilt and perish at the slightest tribulation, Loufis sought to do what no one else in his family thought he could do. 

He felt his mental strength draining, but he continued to persist as he nudged the strand of Demonic Qi through the meridian. The harder he nudged the strand of Demonic Qi, the more pain he felt in his throbbing arm. Waves of pain traveled up his arm, threatening to break his focus, but he endured. He just needed one good push.

Using Demonic Qi to open a spiritual meridian was not a conventional method to open a meridian. Even cultivators who walked the Path of Demons used Spiritual Qi to open their meridians when they were young.

Only an imbecile or madman would use Demonic Qi to attempt something like this.

Ordinary cultivators used gentle Spiritual Qi to slowly open the meridian over time, but Loufis's spiritual meridians were so severely blocked that he spent the rest of his short life using the orthodox method, he would have never opened a single meridian.

In the end, what choice did Loufis have? It was either this or nothing at all. In his mind, anything was better than dying pitifully and accomplishing nothing in his life. 

Loufis wasn't afraid of dying or pain. He was afraid of not amounting to anything. That was what really kept him up at night. 

Once he felt his mind was at its limit, he mustered all of his fading will moving the strand of Demonic Qi and forced to obey him - he did not nudge it, he gathered his Spiritual pressure and rammed it through the meridian with a ferocity not unlike a warrior swinging his blade for the last time. 

A peculiar sound reverberated in his ears, not unlike the shattering of glass and the pain in his arm quickly subsided as a warm current of ambient Spiritual Qi began to flow through his newly opened spiritual meridian. 

Loufis would have started dancing and celebrating were it not for the fact that he was mentally spent. As soon as he had succeeded, he fainted and collapsed onto the ground like a puppet that had its strings cut. 

An ephemeral, invisible figure stood over Loufis with an indiscernible expression on his face. 

Two hours and forty-seven minutes this time around. He's shaved off an hour and ten minutes from the last time he opened his third meridian. He still has room for improvement. Good thing he has another nine meridians to open. 

The ghost rubbed his chin thoughtfully and said, "Well, he did well today. All things considered, we're still on schedule as planned."

A deal was a deal.

He'd make the lad into a cultivator that would shake the world and then some, and the lad would fulfill what he could not do in life. 

Or he'd die trying.