Chapter 14: Rebirth: The Divine Prince

  The River of Forgetfulness was not water. It was a solvent.

  It was a roaring, chaotic torrent of liquid time that dissolved the ego. Millions of souls screamed silently around him, their memories being scrubbed away like dirt off a dirty plate, leaving them blank and white, ready to be repainted by the mortal world.

  But Liu Changsheng did not scream. He did not let go.

  He curled his spirit into a singularity. He visualized the Diamond Sutra engraved on the inside of his skull. He locked his memories—his cultivation techniques, his arrogance, his identity as the Northern Sovereign—into the deepest vault of his consciousness.

  You will not erase me, he projected his Intent against the crushing pressure of the cycle. I am merely passing through.

  He felt the tug. The gravity of the Red Dust. It wasn't a gentle pull; it was a violent yank, like a hook catching a fish.

  The Karmic Knot—that accursed red rope he had tied to the Empress—jerked him downward.

  He fell.

  He fell past the 33rd Heaven. Past the floating mountains of the Kunlun Realm. Past the thunderclouds.

  He plunged into the warm, sticky darkness of a womb.

  The Kingdom of Gege. The Royal Harem.

  Year of Jiawu. 11th Month. 18th Day.

  Concubine Deng screamed.

  The sound tore through the heavy silence of the Phoenix Pavilion. Outside, the winter wind howled, stripping the last leaves from the paulownia trees.

  Inside, the air was thick with the metallic scent of blood and the herbal steam of ginseng soup. Midwives bustled back and forth with basins of hot water, their faces pale and slick with sweat.

  "Push, Your Highness! The head is crowning!"

  King Cheng’an stood outside the heavy sandalwood doors. He was pacing. The former hunter-king, who had once faced tigers without flinching, was now wringing his hands like a nervous scholar.

  Since his Teacher, the Patriarch, had died, the King had aged twenty years in a few months. His beard was gray. His eyes were haunted. He had spent his days governing casually and his nights staring at the stars, wondering if his Teacher had reached the other side.

  And now, on this stormy night, his new heir was arriving.

  Boom!

  Thunder shook the palace tiles. But it wasn't the dark, angry thunder of a storm.

  It was golden thunder.

  A beam of light, thick as a pillar, smashed through the roof of the Phoenix Pavilion. It didn't break the tiles; it phased through them, illuminating the courtyard with a brilliance that turned night into noon.

  The screaming inside the room stopped abruptly.

  Silence.

  The King froze. His heart hammered against his ribs. Is she dead?

  Then, the doors creaked open. The head midwife stepped out. She wasn't holding a crying, bloody bundle. She was trembling, holding a swaddle of gold silk as if she were carrying a holy relic.

  "Your Majesty..." she stammered, dropping to her knees. "The Prince... he..."

  "Is he stillborn?" The King’s voice cracked.

  "No, Sire. He is..."

  The King strode forward and pulled back the silk.

  He stopped breathing.

  The infant looked back at him.

  Newborns were supposed to be ugly. They were supposed to be wrinkled, red, and screaming, their eyes shut tight against the harshness of the world.

  This child was porcelain white. His skin possessed a faint, translucent luster, like high-grade Hetian jade. There was no blood, no vernix, no filth. He smelled not of the womb, but of ozone and pine needles.

  But it was the eyes that froze the King’s soul.

  The baby’s eyes were open. They were dark, deep, and terrifyingly calm. They didn't wander aimlessly. They locked onto the King’s face with a shocking, focused intelligence.

  It wasn't the look of a son seeing his father.

  It was the look of a monarch evaluating a subject.

  The infant—Xuanming—sighed. A tiny, audible sigh of profound annoyance.

  He could feel his new vessel. It was small, weak, and humiliatingly helpless, but the foundation was flawless. The meridians were open rivers, unobstructed by the filth of pre-natal food. The Pre-Natal Dao Body was intact.

  The King stared. The familiar gesture hit him like a physical blow. The way the eyebrow raised slightly. The specific cadence of that sigh.

  "Teacher?" the King whispered, his voice trembling.

  The infant blinked slowly.

  The King fell to his knees, tears streaming down his face. The servants gasped, horrified to see their sovereign kneeling in the snow before a newborn.

  "He is born," the King declared, his voice ringing with renewed strength. "He is the darkness before the dawn. He is the brightness of the sun and moon. His name shall be Xuanming."

  The baby closed his eyes, accepting the title.

  Xuanming. Dark and Bright. Appropriate.

  He was back.

  Meanwhile. The Li Manor, South of the Capital.

  At the exact moment of Xuanming’s birth, ten miles away, another cry pierced the night.

  The Li family was the wealthiest merchant clan in the kingdom. Their estate was a labyrinth of gardens and pavilions, filled with the finest silks and imported porcelain.

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  Tonight, the master of the house, Li Yuan, was waiting outside his wife’s chambers.

  Unlike the dramatic golden lightning at the palace, this birth was heralded by something subtler.

  A breeze picked up. It wasn't the biting winter wind. It was a warm, spring-like zephyr that shouldn't have existed in the eleventh month.

  Suddenly, the manor was flooded with a fragrance.

  It started in the courtyard—the scent of blooming orchids. Then, it deepened into the aroma of musk, sandalwood, and finally, a strange, ethereal sweetness that reminded Li Yuan of old temple incense.

  The servants sniffed the air, confused. The plum trees in the garden, which were bare branches a moment ago, suddenly burst into full bloom. Thousands of pink petals swirled in the impossible wind.

  The door opened.

  "It is a daughter, Master Li!"

  Li Yuan rushed in. The room was filled with that heavenly scent. His wife lay exhausted but smiling, holding a baby girl with skin as soft as a peach blossom.

  The girl was sleeping peacefully. On her wrist, visible only for a split second before fading into her skin, was a faint red mark.

  A mark that looked like a rope burn.

  "She smells... divine," Li Yuan marveled, inhaling the scent that radiated from her skin. "We shall call her Xiangniang (Scented Lady)."

  Far away, in the Royal Palace, the infant Xuanming opened his eyes again.

  He felt the tug. The anchor had landed. The other end of the rope was secured.

  She is here, he thought grimly. The debt collector has arrived.

  Three Years Later. The Dading Era.

  Time in the mortal world flowed like molasses—sticky and slow.

  For Prince Xuanming, toddlerhood was a prison sentence. His mind was a vast library of cosmic knowledge, containing the secrets of the 36 Heavenly Marshals and the formations of the stars. His body, however, was a chubby, uncoordinated lump that required naps.

  He hated it.

  He refused to cry. Crying was a waste of moisture and Qi. When he was hungry, he would simply stare at the wet nurse with such intense, judging gravity that she would hurriedly offer milk, trembling under his gaze.

  He refused to play with toys. When the King presented him with a wooden sword, Xuanming had inspected the balance, found it lacking, and tossed it into the brazier.

  Instead, he sat.

  In the royal nurseries, while the maids gossiped, Xuanming would sit in the lotus position in his crib. He was breathing.

  Inhale. The Qi of the morning sun.

  Exhale. The turbidity of the digestion process.

  He was rebuilding the Indestructible Diamond Body.

  In his previous life, it had taken him twenty years of eating pine needles. Now, with the foundation of the Pre-Natal Dao Body (a body forged from pure spirit entering the womb), the process was accelerated.

  His skin was already tougher than cured leather. Once, a clumsy maid had dropped a hot teapot on his arm. The teapot shattered. His arm didn't even turn red.

  The King, Cheng’an, treated his son with a bizarre mix of paternal love and terrified reverence. He didn't hire normal tutors. He brought ancient scrolls to the nursery and read them aloud, watching his three-year-old son nod in approval or frown in criticism.

  "My son," the King said one afternoon, watching Xuanming stack blocks into a perfect representation of the Eight Trigrams defensive formation. "The Ministers are pressuring me. The engagement... it must be settled."

  Xuanming didn't look up from his blocks. He knew what was coming.

  "The Li family," the King continued. "Their daughter, Xiangniang. The Astrologers say your horoscopes are a match made by the Heavens themselves."

  Xuanming’s hand paused over the blocks.

  A match made by Heaven? No. A sentence passed by the Auditor.

  He placed the final block. The formation was complete.

  "Do it," the toddler said.

  His voice was clear, articulate, and devoid of childish lisp. It was the voice of a man speaking through a child's vocal cords.

  The King bowed instinctively. "Yes... Xuanming."

  The Grand Union.

  The wedding—or rather, the Child Betrothal Ceremony—was the grandest event the Kingdom of Gege had seen in a century.

  Red lanterns stretched from the Royal Palace to the Li Manor. Drums thundered like the heartbeat of the earth. The streets were paved with flower petals.

  Xuanming, dressed in miniature robes of imperial purple embroidered with four-clawed dragons, sat in the royal palanquin. He sat perfectly straight, his face an impassive mask.

  He was bored.

  Internal calculation suggested that this ceremony was horribly inefficient. Four hours of travel time. Six hours of ritual. The net gain in Qi was zero, though the Karmic gain was necessary.

  The palanquin stopped. The Li family estate loomed ahead.

  He was carried into the Great Hall. The incense smoke was thick. The guests—hundreds of nobles and merchants—were whispering about the "Divine Prince" and the "Fragrant Girl."

  And then, he saw her.

  She was being led by her mother. She was three years old, dressed in layers of red silk that made her look like a walking flower.

  She was stumbling slightly, overwhelmed by the noise and the crowd. She looked scared.

  Xuanming narrowed his eyes. The [Divine Eye] technique flared in the back of his mind, not as a command, but as an instinct.

  He saw beneath the skin.

  Bone structure: Delicate.

  Spirit Root: Dormant but high quality.

  Karmic Status: Heavily entangled.

  She looked up. Her eyes met his.

  For a moment, the noise of the wedding faded. The drums went silent. The crowd blurred into gray static.

  Xuanming felt a burning sensation in his chest. The invisible red thread tightened, vibrating with a low hum. It was a physical connection, a data-link between souls.

  Xiangniang didn't possess his memories. She was a blank slate, a true child. But as she looked at the solemn, terrifyingly beautiful boy on the dais, her fear vanished.

  She smiled. It was a reflex. A soul-memory of a poem recited in a Jingle Palace feast.

  I know you, her eyes seemed to say.

  Xuanming didn't smile. He stepped forward, his small hands clasping behind his back in the manner of an elder master.

  He walked up to her. The crowd held its breath. Was the Prodigy Prince going to speak?

  Xuanming looked at the girl who had cost him his immortality. The girl whose flirtation had dragged him out of the 33rd Heaven and back into this muddy reality.

  He reached out and adjusted a hairpin that was slipping from her elaborate coiffure.

  "Messy," he stated flatly.

  The crowd chuckled, thinking it was a cute childish interaction.

  But Xiangniang grabbed his hand. Her grip was surprisingly strong.

  "Prince," she chirped. "You look... familiar."

  Xuanming withdrew his hand, feeling the static shock of the karma.

  "We have work to do," he muttered, more to himself than to her. "Grow up quickly, Li Xiangniang. I do not have time to babysit."

  Four Years Later. (Age 7).

  The peace of the Kingdom of Gege was a fragile thing.

  While Prince Xuanming spent his days in the Royal Library absorbing military strategy and his nights cultivating the Dark Heaven Breathing Technique, the world outside was shifting.

  The Western Kingdom of Geritianer was rising.

  Reports came from the border—raids, skirmishes, and the gathering of a massive army. They were barbarians, but they were barbarians with steel and ambition.

  Xuanming knew this. He sensed the shifting Qi of the continent. The aura of war was bleeding into the sky, turning the sunsets a bloody red.

  He stood on the ramparts of the palace, looking West. The wind whipped his black hair. At seven years old, he was already as tall as a ten-year-old. His features were sharp, his gaze piercing.

  He wasn't worried about the war. War was just another form of tribulation.

  He was waiting.

  "Your Highness!" A eunuch ran up the stairs, panting. "Your Highness! Urgent news!"

  Xuanming didn't turn around. "The Envoy has arrived?"

  The eunuch froze. "H-how did you know?"

  "I smelled the unwashed leather and arrogance from three miles away," Xuanming said coldly.

  "Yes... yes, Your Highness. An Envoy from Geritianer. He is in the Throne Room. He... he brought a drum."

  Xuanming’s lips curled into a faint, dangerous smile.

  Finally.

  The boredom of childhood was over.

  "A drum," Xuanming mused. "How festive. Let us go see what music they wish to play with my father's kingdom."

  He turned, his robes snapping in the wind.

  He could feel the threads of fate aligning. Conflict had arrived. Merit was waiting to be harvested. And the potential for humiliation—for them, not him—was absolute.

  "Lead the way," the Prince commanded.

  Author's Notes: The Dao of Reincarnation

  1. The Congenital Breath (Xiantian Qi)

  In the cultivation world, an infant within the womb exists in a state of "Pre-Heaven" purity, nourished directly by the Primordial Chaos. The moment a normal child is born and cries, they exhale this pure Congenital Qi and inhale the "Turbid Air" of the mortal world, instantly degrading their constitution.

  Xuanming is terrifying because he utilized the "Turtle Breathing Method" from the moment of birth. He refused to cry, locking the Congenital Qi inside his meridians. He is not just a genius; he is a vessel that has never been polluted by the mundane dust.

  2. The Mark of Samsara

  Why does Xiangniang smile? The "Soup of Oblivion" (Meng Po Soup) drank before reincarnation erases memories, but it cannot wash away heavy Karma. The connection between them is carved into their True Souls (Shen). When she sees him, her soul vibrates not out of romance, but out of spiritual recognition—she is seeing the one who tied the knot of destiny around her neck.

  3. The Suppression of Destiny

  The Bronze Drum is not merely a musical instrument; it is a Dharma Artifact meant to suppress the "Dragon Veins" (Luck) of a nation. In ancient cultivation lore, to place such a heavy artifact in a rival's court is a curse—it weighs down the destiny of the King. By bringing it, the Envoy is trying to spiritually crush the Kingdom of Gege before a single soldier marches.