1 - Fallen

It was a cold winter night. The moon shone brilliantly over all the land, bringing with it dazzling and beautiful blue light.

Bathed in this beautiful blue light, everything in the world seemed magical and alive.

Under the wide night sky, there sat a beautiful cherry blossom tree. This tree was in a massive open field, and it was the only thing in the field for at least half a mile.

Under the tree laid a young boy. He was lying next the trunk of the tree, sleeping. He looked to be about fourteen years old.

His sleep was light, and his eyes were even slightly open. Through his cracked eyelids, you could see his deep blue eyes, which had thin black lines on them, covering his whole eyeballs, including both his irises and the whites of his eyes.

His whole body was extremely thin, as if his muscles had been dissolved. He lightly wheezed while breathing as blood trickled from his nose and mouth lightly. His chest was also slightly caved in, and his side was soaked in blood. It was obvious that he was very badly injured.

There were ghastly black lines all over his body, and they seemed to be sucking out the life from his body. It was poison, and a very potent one too.

The blood that had been tainted by the poison that leaked out his nose and mouth gave off a vile smell, like that of rotten flesh and spoiled dairy.

He was in absolutely miserable condition, and he was very close to death.

Suddenly, a nearby noise startled him awake, causing him to instinctively sit straight up.

His heart jumped as he saw what made it. Nearby, there was a group of several boys, all of them clothed in plain clothing. Seeing them, he quickly hid on the other side of the tree, hoping that they hadn't seen him.

Luckily, he soon heard them leave, and he calmed back down. He watched their backs as they walked away from him, joking and laughing with each other.

Previously, he never would have thought that this would be his life, but there was nothing he could do.

His name was Xu Xin, and he was once the crown prince of the kingdom, but he was now being hunted like a wounded dog, and even the weakest in this world could easily kill him. That group of boys was no different.

His birth name was Xiao Xin, but his family had betrayed him, and he now hated them so much that he changed his name to Xu Xin. He felt that he couldn't live with the same name as the ones who had betrayed him to the level that they had. Words couldn't describe the hate he held in his heart.

In such a big field, he thought that nobody would go here, but he had just been proven wrong. Those boys had come close to the cherry blossom tree, but they had never changed the direction they were walking, obviously just passing by it on the way to their destination.

Then, he felt a bit of pain from his side above his waist, and he felt something warm trickling down his side. He tried to stop the bleeding of his old wound, but it had reopened from his sudden awakening.

When he woke up, he was woken with a jolt, and he instinctively had sat all the way up, and he had pulled open the giant gash in his side by accident in doing so.

As he fell back against the tree, he moved his shirt to the side, revealing a massive amount of makeshift bandaging around the wound. However, despite all the layers of bandaging, the gash still bled through all the layers and dripped blood onto the ground.

He firmly pressed his hand against the bandages, putting pressure on it to help slow the bleeding. He couldn't help but let out a quiet yell of pain. Luckily, there was nobody near here to hear him. Those boys had already left earshot of him.

He managed to slow down the bleeding by a considerable amount by doing this, but it didn't stop the bleeding. He only barely managed to avoid fainting from the intense pain that doing this brought.

After a while, the bleeding slowly stopped, but his whole body had gone pale, and he had already fallen unconscious. He had lost too much blood at this point, and he would be lucky to survive much longer.

Before he passed out, he had laid back down on the ground to make sure that the wound healed in a standing position rather than a sitting position. It would also spread the blood that he hadn't lost throughout his body better, giving him a better chance of survival.

And so, he lay there, on the ground below the beautiful cherry blossom tree, his life and death unknown.

...

*About two hours later*

"Hmm... Blood?" An ancient and ethereal voice murmured to itself. This voice seemed to come from the world itself, as if it had no source. This voice sounded around Xu Xin's unconscious body and the entire area around where he was.

The voice which had just awakened sounded extremely ancient, but it was neither a man's voice or a woman's voice, seeming to be both deep as an ocean and as high as the heavens at the same time.

"Why would I awaken to blood?" The voice once again mumbled to itself in confusion. If someone were to hear the voice, they would be confused as to where it came from, as it seemed to appear directly in a person's mind, not even in their ears. Even the air was completely undisturbed by it.

"Poisoned blood? Could it be?" The ancient voice once again mumbled to itself, as if it couldn't speak in more than a murmur or mumble.

Then, after a few more moments passed, the voice finally mumbled again. "Poisoned blood, a shattered dantian, and a soul in chaos. It looks like this is destiny." The old voice seemed to be filled with infinite pain and sadness, as if it had endured a thousand lifetimes of misfortune.

"We'll see if you were right soon enough, old friend." With a sad chuckle, the old voice started to fade away into nothing, as if it had never existed in the first place.

As the voice completely faded away, suddenly there was change in the environment around the boy. The wind picked up slightly, and a smell of rain permeated the air.

*Pitter-patter pitter-patter* Rain started to fall on the ground. The wind ended up blowing in a constant blow, but it wasn't super strong. After that, it didn't get any worse, with only light rain and a light wind constantly blowing.

Under this wind and rain, the tree above the boy shifted lightly, and a few petals fell off the branches. With them fell a very peculiar petal; it was a normal petal, but it had a very small bright aquamarine spot in the middle of it. This spot made up less than a tenth of the full petal.

Unlike the others, this petal did not drift with the wind. Instead, it slowly floated down to the ground, affected by neither the wind nor the rain.

Slowly, it swayed back and forth, gently drifting as if it had a life of its own.

It took almost half a minute for the petal to reach near the ground, and when it did, it was just above Xu Xin's unconscious body.

Then, gently, it landed on the his chest, settling lightly as if it weighed nothing at all. Weirdly enough, it landed exactly on a spot where his chest was exposed to the night air.

For a while, nothing happened.

However, after almost a full minute of sitting there doing nothing, the aquamarine spot on the petal slowly started to fade away, leaving behind the normal pink petal. After that, the petal blew away in the wind, following behind the others as if that aquamarine dot had never existed.

Meanwhile, in the boy's body, that same bright aquamarine color appeared in a single drop of blood.

Slowly, his breathing increased from the shallow breath he had previously to a semi-normal depth, and a bit of color returned to his body as it warmed slightly from its previous cold state.

Despite this, however, he still didn't wake up as he was still badly injured and the black lines of poison still coursed through his body, attempting to strip him of all vitality.

But despite not waking up, his condition had improved, and it was now possible for him to awaken again eventually as opposed to almost certain death like before.

...

*The next morning, at dawn*

"Ehhhh???" The boy muttered to himself groggily and dizzily as he tried to sit up. However, he found that his body was extremely weak, and he could barely move at all. Even opening his eyes took a large amount of effort to do, and when he did, everything was out of focus and blurry.

Then, he felt the pain in his body, but all he could do was groan. He was so out of energy that even staying awake was an arduous task.

His eyes slowly started to align and focus, and the first thing that he saw was the branches of the cherry blossom tree above him. However, there was something different about it now.

All the petals were completely gone, while the wood had shrunk and rotted, only barely managing to stay together.

The entire tree had died, and it looked as if it had been dead and rotting for many years, only barely managing to prevent falling over. There were even some branches which had fallen to the ground.

He couldn't help being confused when he saw this, but he didn't even have the energy to sit up, let alone think about such a thing. All he was focused on was trying to stay awake and move.

Slowly, a bit of energy came to his body, and he was finally able to move a little bit. The first thing he did was prop himself up on his elbows, pushing his torso up, using every bit of strength he had just to sit up.

As he did so, he felt pain from his side, but it was somewhat bearable. After sitting up, he propped himself up against the tree trunk, as even just sitting up sapped him of all his energy.

He was so exhausted that just sitting up and leaning on the tree made him lightheaded to the point where his vision started to fade and blur as he nearly passed out.

As the lightheadedness got worse, he felt extremely nauseous, and he felt himself gag several times before he eventually threw up. But when he threw up, all that came out was a bit of blood and stomach acid, as he had had nothing to eat in the past few days.

After throwing up, all he needed to do was catch his breath and regain his energy before he started to feel much better.

Eventually, he started to feel better, and as he lifted up his head, he finally realized that it was just past sunrise now, and it was the beginning of the day, meaning that he had been passed out for only about six hours, which surprised him.

This surprised him because each time he had passed out so far, he had slept for about twelve hours each time considering how exhausted he always was due to his starvation and extreme lack of sleep.

But he quickly dismissed this thought and wondered about why he was so weak when he had woken up. The effect was worse than what just blood loss and poison could cause, because the poison was mainly focused towards crippling a person rather than killing them.

This was the exact reason that the ancient ethereal voice had said that he had a shattered dantian. The poison had seeped into his body, and it had completely decimated his dantian, reducing it to even less than dust.

The dantian was the source of power for a cultivator; he had once been extremely strong, but the moment his dantian broke, he became as weak as a commoner, the weakest in the world.

At this moment, he was still too weak to properly move, but he suddenly felt weird.

As he looked at his body, he felt that it was slightly different to before. Groggily bringing his hands to his face, he touched it, only to realize that his facial structure was completely different to before.

However, before he had the chance to think about it further, the same ethereal voice from before rang out again.

"You have been given what almost nobody has ever gotten before: a second chance at life. You are very lucky, child. Do not waste this chance, and rise above everything that has ever pushed you down.

Your life has only just begun, boy, Do not disappoint us."

After this, the voice completely disappeared, and the tree Xu Xin was leaning against started to fall apart. The branches broke off as the trunk snapped in half, only barely avoiding crushing him as it fell.

He barely managed to throw himself to the side to avoid a falling branch, and he realized that the entire tree was collapsing, and he ignored his fatigue and got out of the way as fast as he possibly could.

However, it was at this moment that a branch fell on his head, knocking him out instantly.