Previous Life Memories

Han Chen didn't find solitude as weary and bored. Sixteen years in the hiding to prevent being hunted down by other sects? Well worthy.

But to him, the ancient scrolls and alchemy manuals in his storage rings were never ending and with insights preceding the recorded texts, he now has a whole new awareness of dao .

With adding his system to the mix, just with the consumption of mental power, Han Chen was able to comprehend newly created formidable secrets of dao, every moment of contemplation.

Sure, the sword arts forbidden to lesser minds in his collections practically screamed warnings in blood-red aura, but Han Chen? He just chuckled, fingers tracing characters that burned others' eyes, his system first reproduces and then perfected and levelled up the technique within his consciousness space, where he would train it beyond mastery to true state. Heaven-Defying Understanding— what an ability.

Every deduced information left his mind trembling, lit with insights no one in similar realm to understand. The normal qi arts in his hands levelled up in days of comprehension to immortal arts. Falling star slash become annihilating slash, demon subduing palm become holy purification lotus 🪷 attack,phantom step become ethereal mirage void step, great devil palm became nine hells demonic desolate palm, Great Buddha roar become Vajra Thunder roar, like that he kept on accumulating experience.

He built his foundation in shadows. Feeling bottleneck in cultivation he left after a while to wander around the world. While young masters flaunted spirit stones and swallowed enlightenment pills like candy, Han Chen honed his spirit in abandoned mines and moonless forests, with formations carved into his skin to hide the breath and soul fluctuations. He ventured into the sea, into the desert, into the wildness.

Twenty-six years to Nascent Soul? The numbers meant nothing. He still tasted bile when recalling the third year—a botched array had nearly unraveled his golden core, leaving him coughing blood onto frost-laced grass. It was before his first sect got destroyed. Lack of insight was the enemy.

But anonymity was armor. Even as he slipped into treasure vaults wearing the faces of dead men, or bargained with sect elders using borrowed voices, he kept his laughter quiet. Power, he'd learned, grows loudest when watered in silence. 

The cultivation world eats its children. Han Chen watched it happen—saw Zheng Yi, who'd shared stolen wine with him in the Azure Mist Sect, torn apart by rival disciples over a jade slip. A jade slip rumoured to possess unriveled inheritance, but in actuality was just a random jade stone and rumour was made up by a person he had grudge on.

Watched Lady Ling, her laugh like wind chimes, drown to death in her poisoned meridians after a "friendly" spar. He didn't mourn. Just pocketed the shards of their luck they left behind.

Centuries blurred. He fought beside demonic cultivators against celestials one decade, then slaughtered those same demons when the winds shifted. The great hegemony wars? A carnival of fools.

Ascension to immortal plain was brief. Very few known about him, but none knew about his true identity. When the Immortal Gate's light finally swallowed him, Han Chen didn't feel triumph. Just the weight of 2,100 years pressing down… and her voice.

The heart demon didn't roar—it seeped. Memories of a life before cultivation: a woman's hands thin and frail holding him just before she took the final breath. Her eyes with a trace of sanity appearing at the last moment.

His despair. Now, drowning in immortal qi, he finally understood what's holding him back and what he left behind in the depth of his mind.

But Han Chen had refined the heart-demon for what it was. Let the demons gnaw. He'd rebuild in the cracks. That's what he did.

Wandered around for thousands of years accumulating knowledge venturing into emotionless dao, lust cultivation, dual cultivation anything he could use against this imbalance in him and he indeed merged them all and found a way to refine heart demons to increase his own spirit will. He didn't hog women nor fight for attention in his path as they were all his steppingstones. 

His thirst for accumulating knowledge almost turned into an obsession that he left cultivation to the side and started seeking knowledge. From a nobody he becomes a disciple of immortal sect, then he become a master and his life continued.

A million years is long enough to blur the memory of your mother's embrace, the exact curve of a first love's smile. Han Chen remembered neither. What he did recall: the way blood crystallized on immortal robes after slaughter, the metallic tang of divine realms collapsing, peace for years observing nature and assimilating various dao rules, ruling empires under his domain of rules and his new disciple he care a lot about.

He'd climbed to emperor-hood not on ambition, but for peace—a festering, quiet thing that kept his feet moving when even time itself seemed to sag under the weight of epochs. Having trillions of years of life span what immortals fear is death by dulling of spirit.

They called him the Ghost-Fisted or Calamity wrought Sovereign in the later years. A title earned not through flashy decrees nor engaging in battles among the peak cultivators, but because he'd once annihilated the Thunder Abyss Sect by accident while testing a half-formed spatial technique.

His reputation gained infamy since then. Refining a single drop of primordial chaos for 30,000 years in his left palm, bargaining with starved void-beasts for scraps of forgotten lore. Like that those years went by. The one who now accompany him is his taoist partner he recognised.

But Lín Yǐn… ah, her. She'd been different. Or so he'd thought. When he found her gutted by karmic flames in the Ruins of Mourning, he didn't see a disciple—he saw a mirror. Her hunger for knowledge and strength mirrored his own, sharp and unflinching yet seeking comfort and peace.

Somehow her affiliation with the protagonist, I later killed didn't bother me. With my absolute power what can fate do?

Five centuries mentoring her, and he'd actually let himself believe the lie. Let her sip from his cup at the Feast of Falling Stars, sharing his small joys. Let her fingers linger when passing him and behaving intimately than what a master disciple relation should be.

'Stupid.' The relationship advanced from a mentor to a taoist partner. 'Never mind.'

'Did the overwhelming power make me forget? Fool. Where was my caution? why deal with heavenly protagonist and heroine and playing with fate as a villain?'

The betrayal came drenched in irony. Ye Fan—that puling protagonist he'd crushed centuries ago—had somehow spun a resurrection from the dregs of a discarded time somehow.

The man's revenge method stank of cheap theater: Lín Yǐn's blade piercing Han Chen's spine precisely where she'd traced a love poem just few months prior. Inducing his own lover to kill him when the tribulation to ascension to divine plane he theorized happened.

What should be an overwhelming achievement for the couple become a tragedy betraying other.

Later, as golden ichor pooled at his feet, Han Chen almost laughed. All for a revenge, his divine techniques, his heavenly mandates and treasures … undone by the old mortal trifecta of lust, vengeance, and finally his bad taste in women. 

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The Final Fall

He defeated them, of course. World witnessed what it meant to be a true powerhouse that day. His soul transcended first but mid way the process got interrupted by Ye Chen's attack and later backstabbing from his partner.

His divine techniques were not for show. Even withstanding the tribulation that threatened the immortal plane to rupture, he send the attacker flying.

Broke Ye Fan's "indestructible" protagonist halo with a whisper—the same technique he'd used to silence void sirens in the Cosmic Deep.

Watched Lín Yǐn's perfect dao heart crumble as he regurgitated her own childhood memories and attacked with his spirit will, drowning her in pseudo memories ones she'd sworn she never shared, distorting her mind. But victory? There wasn't one.

The devouring of poison, soul disintegrating back stab his partner gave, combined with tribulation of mind which started in the middle rendering him immobile all made his fate closed.

The heart demon didn't strike—it unfolded again after long years. Not the grand regrets you'd expect. No, it was the little rot that undid him: He opened the door to her room seeking her surprise, that shouldn't have opened in the first place. Carrying a bouquet of flowers, 💐 he witnessed his first lover in previous life engaging in shameless sex with his bully and calling out his name in pleasure.

Being interrupted, he only received kick to his chest and later beatings and curse words from them. Later on, Xu Qing's cracked lips formed the words, "Pathetic! Get a life," as Zhao Lin pulled her away from me, shoving me aside like I was nothing.

And now, just like back then, I watch as my partner—standing at a distance—tends to the injured attacker with such care, pain etched on her face. Not for me, but for him. Her killing intent practically radiates toward me. What did I do to deserve this?

Is this her own consciousness doing? Has she been like this always? Is destiny meddling in my fate? Or is the architect some higher powers? Sigh..a lot of unanswered questions for a dying fool.

Then the most hurtful memories resurfaced about his wife who left him early. It didn't invoke heart demon, but it fueled the previous one.

Feeling the timidity and weakness of mind under the tribulation, the ascension failed, the backlash is coming in harsh. Destruction followed.

A million years of cutting away "weakness," only to realize he'd carved himself hollow. 

When his soul began fracturing, Han Chen did something unprecedented—he activated the backup he left behind. His soul was refined to nothing by himself, essentially suicide what he was already destroyed beyond measure.

The safeguard triggered as planned. A wisp of consciousness slipped of him and no one sensed, shortly after he died, bounding to a bead he hidden beyond cosmos. His enemies who were seriously injured did a through searching of him and found no heaven defying treasures, nor get to capture the soul left behind, couldn't even rewind time and cause to undid the damage to a being which at that moment jumped out of cause, out of the river of time.

But they inspected his treasury found nothing except cobwebs. What should have been filled with immeasurable wealth of countless eons is empty. A final revenge he left behind. But as oblivion took him, Han Chen clung to one truth: next time, he'd choose a better poison. Love over power? Maybe. Or perhaps just a longer knife.