Flame Mantra: Foundation Forging

Spring turned to autumn, and five long years passed. In a spacious courtyard house southeast of Jingcheng, a four- or five-year-old boy climbed out of bed. After glancing around and confirming that no one was nearby, he sneaked into the kitchen.

The exquisitely cute little boy came before the kitchen stove and leaped lightly onto it, displaying agility far beyond that of an ordinary person. Jumping more than a meter onto the counter like that was something not many adults could manage.

The boy reached out and fumbled with the switch on the cast-iron gas stove. A moment later, with a soft hiss, a blue-orange flame appeared before him.

He stared at the blue-orange flame, his eyes revealing a weariness and helplessness utterly unfitting for his age. After a moment, he slowly closed his eyes and sat cross-legged.

His hands formed an unusual seal before him, his chest rising and falling faintly. Each inhalation and exhalation formed a perfect cycle. As his breath circulated, thin streams of air rose from the blue-orange flame and entered the boy's body through his nose and mouth.

After cultivating with his eyes closed for a long while, the boy slowly exhaled a breath of turbid air. His eyes abruptly opened, and a faint flash of flame passed through their depths.

Looking at the dimming flame before him, a bitter smile crossed his lips. "Another tank of gas is almost gone. When Ms. Xiao gets back, I'll have to find a way to shift her attention to Old Yan. Who told that guy to be my dad?"

The little boy was naturally Yan Kuan, now considerably older. Muttering to himself, he turned up the switch, and the blue-orange flame surged up once more. Standing atop the stove, he sighed. "Sigh! Cultivating Dou Qi is already this difficult. What am I supposed to do in the future?

"This world is strange no matter how I look at it. You can't say it's completely in the End of Dharma, but I haven't seen anything supernatural in these five years either. Could it be one of those spiritual-energy-revival worlds?"

Muttering to himself, Yan Kuan began cultivating again. This time, it took a little longer. By the time he finished, more than half the tank of gas had been used up, and the blue-orange flame flickered on and off, on the verge of vanishing completely.

"This is only possible because I have the Flame Mantra: Foundation Forging Chapter that Xiao Yan modified. If anyone else came here, even with a cultivation technique, they'd be completely helpless. With the spiritual energy of heaven and earth this thin, I'd believe you if you told me this was a world without magic!"

Yan Kuan was deeply dissatisfied with his current cultivation environment. He was the inheritor of Empyrean Flame and the Burning Art, and he had cultivated one of the universe's finest techniques for years, yet he still had not managed to form a Battle Qi Cyclone and become a Dou Zhe. If word got out, the other transmigrators would probably laugh themselves to death.

But there was truly nothing he could do about reality. Yan Kuan reckoned that even if Flame Emperor Xiao Yan himself came here, he would not fare much better. Then again, he and Flame Emperor Xiao Yan seemed to count as the "same person."

Why was that? It involved the famous Parallel Universe Theory from the saying, "When in doubt, quantum mechanics." Put simply, he and Xiao Yan were counterparts in different universes, much like the Alternate Self in The Grandmaster of the World.

However, Yan Kuan and Xiao Yan had a rather special relationship. They were only similar to Alternate Selves; neither was the True Self, meaning there was no original body and clone between them. Of course, compared to the other Alternate Selves across countless universes, they were especially unusual as well.

Flame Emperor Xiao Yan's uniqueness lay in the fact that he had transmigrated from Blue Star to Battle Qi Continent, risen all the way to the peak of the universe as a Grand Overlord, and become one of the strongest beings in a universe.

Yan Kuan's uniqueness was that he had also transmigrated. The first time, his soul had entered another vegetative Alternate Self, after which he had accidentally been chosen by a clone of the Flame Emperor to become the inheritor of Empyrean Flame.

Over the years, Yan Kuan had more or less sorted out what had happened. After Flame Emperor Xiao Yan became a Grand Overlord, he had suddenly felt something and split off a clone carrying all his inheritances to "go home" for a look.

That clone encountered an accident while crossing universes and arrived in the world where Yan Kuan's vegetative Alternate Self lived. Then, because the laws of the universe rejected it, it had been forced to self-destruct. Before doing so, however, it had given Yan Kuan, this "original body," a hand and allowed him to be reborn.

As for this world, Yan Kuan was not very sure either. He could only confirm that it was neither the Blue Star Xiao Yan had lived on before transmigrating, nor the Blue Star where his vegetative Alternate Self had been, nor the hometown his original soul had once known. It was the world of another Alternate Self.

The situation sounded rather complicated and somewhat unreasonable. It involved traveling through space-time to reach the "past," but since it had happened, Yan Kuan could only make the best of it. In any case, with his tiny arms and legs, he could not meddle in such profound matters.

Over five years, Yan Kuan had organized the inheritance left by the Flame Emperor's clone and barely embarked upon the path of cultivation. If Dou Qi counted as a supernatural stage, then he could be considered a minor superhuman.

The world he was currently in was much the same as the Blue Stars he had visited before. Spiritual energy of heaven and earth was nearly nonexistent, and technological development was roughly on par with this era in his memories. It looked like an ordinary Blue Star.

Yet after living in this world for five years, Yan Kuan faintly sensed that something was off. From some antiques his family had collected over the years, he had refined traces of extremely scarce spiritual energy. The older the object, the more obvious its special traits became, as though they all indicated that an incomparably glorious ancient age had once existed.

However, all that was still too far off for him with his tiny arms and legs. For now, Yan Kuan's most urgent task was to form a Battle Qi Cyclone and become a Dou Zhe, and that was exceedingly difficult.

On Battle Qi Continent, where Flame Emperor Xiao Yan had lived, spiritual energy was abundant. Even so, cultivators needed more than ten years for a chance to form a Qi Cyclone and become a Dou Zhe. In Yan Kuan's current world, where spiritual energy was nearly nonexistent, cultivation was harder than climbing to the heavens.

Fortunately, the Flame Emperor who had given him the inheritance had considered the circumstances of his hometown. After becoming a Grand Overlord, he had thoroughly deduced his foundational technique, the Burning Art, and created the "Flame Mantra: Foundation Forging Chapter."

This technique was specifically for the Dou Qi stage and could be cultivated in an environment without magic. However, the law of conservation of energy still applied. If spiritual energy of heaven and earth could not be absorbed, then mortal flames became the substitute.

Fortunately, the flames of a gas stove burned far hotter than the open flames produced by ancient firewood, so the cultivation results were naturally better. After cultivating in fits and starts for several years, Yan Kuan had at least built a modest foundation. He was light as a swallow and possessed immense strength; an ordinary person who faced him would only be in for a beating.

"Little Kuan, where did you run off to? We're heading out!"

Just as Yan Kuan finished tidying up the kitchen, his mother's voice came from the courtyard. He did not delay, and his little legs moved swiftly as he rushed to Ms. Xiao.