New Life

The desert still retained a searing heat in the evening. Under the crimson sun's glow, the entire desert had been dyed blood-red. Coupled with the heat-distorted air, the scene was filled with a bleak, eerie beauty.

Within this Desert of the Dead, brimming with hidden dangers, a solitary figure pressed one hand over the wound on his shoulder and dragged his exhausted body over the dune before him, leaving behind only a long, lonely shadow branded into the sand by the setting sun.

His youthful face was twisted by pain, while his pitch-black pupils brimmed with unconcealable regret and hatred. His lips kept mechanically, numbly murmuring something.

"Father, you must hold on! I will definitely..."

Yet before he could finish his murmur, a flickering starlight suddenly appeared at the edge of the sky, which still retained the sun's majesty. The sudden change left the youth stunned.

Then, his entire soul was crushed into fragments by a suddenly surging, immense power. He instantly lost consciousness and collapsed atop the dune...

This frail body was far too weak to endure the terrifying data that had touched the fundamental laws of the cosmos. Yet just as his entire body seemed about to dissolve into nothingness, the Bloodline Power hidden in the deepest depths of this body was instantly catalyzed into awakening.

Even if this hidden Bloodline was extraordinary, it still could not have contained that immense power. But during that brief delay, a humble trace of soul at the core of the soul shell carrying that vast data seized the chance to occupy this ownerless body that matched it.

The terrifying data of that stellar power instantly seemed to find an outlet, flooding into the deepest part of that trace of soul. It formatted itself and began operating according to the most basic logic, forming an eerie Soul Database...

"Cough, cough, cough..."

A violent fit of coughing, as though he had choked, suddenly rang out. The body that had been lying on the ground abruptly sat up as if pricked by needles, greedily gulping down great mouthfuls of air still carrying the desert's scorching heat with the ragged breathing of an asthma patient.

His already cracked lips split open again from the sudden trembling, making him unconsciously stick out his tongue to taste the faint saltiness.

Raising a hand to cover his lungs, which felt as if they were about to burst apart from his violent breathing, the youth opened his eyes.

But the pure black pupils he had possessed had completely turned blood-red when he opened them again!

"Alive... am I alive...?"

In a hoarse voice that seemed not to know how to speak, he uttered a sentence in a language entirely foreign to this world.

Hao Dou, a soul from twenty-first-century Earth, did not even know why he had undergone that endless journey through space. The sensation of traveling through the universe had turned from a trace of novelty at the beginning into boundless numbness.

Had that immense mass of information not been converted into hard-drive-like data and sealed within his Soul Core, his personality and humanity would undoubtedly have been assimilated, crushed, and broken down by the vast data.

His mere twenty-odd years of life experience could not even be called a drop in the ocean before that immense data. A drop of red dye falling into the sea would only be assimilated, just like this body's original owner. The original soul had directly lost its soul imprint, leaving only basic memory images behind as part of the dry data.

"What's going on?"

As the youth who had risen again processed the changes and experiences before him, he suddenly discovered that his vision had become extraordinarily strange.

At a glance, he could seemingly count every grain of sand on the opposite dune. Vague, profound ripples appeared in the air within his field of vision, while countless coordinate axes continuously emerged. As though triggered by this visual analysis, the immense Database hidden within his Soul Core suddenly began operating, and inexplicable information appeared in his mind in the purest Soul Language.

"Ah!"

A hoarse roar burst from the depths of his throat. Clutching his head with both hands, the youth's entire face twisted in agony.

In just a few seconds, he experienced torture worse than death, like the punishment of branding slowed down countless times. Meanwhile, the images he had seen seemed to be seared deeply into his soul like a branding iron.

The number of grains of sand on the opposite dune, the dune's mass, the mysterious fluctuations in the air, the flow rate of the air, minute changes in temperature, the dune's gradual movement under the effects of air currents—all of it was broken down and analyzed by countless coordinate vectors into the most basic parameters!

The massive stream of parameters flooded in within those few short seconds, nearly bursting his head apart.

"Eyes of Lawbreaking."

This was a memory image that suddenly surfaced in his mind, originating from this body's original owner. After gradually recovering, the youth closed his eyes and cautiously began extracting and digesting fragments and memories from the Soul Database.

There was no doubt that this was no longer Earth. It was a world where gods, Combat Skills, and magic existed. The people here called this world Reizel. Based on the original owner's own understanding, it was naturally impossible for him to possess deep knowledge of the world, but Hao Dou could still form a rough understanding—especially since this body's identity and its father were far from as simple as they appeared.

This body's original name was Xuan Ye. Judging by his name and appearance, he belonged to the Xia Descendant Tribe, one of the Human Race's major branches.

As a commoner, there was nothing particularly remarkable about him. If there was anything different about him, it was probably that the youth had a father who was a Ninth Grade Knight Attendant, while he himself was a moderately talented knight.

At sixteen, he had already broken through to the level of a Sixth Grade Knight Attendant, surpassing eighty percent of those his age in Stanrose, the city where he lived. Of the remaining twenty percent, aside from those with genuinely greater talent than his, they were the children of major families.

Tempering the body was extremely damaging. The disciples of great families possessed unparalleled advantages in resources such as beast meat, Qi and Blood herbs, and potions. Xuan Ye could only rely on the portion earned by his father risking his life at work. While that was naturally far better than the circumstances of ordinary commoners, it was nothing compared to wealthy clans and nobles.

There was no doubt that he had once had a father who loved him dearly. This left Hao Dou feeling extremely conflicted. Only after losing something did one understand how to cherish it. Especially with that loneliness and wandering etched into his soul, this useless shut-in who had once found his parents' nagging irritating had, for the first time, felt a tearing pain so profound that he could not even cry, impossible to describe with words. Would he never see his family on Earth again...?

Forcibly calming himself and continuing to interpret the memories, Hao Dou—or rather, the new Xuan Ye—strangely discovered that this body's father did not merely work and hunt desperately to earn what his son needed for cultivation. He also repeatedly lectured Xuan Ye, almost brainwashing him by telling him how extraordinary the Bloodline within his body was.

This world was a strange place where magic and Combat Skills coexisted. During the Primordial Era, even gods would descend upon this land in their true forms. After countless races had risen and fallen and history had changed, the Human Race's golden age, during which they had ruled in the Near Ancient era, had already ended, ushering in the new Chaotic Dawn Era.

Due to a great catastrophe more than six thousand years ago, the Human Race had declined from prosperity. Their faith had been divided and shattered. The place where he currently was was a city-state region known as Stanrosai Territory.

A li in this world was roughly equivalent to one thousand meters from his old world, and the various other units of measurement were not too different either. The year was divided into six seasons, each with two months and sixty days, while the daily time difference was similarly close. (A setting for reading convenience—do not overthink it. If the unit names happen to match, just treat it as Martian language translated into words we can understand.)

Compared with the Human Race's circumstances when they had first risen from obscurity during the War of the Hundred Races in the Middle Ages, their current situation, while far inferior to their peak, was still much better. The reason was that the catastrophe which had thrown the Human Race into turmoil had also affected every other race. The Human Race had merely suffered the greatest losses.

At the same time, the cultivation techniques whose systems had largely been preserved, along with the Bloodline Powers discovered and incorporated during the War of the Hundred Races, were far superior to those of the earliest era.

The Human Race's innate talents were far inferior to those of other races; they could not even compare to magical beasts. At the same level, even geniuses could easily be crushed. Humans could not even condense an Energy Core through their own power. In the early days of the War of the Hundred Races during the Middle Ages, the Human Race had no experts capable of condensing an Energy Core at all.

It was only after receiving the protection of the High Elves, an Alien Race that had migrated to Reizel, and learning primitive Elf Magic from them that humans began making use of their ability to learn and research. Through alchemical methods, they found ways to assimilate and integrate magical beast crystal cores in order to condense their own Professional Cores.

At the same time, through methods such as implanting Alien Race Bloodlines, they developed many Bloodline talents. Bloodline talents were generally auxiliary powers that could better assist in combat and increase one's strength. For example, the Kend Family, the third-largest power in Stanrosai City, which Xuan Ye's father served, possessed the Bloodline Power known as Power of Frenzy.

Once a descendant awakened this Bloodline talent, they could, with surging Qi and Blood, suddenly trigger a strength increase of over fifty percent at the cost of depleting their Qi and Blood!

There was no doubt that family descendants who possessed and awakened Bloodline Powers held unparalleled advantages in battles against opponents of the same level.

Yet through the brainwashing-like teachings of Xuan Ye's father, he learned that during the Human Race's most glorious peak, Bloodline Powers at the level of Power of Frenzy could not even rank as second-rate. They had merely been mass-integrated due to their ease of awakening, becoming the sort used by rank-and-file soldiers and household guards.

But after the Human Race's throne had collapsed and they had declined from prosperity for many years, higher-grade Bloodlines had vanished into the river of history due to hunting by other races and the difficulty of awakening them. Instead, those inferior Bloodlines had risen to prominence because they were easy to awaken, highly adaptable, and required few resources.

The strong prey on the weak! Survival of the fittest! This was an eternal truth!

There was no doubt that Xuan Ye's father kept repeating these things in a brainwashing manner because he wanted to tell Xuan Ye that the Bloodline Power within him was an exceptionally high-grade one...

Rubbing his temples, Xuan Ye reopened his eyes, which had returned to black, though a faint trace of crimson still lingered in their depths and made them even more captivating. He let out a long breath.

Fortunately, while constantly brainwashing him, Xuan Ye's father had also crammed him full of methods to control his Bloodline after it awakened.

It had to be said that, judging from the initial performance of these eyes, they truly were absurdly powerful. They had only just awakened, yet they were already practically defying the heavens—so much so that they had nearly killed him.

However, Xuan Ye vaguely understood that the original Eyes of Lawbreaking probably did not possess such exaggerated effects. It was impossible for a Sixth Grade Knight Attendant to reach this level immediately after awakening them. More likely, the effect was due to a mutation caused by combining them with the stored data from his journey through the void of the cosmos, which resided in his Soul Core.

This had greatly enhanced their effect, but judging from what had just happened, the burden they placed on his body and mind was also far greater than that of the original Eyes of Lawbreaking.

"Gods and magic... If I keep cultivating, then I can go home too, right...?"

With a somewhat dazed expression, Xuan Ye raised his head and looked at the night sky that had only just darkened. He looked at the Silver Moon that dominated the heavens, three or four times larger than Earth's moon, at the mountains and craters upon its surface, and confusion surfaced in his eyes...

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