Zhang Chaoyang was an old farmer in his sixties. He had been too poor to attend school when he was young. This had made him determined that his son should study hard, get into university, and make something of himself. Fortunately, his boy had done him proud and gotten into a Project 985 university. Now he had graduated and was working in a big city!
His wife had developed stomach cancer from overwork and poor nutrition in her younger years, and she had passed away a few years earlier. That left him alone at home. He could no longer manage farm work, so he had stopped cultivating his land.
Old Zhang had lived a hard life! His family had died in a famine when he was little, and a lonely old man had raised him and taught him some feng shui techniques. He had also given him the Taoist name Qingxuan.
Now that he had time on his hands, he made a living by occasionally assessing feng shui and conducting funerals for people in the surrounding villages.
Back in his hometown, his profession was called a "yin-yang practitioner," meaning someone who could see through the barriers between yin and yang, life and death, survey mountains to find burial sites and build grand tombs, prepare ritual petitions to invoke gods and secure good fortune for the living, and burn talismans to communicate with the netherworld and deliver departed souls. The old man who had adopted him had done the same work. Unfortunately, Zhang Chaoyang possessed none of those abilities.
When he was little, the old man had forced him to practice breathing exercises every morning and visualize a Judge Diagram passed down through their lineage every night. During the day, he also had to study talisman drawing, formations, calligraphy, the human body's acupuncture points and meridians, and other folk medical arts.
Zhang Chaoyang had begun practicing these things at eight, but he had achieved nothing even by the time the old man died. After burying his master, he had left the mountain and come to the village where he now lived, married, and had a child. Gradually, he had grown lax about practicing what his old master had taught him.
Later, busy making a living and with the changing times, he had stopped practicing the cultivation method altogether! But because he was literate, he would read the birth charts of people and children in the surrounding villages, choose names, and the like. Now his son had grown up and his wife had passed away, leaving him with time on his hands. Out of boredom, he had gradually taken up the skills his master had taught him again.
Today, an old man from his village, more than ten years his senior, had been buried. By the time all the work was done, evening had fallen. It had already been snowing for a long time!
On his way home after drinking, Zhang Chaoyang looked at the thickly falling snow and pulled his heavy padded coat tighter around him! Seeing a stone by the roadside, Li Hua kicked it! Then his foot slipped, and he rolled down the field ridge and struck a utility pole at the edge of the field! He passed out.
Hongmeng saw a streak of light carrying a soul plunge into the Coiling Dragon Universe he had only recently created. At this point, the Four Higher Planes and the Seven Divine Planes had yet to be created. He took a look and paid it no further attention!
On a material plane, the soul entered the womb of a human woman who was already eight months pregnant. Suddenly, she felt the fetus move and cried out in pain.
The man sleeping beside her woke with a start and asked in the pitch darkness, "What's wrong?"
The woman spoke in a language Zhang Chaoyang could not understand. "It feels like the baby's moving."
The man anxiously told his woman, "I'll go get Mother to take a look."
While the man went to fetch his mother, the still-hazy consciousness of the child Zhang Chaoyang had entered began to fight back reflexively. Even if this was Coiling Dragon, where humans had stronger innate consciousnesses, it was still the mental consciousness of an unborn child. How could it stand against someone with more than sixty years of mental will?
Although Zhang Chaoyang's consciousness had fallen dormant, the child's incompletely developed consciousness was overwhelmed from the very start of their clash. Because Zhang Chaoyang had visualized the Judge Diagram, which inherently carried the death attribute, his death attribute also collided with the child's innate life and earth affinities.
That collision caused the child's fragile soul to begin mutating immediately. Zhang Chaoyang's mental will naturally devoured the child's mental will until the child's mental consciousness had been swallowed completely. Because Zhang Chaoyang had not had time to refine the child's consciousness, his spiritual energy now also contained the imprint of the Coiling Dragon World carried by the child's spiritual energy.
Thus, the Laws of the World judged that the three-element soul mutation was still continuing.
Poor Zhang Chaoyang had no idea what danger he was in. Even Linley, who had already become a deity, had only succeeded in his soul mutation after exhausting the energy of a Soul Stone. Although the enormous consumption was due to his four-element mutation, it had still depleted the Soul Stone a Sovereign had given him. That alone showed how much spiritual energy soul mutation required!
Olivier had undergone a two-element soul mutation, and he had only succeeded because he had already been a Saint at the time. His spiritual energy, willpower, and soul had been stronger by untold multiples than those of Zhang Chaoyang, who was now a mortal.
Thus, Zhang Chaoyang's soul weakened at a rate visible to the naked eye. Just as it was about to go out, the streak of light that had brought him here released a gentle glow that protected his soul. More than two months slowly passed like this, and Zhang Chaoyang's soul began to grow stronger.
Hongmeng looked at Zhang Chaoyang's strengthening soul and grew interested. He said, "It seems the first three-element soul mutator in this universe has succeeded. This foreign soul now bears this universe's imprint, too. I wonder whether he can transcend it now that he bears its imprint and his fate remains beyond my sight. But there's no hurry."
Still unconscious, Zhang Chaoyang had no idea that he had already died and changed worlds. Now he was about to be born, going from an old man in his sixties to an infant in moments.
The man's mother, who was serving as midwife, saw that the child was not struggling at all and hurriedly patted his feet. She tried to make him cry so that his lungs would fill with air. A child's first cry upon entering the world also marked the beginning of life.
Unfortunately, Zhang Chaoyang's consciousness was still in the final stage of soul mutation. Although it had succeeded and his soul was growing stronger, he had yet to wake. Thus, he could not cry as he should.
The man's mother patted him several times without success. Thinking the child was about to die, she was ready to give up. She laid him down. While he had been held upside down, the intestines in his belly had pressed against his chest cavity. Once he was laid flat, his intestines shifted back, his chest cavity contracted, and his lungs filled with air.
Only then did Zhang Chaoyang's body in this life begin to cry. Once again, he had passed through death's door and back.
Seeing that the child had cried, the man's mother cleaned him up, carried him out of the birthing room, and handed him to his father. The man looked at his son and happily named him Lucas.
The man joyfully lifted Zhang Chaoyang high and shouted to the people of the tribe, "Here in our Stans Tribe, the son of Abuda, a sixth-rank warrior, has been born! His name is Lucas!"
The people around him also shouted Lucas's name. They did not know that this child, who had nearly died at birth, would one day reach a position they had never imagined, becoming an existence whose name was spoken throughout the many planes of the Coiling Dragon Universe.
Here began the magnificent life of Lucas, the legendary Sovereign!
Before you continue