Pain was the first thing.
Then dirt in his mouth.
Then blood.
Silas opened his eyes.
He was 16 again.
And he was 84.
Both at once.
He breathed. In. Out. Inward.
A line from the manuscript echoed in his head:
_"Soul exists before Spiritual Energy. The first step is to feel emotion."_
`Soul Forging: 9 Steps to Heaven`
Written by *Elder Varn Kest, Golden Core Stage 9 Peak* of the Red Leaf Clan.
*Talent: E.*
Varn had reached 400 years old and stopped at Golden Core 9.
He could not break through to Nascent Soul.
So he didn't despair like people with E talent always did.
He created something new.
For 30 years he locked himself in a stone room and built a new path.
His goal was simple: write four steps. Just enough to force a breakthrough.
He wrote them.
Then he tried the first step.
And nothing happened. He wasted 30 years. He died of old age but was clear that this technique can only be cultivated from start of path not in middle.
When the clan found the manuscript they were happy.They tried it on juniors as this was a rare divine sense technique and it doesn't even need talent. But this technique burned the future of the clan juniors to ash as they cannot form foundation all died at 9th stage energy gathering peak.
They renamed the technique out of spite: `9 Steps to Ash`.
They burned most of the copies and threw the last one in the trash archives.
Silas had read it in his last life. At 25. At 40. At 60.
Back then he was F talent.
All he got from it was a slightly sharper sense. No range. No power. Just clearer fog for 84 years.
That was because the man who wrote it died trying to take the first step.
But Silas tried it again.
Because he could feel 1m domain and emotion that was how it should be according to technique that no one ever achieved.
And also because F talent had nothing else to try.
He started operating technique.
And then something snapped.
Ten meters opened around him.
He could see the dirt. A beetle. A tree three meters away. A rock at seven.
But then he saw the problem.
One meter was clear.
From two meters to ten meters, everything was fog. Dead.
Silas laughed, and it cracked in his throat. "Ten meters of ash."
In his last life he had zero meters. Only "sharper fog."
In this life he had ten meters of range, but only one meter was real.
It was like holding a ten meter spear with only one meter of edge.
"If a lion is in that nine meters, I'm dead."
He sat in the dirt and bled.
He has to travel 3km to nearest village but with this condition he is just breakfast for mortal beasts.
So he thought of starting energy gathering .
He owned the technique for energy gathering.
But with F talent, that method would take three weeks to pull a single wisp of energy.
He would bleed out before he finished.
So he didn't use it.
Instead he used the one meter he had.
He pushed his divine sense out and grabbed a strand of Spiritual Energy floating 0.8 meters away.
He dragged it to himself.
Then another at 0.5 meters.
Then another at 0.2 meters.
Thread by thread he pulled it to his chest and forced it down.
No circulation method. Just pressure.
There was a soft pop inside him.
_Energy Gathering Stage 1._
The moment Spiritual Energy filled his body, the ten meters snapped into focus.
One meter to ten meters. All clear.
He could see the veins in a leaf. The legs on an ant. The heartbeat in a bird.
The fog had turned to glass.
Silas let out a breath. There was blood on his lips.
"So 10m was not hollow it just needs real divine sense to mix and now with my domain and divine sense has became one with each other."
In his last life, "sharper divine sense" meant he was still blind.
In this life, ten meters plus stolen energy meant he could see.
A Golden Core 9 had turned to ash on Step 1.
An F talent with two lives had stolen his way in, because the right way was too slow.
*THE 3KM WALK*
Now that he could move, he walked.
Ten meters at a time, then a hundred, then a kilometer.
One kilometer through jungle.
Two kilometers on a broken road.
Three kilometers total.
Dawn broke on the third kilometer.
In front of him was *Greywater Village*.
Walls, smoke, and fields.
And underneath it, a Stage 1 Spiritual Vein.
As every mortal village has as clan needs talent from these mortals.
Outside the east gate there were only weeds.
And a shrine.
The wood was rotten. A bowl was carved into the stone.
It was dedicated to the God of Lost Children.
Everyone had forgotten it.
Silas stopped ten meters away.
From here his Domain covered the entire shrine, the road of the village.
He watched the village wake up.
Women at the wells. Children with buckets.
No one looked at the shrine.
Perfect.
He remembered from his past life:
With F talent it would take him 40 to 50 years to reach Stage 9.
He had wasted that life already. He was not willing to one more.
He made his plan.
First, live here.
Second, leech the vein until Stage 9.
Third, leave and find a real technique to reach Foundation.
The sun hit the roof of the shrine. Silas stepped inside.
Dust, mold, and the smell of old rain.
He pushed his ten meter Domain out.
It was the first safe morning he had in 84 years.
And he had earned it over three kilometers.
Outside, Greywater Village was waking up.
Inside shrine, Silas saw the basement in the back of a large statue of god but broken above neck.
No destiny.
No heaven.
No technique used.
Only ash.
And a kid who walked three kilometers to steal his first breath.
_END CHAPTER 2_