The afterlife smelled like sawdust and boiling rice.
Mo Yuan floated in a haze of absolute exhaustion. He had expected the chilling waters of the Yellow Springs. He had expected the eternal, suffocating darkness of the Underworld, where the souls of slaughtered Emperors were chained to the River of Forgetfulness.
Instead, it was warm.
He opened his eyes. The cosmic expanse of the void was gone, replaced by a low, slightly crooked ceiling made of thatched straw and heavy wooden beams.
Ah, Mo Yuan thought, his mind sluggish and heavy. A Heart-Demon illusion. Or perhaps... a dying dream. It was a well-known legend in the cultivation world that in the final microsecond before a supreme soul completely shattered, the Heavens would grant them a single, fleeting illusion of their deepest desire.
Mo Yuan did not try to fight it. He was too tired to break illusions. If this was his final moment of existence, he would gladly drown in it.
He turned his head against a cheap, lumpy pillow.
Sitting beside his small cot was a woman in a patched, faded blue dress. Her hair was tied back with a simple wooden hairpin, and she was gently blowing on a wooden spoonful of hot porridge.
Mo Yuan's breath hitched. The phantom pain of his ripped-out heart briefly flared, then vanished, replaced by an agonizingly tight knot in his throat.
In his past life, she had died in a sea of ash long before he ever picked up a sword. He had spent a thousand years sitting on a throne of meteors, desperately trying to remember the exact shade of her eyes.
"Yuan'er? Are you finally awake?"
Her voice was soft, laced with exhaustion and deep maternal worry.
Mo Yuan closed his eyes. A single tear slipped down his cheek. Such a perfect illusion, he thought. The universe took everything from me, but at least it lets me hear her voice one last time. "Mother…" his voice cracked. It was a weak, thin sound. Not the booming, heaven-shaking authority of a sovereign, but the fragile, cracking voice of a sixteen-year-old boy.
His mother set the wooden bowl down and quickly pressed her rough, calloused palm against his forehead.
Mo Yuan froze.
Illusionary constructs crafted by the Heavenly Dao were perfect in sight and sound, but they lacked the raw, imperfect texture of reality. They did not have calluses. They did not have the faint scent of cheap washing lye and sweat.
And most importantly, they did not have a pulse.
Underneath her palm, Mo Yuan felt a steady, warm, mortal heartbeat.
"Thank the heavens," she sighed, her shoulders dropping in relief. "The fever broke. You've been sleeping for three days, my silly boy. I told you not to stay out in the autumn rain gathering firewood."
Mo Yuan's eyes snapped wide open.
Fever? He immediately turned his attention inward, scanning his spiritual sea. There was no vast, golden ocean of Emperor Qi. There was no Supreme Dao Foundation. His meridians were thin, brittle, and completely clogged with mortal impurities. He was sick, frail, and entirely powerless.
He wasn't dead. He wasn't dreaming.
The Heavens had actually glitched. They had sent him back.
He reached up with trembling hands and gripped his mother's wrist. It was solid. Real.
The supreme Immortal Ascendant Emperor—the man who had walked through the hellscapes of the Outer Void without blinking, the man who had slaughtered demonic gods without shedding a single tear—began to weep.
Hot, silent sobs shook his frail frame. He buried his face in his mother's palm, his tears soaking into her calloused skin.
"Oh, my sweet boy, does your head hurt that much?" She quickly wiped his tears with her thumbs, her own eyes misting over as she pulled him into a gentle embrace. "Hush now. Mother is here. I won't let anything happen to you."
No, Mo Yuan thought, leaning into the warmth he hadn't felt in a millennium. This time... I won't let anything happen to you.
In that small, sunlit room, Mo Yuan made a silent vow to the universe.
He didn't feel a shred of anger toward Ye Yan or Li Lian. He didn't care about his stolen fortune, his ripped-out cultivation bone, or the throne he had lost. Let them have the cold, lonely peak of the void.
He was done with swords. He was done with the heavens. He was done with the blood.
In this life, he would not cultivate. He would stay right here, in this tiny, dusty village, and fulfill the only dream he had ever truly cared about before the world forced him to become a monster.
He was going to be a painter.
Three days later.
The smell of fresh pine and sawdust filled the sunlit workshop. Mo Yuan sat on a low, wobbly stool, staring at a rectangular block of discarded oak.
"Yuan'er," his father, Mo Shen, called out from the front of the shop. The older man wiped sweat from his brow, gesturing nervously toward the street. "Don't waste too much time on the scraps today. Master Zhao from the Flying Sword Sect's outer court is coming to collect the monthly protection tax. We need everything looking orderly."
At the mention of a cultivator, Mo Yuan's dark eyes didn't even ripple. To a man who used to swat away Void Dragons, the Flying Sword Sect was less than a speck of dust.
"I know, Father," Mo Yuan replied softly, his voice perfectly calm.
He turned his attention back to the block of wood. Beside him sat a crude, pig-bristle brush and a small stone inkwell filled with cheap, watered-down ink.
He picked up the brush. It felt strange. Too light. Too fragile. He had never painted before; his hands were only used for killing.
He dipped the bristles into the dark ink, intending to paint a simple sparrow.
But Mo Yuan did not realize that his soul was still that of a supreme powerhouse. As the cheap bristles touched the wood, a millennium of suppressed longing and the absolute authority of an Emperor unknowingly flowed from his soul, directly into the ink.
Tap.
Outside, the autumn wind suddenly died. The village dogs fell dead silent. For a fraction of a microsecond, the gravity in the courtyard increased tenfold.
Bang! The wooden doors of the carpentry shop were violently kicked open. A young man in the pristine white robes of an outer sect disciple strode in, a sneer on his face.
"Old man Mo!" the disciple barked. "Where is the tax—"
The disciple's arrogant voice suddenly caught in his throat.
Mo Yuan had just finished painting the sparrow's eye. Annoyed by the loud noise, he slowly lifted his head and met the disciple's gaze.
To Mo Yuan, he was just looking at a noisy teenager.
But to the outer sect disciple, the fabric of reality tore open. Behind the frail carpenter's son, the blood-soaked phantom of an ancient sovereign opened its eyes. The crude wooden sparrow on the table didn't look like a bird anymore—it radiated the suffocating, primordial aura of an ancient Golden Crow, ready to burn his soul to ash.
Crack. The disciple's knees slammed into the floorboards. His spiritual qi violently shattered. Trembling in absolute terror, a warm puddle quickly spread beneath his pristine white robes.
Without uttering a single word, the arrogant cultivator scrambled backward on his hands and knees, tearing his fingernails on the floorboards, before throwing himself out the door and sprinting out of the village, screaming in pure madness.
Mo Yuan blinked, staring at the empty doorway.
He looked down at his slightly lopsided painting of a sparrow.
"Did he... just remember he left his pill-furnace on?" Mo Yuan muttered, casually dipping his brush back into the well. "Cultivators these days. Always in such a rush."