Fu gracefully stepped forward, his bare feet digging into a cloud as if it was solid ground. He was here on a mission, he wanted to devour the soul of a cloud. Not just any cloud would do for the task. No, for a cloud to gain a soul it must sit undisturbed for thousands of years in a Qi-rich environment.

It was extremely rare for a cloud to gain sentience, approximately a one in a million chance. If he was unlucky it could take weeks for him to stumble upon one, but he didn’t mind, it had always been a dream of his to walk amongst the clouds.

The cold blue moonlight illuminated his form as he hopped from cloud to cloud, searching for the perfect one to devour. He abruptly stopped and grabbed his head. It hadn’t been his dream to walk among the clouds. A shard of consciousness bounced off the edges of his soul, demanding to take control.

He ran through a short mantra of facts about himself to ground his identity. The fragment fell silent. Now that his head was free from outside influence, or as free as someone like him could be, he realized that he had never liked the clouds. In his mind, their only purpose was to ruin an otherwise sunny day.

He kneeled and scooped his hand through the cloud. Immediately he was filled with disappointment. The sect elder’s fragment of consciousness had made them sound much better than they actually were.

The cloud was wet and cold, the dense natural energy within it making it acidic to the touch. The experience was nothing like he had thought it would be. From the ground, the clouds looked so warm and fluffy. In reality, they felt like wet blankets. A thin layer of ice formed on his hand from the extreme cold of the atmosphere.

He shook his head, the sect elder was invading his thoughts again. Even in death, the man was proving to be an annoying opponent. If he lost focus for even a second a sea of voices would assault his mind, threatening to take over his body. Fortunately, his soul was strong and he was able to fight them off, but their sheer numbers posed a challenge. Keeping hundreds of thousands of voices in check was not an easy task.

The sect elder wasn’t the only troublesome wisp. The soul of a saint constantly buffeted his mind, urging him to be more generous and kind.

The saint truly perplexed him, he had never met an existence like the man in all of his travels. The saint hadn’t even tried to fight back, he just sat there with a smile on his face and let himself be cut down. He hated the smug look on the saint's face as he stared down his death, looking at him like he knew something Fu did not.

Behind him, a hawk the size of a mountain charged towards him angered that he would dare invade its territory. Fu stopped channeling Qi to his feet, causing him to drop through the cloud like a rock.

Howling winds buffeted his form as he limply fell face first towards the ground. A barrage of razor-sharp feathers cut holes into the cloud as they raced towards him. Plumes of fire ignited on the end of the feathers, accelerating them further, causing them to break the sound barrier.

Fu made no effort to move. He was an immortal, an attack of this level couldn’t dream of harming him. Even if he smashed face first into the ground, he would be fine.

Fu watched as the feathers slowly crept towards him. He placed his hands in his pockets and made no effort to move. The bird burst through the cloud, giving Fu a good look at its ugly face. “The beast is too ugly to let live,” the voice of a famous painter rang out in his mind. A cacophony of other opinions made themselves known.

He reached out with his Qi and grabbed a feather as it was about to hit him in the chest. Normally he wouldn’t have spent the effort to block the attack, but he was wearing his favorite shirt today. While he couldn’t be hurt, his clothing still could. It would be unforgivable if his tye-dye shirt was damaged.

He casually tossed the feather back at the bird. It tore through its hard flesh with nearly no resistance, puncturing a house-sized hole in it. The bird screeched in pain and swooped down towards him with its massive claws outstretched.

Compared to the massive beast's claws, Fu was barely a speck in the night sky. However, he wasn’t concerned, he had slain bigger beasts in the past. A mountain was nothing to him anymore.

Time slowed as he enhanced his body with Qi. The bird's screeches became distorted as it moved slower and slower. Finally, the bird seemed to hang over him, completely unmoving. Fu casually looked around, the curvature of the planet allowing him to see hundreds of miles away.

He spotted a small village near a lake, its architecture intimately familiar. It had been hundreds of years, but he would never forget the village he grew up in. Idly, he noted flames beginning to gather on the hawk's claws.

A pair of shooting stars shot through the clear night sky. “What an auspicious event. We must follow the stars,” a voice of an astronomer told him. Fu easily discarded the voice, the astronomer simply didn’t have the power required to control him.

Curious as to the beast's abilities, he let himself get caught in its flaming claws. He reinforced his clothing with Qi as the beast clenched its claws, increasing the temperature of the fire to the point where the clouds in the area evaporated.

Trapped amongst the flames; Fu sighed. “Boring.” He had devoured the essence of living flame, the heart of a volcano, and a mythical phoenix, the hawk’s power paled in comparison.

In his soul, a bridge to the concept of fire opened, filling his body with power. His understanding of the dao was complete, he was simultaneously the fire of invention, protection, and wrath. Hundreds of fragments worked together to form the perfect attack.

With a snap of his fingers, the mountain-sized hawk turned to ash. He stopped enhancing his body with Qi and let the wind carry him to his destination. He drifted through the air in silent contemplation.

He had absorbed hundreds of thousands of wisps, he had experienced every possible type of lifestyle, but he still felt empty inside. Nothing he could do could satisfy the hunger inside him for long. The feeling had only increased in recent years, there was nothing left for him to absorb.

The only life he hadn’t lived was his own. He had no worldly connections: no friends, no enemies, not even a lover. He had experienced everything secondhand. He figured it was about time he started to live his own life. The thought caused the sea of voices in his head to fall silent for a moment.

The idea sounded good, making his own mark on the world filled him with an indescribable sort of happiness. He smiled.

Transforming himself into a crow, Fu flew the rest of the way to the village. In seconds he reached his destination. Unnoticed by anyone, he landed in the center of the village. His home was not how he remembered it.

The houses were in a state of disrepair and the children were skinny, with barely any meat on their bones. He sent his Qi into the ground and sighed. The earth was barren, depleted of all its resources, nothing would grow here. When he had lived here, the ground was lush, capable of supporting hundreds of farms.

He returned to his human form and wandered the village, basking in the memories of his past. It was rare for him to experience a memory of his own after all. He passed the place where his mother used to buy him birthday cakes, the building was gone now. Like the bakery, all the landmarks of his childhood were gone. It had been too much to expect the village to not change for hundreds of years.

Though the buildings were different, the spirit of the village remained. Children played in the streets and old women gossiped. A particularly rowdy bunch of children passed around a ball. Fu smiled as he watched them play, his hunger increasing. His power surged to life, demanding he devour their wisps. The prospect of experiencing life in his home village after hundreds of years was tantalizing.

Fu’s internal struggles distracted him from the outside world, allowing the ball to hit him directly in the forehead. The group of children laughed hysterically at his plight, some going as far as to roll around on the ground.

Fu slowly picked up the ball and looked at the children, he vaguely remembered participating in similar antics when he was a child. Their smiling faces warmed his heart, he would only kill one of them. Childhood was something too precious to waste unduly.

“This loss of face can not be allowed! Kill them all,” the sect elder whispered to him. The fragment took partial control of his body. Tendrils of power sucked Fu into the sea of voices. He struggled to regain control.

In the meantime, his back straightened and he approached the group of children with military precision. Killing intent radiated off him in waves as he decided to devour their wisps. The children ran, but Fu chose not to chase them, there was nowhere they could go to escape him.

A small child not much more than skin and bone stayed, sat glued to the floor in fear. “I will teach you respect.” A shocking amount of glowing red energy gathered in his hand. He would destroy the whole town in a single attack, purging the bloodlines of those who offended him from existence.

Smooth as a snake, another fragment of consciousness stole control over the body. The energy building in his hand dissipated and his shoulders sagged, invisible age weighing them down.

Fu smiled warmly as he pulled the child to his feet. “I’m sorry, my temper is a bit shorter than it used to be.” Fu sighed, a kind and calming aura forming around him. “In a world like this, you shouldn’t harass strangers, you can never know how they will react.”

The child nodded, the aura surrounding him, causing him to relax. “Don’t worry, I know you did not mean to harm me. We all make mistakes, all that matters is working hard to not repeat them. Does that make sense?”

The boy nodded so vigorously Fu worried that he would damage his neck. He moved to run away before pausing. His eyes filled with concern as he looked over Fu.

“Mister, you’re so skinny. Do you want some food?” The boy dug through his satchel then offered him a small loaf of bread.

Fu broke free of his shackles and took back control of his consciousness. The kindly aura of the saint disappeared and his shoulders no longer sagged.

The boy's offer weighed heavily on his mind. It wouldn’t feel right to kill the child after he had offered him food. He sighed, taking in the child's gaunt form. The child's naive kindness reminded him of a younger version of himself before he fell into the cavern.

Fu declined. “Save it for yourself, the coming winter will be hard.” The child looked at him in confusion, not understanding what he meant.

Fu sighed. Based on the soil nutrients and the natural energy flows the area would soon completely lose its ability to grow food. The closest village was hundreds of miles away, meaning that there were no neighboring villages to trade with. Within ten years everyone in the village would either starve to death or be forced to make the dangerous journey through the wilderness to the capital.

Of course, he didn’t tell the child that. His secondhand experiences as a father told him that children generally don’t deal well with dire news.

“Don’t worry, I won’t let that happen. No one in the village will ever go hungry again.” The voices in his head went silent as he decided to do his first truly selfless act. The influence of the saint went unnoticed by Fu.

With a wave of his hand, he summoned a small boar. “This animal will replicate itself so that whenever you are hungry you shall have meat to eat.” The child watched with stars in his eyes.

Massive amounts of Qi flowed around Fu, shredding the basic laws of reality. The sky darkened as the heavens threatened him to abort his current course of action. Fu ignored the dark clouds forming in the sky and poured massive amounts of Qi into the animal. He twisted and pinched pathways of Qi, forming a masterpiece. Sweat dripped down his brow.

Just as he was about to finish connecting the last piece of the complex lattice of Qi, a titanic lightning bolt launched itself out of the sky. Fu ignored the attack, intent on finishing his project as the whole world flashed white.

Before he could finish, millions of volts of electricity ran through his body, breaking his concentration. “Shit,” Fu muttered as he collapsed to the ground, a twitching mess.

Steam rose off of Fu’s heavily burnt body. However, despite the immense damage he endured, he smiled. The shields of Qi he had put around the child and animal had held. He coughed as he pulled himself to his feet.

The tribulation had interfered with his creation of the self-replicating boar, he couldn’t sense anything wrong with it, but even a minor flaw could cause a disaster. Each time it cloned itself, the beast if improperly made would mutate slightly.

After a quick scan, he was confident the boar would be fine. He smiled, satisfied with his work, he knew the pain of hunger, he didn’t want anyone else to have to feel it. The saint's influence danced in the back of his mind, avoiding his notice.

Another blinding bolt of divine lightning built in the clouds. Fu felt his eyebrow twitch, the gods were annoying, always choosing the worst possible time to interfere. If they kept this up, he would be tempted to hunt them down and devour them. He glanced down at his burnt tye-dye shirt. He clenched his fist, he would definitely have his revenge.

However, at the moment he knew he was nowhere near strong enough. He smiled as he escaped the village, a literal sea of lightning following close behind him.

On this day, the great beast horde was created. Millions would fall to their fangs as they plagued mankind.

Who would have known that a lonely man's desire to stop a child from starving would cause so much destruction?