The room was dark when Jack woke up again. Through a small window dim light was shining inside, but it wasn’t enough to be able to see anything beyond slight silhouettes. The sound of soft breathing could be heard, so at least he wasn’t alone in the dark. Someone, probably his new mother was sleeping near him. Unable to move much, except for flailing with his arms, all he could do was listening to the soft breathing.

Quickly Jack became bored. Lying around doing nothing wasn’t very interesting. But what else could he do? Silently he cursed his new infant body for being this useless. He couldn’t move even if he wanted to.

After a few minutes he finally had the idea to try meditating. He was much too young to try cultivating, but simply testing for the potential of this body shouldn’t do any harm.

Closing his eyes, Jack began to slow his breathing. He needed a few minutes due to this still unfamiliar body, but in the end he fell into a light meditative trance. He could feel his body and everything in it. On the outside it was the body of a normal human baby, no sign of any cultivation whatsoever.

But the interior was a different story. When he turned his view towards his Dantian a familiar sight greeted him. The large muddy looking Core was still floating amidst the vogues of a glowing sea of Qi. But it was clearly different from usual, the red coloured sea had shrunk to a fraction of its former self and wide parts were already dry.

‘Probably a side effect of the reincarnation. Something like that is bound to burn a lot of Qi. Whatever, my core is safe, so my cultivation stage should still be the same as… Wait a second’

Jack was confused. That didn’t make sense. According to what he knew about reincarnated beings he should have no cultivation at all. And honestly it made no sense, cultivation was after all bound to the body, so it should have stayed behind with his corpse. So how could he still have access to it?

Searching for answers he began to investigate his body closer. But quickly he frowned. What he found was strange. Most people had very small Spiritual Veins inside of them. They were formed during the birth of a child by the Qi around them. These Veins were later used to move Qi from the Dantian out towards the entire body, strengthening and repairing it in the process. This made training much more efficient and healing quicker, so their size was often treated as a sign for the talent a person would have. The bigger the Veins the more Qi could be transported inside them. More Qi meant more support and as such training would become more efficient.

And right now Jack looked at his own Spiritual Veins and found… nothing. Not even a hint of them existing. Which should be impossible. The few people he knew who had no Spiritual Veins were completely unable to absorb any Qi from the surrounding and were doomed to stay mortals. But he clearly had cultivation. Though where it came from was still a mystery…

Suddenly Jack was worried. What if he was a cripple, doomed to never be able to cultivate? His new life would be a living hell. He could count himself lucky if he wouldn’t be outcasted out by his family.

Looking for reason for his inability to find his Spiritual Veins Jack decided to check his perception. Maybe it malfunctioned because of the rebirth and that was the reason he couldn’t feel the Veins. Or so he hoped.

Focused to only take the slightest amount possible Jack extracted a bit of Qi from his Dantian and shot it outwards. Without any Spiritual Veins to guide the Qi a large part of it became absorbed by his body before it even left him. Another part stayed behind, forming a small thread of Qi still connected to the Dantian so he could control the remaining Qi better. In the end only a very small drop of Qi left his body, but it was enough for Jack. The drop let out a small wave of Qi that shot out in all directions, ready to scan his surroundings. And the result was… emptiness. He knitted his brows and tried again. Again, just the feeling of a large open space, as if nothing was around him at all, not even the air they were breathing.

‘So it was truly my perception that was wrong. Strange, I expected – argh’

Suddenly Jack’s body jolted and he quickly turned his sight inwards, back to his Dantian. Instantly he paled. The previously already shrunken ocean had run completely dry, with the last puddles of Qi already starting to evaporate. Hastily he tried to grab onto it, forcing the Qi to condense again, but it wriggled out of his controls and left the Dantian completely. Soon even the ‘ground’ inside his Dantian began to vaporize, leaving behind nothing as something was sucking all his cultivation out of his body. Several millennia of work were vanishing within the blink of an eye.

Jack could feel the Qi leaving him and yet he could do nothing to stop it. And the worst of all was that he knew the reason why it did happening so suddenly. It was the thread of Qi that he had used for his perception. Somehow it hadn’t dissipated like normally as soon as the Qi left him, but instead acted like a bridge between his Dantian and the outside. And even though he tried he couldn’t severe it either. Not that that would have helped. After feeling the strength of the suction he understood that even without the bridge his cultivation would have been absorbed, it would only have been slower.

Helpless he watched as the last drop of Qi vanished. Only the muddy Core was floating in the - now empty – Dantian. A short moment nothing further happened and Jack began to hope that at least his Core would stay unharmed. But then a loud cracking sound resounded inside his Dantian and a large crack split the Core. Large amounts of liquid Qi began gushing out of it, vaporizing quickly.

In the end, all that was left of his former lifework of cultivation was a nearly empty dantian with a few shards of the broken core, the solid Qi too dense to dissipate as easily as the liquid. Though it was only a question of time until it would vanish, too. The thread of Qi had dissolved itself as it wasn’t supplemented by the Qi from inside any longer. He was a normal mortal again.

Jack looked at the sorry remains of his past as he began thinking. While what had happened had been bad it was more important right now to find the reason for it. Cultivation wouldn’t disintegrate itself normally. And he had already a hint where to start.

The whole thing started after he had sent his Qi out, so probably whatever destroyed his cultivation came from the outside. Moreover, it had been sucked out of him, not shattered or cut like an attack would be. And that led to a simple conclusion.

‘…A void zone?’

Void zones were areas without any Qi. They were quite rare naturally and would mostly occur in lower worlds. More often they were artificially created and were used as prisons, storage for sensible materials or even as a shielding against espionage magic. But in all their usefulness he had never heard of a void zone that was strong enough to actually absorb the cultivation of a living body. At most they could absorb magic that was cast outside of it and even then most would simply weaken it. And that was because the suction force of a void zone depended on its size. To get such a powerful suction, just how big was it? Suddenly an old memory came into his mind.

‘It can’t be… I’m inside a sphere?’

In the countless worlds that were connected by the world stream there existed many anomalies. Strange world that didn’t follow the natural laws like the infinite planes, the origin planets and the spheres. All of them special and mysterious. The spheres themselves were perhaps the most mysterious of them. No one knew how they worked, but they were giant spherical barriers in the world stream that enclosed a large amount of space. It wasn’t even known if they were a natural occurrence or something manmade.

Anyway, these barriers let nothing through them, not even Qi. So, if there was a world inside of it, then the people that lived on it would slowly consume every bit of Qi in the sphere until nothing was left. The sphere would slowly turn into a giant void zone. A void zone that was strong enough to even absorb the cultivation of a human right out of their body, just like he had experienced just now.

Jack shivered. Of all places he could have reincarnated to, it had to be here. An empty world where he had no chance to ever cultivate again.

Powerless he closed his eyes. He was now back to being a mortal, an immortal who had fallen from the Heavens back to Earth.

‘Still better than being dead I guess’

Exhausted from the ordeal of losing all his cultivation Jack fell asleep again.