Chapter 1

The Celestial Jade Continent, an enormous land that stretched for millions of kilometers; a land where magical beasts lived amongst martial arts practitioners called cultivators who searched for their own truth of the Heavens, known as a Dao; a land where the strong crushing the weak was but a natural conclusion. In ancient times, the Immortal Tiger Empire once dominated nearly half of the entire continent through its military prowess and mighty cultivators, but after many millennia of corruption, incompetent leadership, and constant war, other empires pushed it back to its core territories in the northern part of the continent. Presently, many would barely consider it to be a second-rate empire, yet it was within this nation that the legend of Li Jie began.

In one of the many bustling markets in the Huo City, one of the largest cities of the Immortal Tiger Empire, a chaotic scene was taking place.

“Brat! Get back here so I can cut off your hand! You dare steal my herbs!?” An old man yelled as he hobbled as fast as he could through the busy streets.

“Stupid geezer! Why would I willingly let my hand be chopped off?” A young teenager replied as he turned his head around and stuck out his tongue at the old man. The boy, carrying the small package of herbs within his arms, had fiery red hair with piercing sky blue eyes. He looked to be around 14 years old, but his eyes contained none of the youthful naivety one would expect in a child that age. Instead, one might see cynicism and a tinge of wisdom, most likely brought about by his harsh life. His clothes were rather plain but evidence of many patches and skillful repairs could be seen on his shirt and pants upon closer examination. His surprisingly muscular legs bounded down the crowded road, weaving through the many citizens doing their daily shopping. If any person was unfortunate enough to get in his way, they would not feel the light weight of a child bumping into them but rather a body that seemed to be forged out of steel blasting them away.

After running for another minute and quickly ducking into a side alley, the boy peered out into the main road to check for any pursuers.

‘Looks like I lost the old man,’ the boy thought as he turned around and promptly walked straight into an iron wall. He was slightly stunned but managed to keep hold of his package. As he regained his senses, he focused on the iron wall that seemingly appeared out of nowhere and found that to his dismay, it was a person. The boy himself was already quite tall with a height of nearly 1.8 meters, but the giant in front of him was over two full heads taller than him. Seeing the magical greatsword sheathed in a scabbard that emitted a dull red glow and feeling the unnatural, crushing pressure of the giant bearing down on him, the boy cursed, ‘Dammit, it just had to be a cultivator!’

The giant stood like an impassable mountain with his arms crossed and bellowed, “Boy, where do you think you’re going?”

“Sir please, that old man was trying to cheat me and my mother. I gathered these herbs just this morning and was trying to sell them, but tried to take advantage of me and take the herbs for free!” replied the boy, guessing the giant’s purpose and switching to a respectful tone.

From the giant’s belly came a laugh that almost sounded more like a roar; the boy could feel his bones being shaken to their core as the sound passed him. After laughing a bit more, the man, with one eyebrow raised, said, “You know kid, I was watching you from the very beginning. You’re quite the shameless one, aren’t you?”

When he heard this, the boy’s eyes widened and he quickly tried to flee, but was immediately stopped after the giant grabbed onto the scruff of his shirt. The boy reacted quickly and prepared his ultimate trump card--the dirt in his pocket. With one arm, he accurately threw the dirt right into the giant’s eyes.

“ARGH--” the giant yelled and, letting go of the shirt, withdrew his hands to his face in apparent pain. The boy once again fled and was not stopped this time. Soon after the boy disappeared from the alley, the giant stopped his fake act and started chuckling as he mused to himself, “The boy never fails to amuse me in his daily antics. At least it makes this arduous task just a little more bearable.”

He stood there with his eyes closed for some time while he tracked the boy running through the city with his spiritual sense. After making sure he arrived safely at his home, the air around the giant suddenly shimmered as he mysteriously vanished. The alley once again returned to quietness, the only difference being a tiny pile of ash where the giant once stood.

-----

Around a 15 minute walk from the market district, the boy entered one of the many slums surrounding the city. He carefully tread through the trash lining the narrow and winding streets to reach his house--a rickety wooden shack measuring about 8 meters by 10 meters. Noticing the dirty, tattered boots next to the front door and hearing the moans coming from inside, the boy frowned and went through the back entrance that led directly to his room.

While he waited for his mother’s client to finish, he began meditating and conducting a simple breathing technique that was commonly practiced by the poor. The boy felt the qi of the world gathering around him and slowly being absorbed through the pores in his skin, coalescing into his own sea of qi, called the dantian, near his heart. The newly added colorless qi circulated continuously within his dantian before being gradually being refined into a pale red qi that was unique to the boy himself. Some of the qi dispersed through his qi pathways known as meridians and was absorbed by his bones and muscle, constantly reforging them to make them stronger. Most of the qi remained within his dantian where it was condensed in the center of his dantian. This process formed the basis of cultivation.

In the Celestial Jade Continent, anyone can be a cultivator, whether it be a slave or the son of a king, yet the Heavens are not that accomodating. The rich have an advantage in resources to speed up their cultivation and supreme martial techniques, as well as having the connections to get their children sent to a good sect where they could learn from master cultivators. Bloodline also played an important factor in determining innate talent which is why the strongest cultivators generally came from the strongest clans.

Cultivators absorbed the world’s qi from their surroundings or through the consumption of cultivation resources and refined it into their own personal qi. This personal qi strengthened their bodies to far beyond what any normal human could imagine, and after accumulating enough within their dantian, the cultivator could break through and reach a new level of power. Specifically, cultivators were ranked by realm, with each realm being divided into 9 levels. Each level within the same realm had a moderate difference in power, but the difference between realms was like the sky and the earth. Currently the boy was attempting to breakthrough to the 3rd level of the Nascent Realm, the very first realm on the path to cultivation.

The boy suddenly felt a change occurring within his dantian as his qi suddenly underwent a transformation. The pale red qi slowly became a tinge more red, and an explosion of energy came from his dantian that rushed forward and cleansed his meridians. He felt all the accumulated fatigue and stress suddenly evaporate away as new power flooded his body. A smile crept across his face as he opened his eyes, “Finally, I’ve reached the 3rd level.”

Very few people in the entire continent understood the complete nature of qi, the destitute boy certainly not being one of them. But all cultivators instinctively understood they could wield their qi in all sorts of wild ways to enhance their strength, the most common being through explosive bursts of power called martial skills.

When he stood up, he looked outside and noted the time, ‘It must already be around dinner time, looks like I’ve been meditating for most of the day.”

He put his head to the wall that separated his room from the rest of the shack and listened carefully. When he heard no sounds coming from the other side, he opened his door and walked into the other room which doubled as the kitchen and his mother’s room. He wrinkled his nose in disgust at the musty smell permeating the air before striding over to the other side of the room and opening a window. He then glanced at the naked female figure sleeping on the bed. At one point, she very well may have been the kind of beauty kings would fight over, but now the woman was a shadow of her former self. Jet black hair straight, streaked with gray, ran down her body and reached her lower back; her black eyes, if they were open, would seem like one was staring into an abyss. Her pale white face was gaunt from either malnutrition or illness and her ribs could be seen jutting through her skin. Even then, she still possessed enough beauty to cause men to desire her, a trait she took advantage of in her work.

The boy walked over to her and gently shook her awake, having a slightly worried expression on his face the whole time. She stirred a bit, opened her eyes, and gave a few coughs before weakly saying, “Ahh, Li Jie, you’ve returned. How was work?”

Li Jie was about to reprimand his mother angrily for working while in her condition but thought better of it and said, “Fine mother, my boss was kind enough to give me some herbs for your illness. Let me make some medicine for you. Also what would you like for dinner? We still have some dried meat that I stol--got from our neighbors.”

A momentary flash of sadness appeared in his mother’s eyes but quickly returned to normal, “Anything’s fine dear... and thanks.”

Li Jie nodded before getting to work on preparing some medicine and dinner, thankfully he had gotten the old man to teach him how to mix the herbs before shamelessly stealing them. He knew that he had to get strong as soon as possible so that he could take care of his sick mother and pay for a doctor. Working hard every day and stealing what he could not afford--all of these actions were done for the sake of his beloved mother. He often hopped from job to job since as soon as his employers found out his identity, they would often begin paying him less, saying absurd things like “it would be shameless to pay a prostitute’s son, be happy that you’re receiving any money at all!” Sometimes they would not even bother to find an excuse but just withhold his pay since he was a 14 year old who couldn’t do anything about it. Such behaviors were normal in this world where the strong ruled and the weak suffered. Li Jie never gave up even when faced with unfairness. As long as he could live together with his mother, he was happy.

But in recent weeks, his mother’s condition had been getting steadily worse, leading to him take more risky actions like stealing medicinal herbs today. He cursed at himself, thinking about how if he actually had been caught, how much would his mother suffer? A hacking cough suddenly brought Li Jie out of his thoughts. He quickly looked over to his mother to see her eyes wide open and her hand covered in her own blood.

-----

That night, Li Jie sat in meditation, attempting to calm his heart. His mother’s condition deteriorated far faster than he had originally thought; thankfully he had the medicinal herbs to treat her symptoms. She was currently sleeping peacefully after taking the medicine.

‘Dammit, at this rate I won’t be able to afford a good doctor to cure my mother,’ Li Jie thought in frustration, ‘I need to work even harder than before; I need to become a strong cultivator and hunt down magical beasts for money!’

All magical beasts possessed a monster core which was a primary ingredient for many valuable pills and equipment. Magical beasts were ranked using the same realm system as cultivators but were generally stronger than similarly ranked cultivators due to their nature-blessed bodies. To Li Jie, even the cores of the weakest monsters would fetch astronomical prices.

Li Jie sighed, ‘If someone like me were just to go outside and hunt down magical beasts, the only thing I could give to my mother would be my corpse.’ He continued to meditate throughout the night and renewed his resolve to work even harder to support his mother.