Chapter 2: A Soul Leaves, A War Ends
In the featureless dark between worlds, the Black Book drifted on, carrying two souls and a storm of stolen light.
One soul was Ayush's, sealed and sleeping, vibrant and intact. The other was a cracked, bleeding fragment that had only just managed to cling to the book inside the space‑crack: the remnant will of a future Huo Yuhao, God of Destiny, who had died fighting Tang San in a distant timeline.
That fragment floated just behind the Book, drawn along like wreckage in the wake of a ship. It did not know where it was going; it only knew that, after death, it had refused to scatter. There was one last thing left to do.
A dim, ruined God Realm, not the pristine one of Tang San's illusion, flickered in its memory.
Temples broken.Thrones empty. Law‑lines severed.
In that ending,Yuhao had finally understood what his life had really been: not fate, but a script.
He remembered Tang Wutong's souls—three girls crushed into one shell.
He remembered Wang Qiu'er burning her life to buy him one more move.
He remembered the leash:every "coincidence" on the Douluo Continent, every "test", every "sacrifice" quietly nudged from above by a so‑called God King who refused to let go of his own story.
He had won some battles. He had even torn holes in Tang San's web. But in the end, under the weight of an entire plane's rules and a God King who had rewritten them, he had been crushed. His body shattered. His god‑seat collapsed. His soul exploded into dust.
Almost all of it.
One shard refused. One shard gathered every drop of hatred, every insight, every hard‑learned trick about how gods, planes, and destiny actually worked, and wrapped them around a single, childish vow:
"If I get even one more chance, I won't live as your piece."
That vow became gravity.
And gravity pulled that shard into the space‑crack just as the Black Book passed by.
Now, in the formless dark, the fragment finally stirred. He felt the Book's aura: higher‑dimensional, completely outside the God Realm system, beyond Tang San's reach. He felt another soul sealed within—young, bright, totally unscarred. Not him. Someone else. Another human from another world.
"...So that's it," the fragment realized. "You're not here for me. You're here for him."
He did not feel anger. Only a tired, wry acceptance. His time was already over. But the anger at Tang San, that never cooled.
The Book did not answer. It simply moved.
Layers of reality parted. Below them, a new sky unfolded—blue, crisp, carrying the faint scent of sea and forest. The Douluo plane. Not his Douluo. Another branch, another run of the same game, but with the same basic board: Martial Souls, Spirit Beasts, God Realm, and at the far end of all paths, that same blue‑haired figure on a throne of light.
The Book sank through clouds, through weather, through the hidden arrays of Spirit Beast territories, until it hovered over a region rich in life force and secrets—the outskirts of Star Dou Great Forest, near the route that one day a boy named Huo Yuhao would take in search of his first ring.
The fragment extended a thin thread of divine sense. The laws of this Douluo tried to push him back—the instinctive rejection of an intruder with god‑rank energy—but the Book wrapped him once in its own shadow, dulling the alarm.
"Just looking," he murmured, and let his sense sweep.
Shrek's city walls existed, but the current Huo Yuhao of this world was not yet born. The God Realm above was intact, its laws unbroken, Tang San's line of fate still bright and untouched.
This timeline was early.Clean. Full of dangers he knew too well.
The sense followed one particular thread downward, into a poor district of a big city, into a cramped, dim courtyard where a thin woman sat, one hand on her lower belly.
His breath caught.
"Mom…"
It was her. Different details, same warmth in the eyes, same tired softness around the mouth. In this branch, too, she would die for him. In this branch, too, he would pull himself up from mud and humiliation to stand under a sky that never meant to be kind.
He pressed forward—and slammed into something invisible but absolute.
The rule of this world. The plane's will.
It did not speak, but its meaning was clear:
This child is ours.
His soul is in place.
You will not overwrite him.
The fragment withdrew. He could force it—burn what was left of his essence, shove himself into the fetus and try to fuse—but that would not be reincarnation. That would be theft. And the world would resist until either he broke or the child did.
He had already seen enough stolen agency for one eternity. He would not become another Tang San.
"So this time, I don't get to live it," he whispered. "Fine. Then I'll do the only thing I still can."
He looked back at the Book. Inside, Ayush's soul slept, unaware. An outsider. A reader who had raged for a fictional boy he'd never met.
The Book had picked him for a reason.
"Then I'll clear the path for you, stranger," the fragment decided. "You be the one who lives it better."
The world's rules tightened; his soul was beginning to fray. He had minutes at most. Enough.
He bent his will.
Light flared in directions that were not "up" or "down" but across lines of probability. The fragment's consciousness shot away from the unborn child, racing across Douluo like a ghost. His god‑rank authority was too weak to fight the plane head‑on, but for small, precise thefts, it was still more than enough.
"In my life, I walked this land once already," he thought. "I remember where the bones are buried."
In a distant city's underground vaults, reality shivered. A locked case in an auction house flickered, and a carving knife that still carried the faint warmth of a purified soul slipped out of existence, reappearing in the Book's inner space.
Deep beneath a sect's ancestral hall, under layers of rock and ice arrays, dozens of irregular, glowing pieces of ten‑thousand‑year Frozen Marrow vanished one after another—fifty‑five pieces in total, each colder than death, now quietly sinking into the Book's private ocean.
Far to the north, in a blizzard that never truly stopped, a Ten‑Thousand‑Year Ice Lotus growing alone on black rock shuddered. It had no mind, only pure, dense cold. A hand made of memory reached out, and it, too, disappeared into the Book.
The fragment's consciousness moved faster. The plane's rejection grew fiercer, trying to pin and tear him apart, but the Book's shadow kept just ahead like a moving shield.
He reached a certain hidden fold of space—the Dragon Valley, a pocket world formed from broken god‑remains and dragon graves.
There,drifting above cracked stone and old bones, were souls: sluggish, distorted echoes of dragon roars, some mighty, some nearly blank.
"Last time, I came here as prey," he remembered. "This time, I come as a thief."
He did not fight them. He wrapped them. Chains of his remaining divine sense coiled around each of the Dragon God's sons' remnant souls—seven in this version's valley, each tied to a different element and law. Bound to those chains, vast bones of all attributes rose from where they'd lain and sank into the Book's inner night.
At the valley's core, a mass of nine‑colored mist pulsed faintly. A shard of the Dragon God's own soul, long split between Golden Dragon King and Silver Dragon King, with only this scrap left behind. Within that fragment glimmered two thumb‑sized crystals, one gold, one silver—their divine codes, weakened but still terrifying.
The fragment of Huo Yuhao measured himself against it and laughed once, low.
"In my peak, you were barely enough to warm up," he said. "Now? You're still heavy."
He burned another slice of himself, surged forward, wrapped the Dragon God shard in his power, and dragged it free. The two crystals came with it, sealed tight before they could leak their presence to anyone. All three sank into the Book.
The plane howled now. The valley shook; far away, sensitive beasts raised their heads in fear, not knowing why.
"Almost done," the fragment gritted. "Just one more pit to rob."
He left Dragon Valley scarred and bare of its greatest secrets, then fell along a line of memory toward a forest dripping poison: Sunset Forest, and within it, the Yin‑Yang Love Eyes.
Poisonous fog billowed, but it parted around him like stale incense. He dropped through the mists, slipped past the great beasts that once terrified him, and hovered above the twin springs—one boiling hot, one killing cold, together forming a Tai Chi of life and death.
In his own past, he had only ever touched the surface. Now, as a soul, he went down.
One hundred meters.Three hundred. One thousand. Fifteen hundred.
At that depth, space quivered. A hidden sub‑world hung there, sealed so cleverly that ordinary gods would miss it. He did not. He forced it open with the last of his authority, stepped inside, and found two more dragon souls—incomplete, but still bearing fire and water authority, tied to the other two sons of Dragon God.
"They belong with the rest," he decided.
He ripped them free and sent them—and the strange, mixed waters soaked in ages of yin and yang—into the Book. Then he reached back up through the springs and took samples of every special water in those eyes: extreme cold, extreme heat, healing, corrosive. All of it entered the same bottomless vault.
By the time he broke the surface again, his soul was fracturing. Cracks of white pain split his awareness; parts of his memory fell away like burning paper. The plane's law pressed close, about to snuff him out.
He did not resist.
"It's enough," he told the howling rules. "I won't stay."
He turned, rushed back along the tie that connected him to the Book, and reentered its inner sea. There, in the deepest layer of that black ocean, he saw everything he had just stolen floating like suns and comets:
Frozen marrow, Ice Lotus, dragon souls, Dragon God fragment and dual crystals, Yin‑Yang waters, dragon bones, the soul‑carving knife, and more—all orbiting around a quiet, blank space where a future "him" would soon exist.
In the middle of that space, the outline of an unborn child's soul flickered, half‑formed. Closer now. The Book was already lining up the shot.
"Listen," the fragment said, turning his face toward that tiny spark. "Child. Stranger. Me, but not me."
His voice carried not as sound but as imprint. His remaining essence folded into a single, clear intention and lodged itself next to that soul seed—not merging, not controlling, just recording. A message to be felt, not heard, someday far in the future when seals loosened and seas widened.
"I couldn't beat him," the thought wrote itself. "Not with the rules as they were. So I stole the pieces I could and stacked them under your feet."
"I am not your past life. You are not my second chance. You are you. Ayush. Huo Yuhao. Whatever name you take."
"These treasures, these rings, this Black Book—they're not shackles. They're tools. Don't let anyone, god or human, tell you your role. Don't let any 'father' wrap a leash around your neck."
"If you ever hear the name Tang San and feel your chest burn," the imprint finished, "that's not destiny. That's just me, hoping you'll punch harder than I did."
The message sealed.
The fragment looked up one last time. The world outside the Book faded. The Douluo plane's rejection finally pierced even the Book's shadow and touched him directly.
His soul, already hanging by a thread, shattered completely—this time with no pieces left to cling. What remained of Future Huo Yuhao scattered into fine dust and sank into the fabric of this universe as nameless spiritual energy, indistinguishable from any other breeze.
Inside the Book, the storm he had kicked up did not fade.
All the stolen essences, now ownerless, began to spin. Guided by laws the fragment had woven into them, they spiraled toward that unborn soul, merging not into the child's body, but into the vast, dark vault of the Book itself. They would be there, waiting, when the new soul arrived and was strong enough to reach for them.
The Book observed this, satisfied.
It had its passenger. It had its cargo. It had the fuel of one god's final, furious sacrifice.
With a soundless motion, it aligned itself with the flickering soul in the courtyard and dove.
The transition was seamless. There was no burst of light, no shockwave. One moment, the Book was between worlds. The next, it was simply there, nested in the spiritual dimension of a fetus, its cover firmly shut once more.
The woman in the courtyard felt a sudden, gentle warmth in her belly and smiled, unaware that her son now carried a library of stolen miracles and a guest from another world.
High above, in a God Realm that felt a tremor it could not explain, a God King frowned. A thread of fate had… blurred. He reached out with his divine sense, scanning the lower plane.
He found nothing. The Book's shadow hid everything.
Annoyed, but not yet alarmed, Tang San turned his attention back to his own plans. The board was set. The pieces were moving. His daughter's soul was safely stored, ready for its role.
He did not see the new piece that had just been placed on the board, the piece that carried a reader's anger and a dead god's vengeance.
He did not see the crack in his script.
Not yet.
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What comes next could be:
· Ayush's birth and early childhood, experiencing the dual memories and the first, cryptic messages from the Black Book or the Multiverse Chat Group.
· His first conscious use of a power—perhaps a flicker of Spirit Eyes to see spirit energy, or a instinctive grasp of Ice to cool a fever.
· The looming shadow of his mother's fate and his first, desperate plan to change it using his foreknowledge and strange new tools.
Would you like to continue with his childhood, or jump forward to a key moment like his Spirit Awakening or his journey to the Star Dou Great Forest?