The second attempt began on the eleventh day.
Han Chen sat cross‑legged on the green grass, the quiet air vibrating faintly with residual energy. The bead floated between his palms, spinning slowly as tendrils of black smoke curled upward, tracing faint rings around his fingers.
This time, he didn't rush. His greenish‑black spiritual qi flowed steadily from his fingertips into the bead. Instead of trying to dominate it, he guided his qi gently, letting both energies feel each other out. The bead pulsed faintly, not resisting, as if curious.
The two forces met—Han Chen's faint yet stubbornly dense qi mixing with the bead's ancient Law energy. Slowly, the smoky darkness turned translucent, glowing from within. White light bled through the black, forming a whirling core that flickered steadily before transforming into a sphere of balanced light and shadow.
He exhaled. The bead—no, the energy now—floated upward and pressed softly against his chest. Then it moved.
Whoosh—The energy shot forward, phasing through his body. It followed his meridians, tracing a line from his chest through his shoulders, splitting into thin threads of energy that surged toward his upper dantian—the center of his soul. When it reached his head, the pain struck.
"Ah—!" A flash of green light exploded behind his eyes. His vision blurred white. The pain didn't feel physical—it was deeper, like knives carving runes across the surface of his consciousness. His ears rang with a low hum, his heartbeat turning chaotic.
Blood streamed from his ears, nose, and eyes. Even his mouth filled with the bitter taste of iron. Inside his mind-upper dantian, a sound like cracking glass echoed faintly.
Crack. Crack. The bead—the Soul Bead, seated deep within his upper dantian—split at its surface. Hairline fractures spread across it like spiderwebs, glowing faintly with pale emerald light.
Every cultivator below the Nascent Soul realm carried this Soul Bead instead of a formed spiritual soul. It was their condensed consciousness, the heart of their spirit. To damage it was to risk death itself.
And Han Chen's was breaking. The bead splintered again. Boom—It shattered completely with a muffled sound that seemed to only exist within his skull. The fragments didn't disappear—they dissolved into streams of radiant, emerald energy that crawled through his brain like molten veins, releasing heat and pressure that made every nerve scream.
Han Chen's body convulsed violently. His back arched as his head tilted upward toward the frozen sky. He wanted to scream, but his body didn't obey. His jaw clenched involuntarily, teeth grinding hard enough to draw blood. His hands trembled, fingernails cutting into his palms, yet even pain felt distant beneath the flood tearing through his mind.
The air quaked faintly around him. The green energy, now freed from the constraints of his soul bead, swirled wildly in his consciousness. It spun faster, fusing with the residual energy from the black bead that snaked its way up through his body.
When black and white met the emerald, the three energies spiraled together into a vortex.
Whoom—A whirlpool of light formed inside him—green, black, and white twisting together without blending. Each color resisted the others, warring for dominance, yet unable to tear apart the balance keeping them circling endlessly. The pressure around him grew heavier. The air shimmered as invisible waves pulsed out from where he sat.
Even seated motionless, his body seemed caught between tearing and rebuilding itself in every passing moment.
Four days passed. The whirlpool never stopped spinning. It refused to fuse. By the fifteenth day, the light of the trial began shifting. The skies above the dome darkened from gold to gray—a sign that time was running out.
Han Chen's breathing was ragged now. His body sat unnaturally still while faint tremors rippled beneath his skin. Sweat mixed with dried blood across his face."It's… still resisting," his thoughts whispered weakly. "Why won't it merge?" Inside his upper dantian, the tri‑colored whirlpool raged violently, churning energy so powerful that even the flowers in the grassland nearby tilted away from it, shriveling slightly under the soul pressure he released.
Still, the energies wouldn't fuse. They only spun faster. The seconds dragged. The trial's time limit crept closer. And Han Chen's consciousness began to dim under the endless pressure, one thought looping again and again in his fading mind.
"I can't… fail again…"
---
Inside Han Chen's body, the whirlpool of tri‑colored energies—white, black, and emerald—had reached its limit.
For four days it had spun ceaselessly, refusing to merge, each color clashing against the other. Then—Boom. The balance shattered.
The whirlpool imploded, and the three forces erupted throughout his body like an explosion contained within flesh and bone. His meridians burned, every channel of energy torn open as brilliant streams of light struggled for dominance.
White energy seared through his veins like flame.
Black energy coiled like smoke, suffocating the other two.
The emerald energy pulsed unevenly, trying to bind them—but failing again and again.
Han Chen's back arched violently, pain flooding every cell. His body convulsed, limbs trembling as the world around him dimmed. Then came the feeling of death.
A chill deeper than ice crawled up his spine, spreading into his heart. His breathing slowed. His consciousness flickered. The eruption inside was too wild, the energies too foreign—each trying to devour the other and, in doing so, consume him along with it. For a moment, everything turned silent. Only the pulse of his weakening heart echoed in the void.
Then—A tremor rippled through his sea of consciousness. From the deepest part of his mind, a familiar presence stirred—the ancient force that slumbered within him since his arrival in this world.
Whoom—With a deep hum, The Heavenly Eye appeared above him, manifesting from the depths of his spirit. Pitch black, vast as the heavens, its purple pupil pulsed once—slow, deliberate, alive.
The mere ripple of its aura shook the grasslands. The flowers around him flattened under the pressure, and cracks formed in the ground in a perfect circular radius beneath his seated form. The chaotic energies inside his body froze in place.
Time itself seemed to hold its breath. The Eye's purple pupil contracted and then widened again, releasing rings of faint, translucent light that flowed into Han Chen's chest, traveling through his veins, his bones, his spirit.
Wherever it passed, calmness followed. The rampaging energies—white, black, and emerald—stilled like frightened beasts before a king. Slowly, they reversed direction, merging together once again and retreating back toward his upper dantian. Han Chen's body stopped convulsing. His erratic breathing steadied.
Inside him, the chaos transformed into order. The energies gathered once again in his upper dantian, swirling in renewed harmony. The black fused into the emerald, the white wove through their depths, and together they formed a single unified current that shone faintly with a dark greenish-black hue—the same tone as Han Chen's own spiritual energy.
The Heavenly Eye's pupil pulsed a final time, sending a faint resonance through his being as the Eye slowly began to fade, retreating back into the depths of his sea of consciousness.
When the echo vanished, the whirlpool in his upper dantian stabilized fully, its motion becoming smooth and powerful. The tri‑color had collapsed into unity—greenish‑black energy spinning at its center like liquid darkness touched by jade light.
The energy began condensing rapidly, compressing tighter and tighter until, at last—Tchhn—It solidified. Where once the Soul Bead had resided, now floated a new core—a single greenish‑black bead, glossy and dense, emanating faint ripples of divine weight.
A modified Soul Bead.
The modified soul bead—a concept not born in the age of cultivators, but written long before cultivation itself began.
Its origin was first recorded in one of the oldest texts known to exist :
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Yuan Zu drifted in the quiet void, fresh echoes of Law still humming in the nothingness around him.
He raised his hand, slow and thoughtful, and for a moment, all of existence seemed to hesitate. A gentle glow rose from his form—a luminosity without source, as if the cosmos felt awe at its own reflection.
The light, once wavering and ethereal, gathered itself, drawing tighter and tighter until his figure grew solid. Where there had been only infinite glimmers, flesh emerged: tanned brown and warm against the chill of emptiness.
Yuan Zu blinked. Gold returned to his eyes, a quiet intensity that held all the world's beginnings and ends. His hair, so loose that it drifted like the Milky Way, did not change color; each strand glittered, woven from the memory of countless vanished stars.
He touched his brow, and beneath his gentle fingers shimmered a mark—a tattoo of nine Great Stars, each alive with galaxies, burning in silence. They circled slowly, a crown of eternity tracing his destiny.
Cloth and shadow curled around his body, coiling from nothingness. In a heartbeat, they became a robe—golden along the seams, black as the ancient void at the core. It wrapped him in solemn majesty, fitting for a child born of cosmic error.
His boots appeared next, gleaming with a silvery sheen, faintly echoing distant, forgotten moons.
A sensation prickled at his temples. He frowned, feeling a strange heaviness. With a sound—crk—two horns grew and curled from either side of his brow, formed from pure, dark void, anchoring him between past and future. His ears stretched longer, sharp and keen, tuned to a silence beyond words.
His hair fell around his shoulders until, with a small motion and a sudden pulse of starlight—whoosh—it gathered and bound itself atop his head. There shimmered a silver hairpiece, simple yet exquisite, the kind worn by ancient sages of distant worlds.
He reached up, fingertips brushing the cold metal."So this is what it means to exist," Yuan Zu whispered, voice small but unafraid.
The void did not answer, but the shape of things had changed forever. He stood—no longer a formless dream, not yet a legend of flesh—but the bridge between a cosmos that wept for its rivers, and a cosmos waiting to be born.
...
The vast silence lingered after Yuan Zu's transformation, broken only by the shimmer of his golden-black robes and the subtle glow from his boots. The Laws stood in awe, their forms flickering between certainty and reverence.
The Law of Life suddenly spoke, voice light and clear. "Lord, you are looking… fabulous." A gentle smile played at the edge of its form, the praise echoing with a simple, innocent warmth.
Yuan Zu nodded, his gaze sweeping the gathering. With a calm motion, he lifted his hand and pointed into the void, eyes landing on two waiting specters. "You both—come here," he said.
At his command, two incarnations surged forward with a sound—whoosh—drawn by the authority woven into his words. One was the Law of Creation, pulsing with possibility; the other was the Law of Existence, steady as bedrock and just as ancient. "Reveal your true forms," Yuan Zu ordered, voice low, resonating like distant thunder.
Both incarnations bowed, then transformed. Their figures twisted and unraveled until, with a sudden burst of starlight—crk—each revealed their essence. The Law of Creation blazed into the word "CREATION", every letter forged from infinite luminous threads—each thread a law, each stroke a promise of worlds to come.
Beside it, the Law of Existence manifested as "EXISTENCE" : the word itself vast and impossible, woven from the fabric of reality itself. Each character shimmered, alive with the strength of cosmic permanence—each line a record of all being.
Yuan Zu's eyes glinted. He raised both hands, palms outstretched—his body radiating with the memory of the River and the command of undivided fate. The words "CREATION" and "EXISTENCE" drifted toward his grasp.
He closed his fists. BOOM!!! The impact was neither light nor sound—it was both and more. The words collided in the heart of the void, and a force erupted, larger than all worlds, so vast the universe itself shuddered. Matter and energy spilled from the core—waves of power rolling outward, racing to fill the endless blankness.
Amid the detonation, Yuan Zu stood near the origin. Power surged around him in a dance too grand for imagination to grasp, yet he remained untouched—unburned and unbroken—for wherever the beginning was, it was always him. The swirling chaos of birth and form rushed forth, and the endless void called it : THE DAWN.
...
That scripture, described the formation of the cosmos—how, after millions of years after 'THE DAWN' of existence, the chaotic void had begun to settle. From the ruins of the River of Time, the first traces of stability appeared.
The scattered remnants of chaos condensed into matter, and life began to take form across all corners of the cosmos. It was written that every lifeform born during that era—whether beast, spirit, or being of light—carried in its veins the faintest trace of Yuan Zu's blood.
For Yuan Zu was not a god, but the first being to attain consciousness among primordial chaos. It was through his existence that form, order, and the concept of life itself found meaning.
Yet in the heart of that legend, there was one tale often skipped, shrouded in mystery even among celestial scholars—the story of Yuan Zu's ten children. It was said that when Yuan Zu reached the height of creation, he had extracted ten drops of his own blood essence and used them to fashion ten lifeforms.
Each drop became a different being, infused with a distinct law drawn from Yuan Zu's understanding of the cosmos.
These ten lifeforms would, in eras to come, become the ancestors of the ten most powerful races in the cosmos.
But his seventh child was an exception. Unlike the others—each radiant with power, spiritual energy, and natural mastery over law—the seventh was born fragile. A mortal at birth. She was weak of flesh and spirit, her vitality expiring almost as quickly as it appeared.
Even worse, Yuan Zu saw there was no spiritual energy within her at all. Where her soul should have been, there was only emptiness—a small, flickering bead of consciousness barely sustaining life, it was the Soul-Bead.
Yuan Zu frowned. His power could move stars and command reality, yet the state of his seventh child confounded him. For all the laws he held command over, none could heal this defect.
Then, as if understanding his concern, the Law of Life itself manifested before him—an embodiment of eternal renewal. It bowed before Yuan Zu, speaking with a voice that vibrated through the boundaries of time."Lord Yuan Zu," the Law said, "if you seek to stabilize her essence, I fear I cannot mend what was never there. The child is not unstable—she is unprecedented. Her being lacks spiritual energy entirely, yet she carries a soul bead rather than a true soul. I have seen neither flaw nor blessing of this kind before. It may be a phenomenon born from your own essence."
Yuan Zu listened silently, his golden eyes dimmed in thought. The Law continued, its tone weighty."If you wish to strengthen her, you must not rebuild what is broken—for nothing here is broken. Instead, you must strengthen what already exists. Form is meaningless if foundation is hollow. To anchor her consciousness, you must condense the Law of Soul within an insignificant lifeform—perhaps a Gu worm. Then, allow her to refine that lifeform. Let its essence fortify what little consciousness exists within the bead."
"And what of her dantian?" Yuan Zu asked. "Without the ability to hold energy, she cannot live long."
"For that," the Law of Life replied gently, "grant her the Law of Spiritual Energy—the essence of vitality, not the element of power. Through it, her dantian will awaken. It will not fill with the usual currents of qi, but it will grow—a vessel adapted to her new nature."
Yuan Zu nodded once. Then, with his will, he condensed the Law of Soul into a Gu worm—one so small and simple it existed as a single pulse of energy wrapped in life's shell. That worm became the vessel of the Law of Soul itself. He gave it to his child.
And when she refined it, something unprecedented occurred. The worm dissolved completely within her spirit. Its essence fused with the faint bead of consciousness in her upper dantian. The soul bead pulsed once. Then twice. And slowly, it changed shape.
It developed structure and layers. The faint light within grew stable, no longer flickering but glowing softly like a heart learning to beat for the first time. Thus the 'MODIFIED SOUL BEAD' was born—the first of its kind, an advancement upon the natural soul structure of life.
Through this refinement, the seventh child gained stability. Her soul, weak yet indestructible, became stronger with each breath. Her dantian bloomed open under the guidance of the Law of Spiritual Energy. In time, she awakened her innate potential—a hybrid existence between mortality and divinity.
Yuan Zu, watching her transformation, was moved deeply. It was then he understood something profound—the path to true balance lay not only in creation, but in the refinement of imperfection.
He was so inspired by the Law of Life's idea that he rewrote a rule into the foundation of all existence. From that day onward, those who wished to utilize the Laws directly would have to refine life itself that was born from those Laws—vessels of their essence.
Entities like the Life Gu—creatures born from the Law of Life but without awakened consciousness—became the bridges between life and law.
Over time, as the years grew into eternity, this truth was lost to history. But, Legends of Yuan Zu retained the record of that moment—the origin of soul evolution, the first instance when imperfection became strength, and when existence itself began to branch toward enlightenment.
---
Han Chen's eyes snapped open, pupils glowing faintly before returning to black.
His breath escaped in one slow exhale, sweat falling from his face onto the scorched grass below. "I succeeded," he whispered hoarsely.
He could feel it—the difference. His soul was ten times stronger than before, his consciousness sharper, the world around him clearer.
And deep within, resting silently, the Heavenly Eye pulsed once, as if acknowledging the success.
The Shadow Bead of Soul Refinement—meant for cultivators at the peak of the world—had fused completely with his spirit.
-----TO BE CONTINUED-----