Archive - 001

Chapter 001 - Prologue

Nine Universes existed since time immemorial, each filled billions upon billions of worlds, there were so many it was impossible to count them.

These worlds though were separated between the lower realm and the upper realm, also known as the Mortal Realm and the Divine Realm. And the Nine Universes were separated by the very Laws that governed them, the Origin Law.

Only beings with near god-like powers could cross them forcefully. Though there were secret passages between the Universes for those lucky enough to find them.

In one of these Universes in the Mortal Realm, in a low-level world called Blue Sky Planet, an event took place. An event, so rare that only a twist of fate itself could be responsible for it.

On the outer edges of the massive Detra continent, where the spiritual energy was comparatively weak and less dense, there was a remote place known as the Wildernis.

Forest covered the land as far as the eyes could see, with the occasional smoke rising from the small and big tribes in the region. A massive mountain range was to the South, an enormous lake to the West, the ocean to the East, and fertile grassland to the North.

In one of these small tribes, which was barely a thousand people strong, a youth lay in his small tent on the edges of the small town. His complexion looked sickly pale and purple veins could be seen extending from a small wound on his forearm.

It seemed he was poisoned fatally, though none of the surrounding tribesmen had noticed the young man's fate just yet.

As it was nighttime, it wasn't too surprising that no one would find the silence from his tent suspicious. The youth had also always been a bit of a loner, so no one really was close enough with him to take an interest in what he was up to.

A moment later the youth drew his last breath, as the poison reached his heart. It was also that moment a soul, that was supposed to return to the Origin after its original body's death appeared in the void next to the body and directly latched onto the now soulless body.

Fusing with the remnants of the newly departed soul, it managed to integrate into its new body without any problems, something that should have been impossible for a mortal soul like it.

Even stranger though was that its connection to the void and the Origin, which it had gained after its original body's death, wasn't broken by this act, but transformed fundamentally, giving the soul access to the memories of the Origin itself – the Archive.

The integration with the body also unlocked the soul's cultivation potential, something that had been sealed before. On instinct alone, the soul used its unlocked soul force to expel the poison from its body.

…

Slowly waking up and opening his eyes, Tai shook his head in obvious confusion.

"What the hell happened to me... I died. I clearly remember leaping off the skyscraper, so how the hell am I alive?... What are all these memories? Fang, that's the name of this body's previous owner? Blue Sky Planet? Wildernis? Cultivation?... Just what the hell happened to me after I died ... ?"

Tai's thoughts were incredibly muddled and though he remembered his previous life, he suddenly had bits and pieces of memories from a whole different life inside his head. There was also a strange throbbing at the back of his mind, he instinctively knew that it was the Archive – the memory bank of all Nine Universes.

It took him a few minutes to sort out his new memories and get a grasp of his current situation.

Fang, the name of this body's previous owner, was a thirteen-year-old boy that lived in a small tribe in the Wildernis, named Red Wolf Tribe. The Wildernis was an enormous jungle at the edge of the Detra Continent and this world's society was entirely established around cultivation and personal strength.

Fang himself had barely any cultivation to speak of, but as he was an orphan, he still had to risk going hunting in the forest full of vicious beasts just to survive.

Being an orphan wasn't too uncommon, as not only was the forest full of strong beasts, but the tribes in the Wildernis knew no peace whatsoever. They had small skirmishes all year round, while every now and then they launched large-scale invasions into the territories of other tribes.

Both his parents had died during an attack by a rival tribe when he was only five years old.

Fang had been raised by the tribe until he had become twelve years old before he had been given a tent and a dagger by the tribe. Since then, it had been expected of him to take care of himself.

The Red Wolf Tribe, like the rest of the Wildernis, had no use for the weak. If you couldn't take care of yourself, then nobody else would.

Fang had been bitten by some weak unranked snake-type beast, which didn't do much damage. Sadly though the boy had been too stupid to notice his poisoned state and died shortly after.

Relatively uninteresting thus far in Tai's opinion, but the thing that was the most intriguing for him was the information about cultivation.

Fang himself had been an unimportant tribesman and had only received a few short lessons about cultivation and as he had shown no impressive talent, he had not learned anything substantial. Well, besides the most basic cultivation technique the tribe had.

The Archive Tai possessed, however, was different. It was the collective memory of the Nine Universes and the knowledge it contained was simply immeasurable, which of course included cultivation.

From it, Tai had with a slight prompt from his mind, received all that was to know about cultivation.

There basically existed three paths of cultivation: Body Transformation, Energy Gathering, and Soul Forging.

Every path had different steps and realms with the Soul Forging being the most mysterious and difficult to advance in.

The body and energy system though started with the same fundamental steps, which were: Skin Transformation, Flesh transformation, Bone Transformation, Organ Transformation, and Meridian Transformation.

These stages were necessary to prepare the body for the intake of large quantities of spiritual energy, which was a type of energy present everywhere in the Nine Universes. It was the energy that was used for cultivating all three paths.

Fang had only been at the Skin Transformation stage and even then he was only at the very basic phase of this stage. Not only was Fang's talent relatively subpar, but he was also not the smartest of the bunch.

Generally, talent in the Mortal Realms was measured with the inspection of one's spirit.

Everyone's spirit was either an object or animal born in one's Sea of Consciousness and part of one's soul, at least that was the case for an overwhelming part of the population.

There were nine ranks to classify the potential of a spirit. Almost every mortal is born with an unranked spirit, meaning their spirit was similar to an ordinary animal or object. Only a few gifted were born with ranked spirits. Higher-ranked spirits only appeared after numerous generations, and only when both parents had always been in the possession of ranked spirits, and even then there was no guarantee. Though there were those rare singular events when someone was born with a higher-ranked spirit.

The Mortal Realm basically never saw people with a spirit rank over two or three, with rank four being incredibly rare to appear.

Fang's spirit had been a normal unranked iron blade, which had given him a bit of an affinity and talent when it came to wielding a blade. As the spirit was part of the soul, Fang's death resulted in his spirit also disappearing, though Tai had his own spirit like every soul did.

Retracting his focus into his own mind, he saw a small red fox floating above his Sea of Consciousness - it was a normal unranked fox spirit.

Tai wasn't disappointed in the slightest, as the Archive clearly stated that talent was a very complex topic and the spirit was only a small part of that. He also had knowledge and techniques pouring into his mind, that could be used to change the innate potential of one's spirit. These secret methods were the absolute peak of techniques and were basically completely extinct in all Nine Universes at the current time.

“So I transmigrated after my suicide... It seems this is my chance at a life guided by nothing other than complete freedom. Though to keep this freedom it seems I have to attain an incredible amount of strength and power...”

Tai had jumped off a skyscraper in his last life, as he had no longer been able to endure the restrictions placed on him by society. He had just wanted to live his life in peace and enjoy his freedom. Sadly the modern society he had lived in, had made that absolutely impossible.

You couldn't feed yourself without work, and without being forced into your place in society you couldn't work, and would therefore most likely starve. It was a choice between living in a society that oppressed and restricted individualism, or death. It was as simple as that.

At one point he hadn't been able to take this oppression anymore and had simply jumped off his workplace building's rooftop. The several seconds of freefall had been the freest he had felt in his whole life. His death had been a quick and painless one, which was rather lucky. Though not unexpected as he had jumped from a building several dozen stories high.

This world was different. Cultivation made it different. There was no society or government that ruled all of humanity in this world. The personal strength of its inhabitants made it impossible to unite them and make them follow the rules and laws of a bunch of idiotic politicians.

This was a world full of true powerhouses that struggled for supremacy against one another. Countless sects, clans, and kingdoms called this planet their home, with cultivators being the foundation these organizations and institutions relied on. Only with a powerful figure in their ranks could they compete with powers of the same level.

Though one thing was brutally clear to Tai, a fact that made his eyes shine and his heart soar.

If you had enough strength, then you could be absolutely free.

How could his will to live not be reignited with this simple yet incredible possibility that had been presented to him? His whole life he had searched for true freedom and now he had found his path in his afterlife, it was an ironic yet exhilarating fact to acknowledge.

With the Archive's help, he had all the cultivation techniques he would ever need, while at the same time he knew the location of each treasure and resource he could possibly need on his path to power. And all that with a simple thought in his mind.

Examining his small tent and himself, he took note of his simple living conditions. His belongings were very meager, only amounting to the tent itself, a low-quality curved iron blade, two sets of clothes with the one he wore being one of them, some dried meat, two water skins, some cutlery, a bedroll, a small dagger, three small unranked beast cores, the corpse of the unranked snake-beast that had bitten him, and a small bag to fit all his belongings into.

One would assume this meager amount of wealth would put a damper on Tai's mood but on the contrary. This was all his. If he wanted to pack up and leave right this moment he could. Wasn't that the purest form of freedom? Being able to come and go as he pleased?

One had to mention that the tribes in the Wildernis didn't stay together because they had some deep bonds between them, but simply because it was too dangerous for ordinary people to live alone in the wild.

Tai wasn't stupid, in fact, he was very intelligent. He knew that with his current weak strength, he would likely die in the span of a few days, should he leave the tribe right now. He planned to stay here and enjoy the relative safety of the tribe until his personal strength allowed him to roam freely through the Wildernis.

Even though the Archive could give him accurate information about his surroundings at any point in time, it would be of no use if he was too weak to react in accordance with that knowledge.

A perfect example of this would be a beast tide. The Archive could give him knowledge about any beast tides occurring on the whole planet, but if one of these tides was in front of him right now, he still wouldn't be able to flee.

Knowledge was only power when one knew how, and was able, to use it.