The congee tasted like despair. Thin, watery, with a few grains of rice scattered through it as if by accident. Long Wei swallowed another mouthful, the bland warmth doing little to chase away the chill of the morning. Six years. Six years of this gruel, this hovel, this life clinging to the dirt of Holy Soul Village like a stubborn weed.
He hated it. It was a specific, pointed hatred, reserved for things that offended the very concept of substance. Like this congee. A proper meal should have texture, flavour, a purpose. This was just... wet.
His eyes, a shade too dark and deep for a six-year-old, traced the intricate web of cracks in his earthenware bowl. A compulsion. He saw the world in fault lines, in the splits in the wooden door frame, the fissures in the packed-earth floor, the branching veins on the back of Old Jack’s hands. A world of things waiting to break.
Today, the world would break his way.
“Wei,” Old Jack’s voice was a familiar, gentle rumble. “Done? Spirit Master Su Yuntao will be at the Spirit Hall soon. Can’t be late.”
Long Wei nodded, placing the bowl down with a quiet click. He didn't need the reminder. He’d counted down every single day for the past 2,190 days. He was a man trapped in a child’s body, a ghost with a future he had already read. He knew about the arrogant ‘Blind Douluo’ Su Yuntao. He knew about the boy with a useless spirit and innate full soul power who would arrive with his drunken father any day now.
He dreamed of slaughtering gods. The other children, a gaggle of runny noses and patched clothes, dreamed of sickles and hoes that might make their parents' lives easier. The gulf between them felt as wide as the sea.
At the center of the village stood the largest wooden building, the Spirit Hall. Inside, Su Yuntao was exactly as the story described him. Proud, wolf-like, radiating the faint pressure of a Spirit Grandmaster. He wore the white robes of Spirit Hall, marked with the simple crest over his heart. He looked over the line of nervous children with an air of profound boredom.
"I am Su Yuntao, a level twenty-six Spirit Grandmaster," he announced, his voice carrying an edge that demanded silence. "I will be your guide for today's awakening. Now, line up. Let's get this over with."
One by one, the children stepped forward. A blue-glowing crystal ball, a flurry of light, and the inevitable disappointment. A sickle. A hoe. A blue silver grass. Utterly common, utterly useless. Not a single trace of soul power among them. Su Yuntao's impatience grew with each failure, his expression souring.
Long Wei stood last in line, his small frame taut with anticipation. This was the first pivot. The first lie upon which his entire empire would be built. He was not here to be discovered. He was here to perform.
"Next," Su Yuntao barked, not even bothering to look at him.
Long Wei stepped into the circle of six black stones. He held his breath, placing his hand on the cool, black crystal as instructed. He closed his eyes, not out of nervousness, but to focus. He knew what was coming. Two souls, bound to his. One, a legacy of cosmic happenstance. The other, a lineage of thunder and tyranny.
Soul power flooded from Su Yuntao into the formation. A warm current, gentle at first, then insistent. It probed, it searched, and then it found.
It found the dragon first.
A surge of power so violent it threatened to tear his soul from his body. It was not a spirit; it was a cataclysm. A torrent of violet-gold lightning, thick with the scent of ozone and the ancient, primal arrogance of a king. A roar echoed, not in the hall, but inside the cage of his ribs, a desperate, tyrannical beast demanding to be unleashed. For a terrifying second, Long Wei felt his own consciousness drowning, subsumed by an instinct to dominate, to shatter, to sunder the heavens.
*No.*
With the force of a will forged across two lifetimes, he slammed a mental door on the raging power. He wrestled the dragon, shoving it back into the deepest abyss of his soul. He could feel it thrashing, clawing at the walls of its cage, its fury a physical pressure behind his eyes.
He let the other one out.
The golden light erupting from the formation was brilliant, but it lacked the violet terror of the dragon. Instead of a roar, there was only silence. A deep, profound stillness.
"A tool spirit?" Su Yuntao sounded mildly curious, leaning forward for the first time.
Long Wei opened his eyes. They were no longer the simple dark brown of a village boy. In the center of his right pupil, a second, vertical slit of purest gold had opened, giving him an unnervingly focused, predatory gaze. His left eye mirrored it. The Spirit Eyes. A subtle, powerful, and most importantly, *underestimated* martial soul. Perfect.
Su Yuntao grunted, a flicker of interest dying as quickly as it came. "Another useless tool spirit. Fine. Test your soul power."
Long Wei reached out his other hand, the one not clenched into a white-knuckled fist at his side. He had felt the dragon's rage, but he had also felt its power settle within him, a vast, waiting reservoir. He touched the blue crystal ball.
It did not just glow. It exploded with light. Dazzling, brilliant, blinding light that filled the entire hall, chasing every shadow from the corners. It was a luminescence so pure and intense it forced Su Yuntao to shield his own eyes.
"This... This is... Innate full soul power?" Su Yuntao snatched the ball away, his voice cracking with disbelief. He stared from the incandescent orb to the boy with the strange eyes. "Innate full soul power... for a useless tool spirit?" The words were a lament, a curse upon the unfairness of the gods. A peerless gift wasted on a spirit with no obvious offensive capability.
"What a pity," he finally breathed, shaking his head. "What a complete and utter waste."
Long Wei kept his face a perfect mask of childish confusion, but inside, he smiled. The misdirection had worked flawlessly. Su Yuntao saw a tragic squandering of talent. Long Wei saw the perfect cover. No one would look twice at a boy with a weak surveillance spirit, no matter his innate talent. He would be overlooked. Ignored. Forgotten.
And in the shadows they left him in, he would grow.
"Here," Su Yuntao scribbled hastily on a piece of parchment, his frustration clear in the sharp strokes of his pen. "This is a recommendation for the Nuoding Junior Spirit Academy. With innate full soul power, you meet the standard. Go there. Perhaps you can become a support-type Spirit Master. A scout, maybe." He thrust the paper at Long Wei without another glance, already packing his crystals, eager to leave this village of disappointments behind.
Old Jack was ecstatic, babbling about the village’s first Spirit Master in a hundred years. The other villagers stared with a mixture of awe and envy. Su Yuntao strode out of the hall, his duty done, his disgust barely concealed.
Long Wei ignored them all. He stood alone in the center of the hall, the precious recommendation in his right hand. A ticket to the wider world. A key.
But it wasn't the most important thing he was holding.
Slowly, carefully, he uncurled his left fist. His knuckles ached from the pressure. His palm was slick with sweat. Resting in the center of it, an object that should not exist.
It was a single dragon scale, no bigger than his thumbnail.
It was deep, nightshade violet, edged with a filigree of gold that seemed to drink the light. A hairline crack ran down its center, a miniature fault line marring its perfection. It felt cool and impossibly solid against his skin.
This was wrong. This defied all logic of the Douluo Continent he knew. Martial souls were manifestations of energy. They didn't leave behind physical relics upon awakening. They didn't drop pieces of themselves into the real world.
He felt the untamed power of the Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon, still simmering deep within him, a caged star. But this scale... this was something else. A variable he had not, could not, have accounted for. His meticulously constructed plan, his knowledge of the future, felt suddenly fragile.
He looked from the simple paper in his right hand to the impossible scale in his left. One was the path he had planned. The other was a question without an answer. His reincarnation was not just a second chance. It was a secret he didn't fully understand himself.