My children are suffering. Hate is festering in their souls. They look the same, struggle through the same worldly matters throughout their lives, and yet they kill each other over borders, over religions, over as little as a few coins.

  I see that wars have become unforgiving. War prisoners are only more mouths to feed, and armies wipe out entire villages from the face of the earth.

  Women, children, and the elderly are all brutally murdered, and sometimes that is not their only fate before their eventual death.

  Soldiers who have been away from their families for years on end rape and kill many, while their commanders look on with pride at the carnage their armies have wrought.

  Entire bloodlines are extinguished, facing their end in these wars.

  Rulers steal from their subjects. They fill their bellies with the hard work of their people, living extravagantly, while the poor eat barely enough bread to stave off the hunger, weighed down by taxes that make them slaves to their fates.

  Parents give their children away to whoever can feed them or leave them on the steps of temples for the monks to take in.

  That doesn’t always happen, because even their charity is conditional; they only give it when they’re short on servants for the temple. Servants who will take care of their livestock or their farms, which feed the monks to obesity while the masses starve.

  Need a prayer? Pay.

  Need a blessing? Pay.

  Need medicine? Pay.

  Other children have no choice but to work from a very young age. Their families push them out into the world to feed themselves with what little their labor will get them, abused in a work environment unfit for frail little kids.

  The horrors that exist in the world are many.

  The cultivators ignore the public and focus only on their reach for immortality and their desire to defy the heavens, as if the heavens were their mortal enemy!

  If not for the accidents that occur every few years, people would think they were myths.

  Many already believe they’re a myth, until their fights with each other inevitably spill into the mundane world and their vast power shocks people.

  The cultivators lock themselves away in their sects atop mountains, not deigning to lower themselves to the level of mortals, even forgetting their own families.

  Many human lives are lost before they’ve enjoyed a full life.

  It breaks my heart. How did it all come to this? How can I stop what I now see as inevitable?

  Thus spoke the goddess, Karma. In a place unreachable by humans—not even by most of the ascended cultivators, as rare as they were—she hovered, overlooking our world. She was there at the start, she will be there at the end of it all, and she bore witness to how it all went horribly wrong.

  * * *

  The night was sharp with cold. A young man walked briskly, bundled in two outer robes above his work clothes to block the cold from piercing further into his bones. Unfortunately, they did nothing to help.

  He was climbing the slope of the mountain next to his small village.

  The villagers claimed that the mountain protected their village, but the young man couldn’t think similarly, especially when the cold was trying to kill him.

  The earth around him was buried in snow. All the trees were bare as far as the eye could see through the falling snow, and he was desperately clutching the robes to his body, trying hard to prevent the shivering from controlling him and making it feel even worse.

  A while ago, a doctor had been at his house to check on his sick mother, whose condition had worsened. She needed Vitality Grass, which grew halfway up the mountain, but the doctor had run out, and it was the only way to save her.

  They couldn’t wait until morning, and even then, they weren’t sure if a peddler or a merchant caravan would pass by the village.

  The young man had no other choice. His mother had supported him all her life.

  His father had left them when he was young, and she’d taken care of him ever since, washing clothes for the rich to pay for their needs.

  When he became able, she’d taken over all the house chores while he struggled to work as a water carrier by day and studied at night to become a scholar.

  He couldn’t bear to lose her. He’d have no one else in his life.

  His name was Seph.

  He was eighteen years of age and five feet eight inches tall. His skin was the color of sand, and he kept his black hair short because of his occupation, unlike other aspiring scholars. After all, no one wanted to drink water that had dangling hair in it.

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  He had a powerful upper body from carrying water all day. His pupils were black, and it was easy to tell he was very intelligent by looking at them.

  Some would call it a good foundation for a martial artist, but he had never aspired to be one. So far, he had achieved everything he had set out to do in life, even though it wasn’t much, but it all hung in the balance now.

  His task was dangerous, but he was determined to give it his all.

  Seph’s thoughts raced as he struggled upwards. He knew he had to find the herb and get back to his mother. Mother... I am coming for you... I swear... I’ll save you...

  Somehow, he had reached halfway up the mountain, but the snow began falling even more intensely, and he couldn’t see the herb anywhere around him. His body was already on the verge of freezing.

  Seph couldn’t press on farther, so he started looking for shelter. He strained his eyes to look around, only to find a single dark tree.

  The tree was majestic, bigger than any he had seen coming up this mountain, and it wasn’t covered with snow at all. Right in its center was a big cavity, enough to shelter a grown man. Its wood looked very sturdy, and it had a faint, dark glow surrounding it.

  By this point, Seph’s brain was nearly frozen, and he couldn’t do much thinking. He completely disregarded the mysterious glow coming off the tree.

  He had to take cover in the man-shaped cavity and try to get warmer. The blizzard would pass, and the visibility would increase so he could continue his search for the herb.

  Seph stood inside the cavity with his back to the tree, both his arms hugging his body while he rubbed himself to get warmer.

  He became conscious of his hunger when he saw a black fruit of some kind dangling from the tree.

  He eyed the fruit, trying to figure out its name, but it didn’t look like any fruit he had seen before. He kept bouncing the idea around in his head while waiting for his body to get warmer. Should he eat that fruit or not?

  He hadn’t eaten many fruits in his life, which made his stomach growl more. It didn’t help that he hadn’t had dinner that night, either.

  After a while, Seph felt warmer and walked closer to the fruit. Upon closer inspection, it looked like a black peach hanging from the tree.

  Drool began dripping down the side of his mouth.

  He tried to think logically. He couldn’t eat that weird peach. He had never seen or heard of a black peach before. What if it was dangerous? What if it was poisonous?

  In the end, his stomach won the conversation.

  He reached for the black peach and plucked it from the tree, bringing it closer to his mouth. Before he could take a bite, however, he was interrupted by yelling.

  “It’s one of them!”

  “Get him fast!”

  At that moment, a stone the size of a watermelon shot towards Seph and hit him squarely in the chest.

  He flew back with force, hitting the cavity. He slumped to the ground. Mother... I was so close. I wanted to save you.

  His body went limp.

  * * *

  Seph woke up a little while later gasping for air, his eyes wide open in horror. His chest, crushed from the force of the blow, throbbed with pain, but nothing was the same anymore.

  He found himself surrounded by loud shouting, explosions, and strange, colorful lights flying all around.

  He rubbed his eyes, trying to focus his blurry vision, but it did nothing to help.

  The young man looked at his hands after rubbing his eyes. His hands were blue! Why are my hands blue? Am I that cold?

  He touched his face to check his temperature, only to realize he was cold. He was so cold.

  He was still sprawled on the ground, his back supported by the cavity of the tree. The rock that had struck him was beside him in the clearing, and the black peach was inside the mangled mess that was his chest.

  Seph stopped focusing on himself and watched what was happening on the slope in front of and above him. Yes, above him—there were people floating in the air.

  Stray fireballs and iceballs flew in from the left, along with what looked like windblades and big, round rocks hurled at extreme speeds.

  No way. No freaking way. Cultivators are fighting in front of my eyes. Why did I have to get caught up in this? How am I even alive after the one that hit me?

  He looked to his right to see who the target of these attacks was and saw people—if they could even be called that. They looked like they had just crawled out of a grave after spending a good chunk of time down there.

  Their appearances varied, but they mostly wore long, flowing uniform robes in three different colors. Some looked completely drained of color, their skin pale blue, deathly white, or even pasty gray.

  Seph’s heart froze. Wait a minute! No. Please, no!

  He looked back at his blue hands and lifted his sleeves. His arm was blue. He peeked at his horrendously damaged chest. Also blue, with a dark shade of red, which was a welcome diversity at that point.

  He started panicking internally—he didn’t want to grab the attention of the warring beasts in front of him. Have I become like them? No, it can’t be. I must be extremely cold, that’s all!

  The battle raged on in front of him. The blue-skinned people attacked with black fires and green lumps of something that sizzled the ground wherever it fell. Some had protruding bones covering different parts of their bodies, while others sent energy waves flying with every slash of their swords.

  Balls of light flew from the side of the cultivators, and shadowy balls flew from the opposite direction.

  It was madness, but the battle was waning. The cultivators were retreating, even though Seph couldn’t see any real casualties among their numbers. Soon, only the pale blue people remained.

  Once the battle was over, one of the pale men floated towards Seph. He was tall, about five feet eleven inches, with a slim but strong body. He had a full head of white hair—though he only looked to be around forty—and cold, piercing blue eyes that looked smaller than normal.

  Before today, Seph had never seen anyone float in the air like that, and even though he had seen too many do it in this battle, they were far away enough that he could pretend it was an illusion. Now, however, he could see it clear as day. As the man came closer, his skin turned out not to be pale blue but grayish black.

  He wore a long black coat with a high collar and had his arms folded across his chest.

  “Another poor soul with a purpose who died before his time. I’m afraid we were too late to save you,” the man said with pity.

  Seph looked around at first to make sure he was the target of the talking man. He gulped. “What do you mean by ‘died’? I am still alive! And what do you mean you were too late to save me?!” He looked at the man, wide-eyed in complete horror.

  “Yes, my child. You died. It seems the cultivators were out here looking for us when they saw you and thought you were a yin disciple, and they resolved to cut your unholy life short. That’s the danger we face whenever we venture outside our caves, after all,” the man answered, pain lacing his voice at the thought of what his kin must face whenever they came face-to-face with cultivators.

  Seph said frantically, “You must be mistaking me for someone else, My Lord. I am not a yin disciple. I don’t even know what that means, I swear! Plus, I am still alive. I’m just pale from the cold!” Seph was half-relieved, thinking they had gotten the wrong guy and would leave him alone.

  The man said with finality, “Son, you’re a yin disciple now, no doubt about it. You must have had a strong desire when you died. That brought you back as one of us.”

  “But I...” Seph never finished his sentence. His eyes scanned over the yin disciples in front of him, who looked like walking corpses, and it suddenly occurred to him that the blow to his chest must have been severe enough to halt his heart.

  Italics throughout the novel, I'll not always say He thought.

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