I am eighty years old, the lowest-ranking spirit beast caretaker in the Beast Taming Sect, with only five years left to live. One day, the old green-horned deer who had been my sole companion died in my arms. Holding its still-warm body, I had my first thought of defying fate.
Beneath the White Bone Abyss, I found a glassy pearl. The instant my blood touched it, it sank into my dried-up dantian. My all-attribute spiritual roots awakened, and I discovered I could absorb the essence of spirit beasts and turn it into spiritual energy, spirit stones, and pills. After refining my first life-extending pill, my flesh and blood transformed, and I returned to my youth.
From then on, I walked a path no one had ever taken. Across the vast lands of the Nine Provinces, I searched for the nine ancient cauldrons. With each cauldron I found, a new landscape took shape inside the glassy pearl. I tamed spirit beasts of the nine attributes: metal, wood, water, fire, earth, ice, wind, lightning, and darkness. But I could never find light. They said I was dreaming: spirit beasts of the light attribute had vanished from the world a million years ago.
This path was lined with thorns. My closest friend betrayed me; the woman I loved bled before my eyes. A demonic overlord wanted my soul and body destroyed, while the leader of the righteous path condemned me for defying convention. I have held the hands of twelve women: gentle immortals and cold, alluring demonesses alike. They once stood against me, but in the end, they were willing to betray the whole world for my sake.
When the nine cauldrons were gathered and the world within the glassy pearl was complete, a spirit beast of light was born in the newly formed realm. The gates to the Immortal Realm opened, and immortal light descended to crown me. Cultivators across the heavens bowed their heads, congratulating me on my imminent ascension to the supreme immortal throne.
But I turned away and shattered the glassy pearl with my own hands, in front of everyone.
“The road to immortality is cold and lonely. I would rather...”
“Become the Heavenly Dao with this body, and forge the mortal world with this heart.”
That day, the old pearl broke apart and a new realm opened. I am Song Ling, once an eighty-year-old servant, now the Lord of Creation.
