Chapter 224: Origins Relived: When the Stars Went Dark
The world had gone pitch black—dark, warm, and utterly encompassing, a boundless ocean of nothingness cradling the spark of new life.
'Where am I?'
His mind struggled to process what was happening. One moment he had been in his cottage, perfecting the First Layer of the Still Water Calibration Art. The next—
'That's right. I collapsed from exhaustion.'
The realization came slowly, followed by a wave of crystalline clarity. He could feel it now—his memories, long buried or forgotten, snapping into view with perfect, photographic detail.
'The technique… it's far more powerful than I imagined.'
He tried to move, but there was only gentle resistance. A warm, liquid embrace surrounded him completely. No pain. No sound except for a powerful, steady heartbeat that pulsed through everything like the drum of creation itself.
'Did I reincarnate?'
'No.' He dismissed the thought almost immediately, a faint sense of wonder blooming in its place. 'This is my earliest memory in this world… being relived through a dream.'
With that understanding, Su Tianhao fell silent.
He didn't think anymore.
He simply felt.
Since the heavens had granted him this rare chance to experience the beginning of his life once more, he would savor every sensation—every subtle shift, every quiet moment of existence before the world intruded with all its noise and cruelty.
Warmth. Safety. The distant, muffled rhythm of his mother's heartbeat. A faint, soothing voice that occasionally filtered through the liquid veil—soft, melodic, filled with love and quiet strength.
Mother.
Another voice came less often. Deeper. Steadier. Carrying a quiet authority that made the warm sea around him feel even more secure.
Father.
Time had no meaning here. There were only feelings. The slow, rhythmic sway of his world. The gentle flow of nourishment. The growing awareness that something vast and ancient stirred within his tiny form—a quiet, coiled power resting in his blood, patient and immense.
Su Tianhao remained still, immersed in the pure sensation of simply being.
He didn't know how long he drifted like this.
But eventually, the peaceful darkness began to change.
---
The warm sea around him grew restless. The steady heartbeat quickened. Pressure began to build—slow at first, then stronger, more insistent.
The world that had cradled him for so long was preparing to push him out.
The pressure came in waves. A slow tightening, like the sea itself had begun to contract around him. Su Tianhao drifted within it, observing with the detached clarity the Still Water Calibration Art had granted him. There was no fear—only quiet fascination. He could feel the rhythm building, growing stronger with each pulse.
The heartbeat that had been his constant companion quickened. Louder. Faster.
Distant voices filtered through the warm fluid—strained, urgent.
"Push, Yuexin… You're almost there."
His father's voice. Deep, steady, but edged with tension he couldn't quite conceal.
Another sound answered—raw, guttural, filled with effort and pain. His mother.
He felt it all through the liquid veil: her exhaustion, her determination, the fierce protective love that wrapped around him even now. He didn't need words to understand.
'I'm being born.'
The contractions grew fiercer. The warm world that had cradled him now seemed determined to expel him. Pressure mounted from all sides—squeezing, pushing, forcing him downward. It was uncomfortable, bordering on painful, but his mind remained strangely calm, anchored by the profound clarity of Fluidity.
He did not resist.
He allowed the force to carry him, observing every sensation with quiet wonder. The liquid around him shifted. The heartbeat thundered. His mother's voice broke into another strained cry.
And then—light.
A blinding, overwhelming burst that felt both alien and alive as he was pushed into the world.
The warmth vanished instantly, replaced by a shocking rush of cold air against his skin. His lungs burned as they expanded for the first time. A thin, piercing cry tore from his tiny throat—raw, instinctive, alive.
He was crying.
Strong hands caught him gently. Warm fabric wrapped around his small body. Voices surrounded him—exhausted, joyful, trembling with emotion.
"It's a boy…" his mother whispered, her voice hoarse but filled with wonder. "Our son…"
He felt himself being placed against her chest. Her heartbeat—the same rhythm that had been his entire world—now thundered directly against his ear, steady and full of life. A large, warm hand touched his back.
His father.
In that moment, even as a newborn, something ancient stirred deep within his blood—a quiet, draconic presence acknowledging the beginning of its long journey.
He had returned to the very start.
And from this moment forward, every memory would be his to keep.
---
"Yuexin." His father's voice arrived, unrestrained and full of joy. "What should we name him?"
His mother's chuckle came—hoarse, weak, yet carrying inexplicable warmth. "Tianhao. Let's call him that."
"Hmm."
A brief pause. Although he couldn't see it, Su Tianhao felt it. The man was grinning. "Vast Heaven. It's a powerful name, but it doesn't capture the sacredness of his birth! How about Shengzi? Tunlong Shengzi—Devouring Dragon Saint Child!"
Tian Yuexin's smile was audible in her voice. "Call him whatever you want. I'll call him Tianhao."
"Hahahahahaha!"
Tunlong Chenyuan's laughter reverberated through the room like a dragon's roar shaking the heavens—loud, unrestrained, boundless with pride and joy.
Su Tianhao's lips twitched inwardly.
He felt his tiny body shift in his mother's arms. And for the first time, he opened his eyes.
Twin golden orbs shimmered like ethereal twilight—serene and boundless, as though they contained an ancient, star-filled ocean within them. Vertical slits ran down their centers, regal and otherworldly, glowing with a soft primordial light that felt both peaceful and profoundly deep. They were not the eyes of a newborn. They were the eyes of something ancient, awakening in a fragile vessel.
And in that instant, everything changed.
Darkness fell on the world.
Not the gentle dark of nightfall. Not the slow fade of a dying flame.
Absolute erasure.
It descended like the shadow of an ancient dragon spreading its wings across the heavens—suffocating, immediate, and filled with a primordial majesty that no mortal language had ever been built to describe. Every lantern. Every sacred candle. Every eternal spirit lamp burning in the ancient sects. Every heavenly flame that had endured for centuries without ever once guttering out.
Gone.
As though the golden light in his eyes disdained the existence of any other illumination in the world but its own.
The room blackened completely. The only sources of light remaining were two glowing golden orbs—floating in the void, serene and regal and utterly without apology.
"Chenyuan?" Tian Yuexin's voice carried clear worry. "I can't see anything. Even my divine sense can only expand a single metre."
"Hmm." Tunlong Chenyuan's voice sharpened. The joy was gone. Something heavier had replaced it. "This phenomenon is capable of suppressing the senses of a Peak-stage Martial Saint. But don't worry—even with my cultivation suppressed, my soul power remains absolute."
Whoosh.
A massive gust swept through the room—ancient, boundless, transcendent. Su Tianhao felt it: an overwhelming flood of soul power exploding outward, expanding for miles in every direction, far beyond what he could perceive. Not threatening. Not cold. Simply vast, the way a mountain is vast, without malice or awareness of the smallness around it.
Several seconds passed.
"The entire Azure Dragon Continent has been consumed by darkness." Tunlong Chenyuan's voice carried disbelief—and underneath it, unmistakable pride he made no effort to conceal. "Lanterns dying. Sacred candles extinguishing. The eternal spirit lamps of ancient sects—fading into nothingness. Not a single source of light remaining on the continent."
A beat of silence.
"Except the one flickering in our boy's eyes."
"Wha—"
Before Tian Yuexin could fully express her shock, a low, contented sound escaped Su Tianhao—small and unbothered, entirely indifferent to the continental catastrophe his open eyes had apparently caused.
Tunlong Chenyuan's laughter rumbled quietly. "Looks like our son is simply enjoying our warmth. Your presence. My soul power." A pause. "He finds us more interesting than the darkness."
"Now is not the time for jokes, Chenyuan." Tian Yuexin exhaled, fighting the laugh that tried to escape anyway. "We need to understand what's happened. And fast."
Just then, his tiny body relaxed fully—surrendering to the warmth of his parents—and his golden eyes fluttered.
Each flutter stirred light across the continent. Lanterns flickering back to uncertain life. Flames catching and dying and catching again.
Then his eyes fell shut.
The continent's light sources ignited once more.
But the darkness held.
No sun. No moon. No stars. Just the returning glow of mortal flames in a sky that had forgotten what it was supposed to contain.
Then the world shook.
The entire continent trembled—not from earthquake, not from eruption, but from something that had no category in any cultivator's knowledge or any philosopher's record. The heavens themselves shuddering, as though reality had encountered something it had no framework to process and was straining at every seam to contain it.
The wind howled. The air shrieked. The earth wailed.
Su Tianhao's eyes opened again, disturbed by the sudden chaos.
And for the first time, he saw the room he had been born in. The darkness hadn't given him that chance—now he could see everything with vivid clarity.
---
It unfolded before him like a world that had no business existing.
The walls shimmered with a soft living radiance—light that moved gently, like starlight captured and set to breathe. Massive pillars rose toward a ceiling so high it felt like open sky, their surfaces engraved with flowing patterns that shifted as though alive. The floor beneath his mother gleamed like polished moonlight, reflecting their figures with crystalline clarity. Even the air carried a sweet fragrance that made breathing feel like drinking something pure distilled from the essence of the world itself.
'Woah.'
Su Tianhao's mind went still.
He had known, intellectually, that his parents were extraordinary. But there was a considerable distance between knowing something and seeing it—between understanding his father was the most powerful being in the mortal world and seeing the room that being had built for the woman he loved and the child they were about to have.
He hadn't imagined anything like this. After all, his father soul fragment had told him they lived like a "normal" couple in a quiet corner of the Azure Dragon Continent.
Before he could take more of it in, his vision moved to his parents. He was a spectator in his own memory—the direction of his attention not entirely his own.
His emotions turned heavy and turbulent all at once.
His mother and father. Together. Before his eyes. For the first time.
Tian Yuexin held him with steady, gentle care, her slender brows drawn together as the world trembled outside. She was dressed in flowing silver robes that draped over her form like liquid moonlight—
disheveled now from childbirth, one shoulder fallen, strands of snow-white hair clinging to her damp brow. Yet even in disarray, she carried an ethereal grace that felt less like beauty and more like the quality of something that simply did not belong to the mortal realm. Her eyes were sharp and luminous—midnight jade pools that held starlight trapped within them, piercing and warm simultaneously, the kind of warmth that doesn't soften into sentimentality but holds instead like bedrock.
Standing beside the bed—a bed that felt less like furniture and more like a treasure the mortal realm had no name for—was his father.
Tunlong Chenyuan.
Despite his impossibly long years, he appeared no older than twenty-seven. Handsome in a way the mortal realm had no adequate word for—not merely striking, not merely refined, but something the vocabulary of ordinary men hadn't been built to contain. He wore flowing golden robes embroidered with black dragons that seemed to breathe and shift in the opulent light, alive with every movement of the fabric. His long black hair was gathered into a high ponytail that fell down his back like silk, tiny motes of starlight shimmering through each strand, pulsing with the quiet breath of an ancient dragon. His sword-like brows were drawn together—those golden dragon eyes fixed on some distant point, piercing through the very fabric of space and reality as though the walls of the room were an inconvenience beneath his notice.
Su Tianhao stared.
These were his parents. Two beings who stood at the absolute peak of the mortal realm—who had crossed the Endless Seas and abandoned everything they were supposed to be for each other, and for him. Whose love had been directed at him from the moment of his conception.
He understood it now, in a way the soul fragment's words had never quite managed to convey.
They were real.
He came out of his stillness, and quickly analyzed the situation. Both his parents wore serious expressions as they stared into the distance.
They turned to each other with quiet solemnity, then they nodded as if in sync with their own thoughts. Their divine sense surged outward simultaneously—a tide moving in perfect unison, two Peak-stage Martial Saints extending their perception across impossible distances without a word exchanged between them.
Su Tianhao understood immediately. They were reading what was happening outside.
'No—take me with you. I want to see.'
And then something shifted.
Something unprecedented.
His consciousness expanded—quietly, without announcement, without force. The Still Water Calibration Art moving through him in ways he hadn't anticipated, the profound synchronization it had achieved between his perception and his body now extending further, reaching into the inherited memories that had always been present but never fully accessible.
His vision transformed.
He was no longer seeing through the eyes of a newborn lying in his mother's arms.
He was seeing through theirs.
Their memories—preserved somewhere in the vast inheritance his father had encoded into his soul—opening to him now for the first time, like doors he hadn't known existed swinging wide in a single, silent moment.
'Time to unravel the true aftermath of my birth.'
ANNOUNCEMENT!!!
(Please check the author's note)