Prime Originator

The dashing black hair with strips of grey, the back punctured by a sword, and the divine robe dyed in blood; the familiar back was etched in the deepest parts of his memories.

Leon would never forget it.

'Father…'

Suddenly, the person turned around and revealed his face to Leon.

Although it wasn't a particularly handsome face—actually, it was quite an ugly face without the beautification of high cultivation.

However, this face embodied the Divine Realm's kindness.

As Leon suspected, the face belonged to none other than his late divine father from the Divine Realm, the Divine Medicine King, the only true saint in a world of hypocrites.

Heinrich Escladus silently stood some distance away. His entire body was suffused in a grey light, making him look ethereal and ghostly like an intangible spirit.

Leon didn't know if the person was truly his father or just an illusion conjured by the strange world, but he had so much he wanted to say to his father.

But the moment he opened his mouth to speak, he immediately recalled the cruel reality of the situation that he had no voice.

Even so, he thought he could still convey his thoughts through his gaze.

However, the moment his gaze fell on Heinrich Escladus's pitch-black eye sockets, his entire being froze, suppressed by an absolute force.

He lost all control of his movements.

His father—no, it was not his father; the thing's empty gaze contained a terrifying power of suppression.

Leon even felt deep-rooted fear from the gaze.

'Is this my inner demon?' Leon assumed with wide eyes.

Suddenly, a force of attraction pulled Leon's immobilized body towards the suspected inner demon and fell into its grip.

When Leon gazed in the inner demon's abyss-like black eyes sockets, his emotions of fear were immediately amplified.

'Dammit, this thing is trying to devour me! Piss off!' Leon roared in his mind.

Sensing his existence being eaten away by the inner demon, he resisted with all his might, but to no avail; he was powerless and helpless.

Without control of his body, there was nothing he could do.

'Is there nothing I can do?! Am I bound to die an unknown death?!' Leon desperately wracked his brain for a solution, no matter how hopeless the situation seemed.

Even so, the inner demon felt way too formidable.

Inner demons were supposed to be difficult obstacles in one's cultivation path. Still, the situation shouldn't be as hopeless as he was experiencing.

The inner demon seemed like an absolute existence that he could not defy.

'Dammit! Don't think that I will go down without a fight!' Leon roared madly in his mind. He tried to fight back the absolute suppression with his sheer will.

However, that proved fruitless.

The inner demon continued to devour his existence, making him despair. He became desperate for a solution and went with his only option.

'Dammit! If I have no cultivation, then I'll cultivate right now!' Leon roared.

He optimized his divine sense, which seemed to be the only thing he still had and absorbed whatever energy he could muster from the surroundings.

Grey energy particles appeared in the surroundings and flowed toward Leon, albeit slowly. Even with his best effort, he could not increase his gathering speed.

'So I didn't just lose my cultivation, but also my accumulated talents?! This monochrome world is really pushing for my demise! However, I cannot, shall not, and will not give up! For now, not ever!'

Leon will never allow himself to fall before completing his life's mission!

The moment the first grey energy particle contacted Leon's body, he regained some control of his body.

It was just a slight budge, but it was better than nothing!

'It's effective!' Leon's eyes flickered.

Although the inner demon continued to devour his existence, the grey energy particles replenished it—even granted him power and authority in the monochrome world.

It strengthened his will.

Leon eventually regained control of his movements, but he still failed to break free from the inner demon's grip.

Even worse, his resistance triggered the inner demon's fury! The entire mountain peak reverberated in response to it!

Suddenly, the inner demon's mouth ripped open into a giant gaping maw that could swallow three adult bodies whole at once.

Its appearance became grotesque like a monster, and hardly resembled his father at this point.

'F*ck,' Leon thought.

Snap!

The inner demon devoured Leon in the next instance, swallowing his body whole into the infinite dark abyss inside it.

Darkness encompassed his vision and senses.

'So this is how it ends? I don't even know what killed me or brought me to that world… So many unanswered questions… I'm unwilling to leave like this…' Leon thought bitterly with unwillingness.

He did everything he could but still ended up getting devoured.

…

"Leon!" Aria's distant yet sorrowful cry entered Leon's ears.

"Leon, what happened to you?! Please come back to us! Please don't leave us alone! We need you—I need you!"

Leon heard Aria's heart-wrenching cries again. Even Darlene's distinct weeping could be heard and felt beside him.

When Leon's eyes snapped open, he realized he was back in the stone room with Aria and Darlene weeping on his chest.

Everything he had just experienced seemed like a nightmare.

'An outer body experience?' Leon quickly understood what had happened, yet his understanding only baffled him further.

Outer body experience was something only mortals experience; cultivators don't get them—or at the very least, they shouldn't.

Nevertheless, his mind was quickly occupied by Aria and Darlene's sorrowful weeping. It pained him to see them like that.

He reached out and patted them both on the head with each hand to soothe them.

Aria and Darlene immediately froze before they looked up and saw Leon staring back at them with a tender look.

"What's wrong? Why are you both crying?" Leon asked while drying their tears.

"Leon…? You're alive! That's great… really great… I really thought that you disappeared from this world…"

Aria held Leon's hand on her cheek and felt his warmth, overjoyed by his awakening.

"I don't know what happened, but we suddenly felt your existence disappear… We couldn't feel your soul's presence at all… And no matter what we tried, you wouldn't wake up…"