As I slowly came to I couldn't tell if it was my shattered pride or my broken body that hurt the most. Captured by a mortal, I really didn't want to get used to this.

  I'm going to be honest with you, this defeat stung worse than that time when Grand Admiral Lin had humiliated me before the entire Eastern Fleet in the fourth Thessian war. Back then I was barely a century into my cultivation journey so at least I had the excuse of youth. Obviously I thrashed him the next spring, but it was still embarrassing, yet nothing compared to this. I had been defeated by a common thug, a mortal who wouldn't have the right to even enter my capital.

  I winced as I lifted my throbbing head from where I lay face down, and forced my gummed eyes open. My Emperor’s body would have mended itself in the space of a dozen breaths. But this body was weak, slow, and soft. Well, wherever this was, it wasn't that tavern anymore. It was dark and it took me a moment to realize that the dark meant I couldn’t see.

  Now this may seem obvious, but it had been centuries since I hadn't been able to see in the dark. Light, or the lack of it, shouldn't have affected my vision at all. This wasn't a question of ki. To improve my body I had hunted and absorbed the cores of a multitude of spirit beasts to fundamentally rebuild it. Even if my ki and my cultivation was being suppressed it was just not possible to inhibit what my eyes could do, they were now fully part of me. Yet here we were.

  This was very much not what I had signed up for.

  Right. Enough of this.

  The first thing to do was to remove the headache so that I could think properly. Next, I could work out what was going on. Then, I could wreak bloody retribution on those who had wronged me.

  As you can see, despite what they say about me, I’m a simple man at heart.

  With a thought I used Sea Breeze Clarity. That is to say, I tried to use my favorite mind cleansing technique, but nothing happened. I still had no ki. None. Just like during the fight against the mortal.

  Even while I was unconscious this new body should have absorbed some ki. The ki suppression artifact was clearly still affecting me and leaving me as weak as a mortal. I sat up. This was getting irritating.

  I took a deep breath and ignored the fact that sitting up and taking a breath made the pounding in my head worse. It also alerted me to a pain in my ribs. Bruised, not broken though, so my ribs could wait. With a tentative touch of my mind I tried to feel the ki meridians within my body to work out how they were being suppressed. That was the first step in finding my way past this new restraint, it was clearly more sophisticated than those manacles. Once I understood it I could throw it off.

  Then I paused. My meridians weren't suppressed, they were blocked. All of them. As far as I could tell my meridians had never had a drop of ki pass through them. It wasn't as if I was a mortal. I was a mortal.

  When Han Kuanglie had said that he was going to push my soul into a new vessel surely he hadn't intended to throw me into the body of a mortal?

  Seven centuries of cultivation gone. My meticulously crafted meridians that had channeled enough power to drain oceans had been erased. My ascension should have elevated me to a god; instead, I had been stripped back to a mortal.

  Not only that, but, shockingly, all three of my immense cores, the pride and envy of the nine seas had vanished. I had fought the Maw of the Storm-Swept Reef for eight days and nine nights to absorb its core. Without it I couldn't have allowed my Deepwave Core to swell to the size that it was. Never mind what I had needed to do grow the other two. All of them missing now though. Just empty spaces where my cores should be.

  A core was what ultimately made someone a cultivator. I could barely remember life without a core. It was central to who I was. Of course, you could shatter someone's cores, but I had never come across any technique that could remove them.

  One small glimmer of hope remained as I trawled my sparse inner world. The soul bound items that Han Kuanglie had gifted me in his last moments were connected to me. In particular, the storage ring from a Vanguard like him should hold much that would help me in this state. It only required a trickle of ki to draw them back to me, but ki was exactly what I didn't have.

  This situation transcended 'not ideal'. It was an abomination, an insult carved into the story of my existence. Yet the fury building behind my temples would have to simmer. Seven centuries had taught me that it was better to serve vengeance cold than not to serve it at all.

  For now, I would do what I hadn't had to do for lifetimes. Instead of insisting that the world adapt to me, I would adapt to the world.

  I tried to make sense of my dire situation. Kuanglie's dying words echoed in my mind: a Vanguard would hunt me within a year. A Vanguard cultivator, the highest of the three stages of the Martial Realm. Kuanglie was a Vanguard and he was a worthy challenge for me with my limited ki. But, the idea that I could defeat a Vanguard as I was now was laughable.

  One year. That's all I had to prepare for an opponent who could shatter mountains with a gesture. As for the Transcendent who would follow, that was a problem for the future.

  I took inventory of my circumstances with brutal honesty. Something had been done to my cultivation that meant I wasn't even at Breakthrough stage, the most basic foundation of cultivation that even farmers sometimes stumbled into. I had no meridians, no core, no ki circulation. Nothing. I was less than a novice.

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  With a solid foundation and a good dose of luck, my skills and experience would mean that I could fight one stage above my cultivation level. I had certainly done that before. But that would still mean that I would have to reach at least the Champion stage, the second level of the Martial Realm. That meant progressing through all three stages of the Awakening Realm first, breaking through into the Martial Realm and then progressing through the Warrior stage into Champion. Even then my chances when fighting a Vanguard a further stage up would be impossible if I were not to make significant progress into Champion.

  The corner of my mouth twitched upward. Five centuries. That's what most cultivators took to reach Champion stage, if they even dared to attempt it. Even a prodigy like myself took 230 years to get from mortal to Champion the first time. And that was with every advantage that the doting elders of the Azure Tide Sect could offer me and with my best friend, Chen Huairen, supporting me every step of the way.

  I was giving myself just one of those years.

  This was the very definition of madness. I would have to do this without any resources other that those that I could find for myself. But I had advantages that no one else had.

  Me.

  The ultimate mentor with seven centuries of experience, and all the motivation and time in the world. I had knowledge of cultivation techniques that none outside my sect knew existed, and a few that even they didn't know. I had an understanding of ki pathways and meridian formation that made elders weep with envy. If I was starting from scratch then I would aim for perfection from the beginning.

  In my previous life, I had observed countless breakthroughs, guided disciples through cultivation barriers, and perfected my own advancement. I knew exactly where the shortcuts lay and which paths led to dead ends.

  In fact, once I created a core, or even opened one of my meridians I would have the ki that would allow me to contact Meiyu and access my Silent Pagoda Archive. That contained information on a wealth of arts and techniques that would help me to advance rapidly.

  Critically though, with each breath, I sensed the faint tides of ambient ki flowing through this place. I had no idea what this world was, but at least there was ki here. Without ki, the energy of the world, any plans to rebuild my cultivation would just be dreams.

  That's not to say that everything was perfect. The ki flows here were far weaker than those in my home. No real surprise there. The island where I built my Storm Palace was the nexus of multiple ki flows. There, even novices could draw enough power to destroy cities. If I could create this body's first core, I could begin absorbing what ki there was available. With my experience I could get to Breakthrough stage in a matter of minutes and then build a core in a few hours. That would raise me to the Initiate stage and into the Awakening Realm.

  To be honest, with a half day of peace I could open up all the meridians in my Tidesworn Pillars. After that, a mix of spirit treasures, pills, meditation and, of course, fighting against spirit beasts and other cultivators would get me through the Awakening Realm and into the Martial Realm. It was embarrassing, but for now I couldn't even access the basic arts that we taught the new Tide Ensigns in their first year at the Academy.

  I shut my eyes and stepped back. I was running ahead of myself. One year to reach Champion.

  Impossible.

  I liked impossible.

  I might be starting from nothing, but I wasn't starting as a nobody. No matter my circumstances I was still the Emperor of the Tidebound Seas. I would defy the heavens, defy all known conventions, and bend destiny to my will.

  I opened my eyes. Enough words, time for action. Before any of that, the first thing I needed to do was to make sure I was safe. I would be lost in the depths of my own body while I built my core and forced my meridians open, and so I would be vulnerable to another attack.

  I paused and listened intently, trying to pick up any sounds of life around me. Nothing. No footsteps, no voices, just the distant sounds of what sounded like people on the streets. With my mortal hearing that was the limit of what I could make out. Either I was alone in the building, or whoever had captured me was being exceptionally quiet.

  As I pondered, my eyes adjusted to the thin gray light seeping through slatted walls. Before dawn then. I couldn't make out very much but I wasn't in a room, more a glorified closet barely large enough to contain my body. No guards, no locks.

  I paused once more. If I understood what was happening correctly, this wasn't my body.

  I pulled a strand of hair around and looked at it. Long, brown and wavy. No, this very much was not my body.

  The more I looked the more differences I found. This body was taller than my own, maybe six feet with large, indelicate hands. A typical mortal in other words. More to the point my body, even at its worst, would never have sported a soft belly like this. With a moment to examine my physical body it was clear that the weakness of my punch was not due to some kind of physical suppression. Rather it was due to the fact that this body had no muscle to speak of.

  Han Kuanglie had used his formation to take my soul and fling it into a thoroughly unimpressive, and thoroughly mortal, body. It explained my lack of cores and cultivation, as well as why I couldn't access my soul bound treasures.

  The only reason that Han Kuanglie could even try to do that was because of how much I had been weakened in the formation I had been put in. That would fit with the ritual that Han Kuanglie had suggested that I had been subject to.

  Intrusive fragments of memories and knowledge that were not mine polluted my mind. Echoes from the previous owner of this flesh. Much as I would have liked to purge myself of them, the pragmatic voice in my head suggested they may be what I needed to pass as a native in this world.

  In fact, now I thought about it, the language that the thug had used to speak to me last night wasn't one I knew. Yet I understood every word. I knew all of the languages of my world, the fact that I didn't know this one further pointed to the fact I was in a different world. It must be the residual knowledge from this body that allowed me to communicate in this place.

  I shook my head. Regardless of how they had trapped me, it had happened. Nonetheless, I had managed to escape from those who had been tasked to detain me. If I was lucky then I had killed all those who knew what body I had been flung into, although I couldn't be sure of that.

  What was it that the goon had called this body last night? Taros? Well Taros was clearly a man that required some discipline. If this shell was what I had been trapped in, then I would apply that discipline to it and forge it anew.

  I put my hand on the door then paused. Right at this moment I wasn't in immediate danger. Although I should get away while I could, this might be my only opportunity for a long while to start my cultivation journey and confirm if this body could absorb ki. Without that, I would be truly adrift in this unfamiliar place. I didn't want to risk the time it would take to develop a core, but I could spare a few minutes to try to reach the Breakthrough Stage.

  The benefits were worth the risk. Time to turn this shell into a cultivator