[Welll... let’s just say he’s a man of priorities.]
Kyone’s dry voice lingered in Azel’s head.
Not even she could defend the man.
The Patriarch had been too eager, too transparent in his hunger for divinity.
Azel stretched slowly, his muscles aching, his bones still buzzing with the memory of his father’s strikes.
He felt like a ragdoll that had somehow been held together with spit, tape, and divine luck.
’Imagine... every strike he threw wounded me,’ Azel thought, exhaling. ’If I didn’t have healing, I wouldn’t have been reckless. But still, it was all in good spirits. Seems like I’ve got a long way to go.’
Every swing had been a lesson, every clash a reminder of how wide the gulf still was.
His father’s strength was incomprehensible, a mountain looming over his path.
Azel loved this peace, this warmth, this chance to grow stronger surrounded by people who cared for him.
’Things won’t stay like this forever,’ he admitted silently. ’The moment I return to the Empire and go to the Academy, everything will get dark again.’
Enjoying life now was a blessing — but blessings never lasted forever.
Azel calmly walked off the training field.
The chatter behind him grew distant.
Nobody followed him.
The others were still clustered together, talking animatedly about the fight, voices overlapping in excitement.
Edna sat with Lillia perched on her lap, her arms protectively around the girl as she questioned Medusa with sharp intensity.
It was probably about the hunt.
Azel soon reached his room and shut the door behind him.
He sat on the edge of his bed and pulled out a black card.
It was the Summoning Card he had earned after defeating the Rank 3 Kraken, it was a good item and would summon an ally for him but he had been holding the summoning off... for a good reason.
What if he summoned another yandere? The women that were clawing at him right now were too much to count.
Was it bad to say he wanted a companion like Julius? Even if he was annoyingly fixated on that grudge, he was still a good person.
The system’s prompt appeared in glowing blue text.
[Would you like to use Summoning card?]
[Y/N]
Azel’s finger hovered over the choice for only a breath before clicking Y.
The card slipped from his hand as if alive, twirling in the air.
It spun once, twice, then dropped to the ground a few meters away.
Light erupted.
White and pure at first, then bending into iridescent hues that twisted the air.
A low hum filled the room, rattling the panes of the window.
Azel narrowed his eyes, standing ready.
He had no idea what was about to walk out of that glow.
’Hm... I need a male character this time,’ he thought grimly. ’The girls are good, but...’
His mind flashed to Veyra’s hungry stares, Medusa’s possessive antics, Edna’s yearning, Anya’s teasing, even Diana’s suffocating motherly obsession.
’I do NOT need another yandere. It’s already too much.’
The light grew blinding.
Then — it split.
A portal tore itself open, edges glowing with jagged brilliance.
A figure stepped out.
A young man emerged.
Shorter than Azel by a head, with shoulder-length black hair that clung messily to his thin frame.
His blue eyes, startlingly clear, darted around with unease.
His clothes were simple, patched, threadbare.
His limbs were bony, his skin pale.
At first glance he looked weak.
At second glance — he still looked weak.
And at third and fourth, it became painfully obvious.
He was painfully malnourished, fragile and starving... and that was just putting it into simple words.
Azel tilted his head, suspicion flickering.
’Why does he feel so familiar...?’
Then the system’s text scrolled before his eyes.
[You have summoned Feng Zhan, the Weakest Cultivator]
Azel froze.
His eyes snapped from the text to the thin boy in front of him, then back again.
"...What the absolute fuck?"
Recognition crashed into him like a storm.
He knew Feng Zhan.
Who didn’t?
This was the character from one of the earliest cultivation games ever made by the same company that had produced Fall of Ares.
Azel had played it obsessively in his past life. He
had spent hundreds of hours cursing and admiring this very man.
Alongside fantasy, cultivation had always been his second love.
And Feng Zhan was the reason.
But Feng Zhan... Feng Zhan was no noble hero.
He wasn’t a saint.
He wasn’t even morally gray.
He was evil.
The kind of evil that seared itself into memory.
The Demon of Annihilation.
He began like every pitiful cultivation protagonist — low talent, bullied by sect elites, humiliated by elders, even betrayed by the jade beauty he dared to love.
The world spat on him, crushed him, left him to rot.
But when he finally clawed his way up?
He burned everything.
He stabbed allies in the back, reaped souls, devoured the heavens themselves.
He became a nightmare whispered in cultivation worlds for years to come. A demon through and through, the second Fang Yuan, though not even he could compare with that man.
The boy’s thin body dropped instantly to the ground.
He prostrated fully, forehead pressed hard against the floor.
His voice cracked, filled with raw desperation.
"Please... my life is hell. I’ll call you Master—" His shoulders shook as his hands trembled against the floorboards. "But please, help me grow stronger."
The sound of bone against wood was harsh as he pressed his head lower.
All the pride of a cultivator, all the arrogance expected of one who walked the path of power — it was gone.
Only desperation remained.
Azel stared, throat dry.
’I forgot... how bad it was.’
If there was one thing about a cultivator, even if they were a low ranking one, they could harness the energy that existed in their world, and rise in ranks.
All with the exception of Feng Zhang, he couldn’t harness Qi at all which made him the weakest Cultivator in that world.