Soul of Searing Steel

“Truly inconceivable.”

Instead of responding to ‘Zinsen’—the God of Might and Justice, Joshua did not ask a question, looking around at the field hospital around him until his gaze lingered on a hazy, rusted patient bed.

Then, with a tranquil tone, the warrior said, “I was just born at the time and can’t even remember what was around me. To actually largely relive the image then through tangled information… I never thought that divine powers are so incredible.”

“Divine power is the power that makes the impossible possible. It comes from the ‘Source’, but all that did exist once could indeed be relived through divine powers.” 

The stern yet magnificent deity was looking around the small wartime clinic too; he was not just observing but analyzing every single detail in the environment. Then, He spoke again with a voice that was nonchalant yet immeasurably serious in reply to Joshua’s wonder.

“Sinoer was a deity ultimately. Since your memory could be used as a sample, He certainly could relive it.”

“You’ve seen my memory too,” the warrior said after a brief silence.

“Naturally,” the deity swiftly replied. “The Infinite Horizon watches the world. We’ve especially been following you with great interest. I’ve indeed seen all those memories.”

“Then what do you think?” The man smiled, spreading his arm towards the god. “About this world that was my home.”

As the words escaped his lips, the surrounding sights changed rapidly once more and started to play in chronological order like a tape that had been rewound to the start.

The life of a man born on the battlefield thus began to scroll as the mirage started to scroll again.

With the red blaring siren, a child was born in the untimeliest manner within the field clinic of an underground bunker as the war began.

Since his birth, the smell of smoke and cannon fire became his food and musical accompaniment in life. The mutual bombardment of superweapons had reduced eighty-five percent Earth’s life cycle with most metropolis turned into ash, which was why this boy born in World War III had been running around in the chaotic battlefield with his army parents. Therefore, he displayed extraordinarily impressive physical attributes and innate talent since a meager age, equaling genuine troops in performance despite his youth.

The toil lasted for a dozen years until his father, a military commander was suddenly transferred to some mysterious special mobile troops. The boy, now a teenager joined the reserves of the same divisions as his kin and went through what was perhaps the most arduous death training in that world. Most of his comrades, unable to take it, left halfway through—only the youth, who relied on his innate gifts and staunch resilience to endure it all.

To him, the path to his destiny was clear. He did not feel that anything was wrong with his life whether he died on the battlefield or kept running around completing the army’s endless missions, because it was the meaning of his existence.

Therefore, it was ironic that the war ended.

Perhaps feeling that prolonging the war would change even the victors into primitive beings who fought for life on barren lands, or perhaps feeling that giving up the celestial bodies outside the world for just one Earth was too short-sighted, one way or the other the war ended after seventeen years.

Negotiations and peace thus came in incomprehensible speed. The teenager, now an adult, had just begun his military service for half a year when he was handed a decommissioning notice one summer day.

Freakish? Preposterous? The man who had suddenly lost his life goal did not feel such emotions. He just quietly packed up his notice, took the compensation for himself and his parents and went together to the capital of the ‘Earth Federation’ to enjoy a so-called peaceful life.

The power of scientific technology escaped everyone’s imagination. Through the help of artificial intelligence and automated mechanical factories, radioactive wastelands turned into steel and concrete forests in a brief few years. Towering skyscrapers and those automated factories blanketed the land, with various military tools also exploding in sensational productivity after being adapted into civilian parameters.

Thus, on the man’s twenty-first birthday, the first space city that belonged to the Earth Federation had levitated up to the Lagrangian point, while many spaceships that could travel to and from Mars were also completed.

With rich production power and material luxury, humans did not have to worry about surviving in the post-war era. Menial and repetitive work were all handed to half-automated machines, and sentient life only need think about how to attain meaning life. While most became lost in the beautiful future, the man and his father had become the first citizens in the human space city thanks to their overly-robust bodies.

“Before the war, our family operated a martial arts dojo. This signboard had been stored for over twenty years.”

Due to the intense burdens of war, his father already showed signs of decline despite being just a middle-aged man. He wiped away the dust that had lingered over it and stared at the signboard, as if stumped.

“I never thought that there would be a day that I could actually hang it up anew…” he had muttered absentmindedly. “I might be the first human to open a dojo in space, hahaha.”

Making himself laugh, the man then noticed his quiet son beside him and quickly withdrew his smile. Gravely grasping the other’s hand, the old warrior who had gone through countless battlefields and strode through fire and steel spoke with an unusually grave tone towards the young warrior.

“Jinglin, I’m old now. I could not rekindle the fame of our family dojo… are you willing to inherit and spread its fame?”

“Certainly, father.”

The young man who had been quiet all along suddenly looked up. Having found meaning again, he stared at the signboard so ancient it was about to decay, his gaze twinkling with a curious glint.

Then, the warrior grinned.

“It’s my honor.”

The rest was trivial—not many favored stories of a dojo master beating all his opponents in the era of Great Unity. Thus, light and shadow shifted and clashed within mirage, and everything finally returned to the chaos of the void.

Having seen and observed every intricacy of that world, the God of Might and Justice exhaled once.

“A lively civilization reborn from war,” He remarked after closing His eyes and opening them after a long time, with a hint of reverence in his cold yet majestic tone. “To reach such levels in knowledge and alchemy. Life, relying on just tools and brains without any extraordinary power, could actually claim such incredible achievements. Cities as if steel continents, fortresses that float amidst the void, building colonies in uninhabitable worlds (Moon, Mars), even adjusting them to suit living conditions…. No extraordinary that surpasses society, all life being the cornerstone of order and civilization.”

“As the god of a world that possess extraordinary power, it is difficult for Me to imagine such form of civilization. It is an order outside the boundary of my domain.”Zinsen reflected seriously as a reply to Joshua’s question.

“But I’m not surprised. Acknowledgment is a circle—the more you understand, the more unknowns you would have. Even the gods are neither omnipotent nor omniscient, there is reverence within our pride.”

“Is that so?” Joshua nodded lightly, unsurprised with the answer given by one of the Seven. Not too long ago, the Sage’s colossal magic circle large enough to envelop a world had carried the warrior and the Initial Flame as it traversed the void of the Multiverse. At the time, he witnessed the many worlds that were truly ‘endless’.

Hence, in a domain so it escapes imagination, who could say that they know everything? Indeed, the Seven Gods understood what was reverence which was why they could develop. Proud people who are stagnated in old ideas and having lost their imagination and curiosity would never become strong.

“However, Joshua, that world does not suit you.”

With a sharp change of topic, Zinsen leveled his gaze at Joshua’s own, his gray pupils twitching like a star.

“Its Order is stable enough—if they did not encounter Evil Gods or other civilizations, that world would keep developing in an orderly manner. Such a world of routine and without strife is a shackle to you, a natural-born warrior.”

“That world without miracles doesn’t fit your type.”

Such was His assertion, one that Joshua was rather disappointed with after hearing it.

“You don’t know either,” the warrior mumbled, before shrugging nonchalantly. “Well, I’m fine with that.”

In the short time after traversing between worlds, Joshua had tried thinking several times about why he arrived in this world without worlds. Still, that was because he was too lazy to delve into it and he had not reached the threshold of knowing the truth.

But now, the warrior had developed into Legendary. When he moved back and forth the world of Karlis from the Seven Gods Church, Joshua sense that his physical body could survive in the void—meaning that he could head to other worlds with his body alone if he had the coordinates, and achieve ‘crossing’ with his very own power.

The System was even easier to explain, it was none other than an interface for energy conversion. If the warrior was willing to pay a little price, he could help others raise their levels right now. In short, the System was something similar to the legacy mark left behind by perished gods like Sinoer, and not some special, incredible thing.

He originally believed that the deities of this world would know some correlated information, but he turned out to be wrong. Sinoer, or even Zinsen who was one of the Seven were ignorant about the fact, and seemingly nonchalant even about his true identity.

The reason as to why Zinsen remained indifferent even after becoming aware of the crossing was quite simple too. Such a thing was not unbelievable in an extraordinary world—while rare, it was not impossible for a soul to transcend worlds and crossing into different reincarnation cycles. To this god, the warrior’s condition was something similar to ‘sudden awakening of preexisting memories.”

To a god that was above life and death, what was there to be concerned about? It was similar to a normal folk cheering for another who had hit the five-million-dollar lottery while not doubting the existence of that person who had won. It was rare, but such things existed.

Furthermore, so what if it really had been a soul from another world? Joshua had found the tinder left behind by the Sage and was to some extent the savior of the entire Mycroft Continent. The Seven Gods whose chief aims were to maintain human society had no reason to go against a newborn human Legendary for such meaningless and trivial reason. He might even prove to be Their future partner, lest They had nothing better to do.

Through it all, the divine armament siblings who stood by one side, watching. Both Ling and Ying were still in pure shock, unable to understand what on earth was happening.

“As for questions, I do have one.”

After some thought, Joshua spoke slowly—since he would not get any answers to that particular issue, why not ask in other directions? With that thought, he asked directly, “Because the Sage had left behind some room for maneuver after the final battle, the Mycroft Continent do not have to worry about continuation now. But why.”

After a brief pause, the warrior furrowed his brow and, with supreme solemnness and respect, asked, “Why, would the Sage vanish after leaving the Fourth Legacy?”