A Farmer's Journey To Immortality

The broken roots of the dome trembled.

The vines at the top began to glow faintly, flickering with a reddish light.

The ground beneath his body seemed to fade away, replaced by an endless dark field.

All of this felt like a hallucination. This was because it was indeed a hallucination.

He knew what was coming.

The second trial—Dejection Demon. Also known as the Heart Demon trial.

This time, it wouldn't test his body. It would test his mind. His thoughts. His memories. His will.

The Verdant Elder braced himself. He had beaten pain. Now, he would face his past.

The darkness around the Verdant Elder thickened. It wasn't just dark anymore. It was heavy. Cold. Quiet in a way that felt unnatural, like the world had forgotten how to make sound. Then, the silence broke—not with noise, but with feeling.

A breeze brushed past him. With it came a scent he hadn't smelled in centuries. Rather, it was a feeling he hadn't felt in centuries.

Fresh grass. Tree sap. Wet soil after rainfall. It was a forest—his old forest. Not the one he ruled now, but the one he had been born into.

He looked down and saw a smaller body. His claws weren't fully grown. His tail was shorter. His breath came in quick, fearful bursts. The memories crashed over him like waves.

He was reliving it.

The trial had begun in full.

At first, he remained calm. He was aware it wasn't real. It was the Dejection Demon trial. He told himself again and again: This is just a trial. These are just memories. They cannot hurt me.

But then came the first scene of death.

His mother. Speared by a human cultivator while shielding him. She had cried out—not in fear, but in pain. The way she collapsed, her eyes still open, her body still warm.

He remembered it too clearly. And now he felt it all over again, like it had just happened.

The scene shifted. Years passed in seconds. He grew stronger. He became cruel. He hunted. He fed. He killed. He devoured.

He remembered the demon beast that begged for mercy, its limbs torn, unable to escape. He remembered laughing. Then biting down.

And now… he remembered that beast's anguished roars.

Another voice came. A Spirit cultivator, young and proud, cut down by surprise.

"You… How could you trap me like that? Are… are you really a demon beast or a demonic cultivator possessing a beast's body?"

Then another. And another. Whispering. Screaming. Crying. Cursing.

The Verant Elder's mind was filled with sorrow and blame. He turned, but no matter which direction he looked, faces appeared. All familiar. All dead.

His breath quickened. He tried to roar, but his throat tightened. The forest shifted around him—changing with every memory. It became darker, narrower, more twisted. The trees curled in like claws. The ground pulsed with shadows.

The Verdant Elder's claws dug into the soil. This isn't real, he told himself again. I've done what I had to do to survive. That's the law of nature.

But the voices didn't care.

"You didn't have to enjoy it."

"You didn't have to take everything."

"You didn't have to kill us in order to survive."

His vision blurred. The line between what was memory and what was now began to fade. He saw himself as a young beast again. Then older. Then ancient.

He lived through loss after loss, kill after kill. He watched loved ones die, enemies fall, and strangers beg. All over again. As if he had lived a hundred lifetimes in mere minutes.

He felt his soul grow tired. So heavy, like it had aged beyond its years. His strength meant nothing here. His body was healed, but his spirit began to crack.

Then came the abyss.

A black hole opened beneath his feet. It didn't roar or shake the earth. It just existed—silent and terrifying. The voices called from within. Hands reached out, shadowy and cold, grabbing at his legs, his back, his chest.

They wanted to pull him in.

He struggled. But his limbs wouldn't move right. They were sluggish, as if wrapped in fog. He tried to fly. No wings. He tried to vanish. But his powers didn't answer.

The Verdant Elder's eyes widened. For the first time in centuries, he felt true fear.

He was losing himself. Not his body—but the part that mattered most. His soul.

The darkness wanted him to lure him inside. Even though it did not verbalize its thoughts, the Verdant Elder could feel that it was tempting him to step inside the black hole himself, of his own initiative. It was as if it was promising peace and eternal bliss as long as he stepped inside the hole.

And the Verdant Elder screamed—loud, broken, desperate—as he clung to the last spark of who he was.

The darkness around the Verdant Elder swirled and twisted, his mind still lost in the Dejection Demon trial.

He stood in that black abyss, the weight of regret pressing down on him, the cries of the dead still ringing in his ears. His soul trembled, hanging by a thread.

Then, something changed.

It was sudden. Sharp. A thin needle of light pierced through the shadows, not bright enough to bring comfort, but strange enough to make everything stop. The voices went silent. The hands grabbing his soul paused for a brief second.

That's when it happened.

A pulse—silent but powerful—rushed into his Soul Space. The psychic attack came without warning. The blood-colored flame of the Blood Soul Lamp, far outside in the real world, flared just once.

A wave of Aksai's Aether Essence, carried by the psychic pulse, slipped into the Verdant Elder's soul when he was at his weakest.

His defenses were wide open. His will was drowning. The foreign essence entered with ease, mixing with his own Aether.

Inside his Soul Space, the storm began.

A strange symbol appeared in the center—half-formed at first, then glowing more clearly with every heartbeat. It didn't make sense to the Verdant Elder. It looked like a brand– A soul mark. And it belonged to Aksai.

Before he could react, the memories hit him.

He was no longer a demon beast. He was… Aksai.