1 Rebirth

Rebirth

Somewhere in the United States, in an apartment on the East Coast, a handsome man in his early twenties was currently lying asleep on his bed. But oddly, his eyebrows knitted together tightly, and drops of sweat were falling from his forehead as if he were in a sauna.

Moreover, every once in a while, he would twist and turn while flailing his arms around as if he were using them to fight an unseen foe in his dreams.

This phenomenon continued for almost an hour until, finally, the man sat up from his bed and immediately put on a ferocious and bloodthirsty expression that managed almost to bring the temperature of the room down a few degrees.

"BLACK ABYSS KING, I CURSE YOU TO ETERNAL DAMNATION! I WILL HAVE MY WAY, NO MATTER THE COST! I WILL BE BACK!" The man yelled at the top of his lungs as he pointed to his apartment roof.

Rage engulfed the man's expression. From the twisted yet malicious expression on his face to the crunched-up eyebrows that would terrify anyone, nothing about the handsome man's face was pleasant. It was more like a horrific demon had awakened than the elegant man who was on the bed.

However, soon enough, the man's malicious expression turned into confusion. He didn't recognize where he was. Thankfully, before long, he did recognize his new surroundings.

"This…. Isn't this my apartment back when I was on Earth?" The man named Matthew Miller asked in a confused tone.

"Where is the Black Abyss King? Where is the Nine-Ringed Divine Throne? Wasn't I in the Nine Serenities World a second ago? How could I be in my New York City apartment?" Matthew Miller asked aloud. Apparently, he still wasn't able to process his surroundings.

However, Matthew's question remained unanswered. He was alone in his room, with no one around to answer him. How could they be answered?

So, to find answers himself, Matthew stood up from his bed and picked up the phone on his bedside counter. Turning it on, he saw the date as February 21st, 2025. But instead of giving him answers, the date only served to confuse Matthew even more.

"How did I go back in time? 2025 was almost 5000 years ago." Matthew spoke aloud as he spoke out his thoughts.

With one more idea, Matthew went to his mirror and looked at his current self for the first time. And sure enough, none of the previous signs of his cultivation journey were left on his body. Instead, what stood in front of him was his blonde and handsome 23-year-old self.

"Was that all a dream then? But it was so realistic. I was most definitely at the peak of the Divine Lord Realm. That feeling wasn't fake." Matthew spoke as he raised his hand and looked at his almost foreign-looking hand.

In his 'dream,' he cultivated to the peak of the Divine Lord Realm and was fighting against a man called the Black Abyss King for a treasure. Though he managed to acquire and refine the treasure, because of a defect in his previous cultivation, he still lost the ensuing battle and died full of unwillingness.

However, now not only was Matthew not at the peak of the Divine Lord Realm or in the Nine Serenities World, but rather he was back in his Earth apartment that he lived in during his twenties, almost 5000 years in the past.

Thankfully, Matthew had an easy way to test if it was a dream or not. In his dream, he had cultivated his soul along with his Qi Cultivation, and though he had been sent back to the past, if his dream was true, with his experience and skill, Matthew should be able to use his weak mortal soul to investigate his body.

And sure enough, Matthew was able to sense the weak soul within his body. A few seconds later, he was also able to look throughout his body and probe his still-clogged meridians.

"Then it wasn't a dream! But how did I go back in time, and even for such a long time?" Matthew thought aloud.

Though some of his questions had been answered, he still had a thousand more that were destined not to be answered.

Sensing this, Matthew shook his head, and his eyes instantly regained their clarity.

"It doesn't matter how it happened, but that I am. Everything changes! Black Abyss King I, Matthew Miller, the Spacetime Divine Lord, keep every one of my promises! I will crush you and bring you eternal damnation!" Matthew solemnly swore as he clenched his fists.

In Matthew's previous life, he knew that the Earth would go through earth-shattering changes next week and would slowly, in the coming months, become almost unrecognizable from what it is currently.

The space probe Voyager 1 would, in a week's time, on February 28th, do something mind-boggling.

In the middle of space, not blocked by any object, Voyager 1 would stop as if it had hit a brick wall.

Countless scientists and analysts would try and figure out what it was blocked by, but no one would guess what it was until it was too late.

Voyager did run into an object, but it wasn't a wall or blockade but specifically a seal that was made to keep Earth caged in. Outside of the seal was a universe filled with a foreign substance known as Spiritual Qi.

When Voyager first ran into the seal, it managed to poke a hole in it, allowing Spiritual Qi to flow into our desolate Solar System and rejuvenate it. However, that hole was small and entirely imperceptible to low-level technology on Earth.

Because of this, the Spiritual Qi on the other side of the seal was only able to trickle into Earth's solar system bit by bit. But all of that would change in six months.

In six months, Voyager would finally break through the seal entirely and start a solar-system-wide metamorphic that would turn Earth into something only seen in fantasy stories.

Earth would balloon up to almost three times its current size, and animals would mutate and become ferocious beasts capable of growing multiple times their previous sizes. At the same time, even the plant life would evolve, turning into divine trees capable of healing any injury or parasites wanting to suck all the essence out of the Earth.

Along with the changes, Humans, too, would be able to cultivate Spiritual Qi again.

Nothing would be the same as it is now in half a year, and Matthew wanted to be prepared for that future.

The reason Matthew knew it was again, and not for the first time, was that cultivators used to live on Earth and in this desolate solar system. After all, such a complex and advanced seal wasn't randomly placed around them.

Stonehenge, the Egyptian Pyramids, the Bermuda Triangle, and so many more unexplained pieces of art on Earth were the work of ancient cultivators who had left Earth millennia ago.

When they left, to protect their home planet, they laid out an intricate seal that blocked any Spiritual Qi from going in, along with any hostile forces that wanted to plunder Earth for what it was worth.

However, the ancient cultivators would never expect that after only a few thousand years, the descendants they left behind in the Stone Age would somehow break through the seal they spent so much work on.

Matthew knew some ancient cultivators from his past, but he learned that time eroded everything. After not seeing or even hearing about Earth for a few thousand years, the ancient cultivators were only full of disdain for the primeval planet.

But Matthew didn't care about them. Matthew, now armed with the knowledge of the next five thousand years, had a supreme advantage for his cultivation journey.

Even without future knowledge and his extremely late cultivation start, relying on his supreme talent and comprehension abilities, he was able to cultivate extremely fast and reach the peak of the Divine Lord Realm at an almost record pace. If it weren't for the tight monopolization of many cultivation-related items, Matthew wouldn't have been stuck at the peak of the Divine Lord Realm.

However, now, with the future in his memories, let alone reaching his previous realm, he could surpass it and even ascend to Godhood!

"However, first, before anything, I need to check up on them!" Grabbing his car keys, Matthew ran out of his two-bedroom apartment.

Though Matthew knew that every second would matter in the days preparing for the Spiritual Qi rejuvenation, he had to bring his younger twin siblings back from school.

Going down the elevator and reaching the parking garage, Matthew quickly found the car he used in his youth and entered it.

"Since it's only February, that means that John and Joanne are still alive! That piece of scum, Lance, hasn't done anything to them yet!" Matthew thought as he sped out of the parking garage and drove to where his younger siblings went to school.

In his previous life, his younger siblings were kidnapped by a greedy real estate tycoon because Matthew wouldn't give up a piece of land he had inherited.

Matthew and his younger twin siblings had their parents die two years ago, just as Matthew turned 21, and for the past two years, Matthew has been struggling to juggle university, work, and taking care of his younger siblings.

Thankfully, with the life insurance money his parents left and the influential pieces of real estate with it, Matthew was able to stay afloat relatively well.

However, after the Spiritual Qi rejuvenation happened, all three pieces of real estate that Matthew inherited turned out to be holy lands of cultivation. All three lands had a Spiritual Qi Vein underneath them, making them prime locations to build forces in the impending cultivation era.

Lance, a real estate tycoon, and up-and-coming cultivator, became greedy for these pieces of land. So he did as any greedy businessman would do and went to Matthew and offered him a low price for each piece of land.

Hearing the offer, though Matthew knew it wasn't a good deal, and seeing the cultivators behind Lance indirectly threatening him, he knew that he was going to have to sell those pieces of land whether he wanted to or not.

But Lance offered far too low a price for Matthew to even consider. So, wanting to get some money out of this transaction, Matthew tried to negotiate.

He knew that these lands were extremely valuable, especially since Lance, a known cultivator, and all of his subordinates came to his place of work to buy them from him. However, Matthew was ignorant of just how much the land was worth. But even so, for a man of Lance's wealth, they couldn't have been worth that much.

So, during negotiations, he tried to hike up the prices threefold.

However, that only served to destroy Lance's patience, and with his new forces and cultivation, Lance ordered John and Joanne to be kidnapped. Then, by using his siblings as hostages, Lance managed to get Matthew to spit out the deed for the pieces of land at almost no cost.

Still, even then, Lance refused to give up an inch. Wanting to cover his tracks, Lance killed John and Joanne and even tried to kill Matthew as well.

But Matthew managed to survive the attack and, after seeing the strength of the then-new cultivators, swore he would become one and avenge his siblings.

Eventually, he did manage to do just that. After avenging his younger siblings, he began to rise as Earth's strongest warrior and the future Divine Lord he would grow to be.

Sadly, after the deaths of his siblings, Matthew would lose any and all emotions from then on, becoming a cold-hearted and merciless man. He would then spend the rest of his cultivation journey alone, without a companion or family to accompany him on his rise to the top.

However, now he could change that. John and Joanne are still alive; Earth had yet to transform, and he had the chance to cultivate again from the beginning—something he would have killed for in the past.

Thinking this much, Matthew Miller, the future Spacetime Divine Lord, a man known for his icy-cold eyes and apathetic expression that seemed to be ever plastered on his face, smiled for the first time in 5,000 years, albeit subconsciously.

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