When it all began, it was a day like any other—nothing special, nothing out of the ordinary. At least, that's how it was until tragedy entered his life. Luke Smith, just six years old with half a stick of butter smeared on his face, saw his world split in two.
A weekend outing with his parents—playing, eating, having fun as a family—those were the things he enjoyed most at that age. Unfortunately, the heavens are jealous of talent, and the happiness of the chosen is a slap to their prestige.
The death of his father was something adults described as "unexpected" and "a tragedy." But for Luke, who saw it with his own eyes, it was something more. Not because of the event itself, but because of what came after.
The usual story: a criminal and a passing officer, a weapon and a struggle, and finally, something goes wrong.
While people screamed and his mother clung to the body as if holding it tightly could keep the soul from escaping, Luke felt something. Not sadness, not anger. His father's last words before going on duty echoed in his mind.
"I'll be right back! Take care of your mother!"
Those words stayed in his head, and the only thing he could do as he saw his father's body on the ground was repeat them over and over.
He didn't blame his mother for running when the incident happened. He simply understood that he had to protect her, because that was the final will of the man he admired and loved so deeply. That was now his new responsibility.
He felt a warmth in his chest, a heartbeat so strong it seemed to make his entire body vibrate. As if something inside him had awakened. It was pure power—he didn't know how to describe it, but it was beyond his understanding.
Just as he was absorbed in it, a flood of memories rushed into his mind—memories that weren't his. In them, he saw vast worlds full of beasts the size of continents and people fighting them one-on-one, exotic plants that reminded him of the fossils he saw in museum shelves, young masters, ancestral clans, and heavenly techniques with unnecessarily long names. He didn't remember the details, but he grasped the core logic: the world was a spiritual battlefield, and only cultivators attained true freedom.
And Luke wasn't a protagonist. That, he knew for sure.
In that moment, when he lost everything, he also gained something.
"Memories of my past life? But they're incomplete… Still, this energy… I see, spiritual energy, huh…"
Just as he was trying to understand everything that was happening—the death of his father, his mother's fragility, the past memories, and the spiritual energy—his body couldn't take it anymore and gave out. The last thing he felt was his body in free fall.
The next day, Luke woke up. His mother was lying beside him.
He didn't know what had happened after he lost consciousness, only that death is never simple. After all, he had attended funerals before.
"This is my first tribulation. From now on, it's my turn to challenge the heavens. I refuse to have something taken from me again. I may be a nobody, but I'll use my unstoppable talent to reach the top and transcend."
Months went by, and all he did was train.
He was always muttering his goals and objectives to motivate himself every time someone saw him in the park, eyes closed, fingers forming made-up mudras.
His mother, Elizabeth, watched him from the window with that mix of confusion and tenderness only a mother can manage. Since her husband's death, her son had become introspective—but also strangely determined. He didn't cry. He didn't ask about his father. He just studied, read, and… sat. For hours. In silence. In the garden. Under the rain. Under the sun. Sometimes in front of a rock, as if expecting it to speak.
Elizabeth consulted a psychologist.
"And you say he believes he's 'cultivating spiritual energy'?" The doctor asked without raising an eyebrow.
"Yes, and he also says he wants to enter 'Initial Qi Refinement'… is that some kind of philosophy?"
"Not exactly…" the specialist replied, flipping through his notebook.
"But your son seems highly functional, extremely intelligent, and… well, a bit odd. But not dangerous, which is normal for children, especially those who've experienced trauma."
And with that, Elizabeth decided not to interfere too much.
Luke, for his part, devoted himself to his new path with the seriousness of a monk. He meditated every morning, practiced deep breathing techniques (even if it ended in hyperventilation and dizziness), and began a strict diet of rice, fish, and green tea. At seven, he was convinced simple carbs blocked the flow of Qi. At eight, he quit sugar. At nine, he discovered natural oatmeal cookies and had an existential crisis.
But it wasn't just physical training. As a self-taught cultivator, he knew knowledge was more valuable than celestial jade and sacred scriptures. So he studied with the passion of a basketball player going for a dunk.
While other kids played hide and seek, Luke memorized geopolitical maps. While his classmates read picture books, he devoured treatises on ancient history and medicinal botany. Luke knew that the more he advanced in cultivation, the more resources he would need—and having money and understanding the world were vital to amassing the necessary wealth.
He could distinguish between a wildflower and a potential spiritual herb. He learned that when visiting a friend and finding a green herb in his brother's room while playing. He ate it and felt he had reached enlightenment, as if his mind was floating, then he ran to tell his mother. He doesn't know what happened—just that he never saw the friend's brother again. A shame, surely recruited by some sect.
But from that day on, he became a fan of Jimmy Hendrix, a powerful cultivator specialized in the dao of music. He felt flying again with him.
And when he listened to Pink Floyd for the first time, he knew there was a sect somewhere to teach them. Only those sages could créate such incredible sounds.
He read about physics, hoping to understand the world. Meditation and inner energy manipulation boosted his mind; memorizing became easier. It wasn't photographic memory, but far better than before.
Shortly after his father's death, he began with classical mechanics (kinematics, dynamics, gravitation, etc.). When it came time to study, he never left his books and notebooks, solving problems all day, from simple to complex. It took him six months to master them well.
Then came thermodynamics, electromagnetism, optics, relativity, quantum physics, particle physics, statistical physics, information theory, condensed matter physics, quantum gravity physics, and cosmology—eventually reaching cutting-edge theories like string theory, quantum computing, dark matter, dark energy, and exotic phenomena like negative time and hypothetical particles like tachyons, though the latter were just theories.
And chemistry kept pace…
Of course, he didn't master it all, but the number of books he read gave him a solid theoretical foundation—enough to use.
He wasn't a normal child.
His teachers were torn between awe and concern.
"His essay on thermodynamics is… disturbingly detailed," said the science teacher, barely understanding it, during a Key Stage 1 (5–7 years old in England) school meeting.
"Did anyone else notice he drew a basic business economy diagram?" added the literature teacher, visibly confused.
In truth, none of them really understood what he wrote. The first time he submitted such a paper, his mother was called in because they thought it made no sense and was a sign of a troubled child. They assumed she didn't even check his homework. In their minds, the idea that a child could grasp such things was unthinkable. Otherwise, they would've just found someone who did understand—it was a school full of professionals, after all.
They were stunned when his mother came in and, alongside Luke, explained the physics and business formulas in simple terms. That spared Luke from punishment, but gave his mother a major headache. Thankfully, she'd learned a little—having a child who reads strange things teaches you something. At least enough so people don't think he's crazy.
Luke wasn't fazed by the comments. He knew the path of the cultivator was lonely, misunderstood. Only the truly wise survived the world's initial contempt.
So his life continued—until everything changed when he met Harry.
It was one afternoon while gathering flowers (intending to make a spiritual pill using a mouth-cleansing mint and a fragrant lavender). That's when he saw him—a boy his age, with glasses, messy hair, and a scar on his forehead.
Luke stared at him for three seconds, then turned on his heel and ran.
"It's him!" he shouted at home, slamming doors and windows.
"Who, honey?"
"The MC. The main character of this realm. I saw him! He has the aura. He has the look. He has a prophetic scar!"
From that day, Luke investigated Harry. Found out where he lived, what he did, his age—everything he could. And with each discovery, he became more convinced. Harry had it all—except parents, which was a bonus.
But he decided to avoid him like a tribulation. He watched from afar. Took notes. Analyzed movement patterns. Suspected he might have a sealed ancestral spirit or was accumulating divine techniques. He even thought the scar could be a celestial formation.
But he didn't falter. On the contrary, he doubled down.
"If I'm going to survive the protagonist's arc… I must reach the Spiritual Foundation before he turns eleven," he said while doing pushups on hot stones (a bad idea).
By age ten, Luke had written over 300 pages on cultivation theory applied to reality, using all the knowledge he'd gained. In his mind were memories from countless cultivation worlds, and in all of them, ascension required understanding the world's laws. Given that, why not use the knowledge already available?
Luke reasoned that the problem in previous worlds was that their understanding was instinctive. But here, there was a clear study system. That was an advantage because the foundation was much stronger, preventing deviation in cultivation—even ordinary people could use it to build incredible things. The downside, though, was that each step was as solid as Mt. Tai, making progress slow.
Still, he didn't rely only on that. One day, during meditation, he tried sensing the outside. It was a crude attempt with no technique, but he managed to perceive his mother. Focusing more, he saw something odd—she was surrounded by a pinkish aura. Not knowing what it meant, he kept practicing.
A butcher had low spirit: red aura, violent energy. An elderly librarian had golden energy: a soul enlightened by the Dao of Knowledge.
When he reanalyzed his mother, he recognized a warm, enveloping energy—a Qi that made him feel safe. It was the reason he trained so much.
"I'll protect mom. Even if the Final Tribulation consumes this world."
Elizabeth, meanwhile, still didn't know if she should worry. Sometimes, she'd find Luke talking to the microwave, or burying crystals in flowerpots "to reinforce spiritual formations." Other times, she saw him drawing seals on windows with salt because "he dreamed of an invader from the Shadow Realm."
And then… the letter arrived.
An owl—a giant owl—hit the window.
Luke opened the door slowly, holding his breath. He looked at the creature, read the envelope it carried, and his eyes went wide.
"A message from a spiritual beast messenger?! A correspondence summoning technique?!"
With trembling hands, he removed the letter and read:
HOGWARTS SCHOOL OF WITCHCRAFT AND WIZARDRY
And then the world collapsed. Or was reborn. It depended on how you saw it.
Luke reread the word "magic" at least five times.
"Ma…gic? What is that? A dialect from a higher plane?"
He looked up the word in dictionaries. Analyzed it phonetically. Concluded it must be a mistranslation of "deep cultivation" or "arcane energy."
"It must be a sect. Yes! Hogwarts… sounds like 'Wog-arts,' probably a runic transcription. It's an ancestral sect that accepts young disciples to train in the Dao. Finally! Someone has recognized my talent."
He knelt in the middle of the room and, with tears of emotion, swore loyalty to the Hogwarts sect, convinced that his destiny as a cultivator was finally about to cross its first great threshold.
"Mom… they've chosen me. I'm not the MC… but I'll be the one who survives."
Elizabeth just nodded, not understanding anything, and went to get a notebook to start jotting down therapy appointments. Maybe a psychiatrist—last time he took those pills, he called them training pills and had to be hospitalized for a while.
Luke, meanwhile, calmed down after coming to a terrible conclusion. He knew it was a sect, so he'd surely have to leave his beloved mother behind to embark on a dangerous journey full of perils and face-slapping in search of opportunities and wives.
But he wasn't an MC who thought abandoning your world to seek higher realms was fine. So he decided to do the hardest thing of all: negotiate to let his mother join the sect too.
He knew it would be extremely hard—almost impossible—so he'd have to show exceptional talent. But he had to do it no matter what. He was about to enter a legendary sect… and would do everything possible not to die in the first arc.
"At least I'm not a young master, or have a fiancée ready to be stolen by the MC."
Those were his thoughts of comfort.
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How's this novel going?
How quickly will I get on with it? It depends on the reception and whether you support me.
I hope you enjoy it.