The Weak Prince Is A Cultivation God

Iris stood.

No… she floated.

There was no ground beneath her feet, no horizon to give shape to the world. Around her stretched a void so vast it was beyond comprehension—an infinite expanse where light and darkness blurred into one. And within that void, countless shards of obsidian drifted, suspended in silence.

Each shard shimmered faintly, catching some unseen light, fragments of a shattered reality stretching as far as her eyes could see.

Her gaze moved slowly from one piece to another, the way a prisoner might trace the bars of a cell.

"I… am dead," she said at last. Her voice didn't tremble. It carried more acceptance than fear.

A second voice answered her, deep and certain.

"No… well, yes, but technically not."

Her head snapped toward the sound. Her eyes scanned the shards, the endless dark. And then she saw him—floating just behind her, as though he'd been there all along.

"You…" she muttered.

"Hello, Iris." Lanard's lips curved just enough to be called a smile, but the weight in his eyes made it feel heavier than warmth. "It's been a while."

"Yeah… it has." She stared at him, searching for something in his face. Something she didn't find.

Her gaze broke away. "Where is this place?"

"My spiritual realm," Lanard replied easily. He raised one hand. "Perhaps I'll make it more pleasing to the eye."

He snapped his fingers.

The void began to shift. The shards of obsidian dissolved into black dust, and the dust fell away into nothing.

Light bled in from everywhere at once, painting the darkness with color. In slow motion, the emptiness filled—first with soil, then with grass, then with an endless expanse of flowers that swayed in a wind that hadn't been there a moment before.

The sky above them was a canvas of gold and pale blue, streaked with clouds that drifted lazily across the horizon.

The flowers were every color imaginable—crimson, violet, deep blue, white like fresh snow—and they stretched farther than even the void had. The air was warm and clean, carrying the faint hum of unseen life.

It was perfect in a way no real place ever could be.

"Spiritual realm…" Iris repeated, her voice low. "So I am dead?"

"Not yet," Lanard said, letting his hand brush across the tops of the flowers as he walked past her. "You're somewhere in between—life and death."

Her eyes narrowed slightly. "Why did you bring me here?"

"To give you a choice," Lanard said without turning to face her.

She bent down, plucked one of the flowers, and brought it to her nose. The scent was unlike anything she'd known—so pure and full that it seemed to fill her chest with light.

"A choice," she said slowly.

"You can choose to die," Lanard said plainly. "I release your soul, you move on. I've already agreed with your brother—I'll take Solaris and leave the Empire's crown alone. You'll die with your dreams unfulfilled, and your enemies will stand triumphant."

Iris let out a short chuckle. "You really know how to make that sound appealing."

"That's because I don't want you to choose it."

"And my other option?"

"Pain." His answer was blunt, without hesitation. "Suffering beyond anything you've endured. Constant and unending. Your mind will break. Your soul will be dragged to the very edge of destruction."

"That doesn't sound much better."

"But…" Lanard's gaze finally met hers, cold and steady. "If you survive it—if you somehow come out the other side—you won't just return to life. You'll return stronger. Strong enough to take back everything you've lost with your own hands."

Her fingers released the flower, letting it drift to the ground. "What exactly am I surviving?"

Lanard didn't answer with words.

The field around them began to ripple, as if the air were water. The sky darkened, clouds twisting into unnatural shapes. The flowers blackened and withered, dissolving into the soil beneath them.

And then the world changed again.

They stood on a blood-soaked battlefield under a sky split by black suns. Towers lay broken, their stones cracked and smoking.

Rivers ran thick with crimson, and in the distance, colossal shapes moved—beasts of impossible size and form.

"This," Lanard began, "is the origin of what I offer you."

He stepped forward, and with each step, the scene shifted—one moment showing a hooded figure carving symbols into a skull, the next a circle of robed silhouettes whispering to one another as they drank from a bowl of blood beneath a moon eclipsed into shadow.

"The Blood Domain Arts are more than a path of cultivation," Lanard said. "They are a legacy. One carved into the marrow of the world itself. Born in the age of black suns and shattered empires. They draw on the most primal currency there is: blood."

The visions kept changing. A talisman of flayed skin, its symbols burning. A hand reaching into the chest of a screaming man and pulling free a beating heart. Soldiers kneeling as their wounds closed in an instant, their eyes turning red as the power took hold.

"No sect claims it. Its manuscripts are never written on paper. They are burned into bone, sealed in flesh, or whispered through lips wet with blood under eclipsed moons."

The world flickered, showing a vast library, no books, just skeletal remains—each left with careful markings.

"It is said the Arts were not created. They were something remembered. Fragments of something older than cultivation itself. Older than the First Heaven. Older than the laws that bind Qi."

The vision changed once more—seven rivers of blood flowing through an endless abyss, each one branching in a different direction.

"The Arts are divided into seven veins. Each vein is a path of mastery over life and death through blood. All of them are powerful. All of them dangerous. But only one… is final."

Six of the rivers dimmed, their crimson glow fading into shadow. Only the seventh remained, brighter and deeper in color than the rest, its current violent, endless.

Lanard's voice dropped lower, almost reverent.

"The seventh vein. The unspoken inheritance. The abyss at the end of the river."

The image of the river swelled until it was all around her, its roar filling her ears, the scent of iron choking the air. Somewhere beneath the surface, shapes moved—vast, formless, and terrible.

"This," Lanard said, "is the path I offer you. The Heir of the Devil."

The name hung in the air.

Iris stared into the river, feeling the weight of its pull.