The Supreme God Returns as a Mortal

The Discovery

Chapter 6: The Discovery

Tian Yuan was two years old when he made his first real discovery.

He had been watching the city from the alley where he and Lin slept. The world was a strange, chaotic place, filled with people who had no idea what true power looked like. But he noticed something interesting.

The city was built on a ley line.

It was faint, barely perceptible, but it was there. A stream of qi running beneath the streets, feeding the plants and animals and people who lived on top of it. The qi was weak—this was a mortal city, far from any sect or cultivation mountain—but it was present.

And that gave Tian Yuan an idea.

He couldn't absorb qi into his own body. His damaged soul made that impossible. But he could still sense it, still manipulate it. He could gather it, condense it, shape it. And then, he could infuse it into objects. Into food. Into people.

It was a crude technique, inefficient, the kind of thing mortal alchemists used to create pills. But for someone with Tian Yuan's knowledge, it was child's play.

He started small. He gathered wisps of qi from the air and infused them into Lin's food. Not enough to be noticeable, just enough to strengthen her body, to make her less hungry, less cold. She began to look healthier, her cheeks filling out, her eyes regaining their sparkle.

She thought it was a miracle. She prayed to the gods every night, thanking them for her son's fortune.

Tian Yuan scoffed at her prayers. Do not thank the gods, Mother. There are no gods here. Only me.

And then, one day, Lin came back with a secret.

She had been working as a cleaner in a wealthy merchant's house. The merchant had a son, a boy of ten, who was sick with a fever that wouldn't break. The physicians had given up. The merchant was ready to let his son die.

But Lin had seen Tian Yuan's "miracle." She had seen how the food he touched always tasted better, how it made her feel stronger. And so, in desperation, she had taken a bowl of soup from the merchant's kitchen and asked Tian Yuan to bless it.

"Please, little one," she whispered. "That boy... he's just a child. He doesn't deserve to die."

Tian Yuan stared at her. Then, slowly, he nodded. He reached out with his tiny hand and touched the bowl. Qi flowed from the air, from the ley line, from the very fabric of the world. It poured into the soup, infusing it with enough healing energy to cure a hundred illnesses.

"Give it to him," he said. "But do not tell anyone. And do not bring him here."

Lin nodded, her eyes wide with wonder. She took the soup to the merchant's house, fed it to the boy, and watched as his fever broke.

The merchant was overjoyed. He offered Lin a permanent position as his servant. He offered her money, food, a place to stay.

Lin accepted. She had no choice. She had a son to raise.

And Tian Yuan, watching from the shadows, smiled.

This is how it begins, he thought. Not with power, but with influence. Not with conquest, but with care. I will climb the ladder step by step. I will build an empire out of nothing. And one day, Qing Long, Zhu Que, all of you who betrayed me... one day, I will have my revenge.

But even as he thought it, the revenge felt less important than before.

What mattered was this: Lin was safe. She was happy. And Tian Yuan, the Supreme God of Ten Thousand Realms, had found something he had never expected.

A reason to live.