He woke up as he fell from high, the wind betting against his form.
Something was wrong.
He open his eyes and the world was blurred, he breathed and his body struggled, choking in the sky for a moment before a simple command had the air filling his lungs, qi strengthening the weak organs.
Even the qi moved sluggishly, he felt small, weak, the wind didn't didn't feel the same against his skin, as if he had no feathers, the atmosphere smelt wrong, and his hearing picked alien sounds, unfamiliar.
And his body was wrong.
Instantly his core hummed and the world shot into focus, in that moment he picked a few things, first that he was no longer a keku.
He was in a small body, a baby human, if the visions of what Okerteru's shown him were any indication.
Second was that this body was unrefined, the dantian small, the body incapable of standing the power of his qi, even now, his body was being ripped apart by the mere use of core qi, and healing quicker yet as his concept tempered this body.
He knew that he would be helpless in this body, the enforcement techniques he developed were with keku in mind, and so were the healing skills, leaving him vulnerable.
And if it wasn't so, his coordination was shot, any skill for the movement of a keku useless in this form.
Or they would be.
His mind quickly picked apart everything about this new body, from the mechanical structures to the genetic structures, within moments he adjusted all his techniques, and the world as seen from the toddler body was clarified.
Weak muscles, yet incapable of movement by themselves doubled in strength, and again and again, it was two breaths before even solid metal would be as water in hands.
He looked down and saw he was quit a way in the air, and but he picked no nearby enemies, still, he was wary of attacks too fast to react to, and the featherless skin shimmered for a moment, becoming conceptually reflective, a simple water technique to counter lasers, developed by a discipline of his in lab conditions.
He shot down to the treeline faster than before, even without wings, the wind moving him at speeds just below the speed of sound, as to not alarm any nearby hostiles.
His senses could pick nothing, even as they scanned both light and sound to a level above any technology he was familiar with.
But even as he did it, he felt the deep dissonance, he has heard of the condition called body dysmorphia, but this…
Even as his new unfamiliar body moved with grace, it felt wrong, like Ill fitting clothes.
The keku pillar stood in struck contrast to his physical form but even as he felt his very soul revolting at his flesh, something changed, his insight showed him everything that took place.
From the way the change started effecting his soul, and the way the soul effected the body, introducing keku genes in an attempt to introduce his insight to this new body, while at the same time not doing so.
He split his attention, literally, a qi program technique recording his insight, it wouldn't last, too much information to support anything but rudimentary recordings of the real thing, especially without enlarged dantian as extra hardware.
But for a moment, it would be enough, he focused on something else, his connection to his students, and he breathed a sign of relief as he felt it stretching into the stars, and from it he felt himself, still shining bright in the sky, melding into the connection in a way he knows his other self has also noticed.
Relief flooded him, fear had previously took root as he contemplated that he may have been kidnapped in some way, or was attacked in a way he couldn't protect himself from, leaving his people without him, but it seems like what happened was more similar to cloning.
Even if it couldn't be that, cloning didn't replicate the souls after all.
He quickly triangulated his position and was left in shock at the distance, he was almost half a galaxy away, he shook the distraction away and got back to his insight.
Catching up on the recordings, he focused back on it.
He could feel understanding forming as vague memories of what took place before he awakened floated up.
As he saw the changes of the soul and body, contrasting with the nature of an alien pillar, he felt something growing, he felt an understanding.
Reincarnation
His core felt fitting a little better, more harmonious, and in a daze he didn't notice, he expanded another use of his insight, and felt himself taking a scalpel to his own soul and body, letting his second insight float to the surface and help him along.
Controlling it in a way he wasn't sure he could have done for anything else, slowly that understanding formed into shapes of qi.
Slowly, a middle point before human and a keku took place, on the surface level, his form stayed human, but slowly it took more keku aspects, in the shape of the body, and face, he knew that if he had more than a fuzz of air, it would look almost like feather.
He wielded qi to his genome and soul in a way unlike anything before.
His insight slipped away hours ago, and than days.
And he set there, as if sleeping, immersed in the changing of his body with qi alone.
But something worrying did make him notice, within his soul, a flame burned, and it consumed the divine qi he had left.
Two decades if he didn't use it.
His lifespan was different though, he felt young again, a wellspring of power he could pull upon, slightly weakened by the lack of tempered body or a dantian, but still, the vast majority of his life was back.
Explosions sounded in the distance and he didn't move during the course of his meditation, even as he looked to the future in dark flames on one hand, and refined his understanding in the other.
He heard them before they arrived, their smells and noises echoing from afar, even with this weaker body, and the divine flames disappeared.
They stumbled into the clearing he reseted in, four humans, they were heavily injured, three males and a female, their flames of emotions were weak, reeking with despair, and he recognized their uniforms, guardsman.
He opened his eyes and followed the instinct of this body, crying and reaching for it.
He was just a baby after all.
As he did so, a compulsion was carried with his cry, an application of yin qi, and their minds were influenced, losing distrust, he couldn't be too blatant, for it would be noticed, but manipulating the minds of mortals was easy enough.
He knew the nature of humans, he knew of their xenophobia and hatred of all unnatural.
And as one of them lifted his gun to take aim, suspicious and another, one who was missing an arm, stopped him.
He continued acting, because in his mediation, he realized something, he might not be in his homeworld anymore, he might not be there to help them fight the end, but he had long held suspicion that the reason for the war was him, the lords were afraid of him, of cultivation.
And now there were two of him
Can their attention be split if he was somewhere else.
