I Died Inventing Cultivation, Now the Heavens Call Me Genius

Chapter 5: The Scholar Who Recognized a Dead Man

“Destroy the entrance! Whatever is beneath this palace must never reach my sons!”

Emperor William Cole's command shook the chamber, but before his guards could obey, a child's laughter echoed from beneath the floor. Ethan lay in Queen Victoria's arms, staring at the spot where Lord Marcus Vale had dissolved into silver particles while the minister's final words continued to haunt his thoughts.

Ask your father what happened to the first prince.

William had reacted to the name Thomas as though someone had plunged a blade into his chest. Now he stood motionless, his sword trembling in his hand as the black symbol beneath his sleeve spread toward his wrist.

“Father,” Alexander said cautiously, “who was Thomas?”

William turned toward his eldest son with a frightening expression.

“You will not ask that question again.”

Alexander's jaw tightened. “Someone tried to erase our younger brother's memories, and a dying man mentioned another prince whose existence we apparently know nothing about. You cannot expect me to remain silent.”

“Enough!”

Golden spiritual energy burst from William's body, cracking the tiles beneath his feet. The guards immediately lowered their heads, but Alexander refused to avert his gaze.

Ethan watched the confrontation with growing unease. He had expected royal politics, succession disputes, and perhaps an assassination attempt, but he had never imagined that his new family would be connected to the mystery that had killed him in his previous life.

More troubling still, the laughter beneath the palace had stopped.

Whatever was down there had been listening.

William finally sheathed his sword and ordered his guards to escort Ethan to his mother's private quarters, where nobody would be permitted to approach him without authorization.

Victoria studied her husband's troubled expression.

“And what will you do?”

William glanced toward the cracked floor.

“I will discover why the past has returned to haunt this family.”

He departed without another explanation, leaving Alexander staring at the closed door.

“If Father refuses to reveal the truth, I'll uncover it myself,” the crown prince murmured.

Ethan silently agreed because, for once, he and his supposed royal rival wanted exactly the same thing.

---

By sunset, the imperial palace had become a fortress. Cultivators guarded every corridor, protective formations covered the rooftops, and imperial soldiers searched the lower chambers for hidden passages. Despite their efforts, nobody discovered an entrance beneath the room where Marcus had disappeared.

That failure troubled Ethan more than the minister's death. If something had answered from beneath the palace, it had either concealed its presence or existed somewhere beyond ordinary physical space.

His previous research had explored similar possibilities because Si sometimes produced seemingly impossible effects when observers misunderstood the laws being manipulated.

Unfortunately, his current body made experimentation difficult.

Ethan sat in his cradle while a servant attempted to feed him a spoonful of medicinal paste.

“Your Highness, please cooperate,” the woman pleaded. “The imperial physician says this medicine will strengthen your spiritual channels.”

Ethan immediately turned away from the dark mixture, whose bitter smell and shimmering silver particles suggested a crude attempt to force Si into the body's natural pathways.

In an adult cultivator, the medicine might temporarily improve spiritual sensitivity. However, administering it to an infant could damage developing channels or establish an artificial connection to the heavenly system.

When the servant tried again, Ethan deliberately sneezed, sending the spoon flying from her hand.

“Oh, heavens!”

While the unfortunate woman searched for another spoon, Ethan concentrated on the spilled mixture. A thin strand of silver energy rose from the paste, allowing him to examine its structure more closely.

He recognized the hidden connection immediately. It matched the alteration he had discovered in the formula inside Nathaniel's journal.

Someone had modified ordinary cultivation techniques to make their users dependent on an external authority.

The heavens aren't simply granting recognition. They're creating a connection that can be monitored, restricted, or even severed.

If every cultivator depended on that connection, whoever controlled the system could potentially control the entire cultivation world.

A knock interrupted his thoughts as Queen Victoria entered with an unfamiliar man wearing a weathered brown coat. The stranger carried a leather satchel and bore a small scar running from his left temple to his cheek.

“Ethan, I want you to meet Professor Nathaniel Hayes,” Victoria said as she approached the cradle.

Ethan's eyes widened.

Nathaniel had nearly died in the nursery, and his journal had revealed a warning addressed to Shen Yu. Yet the scholar standing before him appeared completely unharmed.

Nathaniel noticed the infant's expression and smiled faintly.

“An extraordinary child. Most babies cry when they see me.”

Perhaps they have better instincts, Ethan thought.

Victoria dismissed the servant before turning toward the scholar.

“You said you discovered something about the journal.”

Nathaniel placed his satchel on the table and removed a small, cracked crystal.

“The journal I brought into the nursery was not the original. Someone replaced it years ago, preserving most of the handwriting and equations but altering the final pages. These changes could never have come from Shen Yu himself.”

Ethan's attention sharpened as Nathaniel placed the crystal beside his cradle.

“This was hidden inside the genuine journal's binding,” the scholar explained. “I believe it contains a fragment of the original researcher's final experiment.”

Silver light flickered inside the crystal, causing the mark on Ethan's arm to burn.

Nathaniel recoiled in astonishment.

“That's impossible!”

Victoria reached toward her son, but Ethan extended one tiny hand toward the crystal. He needed to see what it contained, regardless of the danger.

The light expanded, revealing a sequence of equations suspended inside the glass. Although several sections were incomplete, Ethan recognized the structure immediately.

It was the experiment that had killed him.

However, someone had added a line beneath the final equation that he had never written.

OBSERVATION CREATES MEMORY. MEMORY CREATES IDENTITY. IDENTITY PERMITS RETURN.

Ethan felt a chill spread through his body.

Nathaniel stared at the glowing crystal in disbelief.

“I have studied Shen Yu's work for forty years. I know every surviving equation, every correction, and every fragment of his handwriting,” he whispered. “Yet this crystal responds only to the prince.”

Victoria's expression hardened.

“Are you suggesting my son is connected to a dead researcher?”

Nathaniel hesitated before answering.

“No, Your Majesty. I am suggesting something far more disturbing.”

He knelt beside the cradle and studied Ethan's eyes.

“When the crystal awakened, it did not recognize the prince as a descendant, an inheritor, or a student. It recognized him as its creator.”

The crystal suddenly cracked, releasing a thin silver thread that touched Ethan's forehead.

His surroundings disappeared.

For an instant, he stood inside his old laboratory, where his instruments remained intact and the crystal container glowed on the workbench. The familiar shadow waited nearby, but another figure stood across from him, wearing imperial robes and bearing the same eyes as Emperor William.

The stranger turned, revealing the royal crest and a black mark beneath his collar.

“Shen Yu, if you're seeing this, then the second prince has awakened.”

Ethan attempted to approach, but the laboratory began collapsing into silver fragments.

“Your first death was not the beginning of this experiment,” the stranger continued. “It was the fourth attempt.”

Ethan jolted back into his body as the crystal shattered across the table. Nathaniel stumbled backward while Victoria pulled her son against her chest.

The fourth attempt.

Someone had conducted the same experiment before Ethan, perhaps three times, and the man in his vision had been connected to the imperial family.

Could the first prince, Thomas, have been one of those earlier attempts?

Before Ethan could organize his thoughts, Nathaniel's journal opened by itself, and silver writing appeared across its pages.

ARCHIVE ACCESS GRANTED.

SUBJECT HISTORY RECOVERED: FOUR ATTEMPTS.

CURRENT STATUS: FOURTH ATTEMPT ACTIVE.

Nathaniel's face turned deathly pale as he stared at Ethan.

“Your Highness, I don't think you were reincarnated by accident.”

A deep metallic sound echoed from beneath the palace before Victoria could question him. The sound repeated three times, each vibration shaking the furniture as though an enormous mechanism had awakened below them.

Then a frightened child's voice rose through the floor.

“Mother?”

Ethan froze when he heard the voice, which sounded impossibly familiar despite belonging to someone he had never met.

“I've been waiting for you, Ethan.”

Far beneath the imperial palace, a sealed door began to open.