I Died Inventing Cultivation, Now the Heavens Call Me Genius

Chapter 6: The Secret Beneath Si

“Get away from the floor!”

Professor Nathaniel Hayes grabbed Queen Victoria’s arm just as a black crack tore through the tiles beneath Ethan’s cradle. The violent impact sent the scholar crashing into a cabinet, scattering ancient scrolls across the chamber while Victoria clutched her son and stumbled toward the opposite wall.

“What is happening?” she demanded.

Nathaniel struggled to his feet, his gaze fixed on the widening fracture. “The seal beneath the palace is breaking.”

Another tremor rocked the room. Dust drifted from the ceiling, and the protective formations carved into the walls flickered before fading one after another. From somewhere deep underground came the grinding sound of metal straining against metal.

Then the mysterious voice returned.

“Mother?”

Ethan’s tiny body stiffened in Victoria’s arms. Although the voice sounded like a child’s, its familiarity sent a chill through him, as if someone were speaking from a memory that had been deliberately erased.

“I’ve been waiting for you, Ethan.”

Victoria pulled him closer. “Who is down there?”

Nathaniel’s attention shifted to the silver mark glowing through the fabric covering Ethan’s wrist.

“That voice should not know his name,” he whispered.

Ethan wanted to demand an explanation, but his infant body betrayed him with a frightened cry.

First the heavens, then the journal, and now a mysterious child beneath the palace. Does nobody in this world know how to introduce themselves properly?

His irritation could not completely suppress his growing fear. The voice had called Victoria Mother, suggesting a connection to the imperial family. If the presence belonged to Thomas, the missing first prince, William’s earlier reaction finally made sense. However, Ethan could not understand how someone sealed underground knew his name or why the voice seemed to recognize him.

A thin silver hand suddenly emerged through the crack.

Victoria screamed as Nathaniel snatched up an iron candlestick and raised it defensively.

“Your Majesty, we must leave immediately!”

Before she could move, the silver hand pressed against the tiles. Every protective formation in the chamber extinguished simultaneously, and a black symbol appeared in the center of Nathaniel’s palm.

The scholar stared at it in horror.

“Oh, no. Not that symbol.”

Ethan recognized the mark. It resembled the forbidden symbol from his original research and the one that had appeared on Lord Marcus Vale before his body dissolved into silver particles.

The hand withdrew beneath the floor, and a child’s laughter echoed through the chamber. Moments later, the crack sealed itself, leaving the tiles perfectly intact.

Nathaniel remained motionless, his face drained of color. Ethan understood the terrifying implication: whatever lived beneath the palace could manipulate Si without relying on the ordinary cultivation system, rendering the empire’s strongest defenses useless.

---

Emperor William arrived minutes later with Crown Prince Alexander and twelve royal guards. One look at Victoria’s frightened expression convinced him to dismiss the guards before demanding an explanation.

After his wife described the voice, the shattered floor, and the silver hand, William closed his eyes.

“Thomas,” he whispered.

Alexander stepped forward, his expression hardening. “Father, I demand to know who Thomas was.”

William hesitated before turning toward the sealed floor.

“Your grandfather had two sons before me. The first was Thomas, and the second was my older brother, Richard.”

“Then why have I never heard of them?” Alexander asked.

“Because both were erased from the imperial records.”

“By whom?”

William’s jaw tightened. “By the emperor himself.”

The revelation unsettled everyone in the room. William explained that Thomas had disappeared at six years old, while Richard vanished three years later after investigating the strange formations beneath the palace. Their father ordered every document concerning them destroyed and forbade anyone from speaking their names.

Years later, William discovered a sealed staircase beneath the eastern palace. Behind it stood a door that no known cultivation technique could open.

Until now.

“I believed my father was concealing a family scandal,” William admitted. “I never imagined he was protecting us from something beneath our own home.”

Ethan listened carefully, remembering the young man from his vision and the revelation that his reincarnation was the fourth attempt. If Thomas and Richard had been involved in earlier experiments, the imperial family might have been investigating Si long before Shen Yu discovered it in his previous life.

Nathaniel broke the silence. “Your Majesty, the prince must see the original seal.”

“Absolutely not,” William replied.

“If the presence beneath the palace is connected to the heavenly system, Ethan may be the only person capable of understanding it.”

“He is an infant!”

“And someone has already tried to erase his memories twice,” Nathaniel countered. “If we continue treating him as an ordinary child, we may lose him before he has the chance to grow.”

William looked down at his son, uncertainty briefly replacing the authority in his eyes.

Victoria stepped beside him. “We cannot let fear make this decision for us. If the truth lies beneath our feet, we must discover it before it threatens our children.”

After a long hesitation, William agreed to investigate, but he made one condition clear: if anything threatened Ethan, he would destroy the entire staircase rather than allow it to reach his son.

---

The entrance to the sealed chamber lay beneath an abandoned shrine at the eastern end of the palace. William carried Ethan down the narrow staircase while Alexander illuminated their path with a spirit lamp. Nathaniel followed, clutching a bundle of ancient records.

The deeper they descended, the stranger their surroundings became. Their walls appeared to be made from a dark substance that absorbed light, while silver lines formed shifting equations across its surface.

Ethan recognized fragments of his original research, but several symbols predated anything he had ever written.

Si existed before my discovery.

The realization unsettled him. He had believed himself the first person to uncover the energy’s true nature, yet the inscriptions suggested that someone had understood it long before his birth as Shen Yu.

At the bottom stood an enormous black door bearing a circular inscription surrounded by four smaller symbols. Three remained dark, while the fourth glowed whenever Ethan approached.

Nathaniel examined the formation. “This seal doesn’t prevent energy from entering or leaving.”

Alexander frowned. “Then what does it seal?”

“Information,” Nathaniel answered uneasily.

Ethan’s heart raced. The formation was designed to prevent something from being observed, identified, or remembered. Perhaps Si could preserve information so completely that a consciousness could survive within its traces.

Before Nathaniel could examine the inscription further, Ethan’s wrist began to burn.

The fourth symbol illuminated, and a silver thread emerged from the door, connecting itself to the mark on his skin. Equations appeared across the inscription, and Ethan instinctively recognized the pattern from the crystal containing his original research.

It was the equation linking observation, memory, and identity.

Without understanding how he knew what to do, Ethan mentally corrected a reversed sign.

The lock clicked.

William immediately raised a golden barrier around his family. “Nobody moves!”

The door opened slightly, releasing a breath of cold air that smelled of dust and metal. Beyond it lay a circular chamber filled with thousands of suspended silver strands, each glowing like a tiny star. Their delicate connections converged around a transparent crystal floating at the center.

Inside the crystal rested a small child who appeared to be about six years old. His dark hair framed a pale face, and his eyes remained closed as though he were sleeping.

Alexander stared at him in disbelief.

“Thomas?”

The child’s eyes opened.

They were identical to Ethan’s.

Smiling through the crystal, the boy raised his hand and revealed a black symbol in the center of his palm.

“Hello, little brother,” Thomas whispered. “I finally found you. Now we can finish the experiment that killed us both.”

The silver strands throughout the chamber ignited, sending a pulse of energy through the earth.

At that exact moment, every cultivator in the Great Zhou Empire lost access to their spiritual power.