After falling unconscious, Seth was thrown into a nightmare.
He was forced to watch the final moments of his mother repeatedly, and he was powerless and there was nothing he could do but watch it happen over and over again.
Being forced to confront the worst moments of his life repeatedly almost drove him insane.
His mind was growing numb to the event, and bit by bit, the madness that came with his grief was eating him whole. Just when he was about to be completely consumed by madness, something interfered.
Suddenly, he was engulfed in a cooling and refreshing feeling. It encroached on his soul, placating it and reversing his looming madness.
Then, with a sudden jolt of foreign energy, he regained consciousness.
"Argh," Seth groaned, met with a splitting headache.
He grabbed his hair in a vain attempt to alleviate the pain.
A calm elderly voice rang in his ears, "Be careful, young one. Don't try to overwhelm your senses. Take it slow."
Seth instinctively followed the instructions of the voice. Calming himself, he let go of his hair and first assimilated his sense of hearing before he slowly began to open his eyes.
The voice sighed, "You're a strange mortal. To think you almost got bedeviled even before becoming a cultivator, this is unheard of."
Finally opening his eyes, Seth saw the room he was in.
Almost immediately, he understood what was happening to him and how he had been transported into this era.
His mother once told him tales of mythic seeds.
These unique seeds didn't just grant their owners abilities after awakening; they gave the hosts ordeals to complete in order to unlock their abilities.
He was told that the child prodigy, Dione Mane, had awakened a mythic seed and had to go through four ordeals to become an A-class irregular, gaining four abilities.
If his speculation was correct, then his seed was definitely of the mythic rank. Seth's eyes lit up with hope—perhaps he had a future after all, and perhaps he could get his revenge.
Just when his thoughts reached this stage, the previously banished madness seemed to encroach once more.
His pupils dilated, his bright crimson eyes turning a shade of black, and the thought of revenge began to cloud his mind again.
An arm radiating a vague blue glow pressed upon his head as a pulse of energy penetrated through his skull.
"Seriously, who are you, young man? Not even a cultivator and your heart devil is already this strong?" the elderly voice questioned.
Seth finally saw the elder in question. "Huh? Is this what ancient humans look like?" After regaining his sanity once more, this question popped into his mind.
He was clear on the fact that his ordeal was a time travel into the past to regain humanity's lost knowledge of empowerment.
So seeing this elder, and how different he looked from modern humans, he was confused. Why did this human look so frail and puny?
The elder was a short man, 4.5 feet tall at best, with pale white skin and a very bushy beard but bald on the head.
He wore ancient Chinese robes, and his body figure was gaunt as his skin literally stuck to his bones.
One had to know that due to enduring countless wars, and natural disasters, and spending eons living underground, humans had acquired forms that best guaranteed their survival.
This led to humans in general having a darker skin tone, more muscle mass, and a higher average height.
The present average height of humanity was 6.6 feet, with the lowest height being 6.2 feet. Presently, only those who were 7.9 feet tall had the right to be called tall.
So one could understand Seth's reaction; if one were to compare the two, the ancient human before him looked really puny and small indeed.
The elder continued gazing at Seth with sympathy. "If you don't resolve your heart devil, you won't be able to cultivate even if you have the talent," the elder lamented with pity.
Finally, Seth opened his mouth and spoke, asking, "W-what is a heart devil, sir?" After speaking, his brain finally registered that the elder had been speaking a foreign language and he understood it.
And just now, when he spoke, the same strange language left his lips.
It appeared that after the time travel, he was granted the understanding of this ancient dialect by his seed.
The elder shook his head in pity and responded, "Heart devils are usually formed when cultivators go through a traumatic event, causing them to go mad and become bedeviled."
The confusion in Seth's eyes didn't lessen. Instead, it deepened as he asked cautiously, "What is a cultivator?"
This time, the elder was surprised at the question. Could it be that he was suffering from amnesia? After all, what single soul under the heavens didn't know what cultivators were? The more he thought of it, the more certain he was that this young man must have lost his memories.
This deepened the pity the elder felt for the young mortal. Such a pitiful soul, he was very fortunate that the divine daughter had intervened, saving him from certain death.
"Keep your questions for later. Let me go brew a heart rebirth ginseng for you. After taking it, it should resolve your heart devil," the elder said, leaving the question unanswered as he left.
Seth finally had time to observe his surroundings.
He was in a chamber with walls of bronze and various relics adorned on them.
There were three more beds aside from the one he was on to his left, and at the four corners of the chamber, four incense sticks burned, releasing a refreshing scent into the atmosphere.
Wait, how did I get here? he wondered. The last he remembered, he was in a forest, weakly gazing at the sky right before he fell unconscious. And also, these cultivators—could they be what he was sent to this era to acquire? If so, this ordeal was going more smoothly than he thought.