Boar woke with the taste of iron in his mouth and dust in his lungs. The sun was rising, its pale orange glow cutting across the ruins of the once-verdant field. His back ached. His arms felt like stone. But something was different.
He wasn't cold.
He sat up slowly, breath steady, heart calm. For the first time in his life, he could feel it—qi.
It flowed through him like a warm river, pulsing gently in his chest and limbs. And deeper still, behind his navel, sat a wide and stable cultivation sea—not a trickle or a puddle, but a vast, glowing lake.
Boar blinked in awe.
"I've... never had a sea before," he whispered. His voice cracked. "I shouldn't have this."
And yet, it was there.
Floating above the center of his sea were dozens of glowing scrolls—wisps of light carrying the legacies of seven ancient immortals. Their memories, experiences, and techniques waited for him like unopened letters from another life.
One of them pulsed brighter than the rest. A golden scroll, thicker than the others, wrapped in flowing script that shimmered with warmth.
Boar reached out, and the scroll unfolded in his mind.
Technique: Realm Vein MendingUse only when the realm's spiritual pathways have been fractured or drained. A successful application will restore flow, enrich ambient qi, and realign spiritual pressure within the region. Use with caution. Success may alter cultivation probability for all lifeforms in range.
His breath caught.
This wasn't just a spell. It was a solution. A chance to fix something no one had been able to fix since the war.
The Great Collapse had poisoned the spiritual lines—natural rivers of qi that flowed through the world like blood in veins. Without those lines, cultivation became rare, difficult, and dangerously unstable in the lower realms.
Which was why anyone with potential was forced to flee to higher realms if they wanted to grow stronger. It had shattered clans, crippled sects, and left empires like Apollo to rot.
But this technique... it could change all that.
Boar stood. His legs wobbled, but held. He looked toward the canyon just beyond the hills, a jagged scar that local farmers said had once been the heart of a spiritual convergence.
Now it was empty.
He walked.
The journey took two hours. His feet bled by the time he reached the edge of the canyon, but the qi inside him kept his body upright, gently healing his wounds as he moved. It was strange. Not fast, not perfect, but steady—like a quiet promise that things were finally going to get better.
Standing at the edge, he closed his eyes.
The scroll unraveled again in his mind. Instructions burned into his senses. He didn't need to chant, or draw symbols, or offer blood. This was not a flashy technique. It required only intent... and will.
Boar stepped forward and knelt, placing his palms against the cracked earth.
His voice was low, steady.
"Begin flow."
Light surged from his hands—soft, golden threads weaving into the stone, seeping downward. The ground trembled slightly. The canyon groaned.
Below the surface, long-dead spiritual lines twitched.
Qi that hadn't moved in decades began to stir.
Then, it rushed.
The ground cracked open with a sharp thunderclap. A pillar of blue-green light exploded upward from the canyon floor, shooting into the sky. Birds scattered. Trees nearby shivered and bloomed in seconds. The air turned sweet. The world felt alive.
Qi flowed again.
And not just here. Boar could feel it—the technique's reach spreading through the dirt like roots in the rain. Villages miles away would feel this. Sect lands long abandoned would stir. The realm was breathing again.
Across the Apollo Empire...
In quiet villages, tired elders opened their eyes wide as their bones no longer ached.
In crumbling sects, low-ranking disciples gasped as their cultivation speeds suddenly tripled.
In the Second Realm cities, where powerful clans hoarded resources, news traveled quickly.
"The spiritual veins in the lower realm have... awakened?"
"How?"
"Who?"
No one knew the answer.
But change had begun.
And the boy who triggered it sat quietly at the edge of the canyon, hands still pressed to the dirt, tears running down his face—not from pain, but from hope.
By the time the sky dimmed into its usual smoky gray, Boar Mile was walking home with a woven satchel over one shoulder and a string of fresh fish tied to his belt.
The herbs had almost plucked themselves from the soil. Greenroot, silver grass, bitterleaf—they hadn't grown like this in years. He picked carefully, heart still pounding with the memory of that golden qi column rising from the canyon. The world had changed, and yet, no one in his village knew just how much.
He passed the edge of the rice fields, where muddy children played beside stagnant ditches that might soon bloom again.
"Caught those yourself?" one of the elders called from a porch, pointing to the fish.
Boar nodded and smiled faintly.
"Lucky boy," the man muttered. "Rivers must be waking up."
Boar didn't answer. He just walked, the weight of the satchel strangely light, his mind already back in the canyon, back in the scrolls floating within his cultivation sea.
That night, after the fish were cleaned and the family fed, Boar retired to the small storage room that served as his bedroom. He lit a single oil lamp, then blew it out a moment later. The light wasn't necessary anymore.
Inside, he sat cross-legged and closed his eyes.
And inward he went.
His cultivation sea glowed bright and still, wide as a valley. The scrolls hovered like stars, but now something new floated at the center—seven slowly spinning cores of different colors and energy patterns. Each one burned with a presence that was not his own... yet.
He reached for the first—deep red with golden lines—belonging to the immortal who had once conquered fire and metal across four empires. The moment his spirit touched it, the core responded, unraveling with warmth and calm precision.
A new scroll formed beneath it.
Immortal Core Fragment – 1st Flame LordInstruction: Connect spirit root to core threads. Meditate in stillness. Resist mental collapse. Do not attempt full fusion—start with resonance.
He followed the instructions with care, focusing on the core threads now linking themselves to his own spirit root.
The first night was agony. Not pain in the body—but a shaking in the soul. The core whispered visions of firestorms, battlefield screams, broken mountains. He almost broke twice. But Boar had always endured.
By the second day, his breath no longer shivered.
By the third, the red core began to dim slightly—just a flicker—but enough to signal that part of its energy had fused into him.
He opened his eyes at dawn.
And everything had changed.
His qi flowed like a current beneath stone. His skin was tougher. His pulse heavier. His core, now fully formed and spinning with power, pulsed in rhythm with the world around him.
He had reached Level 7 Core Forging—mid-stage.
In three days.
Most people took twenty years to get here. Some never made it at all.
He had refined one percent of the Flame Lord's immortal core... and already, he stood leagues above every cultivator in a hundred-mile radius.
It didn't feel like much. But in truth, it was like an ant carrying the weight of a mountain.
Boar Mile looked up, eyes glowing faintly with golden light. He didn't smile. He didn't celebrate.
He just nodded once.
"Let's see how far this goes."