The world did not end with a bang, but with the hollow, wet thud of Su Meng's knees hitting the stone floor of the Pits of Reflection.
The "Shattering Palm" of Elder Wang had been a monstrosity of compressed air and golden Qi. Though Su Meng's newly forged Iron Bones had held—preventing his ribcage from collapsing into a splintered mess of marrow and lung—the kinetic energy had nowhere to go. It had vibrated through his very atoms, rattling his brain against his skull like a marble in a tin can.
As the Elder's purple robes swished out of the cell door, leaving behind the scent of expensive incense and stagnant arrogance, Su Meng's vision began to fray. The damp grey walls of the prison didn't just go dark; they dissolved. The moldy straw, the iron bars, the smell of ancient dampness—it all melted into a swirling vortex of monochrome shadows.
Then, the gravity failed.
Su Meng felt himself falling. It was the same sensation he'd had on the bridge in District 9—the terrifying, stomach-flipping lurch of the abyss. But there was no truck waiting for him this time. There was only a vast, echoing silence.
Am I dying again? he wondered. A flicker of rage sparked in his fading consciousness. I just got here. I just found a world that makes sense. I refuse to let a fat bureaucrat in a silk robe be the end of me!
"Patience, boy. Rage is a fine fuel, but it makes for a terrible navigator."
The voice didn't come from the left or the right. It resonated from the center of Su Meng's own chest.
Suddenly, the falling stopped. Su Meng's feet hit a surface that felt as solid as diamond but looked like ripples on a black lake. He blinked, wiping away the "blood" that felt like it was dripping from his eyes, only to realize his body here was translucent, a shimmering blue outline of his soul.
He was in a void of infinite stars, but nestled in the center of that cosmic expanse was a small, incongruous sight: a wooden porch, a simple bamboo table, and an old man sitting on a stump, pouring tea into a cracked porcelain cup.
The old man wore the simple, sweat-stained tunic of a peasant. His face was a roadmap of a thousand years of wrinkles, and his hair was a wild thicket of silver. But it was his eyes that stopped Su Meng's heart. They weren't eyes; they were twin galaxies, swirling with the birth and death of nebulas.
"You," Su Meng rasped, his soul-voice echoing. "The bridge. The truck. You were the one."
The old man didn't look up. He blew the steam off his tea, the scent of jasmine somehow filling the vacuum of space. "I am many things, Su Meng. A traveler. A librarian of lost causes. A man who heard a very loud, very annoying scream coming from a dying speck of dust called Earth."
Su Meng stepped forward, the "water" beneath his feet rippling. "Why? Why save me?"
"I didn't save you," the old man countered, finally looking up. The sheer weight of his gaze nearly forced Su Meng to his knees. "I merely opened a door you were already pounding on. You wanted a world of the 'Fist.' You wanted a place where a man's worth is measured by his own marrow, not his father's title. Well? Look at you. Lying in a gutter, beaten by a man who couldn't punch his way out of a paper bag without his 'Elder' title to back him up."
The shame burned hotter than the Elder's palm strike. "I have no Dantian," Su Meng spat. "My bones are iron, but I am an engine with no fuel. I have seven days until they kill me in that arena. I need power."
"Power," the old man mused, tapping his tea cup. "Everyone wants power. The Senator's son wanted the power of the law. Elder Wang wants the power of the Sect. They want power that sits on top of them like a crown. Heavy, golden, and fragile."
He stood up, and suddenly, the porch vanished. The two of them were standing in the heart of a sun. Great plumes of white-hot plasma arched over them, and the roar of nuclear fusion was a deafening, rhythmic heartbeat.
"Your Iron Bones are a cage, Su Meng," the old man shouted over the roar of the star. "But a cage is useless if it's empty. Most cultivators build a 'Lake' in their gut. A peaceful, stagnant pool of Qi. But you? You don't want peace. You want the strength to crush the structures of two worlds."
The old man reached out and plunged his hand into the heart of the sun, pulling out a handful of white-hot, screaming energy. He held it toward Su Meng's stomach.
"I will not give you a Dantian. I will give you a Singularity. The Celestial Forge. It will not store Qi; it will devour it. It will compress the energy of the world until it becomes as dense as your bones. But be warned: if your Will falters for even a second, the Forge will not turn outward—it will collapse inward and erase you from existence."
"Do it," Su Meng said, his eyes reflecting the fire of the star. "I've spent my whole life being erased by others. I'd rather be erased by my own power."
The old man grinned, a terrifyingly sharp expression. He slammed his hand into Su Meng's midsection.
Su Meng's eyes snapped open back in the physical world.
The pain was unlike anything he had ever felt. It wasn't the dull ache of a bruise or the sharp sting of a cut. It was as if a miniature sun had been born behind his navel. He looked down and saw his tattered tunic smoldering. A faint, dark radiance was pulsing through his skin, matching the rhythm of his heart.
He tried to breathe, but the air in the cell didn't just enter his lungs; it was sucked in.
The "Vortex" had begun.
Every particle of Qi in the damp, lightless Pit of Reflection began to migrate toward Cell 42. The moisture on the walls evaporated. The rats in the shadows fled in terror as the very temperature of the room began to drop—the Forge was stripping the heat from the molecules themselves to fuel its birth.
Su Meng sat in the center of the cell, his legs crossed. He focused inward.
In his mind's eye, he saw it. In the space where a normal cultivator would have a glowing orb of golden light, Su Meng had a pit of absolute blackness. It was spinning at a speed that defied the laws of physics. Around the edges of this void, the Earth-Qi of the mountain was being shredded, condensed, and hammered into "Heavy Qi."
[Image: A cross-section of Su Meng's body. His skeleton is a cage of dark, metallic iron. In the center, a black vortex is pulling in golden threads of energy from the air.]
"Day One," Su Meng whispered. His voice sounded deeper, carrying a strange, metallic resonance.
He didn't sleep. He didn't eat. He didn't need to. The Forge was feeding on the mountain itself.
By Day Three, the guards noticed something was wrong.
"Hey, do you feel that?" one guard asked, rubbing his arms. "It's freezing down here. And my sword... it feels like it weighs fifty pounds."
They approached Su Meng's cell. They found him sitting perfectly still. He was so motionless he looked like a statue carved from obsidian. But as they drew closer, the torchlight in their hands didn't flicker; it bent. The flames literally leaned toward Su Meng, as if he were a vacuum pulling the light into his skin.
"Open the door," the lead guard commanded, his voice trembling.
"Elder's orders are to leave him until the seventh day," the other replied. "Besides... I'm not going in there. Look at his eyes."
Su Meng didn't look at them. He was busy.
Inside his body, a war was being waged. The "Celestial Forge" was trying to expand, but his "Iron Bones" were holding it back. It was a perfect equilibrium of pressure. The more the Forge pushed, the more his bones were tempered by the heat. He was becoming a living pressure vessel.
He thought about the "Geniuses" above him. He thought about their "Spirit-Gold" armor and their "Jade-Skin" pills.
They are balloons, Su Meng thought. Full of air. Colorful, high-flying, and empty. I am a lead weight. I am the anchor that will drag their sky down to the mud.
By Day Five, Su Meng began to experiment with the "Release."
He stood up and faced the back wall of the cell—solid mountain rock, ten feet thick. He didn't pull back for a punch. He simply placed his index finger against the stone.
He opened a microscopic "valve" in the Forge.
A tiny needle of Heavy Qi shot from his fingertip. There was no sound. There was no flash of light. But a hole, no wider than a pencil, appeared in the rock. It went deep—so deep that Su Meng couldn't see the end of it. The rock hadn't been broken; it had been displaced by the sheer density of the energy.
He pulled his hand back. His finger was charred, but the Iron Bones beneath the flesh were glowing a dull red.
"Almost ready," he murmured.
By Day Seven, the atmosphere in the Iron Mountain Sect was electric.
The rumor had spread that the "Servant who survived an Elder" was still alive. Some said he had turned into a demon. Others said he had died and his corpse was haunted. But as the iron gates of the Pits of Reflection were finally unlocked by the Enforcement Hall, the truth was far more terrifying.
Su Meng walked out of the darkness.
He wasn't the thin, starving boy who had entered. He had grown an inch, but he looked leaner, his muscles corded like steel cables. His skin was a dark, weathered bronze, and every movement he made felt deliberate, like the swinging of a heavy clock pendulum.
Steward Feng was there, waiting with the manacles. "Back in chains, trash. It's time for your execution—I mean, your 'trial'."
Su Meng didn't even look at the manacles. He walked past Feng, and as he did, the heavy iron chains in Feng's hands suddenly snapped. They didn't break; they shattered into a dozen pieces, as if the gravity around Su Meng had simply crushed the links.
Feng fell back, his face white. "What... what are you?"
Su Meng stopped and looked at him. For a split second, the "Old Man's" galactic gaze flickered in Su Meng's eyes.
"I am the world you wanted," Su Meng said. "The world where the Fist speaks. Don't be upset, Steward. You're the one who taught me that the weak have no rights. I'm just starting to agree with you."
He walked toward the Arena, the sun of the cultivation world hitting his face for the first time in a week. It was a bright, arrogant sun, shining on the floating palaces of the rich.
Su Meng looked at the peak of the mountain. He felt the "Celestial Forge" in his gut pulse with a hungry, predatory heat.
"I'm coming for the sky," he whispered. "And I'm bringing the ground with me."
The Arena was a sea of twenty thousand faces.
Wealthy businessmen from the nearby cities had traveled to see the "Spectacle." They sat in the VIP boxes, betting Spirit Stones on how many seconds the servant would last.
"I give him ten seconds," one merchant laughed, adjusted his silk robes. "Disciple Chen's 'Thousand-Wave Palm' is a high-grade technique. One hit and that boy's internal organs will be jelly."
Senator-equivalent figures from the neighboring empires nodded in agreement. To them, this wasn't a fight. It was an execution disguised as entertainment. They wanted to see the "natural order" restored. They wanted to see the boy who dared to strike a Young Master be put back in his place.
Su Meng stepped onto the sand.
The heat of the sun was nothing compared to the heat in his Dantian. He looked up at the high balcony and saw Elder Wang. The Elder was smiling, a cruel, satisfied expression. Beside him, Wang Ba was lounging, his arm in a sling, looking down at Su Meng with pure, unadulterated hatred.
"Begin the Trial!" the Sect Leader shouted.
Su Meng didn't take a stance. He didn't prepare a technique. He just stood there, a dark shadow in the center of the golden arena.
He remembered Earth. He remembered the feeling of the rainy pavement. He remembered the feeling of being invisible.
No more, he thought.
He looked at his first opponent, Chen, who was already blurring forward with the blue light of the Thousand-Wave Palm.
This world thinks wealth is power, Su Meng thought, the Celestial Forge beginning to roar like a furnace. Let me show them the weight of the truth.
As the first blue palm strike touched his chest, Su Meng didn't move. He didn't block. He let the energy hit him.
But instead of breaking his skin, the blue light was sucked into his pores. The "Celestial Forge" grabbed the energy, crushed it, and fed it back into Su Meng's Iron Bones.
Chen's eyes went wide. "Why... why aren't you dying?"
Su Meng reached out, his hand moving with the slow, inevitable speed of a mountain slide. He grabbed Chen's wrist.
"Because your 'Wave' is just a puddle," Su Meng said. "And I am the ocean."
With a single twist, the "Spirit-Gold" bracelets on Chen's arms exploded.
The Arena went silent. The betting stopped. The merchants leaned forward, their smiles vanishing.
Su Meng stood in the center of the stadium, the bare-chested boy from the slums of Earth, and he looked at the gods in the balcony.
"Is this all your money can buy?" he challenged, his voice shaking the pillars of the stadium.
The Architect of Fate, sitting in the void of Su Meng's mind, took a long, slow sip of his tea.
"Good start, boy," the old man whispered. "Now... show them the real meaning of a Fist."