Five years ago, deep underground near the core of the Earth, a young woman lay on the ground, mangled and bloodied.
Surrounding her were the bodies of hundreds of members of her sect.
Some had gruesome wounds like hers, torn apart as if mauled by a blood-lusted grizzly bear.
Others, strangely, had no wounds at all.
But if you looked closer at their pristine, lifeless bodies, you would find a single hole at the base of their skulls.
She had long blonde hair, now matted and marred.
Her face, once flawless, was covered in scars and open wounds that poured blood as if she were weeping.
Wiping the blood from her eyes, the young woman looked forward.
The dazed expression she had worn only moments before disappeared.
A look of grim determination took its place.
"You have no idea what you are doing!" she spat, blood spilling from her mouth.
Using her sword for support, she drove the tip into the ground and pulled herself off her knees, rising to her feet.
She wore only a chainmail and leather bodysuit.
A cracked pauldron hung from one shoulder, barely held together by a torn leather strap.
The rest of her armor lay broken and scattered behind her across the cavern floor.
A man with a slender build, shining white hair, and a smug smile turned to face her as he heard her rise.
"The old order is finished, Family Head."
Miguel spread his arms wide, spinning slowly as he gestured to the bodies of her comrades.
"Look around you."
He completed the turn and fixed his gaze on her, his eyes cold but full of certainty.
"Alexa, the burden of secrecy ends today."
"Once my comrade infuses his Dao essence into the core of this planet, humanity will achieve enlightenment. All at once."
His grin stretched wider, full of triumph.
"Our family will finally be free of its obligation."
Alexa frowned.
"Miguel, you know the consequences of this. You were taught, just like I was, why we do what we do."
"Once your comrade breaks the seal, the entire universe will come rushing here to take advantage of it."
She raised her sword.
"I will no longer be using words. You must di—"
There was a sudden blur of motion.
Cold steel hissed through the air.
Her vision flipped.
In that brief, disoriented moment, she was falling.
She could still see her body standing.
Sword raised. Mouth frozen mid-sentence.
The last face she saw was her brother's comrade, watching her with a look of mild irritation.
"Alright, it's done," he said flatly.
"We should get going. This is going to mess up plate tectonics for a while."
He wrapped an arm around Miguel.
Together, they walked away from the decapitated head of the last family head of the Elemental Protection Sect.
Just days after her inauguration.
---
On Earth, in Boston, Massachusetts, present day, around 5 p.m. in The Commons, a young man and woman walked hand in hand, enjoying the limited free time they had.
They had just returned from exploring the Old State House Realm Portal and were slowly making their way toward the T to head home in Forest Hills.
Both looked visibly exhausted, covered from head to toe in a fine black dust that seemed baked into their skin and clothing.
Around them, hundreds of others trudged along in similar states of disrepair, moving both with and without purpose, somehow simultaneously.
They had just finished a week-long trek through a newly opened Realm Portal, though not by choice, mapping out terrain and cataloging resources.
Their employment came courtesy of Boston's new city government: the New Life Sect, formed shortly after Earth's mass awakening.
At first, the sect promised stability and prosperity in this chaotic new world.
That didn't last long.
Like most other major sects across the country, they dropped the goodwill act a few years in and took over the city outright.
Now, residents of Greater Boston were forced to work for the New Life Sect in exchange for basic necessities like food, shelter, and medical care.
To an outsider, the downtrodden couple now crossing onto the cobblestone path of Winter Street looked utterly miserable.
Truthfully, this was the best they'd had it in years.
Sure, David was constantly on the brink of collapse thanks to partially ruptured meridians in his left leg.
And yes, Juliya had to regularly pull out her phone and record her surroundings just to double-check which voices were real.
But they had healthcare. And consistent days off.
Before the mass awakening of every human on Earth to some weird alien state of imperfect perfection, they were public school teachers.
Now, David and Juliya weren't saying being a U.S. school teacher was worse than slogging through a wasteland of volcanic ash, fighting off hordes of two-foot-tall magma sprites...
But at least now, while fighting the two-foot-tall monsters, they didn't quote Skibidi Toilet and something called "the Rizzler" the whole time.
David's knee buckled as the decline of the cobblestone path increased.
"Do you want to stop by the pharmacy on the way home?" he asked, looking at Juliya with concern. "I heard a new mind-stabilizing pill was created using stuff from the Aquarium Portal."
David's face was full of concern. Juliya's condition had worsened a lot in the last few weeks.
Juliya smiled, her bright white teeth in sharp contrast to the ash covering her body.
"Sweetheart, I just want to go home. I'm exhausted. We can do all that tomorrow."
She grabbed his hand and laid her head on his shoulder as they walked.
Just as they were making their way to the entrance of the underground subway station, a large boom echoed between the high skyscrapers of Boston. Broken glass began raining down on the small group of people around the entrance to the station.
Because they were so close to each other, David was quickly able to grab Juliya on the arm and pull her into the entrance and down the stairs. They fell in an uncoordinated mess, with David cradling his wife's head to protect her from the fall using his own exposed body.
BANG
David suddenly heard screaming. However, he couldn't see. Blood from a fresh head injury rushed to cover his eyes.
He groaned in agony as he shielded Juliya from the mini stampede of people trying to get into the T station.
Eventually, after what felt like hours, it passed. If David had to guess, he would say he had a few broken ribs, a concussion, and multiple lacerations all over his body. However, to his great relief, his wife was safe and secure in his embrace... if maybe covered in a lot of his own blood.
He tried to stand but fell back to his knees. With that as a cue, Juliya took his arm and provided him a shoulder to lean on as they too made their way down to the station.
"Do you know what's happening?" Juliya asked as they slowly made their way down the stairs.
"I haven't the slightest, but the last time I heard a boom like that was when the NLS [1]took over Boston and was fighting with the National Guard," David grumbled in agony, realizing that he was once again stuck in the middle of a fight between powers he could not understand.
Over the past five years, he had never fully grasped how this Qi stuff worked on a fundamental level. Still, that didn't mean he hadn't learned anything. With the help of a few unlikely companions at the NLS, David had come to understand that Qi wasn't just some mystical force but a natural energy that permeated the entire world in varying concentrations. By studying its patterns and learning to quiet his mind, he had gradually sharpened his Qi Sense; developing it to the point where he could detect fluctuations in the flow around him.
With that self-honed power, he focused on the vibrations in the Qi around him. He could feel the disturbances in the Qi, similar to following the ripples in water. He knew that heshoading toward the train platform was too chaotic for the injured couple. The ripples were less like a pebble being thrown in a calm lake and more like a dam being released.
He sighed and asked Juliya to stop for a moment. Holding on to the grimy wall of the tunnel, he redoubled his focus, looking for anywhere in this underground labyrinth that had little to no Qi ripples. This was how he had survived directly after the global awakening. This was how he had stayed hidden during the NLS attack on Boston. And this was how he was going to make sure not only he, but also Juliya, survived.
Lost in thought, he finally found what he was looking for. Still blinded by his own blood, he began relaying instructions to Juliya about how to go to where he detected the calm.
BOOM
BOOM
BOOM
A series of large explosions made the underground shake. Dust and debris fell in clumps from the ceiling, and screams echoed all around.
They stayed near the walls, trying to avoid any more stampedes of people running from the chaos upstairs.
David and Juliya worked in tandem. One leading with vague directions and the other with a guiding hand.
Juliya pulled David left, then right, forward for a while, down a large drop, over what felt to David like train tracks, and eventually into a small side maintenance corridor.
Walking to the end of the corridor, David stopped and gestured in front of him, still blind in both eyes.
"Right here. Whatever is here is the calmest thing around us."
Juliya squinted in the dim light, as if missing something, and said in confusion, "David, I just see an old-ass brick wall."
A moment passed in silence between them. Then David walked forward and sighed in relief.
"Whatever I sensed is past this wall. Are there any doorways?"
Juliya nodded and began urgently searching the hallway, past rusty pipes and uneven grates, for a way through.
While she searched, David took off his shirt. With a weird farmer's tan of blood, ash, and bare skin, he revealed his bruised and battered figure. He turned his ashen shirt inside out to avoid getting ash in his eyes, wiped the blood from his face, and tied it tightly over his head wound.
Feeling some relief, he slid down the wall and sat on the floor with a groan.
"Juliya, we really have to move. I was thinking Panama. Seems like great weather year-round."
Juliya returned, shaking her head to indicate both that she had heard this before and also that she couldn't find an entrance.
"Before that, I think we should find a way to survive. You think the groups in New Hampshire decided to come down here to challenge the NLS?"
David shrugged. "Could be that, or it could be an internal fight. You know the NLS is not exactly known for their brotherhood and honor."
He looked toward the wall and sighed.
"Whatever it is, we should be good in this hallway. It's not as calm as it is behind that wall, but it's the second calmest place in this entire underground."
Juliya nodded and smirked.
"Well, I guess we should start tending to your wounds. You got injured after saving a fair maiden, after all."
The casual nature of this conversation would've been jarring for anyone hearing it from before the awakening; considering the circumstances around them. But they had just spent a week in a volcanic hell scape and before that it was two weeks in an amazon forest on steroids. This was something they were sadly used to. Making conversation at a time like this was the smallest thing they could do to elevate some stress in the chaos of the world today.
As Juliya opened her bag to fetch the first aid kit she carried on long missions, dust began falling from the ceiling. First slowly, then more intensely.
BOOM
CRASH
BANG
The walls shook again. This time, a wave of air pressure slammed into them from the tunnel they had just left. It hit them like a car accident and threw them against the wall.
Groaning in pain, they looked up to see radiant blue light spreading through a crack in the wall they had just slammed into.
David, immediately realizing this hallway was no longer safe, ran to a nearby shelving unit covered in rusted tools.
You'd think two people coming back from a treacherous mission in an uncharted Portal would have weapons. Sadly, that was not the case. They received weapons on their way in and turned them in on their way out.
"A standard issue sword would really be nice right about now," David thought with distain, "but nooo, apparently these swords could be used as weapons against the sect."
Pointing out the hypocrisy of the NLS did help lessen the annoyance, but not by much.
With nothing else to use, David threw the shelving unit to the ground and broke off one of the supporting crossbeams.
He turned to Juliya, who had just regained her senses.
"We have to get the wall down. The Qi in this area is starting to go crazy, but behind that wall, it's still calm."
Juliya grunted and picked up a rusted crowbar David probably would've preferred, had he not immediately smashed the shelf it was on without looking first.
They swung their makeshift weapons at the wall. Each strike coincided with a larger explosion above and in the tunnels they had come from. With increasing desperation but little progress, David decided he needed something more drastic.
"Back up, Juliya. I think I can do this."
With a grimace, he readied himself to run shoulder-first into the wall like someone trying to break down a door.
Before five years ago, David never would have thought to break down a wall like this. Even two years ago, it would've seemed impossible. But recently, he had started learning not just to sense Qi, but to channel it through his meridians.
It took immense focus. It caused immense pain. Every time he used it, it felt like the nerve endings in that part of his body were being ripped out. But it has gotten him out of a pinch multiple times.
"Say what you want about the NLS," David thought, "but they at least want you to be combat effective when exploring the Portal Realms."
He coated the muscles in his shoulder with Qi, grunted in pain, and slammed into the wall.
BOOM
With an explosion of debris, pain, and relief, he fell into a viscous pool of Qi on the other side of the wall. Juliya quickly followed behind. Moments later, the ceiling and wall collapsed behind them, sealing them inside.
David, now in the pool, immediately felt better. So much so that he started laughing. As he lay in the Qi, laughing like a madman, he could feel his wounds closing and bones knitting.
"Juliya, come in here! This is amazing!" he shouted, joy written across his face.
Juliya hesitated. With the rubble to her back, she felt safer, but the view in front of her left her unsure.
She looked at her husband, floating in a pool of materialized Qi, something she had never seen or heard of, laughing like a teenager at prom.
"David, you should probably get out of that. You know what happens when you absorb too much Qi. I don't want to be cleaning up David goo from the walls once you explode."
David looked up with an even bigger smile.
"That's why this is great! It's not letting me absorb it. It's just doing its own thing, healing me, cleaning me, without affecting my own Qi!"
At that, Juliya smiled. No one at David's stage of cultivation understood Qi better than he did. Hearing that, she let go of her reservations and jumped in with him.
Jumping into the pool of radiating blue Qi was like jumping in to a warm hug. Juliya immediately felt her concussion and bruising dissipate as she laid on her back like this was a normal spa day.
The two spent some time healing and laughing. This wasn't the first time they had been this badly hurt. But it was by far the fastest they had ever healed.
They looked around, trying to figure out where they were. They hadn't passed through a Portal, there were no feelings of nausea or dizziness. They were still in Boston. The scent of the T, urine and cigarettes, still hung faintly in the air, although the Qi was starting to replace it with the smell of pine needles and ocean waves. They could still hear explosions above, but no longer felt the ground shaking.
With no answers, they decided to investigate. Juliya left the pool and explored the outskirts of the cavern. It was roughly spherical, 50 feet (15.25 meters) in diameter, and looked carved directly out of the earth. No signs of human intervention.
David took another route and "swam" downward into the Qi, toward the bottom of the cavern.
When his eyes adjusted, he saw something. A blue-and-white stone that was emitting the materialized Qi around him. Confused, he looked up and noticed a hole in the ceiling the exact size of the rock.
Excited at the idea of discovering a Qi Meteor, a name he entirely made up, he reached for it and shouted:
"Babe, we are going to be so RICH! Check this ou—"
David collapsed to the ground as all the materialized Qi retreated into the stone in an instant. Juliya, still in the pool, fell to the ground with a thud. She rushed to David and sprang into action, clearing his airway and checking his meridians.
While Juliya worked, a message appeared in David's mind like a hologram.
System Message: "Improper cultivation techniques detected. Correct all deviated cultivators: 0 / 7,456,141,421."
[1] New Life Sect