Damian Blackwood lounged near the window, crimson eyes glinting faintly as they traced the restless arteries of New Avalon below. From this height, the city looked almost serene.

  But he knew better.

  New Avalon never truly slept.

  Cars hummed along the streets, their engines fueled by refined qi rather than fossil fuels, leaving the air surprisingly clean for a metropolis of this size. Streetlights cast a cool blue-white glow, powered by the same energy that sustained cultivators and fed the sect arrays embedded throughout the city’s bones. Everything pulsed with it. Qi wasn’t just something warriors hoarded. It was infrastructure.

  To Damian, that was always the most impressive part.

  New Avalon was one of the six great Hub Cities, monuments to humanity’s refusal to collapse after the mutations reshaped the world. Allegedly, each Hub had been founded by one of the original cultivators, the so-called First Immortals. Over centuries, those foundations became structured governments—balancing mortal administration with the influence of the Great Families.

  Mortals handled trade, industry, order.

  The Great Families controlled cultivation.

  In this city, that mantle belonged to the Lin family. Publicly righteous. Politically sharp. One of their members was considered among the strongest cultivators in New Avalon. Whether that strength came from talent, legacy, or something darker, Damian didn’t pretend to know.

  Beyond the towering walls of the city lay the reminder of why those walls existed in the first place. Forests thick with mutated beasts. Creatures warped by wild qi. Some massive enough to crush vehicles. Some intelligent enough to hunt in coordinated packs. Civilization thrived—but only because it stood behind fortifications and constant vigilance.

  Outside the city proper, smaller settlements dotted the land. Most traded herbs, beast meat, and raw materials harvested from dangerous territories. They survived by proximity—close enough to benefit from protection, far enough to take risks the city wouldn’t.

  And then there were the lower districts.

  Damian’s lips curved slightly.

  Gangs. Rogue cultivators. Smugglers. Drug rings refining unstable qi substances. Illegal artifact markets. They weren’t demonic cultivators—not officially—but morality blurred easily when profit was involved. The Great Families tolerated them as long as they stayed within invisible boundaries. Power didn’t eliminate crime. It organized it.

  A train roared in the distance, sleek and streamlined, running along qi-powered rails. Above it, a streak cut across the sky—a cultivator flying on a sword. Perfectly normal.

  In New Avalon, owning a flying sword required licensing, registration, and sect approval. Just like owning a car.

  Damian snorted quietly.

  He wasn’t in a rush for either.

  For ten years, this city had been his shelter. His proving ground. His cage. He tapped a slow rhythm against the windowsill, watching the skyline pierce the clouds.

  Humanity had adapted. Thrived, even.

  But beyond those walls, the world was still wild.

  And inside them, it wasn’t much tamer.

  Today carried weight.

  It was the first sect tryouts.

  Damian stood still for a moment, letting that settle in. What a time to be alive, he thought, not entirely joking. His mind drifted briefly—not aimlessly, but reflectively—toward everything that had led to this moment.

  Two centuries had passed since the world changed. Since qi surged back into the earth and twisted forests into danger zones. Since ordinary people began awakening into something more. Since cultivators—those who could bend Heaven and Earth to their will—rose from myth into reality and reshaped society in their image.

  Cities adapted. Governments restructured. The Great Families formed. The old world faded quietly into history books.

  And now, here he was.

  A candidate.

  Sect tryouts weren’t just about strength. They were about potential. About stepping onto a path that could lead beyond mortality—or end in an early grave. Every major sect claimed to pursue the Dao, but each interpreted it differently. Some valued righteousness. Others power. Some sought balance. Others dominance.

  Damian exhaled slowly.

  For two hundred years, cultivators had stood at the top of the food chain. Mortals still existed, still governed, still thrived—but everyone knew where true authority rested.

  In strength.

  And today, he would step into that world.

  Born to parents who had relentlessly pursued the path to immortality, Damian grew up under the quiet pressure of legacy. It wasn’t spoken of openly, but it was always there—heavy, constant.

  He understood the cost of that ambition better than most.

  His first home no longer existed. It had been reduced to ash and broken stone, swallowed by sect conflict and rival grudges that had burned hotter than any natural fire. What survived of his family had shed their name as easily as changing clothes, adopting a new identity to escape the long reach of vengeance.

  But you couldn’t shed history.

  His father had once been a rising star—gifted, admired, expected to climb far. Now he sat confined to a wheelchair, his body ruined by the very path he had chased so fiercely. A living reminder that cultivation was not glory and enlightenment.

  It was risk.

  It was loss.

  And for Damian, it was no longer a distant story.

  It was inheritance.

  Yet even with such a lineage, Damian faced an obstacle no legacy could overcome.

  His dantian—the very foundation of Qi cultivation—was flawed.

  His body could sense Qi. It could guide it. It could even circulate it for brief moments. But it could not contain it. It could not store it. Like water poured into cracked stone, the energy slipped away before it could ever condense into something lasting.

  Forming a core was impossible.

  That single defect cast a long shadow over every lesson he had ever studied, every technique he had ever practiced. The traditional path of cultivation—the steady ascent through realms toward immortality—was closed to him before he had even taken his first true step.

  And fate, it seemed, was not finished.

  His family had once been revered for their mastery of the Sword Dao. For generations, they had produced cultivators whose sword Qi cut through mountains and rival sects alike. Yet in recent decades, something had changed. The bloodline had thinned. The resonance with sword Qi had faded.

  They could still wield swords.

  They just could not awaken them.

  If Damian had possessed the talent for true sword cultivation, he might have found a way around his damaged dantian. External Qi techniques. Sword intent. Borrowed resonance from the blade itself. There were precedents in history.

  But talent was not something that could be forced.

  And destiny, indifferent as ever, had drawn a different line for him.

  Yet even within that bleak reality, a fragile hope endured.

  Though Damian’s dantian could not store Qi, his body had always shown an unusual affinity for absorbing and circulating it. That small advantage became the focus of years of desperate experimentation. His mother—an accomplished alchemist in her own right—poured herself into the problem.

  Through painstaking refinement and countless failures, she created specialized Qi-enhancing pills tailored specifically to his condition. They did not repair his flaw, but they compensated for it. For short periods, the pills allowed him to stabilize circulating Qi long enough to simulate the cohesion required for core potential. They bridged the gaps in his cultivation and prevented complete stagnation.

  To outsiders, it looked like progress.

  To Damian, it felt temporary.

  The pills worked—but only for a time. Each dose was a borrowed step forward, not a foundation. When their effects faded, so did the illusion of normalcy.

  He understood the truth, even if no one said it aloud.

  This was not a solution.

  Before stepping out into the world, Damian made his rounds through the family home—a place steeped in both triumph and ruin.

  His first stop was his grandfather’s room.

  Isa Blackwood sat hunched in a weathered wooden chair, the years carved deeply into his frame. Once a revered sword cultivator, his presence had commanded battlefields. Now, time had dulled his body, though not his spirit. His skin matched Damian’s in tone, and his crimson eyes still burned with quiet intensity. Even diminished, there was danger in his gaze.

  At 6'4", Isa remained imposing despite his frailty—a relic of a generation that had nearly vanished. He was one of the few surviving Nascent Soul cultivators from his era. Most had fallen to time, war, or ambition. And though the world had largely forgotten his name, there were still a handful—friends and enemies alike—who remembered the fear he once inspired.

  Damian’s expression hardened as he looked at him.

  The memories came unbidden.

  That night.

  The night their sect burned.

  He still remembered the metallic scent of blood thick in the air. The screams. The sky lit by technique after technique as Nascent Soul cultivators clashed above the compound. He remembered Isa at his zenith—cutting through enemies like a storm given flesh, sword flashing with impossible precision.

  But even legends bled.

  Outnumbered, battered, bones broken, Isa had fought until nothing remained. With the last of his strength, he shielded Damian, his sister, and their parents, forcing open a path through certain death.

  “You’ll do great,” Isa rasped now, voice rough but steady.

  There was pride in his eyes. Always pride.

  Damian lingered.

  Isa had trained him since he was nine years old. At first, he had tried to teach him the sword—hoping to break the strange curse that had haunted their bloodline for generations. When it became undeniable that Damian lacked the resonance for sword Qi, Isa had not withdrawn.

  He adapted.

  If the blade would not answer, then fists would.

  He forged Damian’s body through brutal drills and relentless sparring. But more than that, he taught him how to think. How to observe opponents. How to read allies. How to survive in a world where strength was currency and mercy was temporary.

  Across the room, beside his grandfather, sat another figure.

  Marcus Blackwood.

  Damian’s father. Once known as the Poison Blade. Now confined to a wheelchair.

  Marcus held a steaming cup of tea, an easy smile softening the sharpness of his features. Years of pushing poison techniques beyond safe limits had ravaged his body from the inside out. He had won battles—but the cost had accumulated.

  Yet even diminished, there was no bitterness in him.

  Only quiet resilience.

  “I’m proud of you, my son,” Marcus said gently. “I’m sorry you have to carry this. But I’m not surprised. I always knew you’d walk your own path.”

  They spoke a little longer—small words layered over larger truths. Shared glances that carried history. Encouragement wrapped in restraint. Eventually, time pressed forward.

  Damian bowed his head slightly—not formal, but respectful.

  And then he turned to leave.

  The next step awaited him.

  His final stop was Kara’s workshop.

  The moment he stepped inside, the faint hum of qi-infused tools greeted him. The air carried the scent of metal, herbs, and something faintly sweet from recent pill refinement. The space was alive—half laboratory, half forge—organized chaos that only Kara truly understood.

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  She stood near her workbench, hair shaped in a striking natural afro that framed her face with effortless confidence. A faint sheen of concentration still lingered in her eyes, as if she had only just stepped away from something complicated.

  “You’re finally here,” she said, crossing the room with quick steps.

  Before he could answer, she pressed a spatial bag into his hands.

  “Immortal Tears,” she announced, unable to hide the pride in her voice. “New explosion pellets. Compact. Stable. Fast ignition. Good for offense or retreat.”

  Her tone sharpened. “They can injure someone above your Realm—but don’t use more than three at once.”

  Damian raised an eyebrow. “Because?”

  “Because I like the building,” she replied flatly.

  He laughed, then leaned down and kissed her forehead. “Always careful.”

  “Someone has to be,” she shot back, though the corner of her mouth lifted.

  Unlike Damian, Kara had never struggled to find her footing. She had inherited their mother’s brilliance in artifact crafting and alchemy—and refined it further. She had reached the early stages of the Qi Refinement Realm already, balancing cultivation with invention. Her work kept the family afloat—financially, strategically, emotionally.

  In another era, in another family, she would have been celebrated as a prodigy.

  Here, she simply carried responsibility.

  “You don’t have to prove anything today,” she said more softly.

  He glanced at her. “I know.”

  But they both understood that wasn’t entirely true.

  As he turned to leave, the spatial bag heavier than its size suggested, he felt something steady settle in his chest. If he failed, it wouldn’t just be his own path collapsing. It would ripple outward.

  And that was something he refused to allow.

  After returning to his room, Damian found himself alone.

  The house felt quieter than usual. He already knew his mother wouldn’t be home—she was likely still at her workshop, fulfilling commissions late into the evening as she often did. Responsibility had a way of stretching her days longer than anyone else’s.

  On the dresser in the living room, something waited for him.

  A letter.

  He recognized her handwriting immediately.

  The parchment was simple, but the words carried warmth. Encouragement. Faith. Hope. She echoed much of what his sister, father, and grandfather had already said—reminding him that no matter the outcome, he was not walking alone.

  He stood there longer than he meant to, rereading certain lines.

  Then he returned to his room and sat down slowly.

  He had been accepted.

  But acceptance wasn’t victory.

  He still had to pass the trials.

  The first test should be manageable. His mother’s pill would simulate the stability needed to give the appearance of core formation—at least temporarily. That would get him through the opening assessment.

  After that?

  It would be him.

  No borrowed stability. No illusions.

  Just effort and instinct.

  The room dimmed as evening deepened, shadows stretching along the walls. Damian leaned back slightly, letting silence settle around him. He thought about the future. About vengeance—though it wasn’t loud or all-consuming. It lived quietly in him, like an ember that refused to die.

  But revenge alone wasn’t enough to sustain a life.

  He didn’t just want to reclaim something lost.

  He wanted to build something new.

  Paths unfolded in his mind—body cultivation, artifact crafting, strategy, survival. Each came with its own risks. Each carried its own cost. Some led to strength. Some to obscurity. Some to death.

  He exhaled slowly.

  Uncertainty pressed in, but it didn’t crush him.

  Tomorrow would not decide his entire fate.

  But it would decide whether he was allowed to step onto the board.

  And Damian Blackwood had no intention of remaining a spectator.

  Eventually, Damian hoisted his bags onto his shoulders and stepped into the cool evening air. He paused on the cracked pavement in front of his home and glanced back one last time.

  The house stood still and dignified beneath the fading light—a quiet monument to everything his family had endured. It carried warmth and sorrow in equal measure. Within those walls lived laughter, arguments, long nights of training, whispered plans for the future. It was shelter. It was memory.

  A question lingered in the back of his mind.

  When would he return?

  And in what state?

  He didn’t let the thought root too deeply.

  Ten minutes later, the shuttle arrived in a soft swirl of dust. It wasn’t extravagant—no polished insignias of great families, no luxury interior meant to flaunt lineage. It was functional. Clean. Practical.

  For a middle-class cultivating family, it was enough.

  As he stepped aboard, a familiar tension tightened in his chest. He knew what waited at the sect grounds—children of elite dynasties raised on entitlement, talents praised since birth, heirs who wore their surnames like armor.

  Some would look at him and see someone beneath them.

  He had grown used to that.

  Still, alongside the tension, there was relief. Out there, he wouldn’t have to endure the suffocating expectations of those who believed his path should follow theirs. Out there, strength would speak louder than status.

  Damian adjusted the straps of his bags and took a seat, gaze steady as the shuttle lifted.

  Whatever waited for him next, it would be earned.

  And that was enough.

  To the untrained eye, he was nothing special. A lazy playboy. A boy coasting on his family’s fading name. Someone with merely decent Spirit Roots and no remarkable physique or rare constitution. In a shuttle filled with heirs and prodigies, he blended easily into the background—just another average cultivator among brighter stars.

  He was aware of the sideways glances. The muted laughter. The assumptions.

  What they didn’t know was more interesting.

  Despite lacking rare gifts, Damian possessed a body honed through relentless training. Against most peers who weren’t born into elite bloodlines, he could physically dominate them. If his potential were measured honestly—without prejudice—he would fall somewhere above average. In certain narrow aspects of cultivation, perhaps even exceptional.

  In another environment, he might have been called a Talent.

  Here, that label meant little.

  As he settled into the back of the shuttle, a practiced, slightly insolent smile curved across his lips. He knew it irritated people. That was part of the point. If they were going to judge him anyway, he might as well control the narrative. Better to be seen as carefree than as something dangerous or desperate.

  The shuttle ride carried a strained quiet.

  Everyone understood what this was. Not an outing. Not a competition for pride.

  A turning point.

  For many aboard, failure meant returning home to ordinary cultivation paths, smaller sects, or family businesses. Success meant access—resources, mentors, techniques that could alter the course of a lifetime. And with that access came rivalry. Alliances would form. Enemies would emerge.

  Damian leaned back, eyes half-lidded but alert.

  His grandfather had weighed every option before pushing for this sect in particular. Given their family’s distant connection to demonic cultivation, some might have expected Damian to drift toward that world. There were still loose ties—old acquaintances who might have offered assistance.

  But the demonic path was unstable.

  Assassins still hunted survivors from their fallen sect. Old grudges did not fade simply because cities modernized. Resources within that world were hoarded fiercely, and loyalty often lasted only as long as convenience. Choosing that road would have been gambling with his life before he even began.

  This sect, though imperfect, offered something different.

  Structure.

  Opportunity.

  And just enough distance from the shadows of his past.

  And beyond all strategy, beyond all calculation, one thought lingered like a shadow that refused to fade.

  The ones who destroyed his home were still alive.

  Somewhere beyond the city walls, beyond the protection of sect arrays and political boundaries, they continued their lives as if nothing had been lost. Within New Avalon, powerhouses and alliances offered a degree of safety. But outside? Outside, the wilderness swallowed names and blood alike.

  If he stepped too far, too soon, he could be hunted.

  That knowledge did not paralyze him.

  It sharpened him.

  What truly made this sect different was its principal: a Nascent Soul cultivator who did not belong to any of the Great Families. Not an heir. Not a puppet. A third-party high-rank cultivator who had built his influence carefully, deliberately—a man who understood long games.

  In that, Damian recognized something familiar.

  Both of them stood slightly outside established power structures. Both understood the importance of alliances without becoming entangled in obligations that could not be repaid. For young cultivators seeking guidance without immediate political branding, this principal represented something rare.

  Neutral ground.

  Or as close to neutral as cultivation ever allowed.

  For Damian, the sect represented more than opportunity—it represented distance from his family’s limitations. The Blackwood legacy revolved around the Sword Dao. Even their body cultivation techniques were saturated with sword Qi principles. Everything returned to the blade.

  But the blade did not answer him.

  Here, he could build something that belonged to him alone.

  As the shuttle continued forward, he closed his eyes. He imagined himself standing at the center of countless branching paths. The body cultivation path stood firm and straightforward. It would amplify his already disciplined physique. In this era, body cultivation was no longer rare; countless manuals and techniques existed to refine muscle, bone, and skin into weapons.

  It was reliable.

  But it was narrow.

  Body cultivators often struggled to integrate smoothly with broader qi systems. Once committed, the path demanded lifelong devotion to physical refinement. Flexibility diminished as strength increased.

  Then there was alchemy. Pill refinement, enhancement, manipulation of external growth. For someone with average Spirit Roots, it was tempting. Wealth flowed through that profession. Influence followed supply.

  But alchemy had ceilings.

  No pill could permanently replace genuine cultivation. And high-level alchemists guarded their techniques ruthlessly, destroying knowledge rather than allowing competitors to rise. It was profitable—but rarely transcendent.

  The weapon path lingered in his thoughts as well. Spears. Sabers. Chains. Exotic constructs. The world offered more than swords. Each weapon carried the potential to form its own Qi base and style.

  Yet even there, he sensed limitations.

  Few weapon systems rivaled high-tier sword cultivation. Exceptions existed—but they were rare, and relying on becoming an exception was gambling with destiny.

  His mind circled these options calmly.

  None felt complete.

  The shuttle slowed. Twenty minutes had passed.

  When it came to a halt, Damian opened his eyes.

  Before him stood the gates of the Great Eternal Dawn Sect.

  The uniqueness of the sect revealed itself not in sheer size, but in design. At first glance, the entrance resembled a modern district—clean streets, structured buildings, residential quarters arranged with intention rather than chaos. Yet something about it felt elevated. Refined. Every surface seemed subtly reinforced by cultivation arrays. Glass panels shimmered faintly with embedded qi circuits, glowing with soft blue light as if the structures themselves were breathing.

  It was a seamless fusion of modern engineering and ancient cultivation artistry.

  Unlike exaggerated portrayals in comics or dramatized media, modern sects no longer hid behind crumbling mountain monasteries alone. The true heart of a sect lay within carefully constructed pocket dimensions—self-contained realms layered over reality itself. Each dimension was engineered to optimize cultivation.

  Some housed dense spiritual forests where qi gathered naturally in the roots of towering trees. Others mimicked frozen tundras, forcing cultivators to temper their bodies against biting cold and sharpened winds. A few elite realms even featured floating islands suspended over vast skies, where gravity itself was manipulated for advanced training.

  These environments were not decoration.

  They were tools.

  Damian stepped down from the shuttle last, boots touching polished stone as he surveyed the crowd. Two to three hundred candidates stood scattered across the courtyard, their conversations low and tense. They were a mosaic of backgrounds—different accents, skin tones, clothing styles, religious markings, family crests.

  But their expressions carried the same hunger.

  Each of them stood at the same threshold.

  Some would leave as disciples. Some would leave as disappointments. And a rare few would emerge years later as monsters, healers, legends—or something far worse.

  Ahead stood the first test.

  Simple.

  Approach the gate. Place your hand on the orb. Allow it to assess your capacity to form a core.

  For most, the result would be straightforward—qualified or unqualified.

  For Damian, it felt like gambling with loaded dice.

  His mother’s pill flowed quietly through his system, stabilizing his qi circulation, simulating the faint cohesion required to pass inspection. On the surface, it would appear normal. Promising, even.

  But beneath that illusion, his dantian remained flawed.

  If something went wrong—if the orb detected instability beyond what the pill could mask—the consequences would not be mild embarrassment. Exposure meant questions. Questions meant scrutiny.

  And scrutiny was dangerous.

  The lines moved quickly. Three stations operated in parallel, city officials working with mechanical efficiency to process the steady stream of applicants. Names were checked. IDs scanned. Results recorded. The system ran like clockwork.

  Fifteen minutes later, Damian stood at the front.

  A city worker in a crisp uniform extended his hand. “Identification.”

  Damian handed it over without hesitation. His movements were smooth, controlled. Inside, however, every sense sharpened.

  The worker scanned the card, eyes flicking over the projected details. “Damian Blackwood. Eighteen,” he muttered. His gaze lifted briefly, pausing on Damian’s crimson eyes. Unusual, yes—but hardly rare among cultivators. No reaction beyond routine acknowledgment.

  The ID was returned. The worker stepped aside and gestured toward the orb.

  That was when the anxiety hit.

  It wasn’t loud. It wasn’t visible. But it surged through him all the same. He trusted his mother. He trusted the pill circulating through his meridians, stabilizing the illusion of core potential. But trust didn’t eliminate risk.

  For a split second, he imagined the orb flaring red. Alarms triggering. Questions asked.

  Exposure.

  His face betrayed none of it. He even allowed the faintest trace of his usual, easy smile to remain.

  Damian stepped forward and placed his hand on the orb.

  The surface was smooth. Cool.

  Then warmth spread beneath his palm.

  The orb responded immediately—light igniting from within like a slow-burning flame. It pulsed once. Twice. Growing brighter, more concentrated. For a heartbeat, it felt as though the light was peering into him, searching.

  Testing.

  He kept his breathing steady.

  The glow intensified, then stabilized into a clear, radiant brilliance.

  Not exceptional. Not weak.

  Qualified.

  The worker gave a small, bored nod. “You passed.”

  Just like that.

  Relief didn’t show on Damian’s face, but inside, something loosened. Around him, the courtyard shifted into noise. Whispers rippled outward—some relieved, some bitter. A few applicants broke into quiet celebration. Others stood frozen, disbelief hollowing their expressions before officials guided them away.

  Those who failed weren’t given speeches. Just directions.

  A handful were removed for lacking identification. Others for lacking potential. The gate did not argue.

  For now, Damian remained where he stood.

  Safe.

  He refused to linger on what might have happened had the result gone differently. Failure would not only have exposed him—it would have redirected his entire future in a single humiliating moment. Instead, he steadied himself.

  This was only the first threshold.

  Relief washed through him, but it didn’t dull his awareness. If anything, it sharpened it. Passing the orb meant nothing beyond eligibility.

  The real trials were still ahead.

  And those would not be fooled by pills.