Year 14,754 of the Imperial Yee Dynasty, Native Housing District, Jurin Province, Planet Terra

Twelve years later…

The final memory of my sister and parents flashed through my mind as I endured another hard slap of bamboo across my back. My bare skin screamed, but I refused to let my mouth do the same. I gritted my teeth instead, breathing hard through my nose in a vain attempt to diffuse the pain. I balled my shackled hands into fists, squeezing the wooden stump between my legs and arms as the public flogging continued.

“Two!” the robe-clad Enforcer shouted as he struck me again. “Three!”

The count continued up to eight. By that time, the overweight Enforcer was desperately out of breath and half the population of the Native Housing District had gathered to watch. The Enforcer’s face was concealed behind a black veil, the same color as his robes, but by his sloppy build and the force of his strikes, I knew he was Terran just like the rest of us.

That made him all the more pathetic in my eyes.

But although he was the one administering the strikes, the true instigator of my punishment was the low-tier Foundation Realm cultivator smirking behind him, Li Fet. Li looked human at first glance. He could pass for a middle-aged Asian man with a broad face and double chin, but a closer inspection would reveal a slight point to his ears, pegging him as one of the many alien races the Yee Dynasty had conquered over the millennia.

Li Fet looked down at me smugly as he approached the stump, hands behind his back. “That was to let you know that I am not joking with you, Chun. Now I’ll ask you again. Where is my money?”

“And I’ll tell you again,” I said huffing through my nostrils. “I lost it gambling.”

I probably shouldn’t have said that. Sassing him in front of an audience would cause a loss of face that would demand a lot more than an eight-tap beating. But to hell with it. I was having a bad day and was on a roll.

Li Fet ordered more strikes for my insolence and the Enforcer got back at it.

Through grunts of pain and watering eyes I saw her looking back at me in the crowd. In all honestly, she was probably the only one truly looking at me. The rest were shuffling by and pretending not to look. After all, a frown of sympathy or disapproval could land them on the stump next to me.

But Yu Li had nothing but concern in her deep brown eyes as she stared back at me from the edge of the public square. She was a couple years younger and from the old world like I was. I asked her once where she came from, and she thought California, but was too young when they took her to truly remember. Her sandy brown hair and tan complexion said she was Hispanic though. In her arms, her baby cried. A newborn barely three months old now.

Yu Li had named her Su Ling.

The enforcer finally ran out of steam at 21 and by that time my back was raw and screaming for ice. My body trembled with the pain, my forehead dripping sweat onto the dusty asphalt that used to be the center of an intersection in old downtown Chicago. Or so the old maps said anyway.

“Perhaps now, Chun, you will answer more sensibly. Where is my money?”

He said my Yee name with the alternate tone that changed its meaning to stupid. It was a joke I’d grown accustomed to from the time I was force fed the Yee language in Foundational school at the age of nine or so.

I forced myself into a submissive tone to respond—my back couldn’t suffer another loss of face today. “This one lost it gambling, honorable Li Fet. This one will have double the rent for you next month. This I swear by the heavens.”

Li Fet nodded, seemingly appeased. He then shouted for all the crowd to hear. “Let it be known that Li Fet is a merciful landowner. I have spared the life of this irresponsible wretch for two moons. Let any of you fall behind in payment and you shall receive the same just and merciful punishment.”

As if on cue, the entire gathering performed small bows of thanks towards the cultivator for his great demonstration of grace.

“Release him,” Li Fet said and then lowering to me he whispered, “this month is your back. Next month, will be your head.”

* * *

The Enforcer threw my overcoat at me after he pushed me back into the crowd. I winced trying to pull it on over my throbbing wounds. That’s when Yu Li suddenly grabbed my arm and pulled me to the side.

“Hey, take it easy. This freaking hurts, you k—”

“What are you doing?” she said, cutting me off in a hushed whisper while bouncing Su Ling on her hip. “Are you crazy?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I mean, why did you give me all of your money if you were short yourself? If I knew you were giving me your rent money, I wouldn’t have even asked much less taken it!”

I chuckled through the sting on my back. Yu Li had come looking for me the day before. She’d run out of silver a week after pay day as usual. I’d stuffed the entire contents of my coin purse into her palm no questions asked.

“Look, don’t worry about it,” I said. “You haven’t been able to work because of the baby. How else were you going to pay? Unless you wanted to be the one on the stump back there.”

I gave her a cocky smile and Yu Li looked at me with an infuriated scowl, before quickly huffing out a sigh and then pulling me into a hug that made me wince again.

“I don’t deserve you,” she said. “Thank you, Chun. As soon as I can find someone to look after Su Ling, I’ll pay you back double. I promise.”

“You bet you will,” I said, but I had no intention of asking for a single Wen of silver back from her. Yu Li was about the closest thing to family that I had. “And you should be making plenty soon. You were close to breaking through the 9th Tier of Body Refinement and into the Foundation Realm before you had to quit school, right? Nothing but big money after that.”

She huffed out a laugh, bouncing Su Ling who started to fuss. “Don’t remind me. I’ll never be able to show my face in that place again. I’ll be lucky to ever break through on my own at this point.”

What Yu Li said was probably true. Cultivation took years of focused meditation and training to absorb the ambient energy of the universe and refine it into the usable form of Qi. Higher level techniques could make the process faster, but that only came with formal education and training. Trying to breakthrough to the next realm of cultivation, from mere Body Refinement to Foundation Establishment took massive amounts of Qi and mental focus. For Yu Li, now with a kid, it was probably next to impossible. Still, I wasn’t going to let her get discouraged over it.

“Hey, who needs ‘em,” I said folding my arms. “Bunch of control freaks in that school anyway. Besides, it’s supposed to be all self-study past that point, right?”

Yu Li laughed. “This from the guy who still hasn’t broken through the 7th tier of Body Refinement yet.”

I shrugged with a smile. “What can I say? I like living up to my name.”

We both laughed until an intrusive voice came from behind me.

“And what name would that be?”

The voice was familiar and caused my lip to curl. If I had been able to break through to the 9th Tier of Body refinement like Yu Li, I’d probably be able to sense the massive well of Qi to my rear.

But dumbass as I was, I sensed nothing.

Except the stink of arrogance.

I turned about slowly, careful not to lift my gaze too fully to meet the eyes of the cultivator as I performed an obligatory bow. “Young Master Hein.”

He was about the same age a Yu Li, fair skinned and dressed in the robes of nobility from one of the minor families within the greater Silver Leaf clan. His baby face wore a smile of confidence that only wealth and privilege could provide. Two other similarly aged boys were with him, dressed in the same air of refinement. The three of them stood out like flies in congee being in the middle of the Native Housing District, but perhaps only those of even higher status would truly care about them being here.

“Master Hein,” Yu Li said, performing a small curtsey that made my stomach sick. “You do recall my friend, Chun, don’t you?”

The prick had met me at least three times already.

“Ah yes,” he said with an exaggerated smile. “Chun!”

The three boys laughed at the great joke and I humored the young master with a smile. “Good one.”

“Yes, of course I remember you, Chun,” he said, patting me on the back and I resisted the urge to wince as the sting set my brain on fire. “Chun here was an upper classman of Yu Li. Sadly you had to drop out of the Foundation academy quite early, didn’t you, Chun?”

He wore a smirk that caused his two friends to grin.

If I bought into the same cultural norms that they were accustomed to, the loss of that much face would force me to have to challenge him right there on the spot. But as a low tier Foundation Realm Cultivator, Hein’s strength, young as he was, would make even the likes of Li Fen, ‘the gracious landowner’, quiver.

“I did,” I answered simply with a smile. “Like I said. I live up to my name.”

The three laughed again and I simply grinned, playing the fool.

“Anyway,” he said, turning from me and gesturing towards Yu Li. “Did I not tell you that there were great beauties amongst the natives?”

This caused Yu Li to grin and blush, while Hein’s lackies nodded like idiots, stroking their peach fuzzed chins.

I hated this guy, even though he was likely Su Ling’s father. Although Yu Li had never admitted it, not even to me. To this day she’d never said who the father was, which made the answer all the more obvious. To have a concubine at Hein’s age was revolting, but to father even a child was even more so. Plus, as detrimental as it was to Yu Li, it was perhaps even more so to him. If people who mattered ever found out, that was.

But the fact that he’d brought his friends to parade her about was a testament to the likelihood of that ever happening. The thought caused ire to burn deep in my soul. I wanted to snatch him by the collar and pound him in the face until he explained why Yu Li had to ask me for rent money while he flew home every night to the great gold pagoda in the sky.

But I knew the answer.

Hein wasn’t rich, his family was. At his young age, there’d be no decent reason for him to be giving money to a young mother in the Native district. Not that his family would miss the paltry sum that would allow Yu Li and Su Ling to live a good life. No, his lack of financial support stemmed from an even deeper rut of depravity.

Hein didn’t pay…because he didn’t have to.

My temples throbbed with simmering anger as I watched him continue to flirt with her.

Yu Li was merely a thrilling pursuit to him before, but now she had become a proof of conquest to show off to his friends. It sickened me. All Yu Li could do now was pretend that Hein had no obligation to her at all; to keep his secret and allow him to save face before his family, in hopes that one day he would honor her discretion with a show of charity.

Damn cultivator society. And they call ‘us’ the savages?

My hands balled into fists and I became acutely aware of how much anger and hatred was welling up inside of me. I wanted to lay this bastard low for what he’d done and if it wasn’t for the fact that he or any one of his family members could kill me in an instant, I’d probably go for it too. He’d robbed Yu Li of her innocence. Ruined her future. But worst of all.

He had stolen Yu Li’s heart.

“Perhaps some tea?” Yu Li offered.

Hein smiled and nodded along with his friends.

She finally extended the offer to me, but I shook my head and made sure I didn’t let my disappointment or anger show as I put on a smile.

“No,” I said. “I have to get to work. I’ll see you later.”

* * *

Rain fell as I ran through the old streets of downtown.

I welcomed it as it soaked through my overcoat and cooled the rawness of my back and the anger burning in my soul. By the time I neared the city’s edge however, the coat started to chafe and I began to regret choosing today to tell Li Fen that I didn’t have his rent money.

Towering edifices of the old world lay in crumbled ruin all around me as I made my way east towards the fields. Skyscrapers with shattered windows, abandoned storefronts painted with graffiti and strewn with old banners for the Tournament of Mortal Champions last year. Even remnants of rusted war machines and burnt-out cars littered the streets, which were now overgrown with tall grass and weeds.

The entire place was a dump, but the cultivators had no need to beautify this part of the city. It instead was home to those unable to afford even the paltry rent of the Native Housing District. Meanwhile the cultivators themselves dwelt within the golden pagoda that hovered eerily several hundred feet above the old city. Even in the grayed out, rain-drenched sky it glowed with the otherworldly light of a second sun. Small crafts and high-tier Core Realm Cultivators flew back and forth from it, looking like flocks of tiny birds from this distance.

I assumed that it was one of the same that had arrived to attack us that night. I wondered just how many there were now, each one hovering over the ruins of major cities from Old Earth. Regretfully, such details were never mentioned in any of my Dynasty reeducation classes, where my traumatized, young mind was forcibly remolded to conform to the society of our new cultivator masters.

My first re-education consisted of learning the hieroglyphic-like script of the Yee language, and then from there learning about the hierarchy of Cultivation and the ranks of Power within them. The five realms of Mortal level cultivation: from Body Tempering, Foundation Establishment, Core Formation, Sacred Soul, Lesser Deity and then beyond.

I realized now that the superheroes I saw on TV that night were perhaps of the Lesser Deity Realm, on loan from the central planets at the core of the Dynasty’s domain. That godlike figure that stopped the nuke for example was likely some elder half-brother of the current Yee Princess that now ruled our world. Big bro doing little sis a favor by clearing her newly gifted planet of its native pests.

That’s what most of them saw us as.

Pests to be eliminated with a few to be tamed as pets.

Apparently, while humans were common throughout the universe, the aptitude to detect and cultivate Qi was not. Our species, now dubbed Terran, was woefully inept at it, earning an overall D rating on average. That meant that less than 10% of the population could truly aspire to become Qi Cultivators.

Maybe that’s why we excelled at science and not magic in our past.

Magic, I thought chuckling. That’s what it still all was to me.

Yu Li had fallen into that lucky 10%, which made it all the more infuriating that Hein had ruined her chances at a better life in this new world. As even a Low tier Foundation Realm cultivator she could find a decent job as an artisan or crafter. Maybe even more if she were allowed to continue her education, or God forbid, participate in that stupid Tournament of Mortal Champions that promised true Yee citizenship to the winner. She’d be able to join even a Sect then.

But for me? I knew I was a dumbass when it came to Qi early on.

Chun had become my schoolyard nickname by the age of 12, as did the daily beatings that came with it. But the feeling was mutual. I despised not just the cultivators, but the very idea of the thing. Sucking up the life force of the universe for selfish gains? To hell with that. Maybe that’s why I had no aptitude for it. It just rubbed me wrong, in the worst kind of way. My entire family died for their savage gluttony and I wanted nothing to do with it.

Still, this was my reality now.

And angst didn’t pay the bills.