In a large corridor beside a slightly open door, three sturdy men wearing martial arts robes stared at a newborn. The one holding the baby was middle-aged and full of vitality. The other two were already old enough that any mortal would've died in their place, yet they kept their power and vigor.

"I've never seen so much affinity with qi..." The oldest man said. "But it's such a pity..."

"To think that he would be born with crippled meridians..." The other old man said.

The middle-aged man looked at his son in silence for a few moments. His eyes showed both the love of a father and the cold judgment of a clan head. At long last, he spoke.

"He shall be trained as the next Keeper," he commanded.

The old men showed disagreement on their faces for only a split second. The clan head hadn't come to his position by ploys or chance. He was a brutal man who dealt with dissent with an iron fist.

If he commanded his son to become the next Keeper of Knowledge, so it would be.

A five-year-old was sitting with his eyes closed, legs crossed, in his manor's large patio.

"Focus," the instructor said in a low voice.

They were both wearing martial arts robes. The child couldn't cultivate because his meridians had been born with huge chunks missing. Still, just absorbing some qi, even though it would dissipate quickly, would help him live for a few extra years. Even that much was only possible because of the exceptional talent the boy had to manipulate qi.

Such hard work would've been unnecessary if the boy's father bought qi-rich food and pills for the boy, but the strict man would never waste the clan's resources on a money sinkhole like his son.

So the boy cultivated, knowing that even if he did his best, he wouldn't live past ten.

He never dared to blame his father, for he had been taught well. The clan came first. The needs of the many who could give back to the clan surpassed the disease of one that would produce nothing useful to the others. That he had been named the next Keeper of Knowledge and been allowed to stay protected was already a great boon.

"Focus," the instructor repeated when he detected the boy's absorption rate decreasing.

They kept going for hours.

A woman killed for the "greater good." Outrage. Justice delivered. Sorrow.

Heart wrenching grief. Deep circumspection.

A change of heart.

The seed of betrayal found fertile soil.

A twelve-year-old was sitting on a vast library, reading the books of one of the many forbidden sections. The sound of children of his age training not too far from there made him jealous, but his body could barely stand up, much less join any physical activity.

But he hadn't given up on hope.

One day, he would find the cure for his crippled meridians hidden in the ancient tomes around him.

One day, he would succeed, or die trying.

He had some extra time to achieve it. In the four last years, his father had been teaching him new things. The clan still came first, but sometimes, familial ties and empathy had a place too.

So he sipped the expensive Heavenly Redwillow Tea that filled him with qi and kept reading.

"Reporting to the clan head," said a kneeling martial artist in the throne room. "We have won the war against the Sevenfold Alliance and acquired the miraculous herb, but it has failed to heal the young master. The head physician has killed himself for failing to deliver on his promise."

The man on the throne just nodded once and waved the next report to come.

The faces of most people in the room twisted in displeasure. After his wife's death, their leader had led the entire clan to war for his son and was wasting great resources on a cripple. Sooner or later, they would have to remove him from that throne.

The clan head knew that, but he didn't care.

In the face of his power, they could only fail in whatever plans they made.

The fifteen-year-old learned a harsh lesson at an early age: sometimes, just willpower, hard work, or even talent wasn't enough. Sometimes, destiny was simply a harsh taskmaster that left no way out.

He had done his best. He had finished reading everything in the martial library twice over. His father had even spent considerable resources to let him browse the libraries of other clans and some sects.

All to no avail.

He had reached the end of his lifespan. The substantial amount of qi that he had absorbed hadn't only given him extra time, but also further damaged his feeble meridians. He barely could absorb qi anymore, and it was a painful business.

He wouldn't live for more than a year.

Facing death in the eyes, he ordered his attendant to bring him to the library, where the only weapons he could wield, his books, waited for him.

As he had promised himself in the past, even if there was no hope, he would die facing destiny in the eyes.

An unconscious sixteen-year-old was lying on an open coffin made of glittering Dragonforged Tempered Diamond. It contained not only the body, but was also filled with gems of all colors and sizes. All the clan's resources—and more!—had been poured in there.

The former clan head looked at his son with overwhelming love.

He had never imagined he would one day betray his clan for personal reasons, but here he was. They would crumble at the hands of their enemies because he had taken away all their money and even left them full of debts. All for a chance for his son.

"This is your last chance, Shen'er," he mumbled. "I pray to the heavens that this method taught to me by the Divine Seer works." He smiled slightly. "Your mother would've been proud of you."

His wife's death had been the turning point in his life. She had been poisoned by an elder who wanted the clan head to marry again and produce a stronger offspring. Even as the man's head had been placed on the chopping block, he had insisted he had done his best for his clan, and all elders seemed to agree.

Screw them all.

Part of him knew he was being a fool. The Divine Seer had told him to place his son in a magic formation that would freeze his life. Not only that, he had to give it enough fuel to last for thousands of years. One day, the Seer had promised, the Great Cosmic Blueness would heal his son.

He refused to explain what the Great Cosmic Blueness was, and his words sounded like the babbling of either a madman or someone who wanted their client to be long dead when their prophecy failed to come true. The dead couldn't ask for refunds.

And yet, the father hoped. He did his all for the boy. He bet his own life on that.

Feng Yang sat beside the coffin in the hidden subterranean cave on the other side of the world from where his clan had reigned. There was no going out after he had locked it from the inside.

He would die meditating while pushing all the qi he could into the gemstones.

All living beings die, all things pass, change is part of existence.

The ages came and went. An experiment gone awry left the world devoid of qi for millennia. The cultivator civilization fell. Science surfaced and reigned supreme. Humanity reached the Information Age.

The boy kept sleeping, his body as young as it had been thousands of years ago.

And one day, the Great Cosmic Blueness came to Earth.

Feng Shen opened his mouth and took a desperate breath as if he had been drowning. A lot of dust entered his lungs, and he coughed deeply while trying to breathe more. He sat up and kept at that until, after a long while, he could finally breathe normally.

Only then did he focus on the floating box that kept glued to the front of his view, no matter where he looked. It was as if it had pinned to his head. The box transparent blue and filled with text.

World Integration

Before anything else, we want to show our goodwill by giving you three boons: the healing of all humans with any disability, the eradication of human disease on Earth, and the eradication of hunger by removing the body's need to eat or drink to survive. These are effective immediately.

Now...

Congratulations!

Earth has become a trainee-level member of the Multiverse Alliance!

The Multiverse Alliance has been resisting the Void for the past tens of thousands of local years. Every time we detect a planet with sapients about to be consumed by the Void, we protect it.

That's the reason you're seeing this message. We've detected the Void was about to consume your star system and have moved it to the very center of the multiverse, the most protected place there is.

There was no time to ask your opinion on the matter, but we aren't kidnappers. If you want to leave the Multiverse Alliance, you only have to say, "Opt out of the Multiverse Alliance," every twenty-four hours. If over two-thirds of the sapient populace says it within twenty-four hours, you will be put back where you were.

You'll be consumed by the Void and be erased from existence, but that's your choice to make.

Please don't be in a hurry to do that. We assure you we have your best interests at heart, for they align with ours:

We need strong Guardians to assist us in the fight against the Void Spawn, and you would certainly want to grow powerful to fight the thing that could obliterate you with your own hands, rather than depend on aliens powerful enough to move your planet around at will.

For now, our strongest planets are the ones at the front lines; just throwing you against our common enemy would serve no purpose. However, the rules of the Multiverse Alliance require Earth to be given training, then be offered a chance to fend for itself. The goal is for you to become fully fledged members of the Alliance, with both voting rights and fighting quotas.

To grow strong, humans need only to enter the Guardian Tutorial.

The tutorial is a place where you'll be pushed beyond your limits time and time again and get in touch with the Guardian System. We promise no deaths in the tutorial, and even those who fail at the early stages shall come back with superhuman strength. Anyone who finishes the tutorial will be gods among men.

In two local years, we will move Earth from the middle of the multiverse to a slightly less protected, and thus slightly dangerous, position. It's in your best interest to have as many Guardians as possible until then.

We estimate you'll need about one hundred million people to have concluded the tutorial to have a 99.9% chance of survival then. About one in every ten attempts should succeed. For your own good, don't hesitate in entering the tutorial. There is absolutely nothing to lose in entering it.

Two local years later, you'll be moved again, and yet again in another two local years. And so on until, in one hundred local years, you reach the front lines.

If you're not strong enough to defend yourselves after so long, you're not worthy enough to be protected.

To join the tutorial, which will teleport you away from Earth for its duration, just say, "Join tutorial."

Fight well!

Shen didn't recognize that language, but could read it. Even the words he shouldn't have understood for a lack of reference, like tutorial, came full of meaning that let him do so. He guessed a superior translation artifact was involved. He moved his hand to touch the box, but it went through it.

The box disappeared as soon as he finished reading it, and he found himself sitting in absolute darkness.

The box's contents were mind blowing. They had moved the entire planet through space? They had changed humankind to not require nourishment, just like powerful cultivators? The Alliance required bodies to fight a war? That they did that without getting stopped by the ruling cultivators was astounding.

Conscription, war of survival, Guardians... All that was nice and all, but what he really focused on was the healing.

Had... He gulped. Had they healed his crippled meridians, too?

Could he cultivate at long last?

He tried at once. He closed his eyes and focused on feeling the surrounding qi. It was surprising to find himself almost drowning in it. He had experience in feeling the vital energy that permeated everything, and the abundance made it even easier.

After feeling it, he focused on his meridians, the set of energy channels that runs through the body. His once almost entirely missing meridians felt like strong river paths.

He pulled qi into his meridians using his willpower. The energy entered his meridians with ease. Soon enough, he was rotating it through all his meridians.

Shen couldn't stop the tears of joy from falling.

That had been his dream for his entire life. He had worked to accomplish that all along, yet he had failed. But now the Multiverse Alliance had given him such an amazing gift. He would definitely repay them by joining their tutorial and fighting for them.

But first, he cultivated. For a while, he kept focusing on pulling the qi from the surroundings and moving it inside his body. He easily located the Nine Obstructions in his meridians, blockades that only thin wisps of qi could go through.

As of now, he was merely an Initiate, able to feel qi and pull it into himself, nothing more. Once he destroyed the first Obstruction, he would become a cultivator in the Meridian Clearing realm. Still, that realm was merely introductory, a boring necessary step all cultivators needed to take.

The heavens were jealous and didn't want mortals going beyond their limits, thus they made their growth difficult. The Nine Obstructions were but the first obstacle in a cultivator's path.

An obstacle Shen would surpass.

He focused the qi in his meridians around one Obstruction and wore it down by making qi go through the small openings in it time and time again. The opening increased slowly, bit by bit. He persevered.

Clearing a single Obstruction could take weeks to months for children because they lacked focus and patience. Seeing how well they did was even a way to evaluate their control and willpower. Older cultivators took days to weeks.

Unless they had talent, that is, and Shen did. He had been born with an enormous affinity to qi, though that hadn't been very useful before. The energy obeyed his will with ease. Less than an hour later, half the First Obstruction was gone.

His meridians were hurting, for they weren't used to having so much qi going through them. It wasn't much different from muscle pain after exercising. Shen should go slower to avoid both the pain and mentally draining himself, but he would be damned if he would stop now that his dream was so close.

He rested for some moments, then went back to clearing his meridians.

Soon, the First Obstruction was gone.

Eight to go.