Chapter 5

Ryu studied the hallway. Force fields had been purely theoretical when he’d last walked among the world of men, a futuristic concept seen only in sci-fi movies. But like everything else he’d encountered, a lot could change in eight hundred years.

Whatever else could be said about Captain Oyama—well, besides the fact she was gorgeous, and that he didn’t mind being mostly naked in front of her—was that she had a good sense of tactics. Unlike the previous group of soldiers, who’d shot at him, her unit now aimed their weapons in a spread that covered the width and height of the corridor.

It could be a very big problem, or a very small one.

Testing out his recently-healed hand, he flexed and extended his fingers. His Hara might only be at a quarter full.

More than enough.

Using his Intention, he projected his Ki toward control panel between him and the soldiers. A brief shower from the sprinklers had reduced the small fire to a few flickering sparks.

As a Cultivator of the Water Path, the Fire Path was the hardest to learn: too intense training with flames would damage his Water; careless Cultivation of water might douse what Fire he had. In eight hundred years, he’d only attained First Rank on the Fire Path.

As feeble as that might be in the Land of Rivers and Lakes, it was infinitely more powerful than anyone here. Unlike them, he could still stoke a spark into something bigger with little more than Ki projection.

The control panel erupted into flames. The soldiers’ eyes flicked to it, then back. The tension in their postures tightened.

Then, the sprinklers sprang to life, sending streams of water into the hall.

With a sweep of his hand, his Ki shot through the water, congealing them into darts which struck several of the soldiers. Several fired their guns, but enough space opened up that Ryu slipped between the beams.

A second barrage started, but he waved his hands out. The sprinkler streams spread and flattened out into a wall. The beams dispersed on its surface.

“Sprinklers off,” Captain Oyama shouted.

For whatever good that would do, there was already enough water in the corridor. With a flick of his finger, he sent a whip out from the water wall and swept the guns from the men’s hands. With a slash of his hand, he thinned the whip to a monofilament and sliced them in half before they hit the floor.

The soldiers on the other side stared at their hands, but the captain approached the water wall. Eyebrows clashing together, she tapped it with a finger and peered, her brow furrowing in the cutest way.

Grinning, he bowed.

Her lips squeezed into a tight line, and not for a kiss.

He straightened and turned to Ken. “Is there another way out?”

The boy nodded like a happy dog wagged its tail, pointing toward another door. “We have to go through a nurse station, but there’s a service maglift on the other side.”

Maglift, eh? “Will that get us to level three?”

If Ken shook his head any harder, he might give himself a concussion. “It will get us to the ground floor, but then we’ll have to go to the main lift junction.”

“Will we meet with much resistance?”

Ken chewed on his lip.

“What about the force fields?”

Wringing his hands, Ken shuffled back and forth on his feet.

Right. Well, they’d think of that as they went. Focusing on the wall of water, Ryu inhaled, using a basic Fire Path technique to draw out the heat. The wall solidified to ice. “Lead the way, Young Ken.”

The young man’s head bobbed up and down like a happy seal as he took off down the hall.

Did seals still exist? They’d been hunted to near extinction eight centuries ago. Ryu banished the silly thought and followed, watching as Ken skipped along. If the kid could actually calm down, all that nervous energy could be channeled into Cultivating the Fire Path.

Really, from what he’d sensed before, the boy had near unlimited potential to Cultivate, if he worked out the blockages in his meridians. To start, he needed to root himself and focus. “Straighten your spine and square your shoulders,” he called.

Ken looked back, eyes wide like a puppy. When he tried to straighten his spine, it looked as if someone had shoved something somewhere it wasn’t meant to go.

“All non-security personnel,” a disembodied female voice echoed through the hall like a ghost, “shelter in place. Do not, we repeat, do not engage the prisoner.”

Ryu grinned. That meant fewer obstacles. Indeed, every person they passed pressed their back against the wall and just watched.

Ken might be as helpless as a newborn, but at least he knew his way around. They’d taken a few turns, and for all Cultivation of the Five Paths was worth, it had never given Ryu a good sense of direction.

After a few minutes of encountering no one, Ryu said, “It looks like they aren’t sending anyone to pursue us.”

Shaking his head, Ken pointed to a spot on the wall. “They’re tracking us. Well, you. They’re probably trying to contain paths of escape, and then close in once they figure out a way to stop you.”

“That’s Low-key disturbing.” Ryu scanned the spot, and even with eyesight that surpassed humans from his era, he didn’t see anything. He nearly barreled into Ken, who skidded to a halt.

“Wait.” He turned and gaped. “Low-key? Is that some kind of ranking where you come from?”

“Oh, hah. It’s English slang from when I was a child. Abbreviations, slang, emoticons… it was all a part of how we communicated across all the languages of the world. I guess a lot of terms fell out of use in the last eight centuries.”

Ken resumed his walk, slower now. “There was more than one language back then, wasn’t there?”

“Hundreds,” Ryu said, gesturing for Ken to keep walking. “But there was one country that was stronger than the others, and everyone in the world spoke their language. Some better than others.” His cheeks warmed. He was definitely one of the others in this case.

“We call your era The Age of Greed.”

“Sounds about right.” In its avarice, mankind had almost destroyed the world. Ryu’s poor health had led him to his pilgrimage to the World of Rivers and Lakes early in life. He’d never seen how humans had turned it all around and created… this. Beyond the ripple effect of the Cataclysm, he knew very little of the world of his birth. “How did we keep from going extinct during the Age of Greed?

Still walking, Ken scratched his head. “Our ancestors discovered alien technologies from thousands of years before, some hidden in plain sight. From that, the leaps and bounds in A.I. helped us find solutions. If I remember correctly, by 2300, most humans were genetically engineered. Mankind learned first how to travel faster than light speed, then fold space.”

“And then the world was at peace?” The futurists of his era had predicted as much. “Is that why everyone except you looks the same?”

Ken shook his head. “Sadly, no. The world was so interconnected, and people intermingled like never before. But in this very city, a purity ideology took root, creating the Asiatic Empire. They started a war to ensure their bloodline remained undiluted.”

“Was that the Cataclysm?”

Ken slowed a step and looked over his shoulder. “What’s that?”

“When the Heavens rained fire, about four hundred years ago.”

“Oh, the Onslaught.” Shuddering, Ken spoke in a fearful tone. “In our exploration into space, we met friendly races like the Elestrae, Eunanae, and Madaerae. We also encountered the Tivarae. Their galactic empire had been at war with the Elestrae Confederation for tens of thousands of years, and were worried an Elestrae alliance with humans would alter the balance. They devastated every major city on Earth with orbital bombardments.”

So the Cataclym had been alien weapons. Now Ryu shuddered. Back then, the effect rippled across the planes into the World of Rivers and Lakes, ravaging it with earthquakes. If not for the powerful Earth Path Sages, both his world and this one might’ve been completely destroyed.

Ken’s eyes brightened. “Something did come of it: nothing brings people together faster than an attack from the outside. People of all races and creeds united and made even greater advances in science. Like the Shocktroopers you fought: they’re bigger and stronger, so they could fight the Tivarae hand-to-hand.”

Ryu nodded. Those men had been so physically powerful, yet energetically bereft.

“And the weapons! We now have ones that can knock people unconscious without causing permanent damage. Wait.” Ken halted and spun around. “When they captured you, they hit you with six shots. Just now, there were far more, yet not a single one hit you.”

“A beam did graze me, actually.” Ryu brushed off a spot on his shoulder. “It low-key tickled.”

“I’ve never heard of anyone recovering so quickly after getting hit by one on the lowest setting. Even when you were hit by six beams, you woke up in an hour.”

Ryu shrugged. “Yes.”

“And this time,” Ken said, “you were able to avoid the shots. Why did you let them capture you before?”

Ryu put two palms over his core. “Had I dodged those attacks, bystanders would’ve been struck.”

Ken’s eyes widened. “So you sacrificed yourself?”

“It’s the Code of Rivers and Lakes.”

“Rivers and Lakes?”

Ryu nodded. “The World of Rivers and Lakes is the world of martial Cultivators.”

“Like the Secret Societies from Imperial China?” Excitement rising in his voice, Ken made a sharp turn into a new hall.

They looked just about the same, cold and sterile. Ryu touched the smooth wall. “Yes. Like those groups, we lay both outside the margin of society and also hidden within.”

“Where is it?”

“Here, but not here.”

Predictably, the boy looked confused. “How so?”

How to explain it? “Imagine this place on the planet. Layers of reality are stacked on one another.” Ryu set one hand on top of the other.

Ken looked no less bewildered.

“Same place, different realities. Where I’m from, there’s no gleaming city of concrete, glass, and lights, but a town of wood and dirt roads.”

“How do you get there?”

Ryu studied the young man. “There are portals.”

“I’d love to go to your world.”

Ryu snorted. The boy wouldn’t last long there.

“And what’s this about a Code?” Ken asked.

The kid sure had a lot of questions. Ryu chuckled. “To quote a great muse from the… what did you call it, The Age of Greed? With great power comes great responsibility.”

“I’ve never heard of this. Who said it?”

“Stan Lee.”

Ken’s head rose and fell in slow bobs. “I heard the men you fought weren’t seriously injured.”

“No, part of the Code is that we do only as much damage as we need to, especially against those who have not yet started practicing Cultivation.” Ryu stopped, then pointed at a pair of doors up ahead. “Is that a maglift?”

With a wide smile, Ken nodded. He lengthened his stride… only to fall back on his butt. He rubbed his nose. “Ow!”

“What happened?”

Clambering to his feet, Ken reached out. His hands stopped flat, and he moved them up and down, side to side. Anyone on the other side would think he was doing his best impression of an Age of Greed mime.

Ryu came up beside him and extended his own palm out. It hit a flat surface, as if the air had become solid. “What is this?”

“Another force field.” Shuffling on his feet, Ken slapped the invisible wall. Panic rose in his voice. “What are we going to do? Their herding us into a trap. What—”

“Wait. Stop fidgeting,” Ryu said. The boy’s Hara gave him potential, but he’d never amount do anything if he didn’t stop and focus. “Take a deep breath.”

“What?”

“Just do it.” Ryu put one hand on Ken’s belly. Beneath, his Hara had vast potential, but was near empty. “Grip the floor with your toes, bend your knees, and tilt your hips forward.”

“Why?”

“To anchor your Spirit. It will help you clear your mind.”

Head bobbing up and down, the boy did as he was told, following the pressure of Ryu’s hands to adjust his stance. He was actually a quick learner.

“All right,” he said. “It’s a dead end. We need to backtrack.”

“There’s another way,” came a sing-songy male voice behind them.

Nobody ever snuck up on Ryu without him sensing their Ki. He spun around and threw a punch.

His fist passed right through an impossibly handsome young man. His long, black hair was tied up in a topknot. His skin tone was lighter than everyone else’s, and with his high cheekbones and large, angular eyes, he probably belonged to Ken’s Purebred.

Except that he wore white robes similar in fashion to Ryu’s confiscated ones.

Another Cultivator? It would explain how he’d snuck up without Ryu sensing their Ki, and the white marked him as a practitioner of the Metal Path. Over the centuries, a handful of Cultivators had left the World of Rivers and Lakes for this world, never to return. This must be one of them, though his plain robes didn’t mark a rank.

Still, for Ryu’s hand to pass right through him… projecting an image of oneself while cloaking one’s actual position was the providence of the Fire Path’s Fourth Rank. Very few people ever reached the third rank of another discipline. Certainly not a Metal Cultivator, who risked Scorching his Hara with the Fire Path. Which meant…

This man must have transcended the Elemental Paths!

For a Transcendent to be here meant he must know of Ryu’s mission. Withdrawing his hand, Ryu set a fist into his other palm and bowed low. “My apologies for attacking you, Great Sage.”

Ken was just turning around, and Ryu reached out and nudged him into a bow.

“It’s okay,” the Transcendent said, eyes roving over him.

Okay? Transcendents supposedly used only formal wording. Then again, he must’ve been in the mundane world for a long time and picked up some of their more unrefined language. And if Ryu weren’t already almost naked, he’d swear the Transcendent’s eyes were undressing him.

Ryu straightened, hands covering his manhood. “I am—”

“Ishihara Ryusuke.” The man returned the salute. “I know.”

Of course he did. “May I know your name?”

“No.”

“Forgive my impertinence, Great Sage. Do you know my mission?”

The Transcendent’s expression betrayed nothing. “Tell me.”

Ryu looked sidelong at Ken. “The boy says we are being watched.”

Ken threw his hands up and waved his hands back and forth through the image.

Such disrespect. Ryu pulled him back. “You mustn’t!”

“It’s a hologram!” Ken pointed up at the ceiling again. “That’s one way people communicate from long distance!”

A hologram? Ryu scowled. “Just who are you?”