The next day Jack waited impatient for school to finally end. Rin’s continued glares didn’t help as time seemed to slow down to a crawl. When it was finally time and the bell rung to signal the end of the lesson, Jack was among the first to rush out of the classroom. Quickly he left the bleak school building.

When he stepped outside a cold gust of autumn wind caused Jack’s clothes to flutter, but he ignored it. With decisive steps he continued onwards.

On his way he could, once again, feel someone watching him. A frown appeared on Jack’s face. If he wanted to test his new flame then it would be better if he wasn’t watched. He wanted to keep it secret for as long as possible. Jack kept walking, following the way he would normally take towards his home.

Ten minutes later he passed by a large fence, separating the sidewalk from a small garden. On the other side of the garden Jack could see the parallel street. Qi rushed down into Jack’s feet and effortlessly he jumped over the 3 metres tall fence. A few steps and another fence later he was on the other street.

Looking behind Jack could see his pursuer, frantically speaking inside a small telephone while looking at him. Giving the man a last smirk, Jack turned around and began running.

Jack’s Qi enhanced legs carried him through the streets far faster than a normal person would be able to do. Still he would be much slower than any car and so he decided to change his way. He left the street and entered a small forest.

Keeping himself away from the streets and any potential pursuers Jack quickly crossed through the forest until he reached his goal, a small hill inside the forest. Here the trees weren’t as dense, but it was far enough away from the streets to not be seen easily. And he had a fantastic view over the city, at least the parts he could see between the trees.

After he had placed his backpack on the ground, Jack sat down on a small rock boulder and started to concentrate. He only needed a moment to summon a small flame into his right hand.

Curious Jack watched the small flame. Just like yesterday its black form appeared to suck in the light around it. And just like before there was a green shimmer around the edges of the flame, a lonely bit of colour before the darkness.

Wondering what exactly the green colour meant Jack started to manipulate the flame, moving the energy within it. Immediately he started to frown. Controlling the flame was a lot harder than he thought it would be. He could move the energy inside of it, yes, but it was moving sluggishly and even the easiest movement costed a lot more energy than it should have. The flame was resisting his controls. But that was something Jack couldn’t accept, no matter what he needed to be able to use this flame.

Gritting his teeth Jack reached inside his Dantian, towards the hazy fog floating around his lone rune. As the energy left the fog it turned a bit translucent, but its colour remained as black as it had been before. Quickly the energy floated through his Spiritual Veins and into his hand where it fused with the flame dancing over it.

Now armed with more energy Jack started to press through the resistance. Flickering the flame begun to move, shrink and grow according to his will, slow at first, but he soon got used to the resistance. The energy he needed became less and less and the speed increased.

But Jack still wasn’t content with it. Even though he had managed to control the flame he still could feel the resistance inside of it. He would never be able to use the true power of flame if he had to fight it every time he used it. So he had to extinguish the core of the resistance as soon as possible.

Stretching out his senses into the flame Jack tried to find the reason for the resistance. But he couldn’t find anything unusual, the flames were working just fine. That is until he reached out for the outer edges of the flames, where the black flame changed into green. Suddenly Jack felt a strange barrier, separating the two different coloured areas. A quick manipulation of the flames later and Jack was sure that it was this barrier that made controlling the flames so hard. It was like a stone inside a gear, blocking it from moving.

Thinking for a moment Jack decided that the easiest way to get rid of the barrier was to split the black parts of the fire from the green ones. Concentrating at the green parts Jack started to pull as hard as he could. Different from before the resistance he felt wasn’t sluggish, no it was more as if he tried to rip apart something solid. Drops of sweat began to form on Jack’s face as he forced his way through the resistance.

Finally he had success. The green part of the flame started moving and, after a moment of hesitation, separated from the black parts. It formed a second, much smaller flame, flickering as if it would vanish any second. Quickly Jack used a bit more energy to stabilise it, this time from the still unrefined Qi inside of him. Using the energy from the already refined Qi around the rune would most likely turn the flame back.

After a last flicker the green flame finally stabilised. Barely the size of a candle flame it shone with a dim yet vibrant green light. Looking at it Jack felt reminded of the young green leaves that began to fill the trees during spring, full of vitality and life.

‘hmm, I wonder if…’

Reaching for his backpack Jack carefully watched the flames, not wanting to risk them going out of control. With his free hand he opened the backpack and searched inside for a few moments before he finally pulled out his knife.

Jack grimaced as he cut a small wound into his right arm. A small trickle of blood flew out of the wound, but it wasn’t too severe. Still, it wasn’t pleasant.

‘now then, let’s see if it works’

With a mental command the green flame began moving towards the wound. Interestingly, no matter how close it came to him, Jack couldn’t feel any heat coming from the flame. When the flame touched it, the flame suddenly began shrinking as if it was absorbed by the wound. After a few moments the whole flame had vanished, showing a much smaller the wound. Seeing this Jack grinned. The flame truly had healing abilities!

That would be useful in the future. For a cultivator getting seriously wounded was something that would happen sooner or later. So having a form of healing available - mostly in form of potions or pills – was necessary to ensure survive. Healing magic and techniques were a lot rarer, so much so that in some cultures healers were the most respected individuals and not the warriors. And all forms of healing techniques were accompanied by the same feeling of vitality his flames had, making it easy to identify.

Still, the fact that his flame had healing abilities was strange. Together with the difference in colour it made Jack almost think that he had two completely separate flames within himself. That in itself wouldn’t be too strange, but he had no idea where the flame had come from. The black came from the cultivation of the ‘Blazes of the Netherflame’, but the other? No matter how much he thought about it Jack didn’t have any idea how he got it.

In the end Jack could only shrug and move on with his test. He turned towards the pitch black flame still hovering over his right hand. Now that there wasn’t any other colour the sheer darkness coming from it turned a lot more oppressive. And, just like yesterday Jack could see small tendrils of darkness moving inside of the flames. Compared to then they had grown a bit, becoming as long as his thumb. Jack shuddered seeing it, some part of his mind was screaming at him that these tendrils were unnatural, something that couldn’t – Shouldn’t exist.

With great effort he pushed down the feeling. He wasn’t even sure why he felt this way about the tendrils, as far as he could see they were simply incorporated darkness. That in itself was rare, but nothing too unusual in his old world and it was definitely nothing he would react with an instinctive aversion to.

When he had finally calmed down Jack began to manipulate the black flame. Surprisingly now that the healing flames had been purged from it, the black flames became a lot easier to control. There wasn’t any hint of the sluggish feeling any longer and the flames moved readily to his every command. At least as long as he didn’t do anything too complicated.

Jack looked at his flames that he had twisted into a pretzel- like form, his current limit.Any more and he would need to expend ever more energy just to keep the form stabilised, though that was something that would improve with his cultivation and familiarity with the flames.

And to increase his familiarity with the flames he would have to figure out what they could actually do. Looking around Jack quickly found a dead branch lying on the ground. Its dry wood was perfect for what he had in mind. With a twist of his wrist he threw the flame towards the branch.

Disappointingly the flame wasn’t the disintegration variant Jack had expected from something called ‘Netherflame’. Instead when it made contact with the branch it simply burned the wood, just like a normal flame would have. It wasn’t even especially hot or anything, just a normal flame with a strange colour. And it was only the original flame that had this colour, the flames that came directly from the branch were completely normal.

Disappointed Jack almost wanted to recall the flame back into his hand when he suddenly noticed something. While the flame wasn’t especially fast, it had already burned the parts of the branch closest to it, turning it into ashes. And yet it still continued burning without anything to fuel it.

Curious Jack grabbed a handful of dirt from the ground and threw it into the flame. Nothing, not even a flicker. Encouraged by that Jack threw more and more dirt, but the flame didn’t react to it and kept burning. Finally Jack even took a bottle of water from his backpack and emptied over the flame just to get no reaction.

‘Interesting, it just keeps burning… Maybe it’s inextinguishable?’

Inextinguishable flames weren’t as rare as one would believe. At least as long as you used the mortal definition of the term ‘inextinguishable’. Quite a lot of flames were safe against suffocation or water and would continue to burn when disturbed. Those few ones which were truly inextinguishable even against supernatural means were a lot rarer. Sadly Jack didn’t have the means to test which of the two kinds his flames would fall under.

However he was willing to bet that his flames were truly inextinguishable. Didn’t the manual of ‘Blazes of the Netherflame’ say that these flames were burning even within the Nether itself? The Nether was a place – if you could call something that was nowhere and everywhere between the worlds a place – where no flame would be able to burn. At least if they weren’t inextinguishable.

With a sigh Jack let the flame vanish. Inextinguishable or not, he was still disappointed. He had hoped that the flames would be something he could use as a weapon, but they simply were too weak for that. And what if he was against something that couldn’t be hurt by fire? His flames would be useless.

Leaning back tired and exhausted from the usage of his flames, Jack looked through the trees. Outside of the forest he could see the city and all the people who lived their lives, not knowing what would come soon enough.

A low chuckle came out of Jack’s mouth as he realized for the first time that was starting to feel guilty for what he did. Sure, some might argue that bringing the apocalypse was a good reason to feel guilty, but it was also true that everyone that was impacted by it were mortals. And cultivators like Jack had been before didn’t really care for mortals, their life was simply too short for that.

‘Guess my time here has influenced me more than I thought’

Only hours later, when the sun had already set Jack left the hill and went home.