“I’m in dire need of medical attention! I think there was a dream demon, and I’m in INTENSE PAIN! Elder Worst, is that you? If it is, GET THE HEALER!”

A burst of numbness shot through Ivor as he felt a liquid being drizzled on his back. “God, that was loud. I’m charging you two pills; one for the potion, one for my eardrums. I came here to get you for more tests, but I find you injured and screaming about a dream demon. Oh, I brought your treasures, by the way.”

The numbness helped Ivor stop screaming and think a little, swiveling around on his bed into a sitting position facing Worst as he did so. “Sorry about that. I had a nightmare in which I was cut on my back and left arm by a monster and woke up like this. I have a feeling there was a dream demon. Just a hunch, you know? Can I have my treasures then?”

Elder Worst placed a bottle of red fluid and a white pill into Ivor’s palms before addressing his story. “You say there was a dream demon? Interesting. I’ve never heard of something like that, but I’ve also never heard of a way to transport every cultivator on a planet to another, and that happened. I’ll get back to you on that. I’ll give you some time to cope with the… attack? So you can go cultivate.”

Ivor and Worst exchanged their goodbyes, and Ivor decided to try his hand at dissolving a pill in a potion. He popped the cap off of the glass potion bottle and dropped in the white marrow pill. It started to bubble like a mentos in coke, and Ivor had done that before. He grabbed the cap from next to him and slammed it onto the elixir, which started to bubble fiercely. Ivor began to shake it wildly. “It reacts on its own, huh? This should help mix it.”

Bubbles began to gather under the cap of the bottle, and Ivor heard an ominous hiss. Realization dawned over him, and he ran to his kitchen to get a glass bowl, which he dropped onto the counter. Ivor pointed the bottle at it, and the cap was blasted off, leaving the… concoction to fill up the bowl. Thankfully for Ivor, it settled down a little after the eruption, allowing him to stir the mixture around a little before pouring it into a mug. “That… did not go as well as expected. I do have an idea for taking it though. I may not be at Qi Gathering, but I can still manipulate qi.”

Ivor inhaled before opening his mouth and placing a film of qi over it. Then he poured the concoction onto this film of qi after tilting his head backwards, causing the qi to collapse into a bubble containing Ivor’s concoction. It went straight through his stomach and to the bladder. It burned against the impurities in Ivor’s meridian and infused it all in one go, indicating the resonance between the two relics and the… masterful preparation? “Worked like a charm! I could take some pills like that to get the qi to my bladder. I guess I’ll try?”

Ivor tried dissolving an energy pill in water and taking it like that, and it worked, although it only filled up 1/18th of his meridian. He took his eight others, leaving his meridian at 8/18ths of its capacity. Ivor then stopped delaying and released the impurities in his bladder before heading to find Elder Worst so he could take his other tests.

After getting back to the west quarter headquarters, Ivor only had to do one more thing to take the test. Ivor prepared… to CLIMB THE STAIRS. As he walked up the stairs, cheers resounded, followed by even more intense cheering when he finished. It was there he saw Elder Worst, already looking at the end of the stairs expectantly and making a remark. “The stairs DEFINITELY weren’t damaged this time. What even… what is this bullshit? You have a stronger Dao heart than ME, the guy who spent 100 years ignoring people picking on him for being a weeb. Shut the fuck up, you people! I moved to China to learn the language, not to get my hentai straight from Japan or whatever you think I do! I joined the sect because I wanted to cultivate, NOT because I wanted to see, screw, or become a weirdly white-skinned person! And who the fuck decided that skin pigments are an impurity!? First of all, racist much, and second of all, they just AREN’T! They’re HELPFUL TO THE HUMAN BODY! I know that qi does their job better, but they aren’t HARMFUL! I LIKED my tan! WHY IS IT FUCKING GONE?!?! WHY ARE THE HEAVENS LIKE THIS?! Whichever asshole up there fetishises overly white skin, because I REFUSE to believe that they’re naturally treated like impurities even though that would make some sense, whichever asshole up there did this, FUCK OFF! In the NAME OF DAO, just let me keep my tan. Ahem. Sorry… about that. Now that I think about it, that might not seem impressive, but that shit was INSANELY malicious. When I went for guidance to the person I respected most, instead of politely rejecting me to give me some face, the fucking SECT LEADER told me that I was a moron who deserved to die because I like anime! Thankfully that Sect Leader, which in case you didn’t know, is not a supreme elder, but manages paperwork and stuff, got fired. Literally, he was stripped of his position, but he was also sentenced to burn in flames of the mind for 10 years for violating the sect’s no discrimination policy AND our no Dao Heart Assault rules AT ONCE!! Oh, a word of advice, it was once said that the most dangerous thing for a cultivator is a midlife crisis. ANYWAYS, ANOTHER sin of all this bullshit is that I’ve been ranting for five straight minutes! Which was a test of patience. You passed. I definitely didn’t start rambling instead of giving you a trial. Give me some face and never mention it, I’m begging you. Oh, next is the trial of combat. How about this… if you touch me before the day ends, you win. You have until… fuck I have no clue how long days are. Maybe like 30 hours, I think? Goddammit, let’s just say you have 478,652,162,787,212 cesium cycles to touch me, and I won’t leave your line of sight voluntarily. If I leave it involuntarily, I’ll do my utmost to reenter. You can’t kill me, so use your most lethal methods. If you catch me within a third of your time, I’ll give you ten energy pills and two contribution tokens. Just a guess, but that should be what you need. I’m lucky about this stuff. Anyway, START!”

Elder Worst jumped out the broken window from the day as Ivor stared blankly at the wall, dumbfounded. Not because he didn’t know what a cesium cycle was, that was common knowledge, but because it was humanly impossible to do that kind of calculation in your head, although Elder Worst was a cultivator. The monologue had also been weird. And skin pigment was an impurity? Ivor was disappointed that his olive skin would become weirdly white. It felt inhuman. At least hair pigment wasn’t an impurity, so Ivor could rest at ease about his black hair. His appearance was one of the few things he could take pride in until a bit less than a week ago, in his perspective at least. Then an astounding thought occurred to him. “Elder Worst is a weeb?! Great! I’ll finally have someone to join me in making my protecting anime artists alliance, or PAAA for short. Paaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah, OH that’s nice to say.! Anime is great for the Dao heart! It brings descrimination to strengthen it and satisfaction to heal it. Weebs truly do have the strongest Dao hearts. Come, let’s shake hands to commemorate this realiza-”

Worst’s voice cut Ivor off, resounding from a spot hanging below the window, with only his pinky in Ivor’s view. “Not falling for it. I know I’m giving away my location but PLEASE. I’m not a moron.”

Ivor’s view shot towards Worst’s pinky and he dashed, aiming for it and reaching out his hand… but it slipped off of the windowsill, and by a stroke of luck, Ivor’s dash shattered the window, shattering glass shards in the air, rapidly expanding his field of view and allowing Worst to sprint off a good distance. Ivor fearlessly jumped through the window even as he was scraped by the glass and chased, deciding to activate his bladder ability. Power coursed through his legs and spine, allowing him to dash after Worst with reckless abandon. This was an enhancement ability, taking the stamina and health-boosting qi from Ivor’s bladder and running it through his whole meridian to enhance himself… but even with it, Elder Worst had him hopelessly left in the dust. He would have had to stop, but he was able to turn a corner by placing a mirror shard that had fallen to him that Ivor could see, expanding Ivor’s line of sight to include the alleyway.

Despite all the chaos, people didn’t dare to heckle the insane cultivators, as Elder Worst jumped out the window quite frequently, being chased about half of those times. Then a trained bird bomber shit on the mirror shard letting Ivor see Worst. Worst quickly pulled back into view. “Sorry, sorry! No need for you to speak. Just come at me! Wait… where are you? Oh, you’re using an innate ability to blend into the crowd? Very clever… if you weren’t facing an elder. I’ve reached Qi Gathering, I can perceive you. It might require a technique instead of simple qi manipulation, but techniques are why Qi Gathering is so powerful.”

Worst threw a stick into the air with some spin, and it landed pointing to a spot in the crowd. When Worst focused on that one spot, he saw Ivor, slowly approaching him. At this point, the crowd started to run. The pair had made enough progress to escape the traces of their earlier fight, and the city was a fairly small one even by normal human standards. Then a knife hit Worst in the chest. He just laughed in response. “Oh damn, that was good. Thankfully for me… it was actually-” Worst pulled out the knife, somehow unharmed “-wedged in my clothes. It was actually aimed at an old wound of mine, a hole in my chest. I stopped it with qi and wrapped my shirt around it. THAT’S exemplary of the distance between a Body Temperer and a Qi Gatherer. You can’t injure me, at least not with those methods.”