Jake sat in his rocking chair, listening to the rustling grass and trees. Occasionally, his chair would let out a groan of protest while he rocked, looking up at the sky, sipping his beer.

Mere minutes ago—perhaps hours, maybe seconds, he wasn’t bothering to keep time—Jake lived a better life. A simpler life. One in which the only oddity was why a new multi-millionaire was out in the wilderness in a small cabin and not in some penthouse partying.

Now, he gazed upon the end of the world.

Most would have gaped when they stepped out of their house, freezing in horror. Some might have run inside to call someone or look at the news. Others start freaking out and scream at the sky.

Jake, well, he would do exactly what he was doing now. Become startled for a moment, then grab a beer from his cooler and sit in his rocker looking at a once in a lifetime view. Even if he had a TV or phone, well, he had a satellite phone. Kinda doubt it works now. It would not change what he was doing.

Even though he was only 27 years old, it was safe to say that he just had one of his biggest shocks in life, and it was not the end of the world. That was the new Everest any set of circumstances would have to climb to surprise him.

No, this was when he was eating lunch. Looking up at a popping hissing sound, one that sounded a little too close to water being poured into a fire—no one wants to hear a sound associated with fire inside a house, especially when you never made one.

It was his satellite phone sitting on the counter that was making the sound. The phone was slowly collapsing to the side, like a pillar of putty.

Though not something that he ever expected nor prepared to see, Jake immediately jumped up, knocking over his chair. Grabbing a towel lying next to the stove, then scooped up the phone, trying to smother the wisps of burgeoning fires seeping from the phone.

“Gaa—Ahh! What the—” Dropping the towel and stepping back, Jake followed the trail of smoke with his eyes leading to the towel-wrapped phone.

When Jake gingerly grabbed the phone, it began to squeeze through his fingers. The far cry between expectation to reality, made him let out a little gasp of surprise. The following—very manly—scream was due to his hand being burned.

Jake Looked down at his hand in shock, unable to comprehend that it was red and white with forming blisters. Though it only tingled now, he knew pain would soon follow; he just couldn’t figure out why?

He had only held onto the burning collapsing phone for seconds, and he even had enough sense to use the towel he used to take sheet pans out of the oven. How the hell was it hot enough to burn through the towel and scold his hand in seconds? Why was it that hot?

Hindsight being perfect, Jake should have expected the phone to be squishy. It was collapsing after all. But the heat? How the hell was he supposed to know that.

His instincts, developed and honed through his life, taught him a phone was hard. Even though it was collapsing, could you blame him for expecting it to be hard? And who would expect a spontaneously combusting phone to be so hot as to instantly seep through the cloth? Dropping them both as a reaction seemed perfectly reasonable to Jake.

It was… it was just…Jake didn’t know. He was unable to process what was going on, least of all the reasons for it. What he did know, and jerked him into action, was his floor was beginning to smoke.

A second of frantic searching, head whipping around, Jake sprang over to the ash shovel next to his fireplace. One hand clamping onto the end, he pivoted around, diving into a dipping lunge.

Scooping up the smoke clouded mass with the blade, getting a good lung full in the process, Jake turned towards the fireplace. Choking back wracking coughs and stumbling as his eyes became blurred and irritated from the smoke, he carefully shuffled over to the hearth, where he threw the mass onto the smoldering coals.

Shuffling away half-blind, Jake headed towards the door, as he dropped the ash shovel on the floor as he coughed and gasped for fresh air. When he reached the door, he fumbled with the handle before slamming the wooden door open.

Taking a step onto the porch, Jake paused for a second, blinking as his vision cleared, then breathed as he spoke, coughing at the end, “Well—shit~."

Cussing was vulgar when you got right down to it. Often, it was something someone said when they lacked the vocabulary to express themselves adequately. It might have been a habit carried over into adulthood after escaping the iron grip of their mother in high school. It could be that they just think it's cool and they wanna fit in.

Jake would be the first to say he was not the most…verbose orator? Sounds smart. But is it correct? Who cares.

Jake read more than his friends, so his vocabulary was technically better, which might sound good, but it was like saying, “Ha, get on my level bitch!” to a blind man, while you only have a single half-working eye. Technically true, but shades of blur don’t help much.

But. But, there was a time for cussing. Those few far-between moments, between which people beat the words fuck, shit, and bitch into the category of trite. Moments that cussing was the only thing that could or really should be said.

It called for a perfect moment in which a ‘fuck’ sums everything up.

This was such a moment.

A base moment. Where all the social expectations of civility are stripped away, when a society, a civilization, learns now insignificant they really are.

And if a civilization stretching across an entire planet is worthless, meaningless, what does it mean for the individuals making up said civilization.

What does that make Jake?

Shit was a good word. Fuck, Crap, or My God, would also be appropriate. It was all one could say as their world was destroyed while they sat in a rocking chair sipping a beer.

There was no escape, death was coming. Either this was a dream, in which case Jake would wake up soon, or this was real, and he could do nothing. Being numb and accepting reality as it came seemed better than screaming and flailing uselessly.

Panicking, or fighting against unfathomable powers cable of tearing apart a world, Jake would leave to others. He was going to enjoy and relax in his last moments.

No time was a good time for an apocalypse. Who would say, “you know, right now, an apocalypse would make everything perfect.”

A goth kid in the middle of cutting themselves hoping to someday strike down everyone bullying them, that's who. Besides those edge cases, no one stable wants an apocalypse.

For Jake, today, or anytime over the past year, was a terrible time. He was not that conceded enough that he thought the world revolved around him and this was a "fuck you" from the universe.

He was unlucky, just like everyone else alive.

Kind of hard not to admit that when he was about to live the life of a multi-millionaire on vacation.

Not the kind of vacation where he travels the world drawing money from the endless spout of his bank account. The type of bank account passed down from one generation to another, growing the whole time from interest.

No. Jake was here mainly to get away from the vultures begging for his money. They were his friends and neighbors, but after a year of “the community would benefit from…”, “you got the bill right Jake?”, and “I hate to ask this, but can I borrow...", Jake was tired.

They were still his friends, and Jake had not changed, besides no longer worrying about money, but they had. He did help out, but he wasn't about to give away all his money.

‘Loaning’ money was never a big deal to Jake, even when he only had a couple hounded to his name. The trick was only lending money when you could afford it and never expecting to see the money again.

Everyone needed help on occasion.

But Jake was tired of everyone coming to him and expecting him to help because he always had before.

So he took his hundreds of millions and fulfilled a promise to his late grandfather while giving his friends time to regain their pride.

Jake’s eyes dulled as he sank into a memory.

“This is’a beautiful spot for a cabin. Could have a field out back, and every day ya could go fishing. And if one was in the mood for something more, run a few trap lines or go hunting, plenty of game. A little slice of paradise here.”

“Yeah. If I ever get rich, I’m gonna build a cabin right here. Just for us, grandpa.” A young Jake said.

His grandpa reached over, ruffling his hair, “You get right on that. A perfect retirement for me to grow old and die. Better yet, a perfect spot to sit on my ass watching a line as I fall asleep and never wake up. To be one with nature.” A satisfied smile sat his worn and weathered face, which was baked by the sun and frozen by the winter into the roughest leather.

“You're not gonna die, grandpa! Not ever!” Jake pleaded more than shouted.

His grandfather's smile wilted somewhat as he said, “We all die Jake’y boy, what matters is how we liv—Fish!” He said, pointing his Jake’s pole, “Now pick it up slowly tip down. Reel it in slowly~ as soon as you feel a tug, set the hook!”

“Ok, grandpa!” An excited and jittery Jake said as he shot up lunging for his pole, conversation forgotten.

Jake smiled at the passing memory. Ironically, Jake was rich because of his grandfather's death. Instead of an inheritance of money, Jake got the cabin and the mountain it was sitting on, which his grandfather spent the last twenty-something years living in.

A few months after his grandfather's death, the mountainside behind his cabin collapsed onto the cabin during a storm. Luckily he had already passed away in his sleep. Would have been a bad way to go.

When Jake went to go inspect the land afterward, he found nuggets of gold. Not those tiny flakes or pea-sized chunks you hope to see when gold panning. But a fist-sized chunk of gold that starts your heart pumping like an Olympic athlete while you start believing you're dreaming but praying your not.

Then he found another.

And the vein they broke off from.

Hectic months followed, Jake got his cousin to help manage the mine. He had some experience where Jake had none.

After Working a few months, he got a law firm to sell the mining rights and take care of everything when he realized he had no idea what he was doing.

The thing was, Jake already had more money than he would ever spend.

He was a simple small-town country boy. The greatest ambition he had in life was settling down on his family farm with his high school sweetheart. Running a multi-million dollar business was… Jake just didn’t have the desire or drive to do it.

If he wanted to do that, he would have stayed with…it doesn’t matter. Jake wasn’t going to do it.

So he signed a contract; he’ll get twenty percent of the gold pulled out of his land per year until some quota was hit, then it would bump up to forty. Jake then walked away.

Now Jake was richer than he ever dreamed of being with only a high school diploma. And he also needed to separate himself from the community for everything to calm down.

Thus entered plan, Grandpa’s Cabin.

Cause why not.

It really was amazing what can happen when you're willing to spend millions of dollars.

A quick visit to his new fancy lawyers, and he owned the land for a couple of dozen miles around Pine Lake a few months later.

He can now sit on the shore of his lake and be alone for a hundred miles or close enough.

Then he paid for a team to build a cabin and some outbuildings. Had to have enough space for everything he might need—or, to be more accurate, to hold everything he bought on his crazed buying spree. Some might even call him an honorary prepper.

With literal millions to spend, why not?

Jake had a plan when he was flown in the day before. It could be called homesteading. But dreams of planting some crops, in between fishing, and maybe putting up another cabin to see if he could, and maybe some hunting, would do it dishonor.

It was, as far as anyone who looked into it was concerned, a vacation. Jake was aware of that, but he could dream of being a homesteader.

Jake was proud of his ability to perform backbreaking work day in and out.

Living by the sweat of one's brow and calloused hands was how humanity built the world we live in today. How could going back to his roots be bad?

It can’t.

And it will offer a perspective you won't get without doing such work.

That was back when the world was still whole, however, when everything made sense and could be explained in logical terms.

All of those few hours—minutes?—ago. Such simple times they were.

Now, Jake was sipping on a beer, watching the sky be ripped apart.

And it was being ripped apart; there was no question of that.

The blue sky above was being decided into smaller and smaller sections as jagged streaks of black divided the sky. One moment there was nothing, then a pulse and flicker, and a jagged bolt of black divided another portion of the sky.

This black was not the darkness of the night sky. It was something more than the emptiness between stars.

When Jake managed to lock his eyes on a section of the jagged black line, instead of looking at the edges, which was a test of will as he forced down the primal irrational fear welling within him. All he received was pain crashing through him. He could feel his mind shudder as his vision blurred.

Only after he had already blinked, his eyes looking at the ground, did he come back to himself. Even then, he was hacking into his hand, which he pulled away to find pooled blood. Feeling liquid running down his face, Jake dabbed at the spots to find more blood running from his nose, eyes, and ears.

Everything from the first moment his eyes locked onto the crack of black, too when he opened his eyes, was lost. When he tried to think back—

Taking another sip of beer, Jake sighed and leaned back in his chair. He unfocused his eyes and just tried to relax.

Letting the events around him soak in without ever focusing. That was his new plan.

It was a good plan. If Jake focused his eyes or if he even thought back—No! Down that path lay madness.

Jake was many things. Hardworking, a good day of labor he could easily take pleasure in. He liked to think he was kind. Carefree and going with the flow was definitely in there. He was not the smartest but far from stupid.

In total, Jake likes to think that he was by and large average. But this made him small.

Like walking into a high society social black-tie dinner party wearing shorts and a Hawaiian shirt. Everyone giving Jake condescending, snide glances while putting him down in backhanded comments.

He didn’t fit in, and just showing up made him feel so limited compared to their supposed grandeur.

This was worse.

This was knowing you were small. That your mind just could not comprehend the events no matter how hard you tried. A limitation one could never break.

Jake was just…small.

And he was ok with that. He knew it before. This just makes it infinitely more apparent.

Rocking in his chair, Jake did not notice at first. The ground was shaking.

Now, some people, like in cesspool places like San Francisco, would be used to feeling earthquakes. They have minor ones all the time, and feeling a slight shaking is nothing to get one’s panties in a twist over.

The thing is, Jake never felt one, and there was no fault line around him. As far as he was concerned, he thought he was in the middle of a tectonic plate.

With no sound of multi-ton explosions going off nearby, Jake was stumped about what was shaking the ground as if it was a baby's rattle.

Sliding out of his chair and falling to the ground, Jake curled in on himself, desperately clutching at his ears in the vain hope of lessening the sound shaking the world to its core.

“ATTENTION, MORTALS! I, ZHAO CHO, DUE TO MY ENDLESS MERCY AND BENEVOLENCE, HAVE DECIDED THAT AFTER NINE-HUNDRED-NINTY-NINE GENERATIONS, THE DESCENDANTS OF THE GHO CLAN HAVE FINALLY PAID FOR THEIR FORBEARS SINS. REJOICE! FOR ALL OF YOU ON THIS PITIFUL MUD-BALL YOU CALL HOME SHALE TRANSMIGRATE WITH THEM TO THE HEAVENLY REALM. THOSE FEW OF YOU WHO STILL HAVE THE GIFT OF CULTIVATION, LIMITED AS IT MAY BE, MUST SURVIVE A… TRIAL TO REJOIN YOUR FELLOW INHABITANCE OF THIS CURSED MUD-BALL, AS THEY WILL BE SHIFTED TO THEIR NEW HOME BEFORE YOU. ENJOY THE SHATTERING.”

Jake dug his fingernails into the sides of his head as he pressed his palms into his ears. He could not keep the voice out, and the physical pain served as a slight distraction from the all-consuming pain.

The voice was scraping at something inside of Jake, creating a new kind of pain he had never experienced. It was not his bones breaking or organs popping, though every pronunciation of a word was like a fifty-pound weight dropping onto his body. It was something deeper than his physical body.

As if his soul was being dissolved in acid. That he was being washed away into oblivion.

It was an agony Jake never wished to, nor wishes to ever again, experience.

With the pause in the voice, Jake’s vision swam back into clarity. Though he was far from what could be called conscious while the voice spoke, Jake could remember the words like they were written down in front of him.

The first thing Jake noticed as he was coming too was something that he had already long smelled, though, in the endless agony, he could not put a name too it and did not care. Namely the piss and beer he was rolling around in. Along with hints of shit, he could feel it smearing into his pants.

Lifting his head from the awful, Jake eye’s slid over what amounted to his front yard, stopping momentarily at his dock, with the burning wreckage of his boat. Then continued up the sides of the surrounding mountains to the sky.

It was no longer broken, jagged lines of black and blue, but a dome of what might be white mist, and at the apex was a bright ball of light like a noonday sun.

He was trapped. Placed in some kind of cage with walls he did not understand. He instinctually knew it as a pressure pressed down onto him.

Everything was still. Peaceful even, for a single blissful moment. Before the thundering voice from the heavens came back, sending Jake into wracking agony once more.

“GREETINGS, CULTIVATORS," even writhing in agony as he was, Jake could hear— feel really—the scorn and disgust loaded into the word, “AS IS REQUIRED, A TRIAL THAT ANY COMPETENT CULTIVATOR REENTERING THE HEAVENLY REALM COULD PASS WILL BE GIVEN TO YOU. THAT TRIAL SHALL BE SURVIVAL. SURVIVE WHILE THE LAND YOU RESIDE ON IS FLOODED WITH Qi. SHOULD YOU SURVIVE AND ESCAPE YOUR TRIALS, DO NOT PLAY THE FOOL LIKE YOUR FOREBEARS. TAKE MY LENIENCE TO HEART. KNOW YOUR PLACE, AND THANK ME WHILE YOU BEG FORGIVENESS ON YOUR ELDERS BEHALF. YOU ARE BEING FORGED IN FIRE; TAKE IT AS THE GIFT IT IS. IF ANY OF YOU SURVIVE, YOU WILL BE WORTHY OF THE HEAVENLY REALMS, BUT REMEMBER, NEVER CHALLENGE YOUR BETTERS!”

The last words almost killed Jake.

Time passed as he coughed up blood, adding to the mess he lay in.

Sometime later, Jake slumped to his side just trying to breathe as his body shook and twitched in aftershocks from hearing the voice. He was finally regaining enough focus to feel blood drying and dripping down his face.

Jake knew nor cared how much time passed. All he cared about was rolling over and flopping onto his back. Preferably without the twinging pain of a cramp or pulling a muscle.

Not laying in the now cold and congealing mess around and on him would be nice, but one cannot have everything in life.

So he would settle for feeling like he just got jumped in some alley and got the crap beat out of him.

Taking one steady breath after another, Jake focused on his breathing, pushing away the throbbing of his aching body.

Finally, Jake rolled over and crawled over to the wall of his house. With a grunt of effort—it was not a whine or whimper of pain—he flipped over, so he was sitting on the ground with his back against the wall.

Looking out over the lake, Jake felt something click within him. His eyes blurred before refocusing, unveiling an incredible sight before him. Impossible, he would have said before. Like ripping the world apart and a voice shaking your soul was possible before today.

Shimmering energy was—raining was not the word, flowing, seeping, or coalesced might be closer. Still, Jake doubted the word existed to describe it.

Regardless, the energy came from the sky—appearing so high he could not see it or a few inches from the ground—and crashed into the earth. For long moments nothing happened, as Jake marveled at the world before him.

Then Jake noticed two spheres of energy rising from the ground, clashing with the energy of the sky. One was tinged a slight brown, while the other remained a nearly transparent clear sphere.

The energies fought and combined in equal measure. Braking apart into smaller orbs and combining once more into larger orbs. Or, on occasion, just bouncing off one another, in random chance.

Jake watched as energy brushed against the railing of his deck and blades of grass. Sometimes, but not always, the energy would seep into or be sucked into the object. It mattered little, if at all if it was the brown, clear, or the now slightly blue spheres coming out of the lake.

Once the energy was absorbed, nothing seemed to happen.

The majority of the time, at least.

Jake noticed that the pile of trash that the workers left, the pile that he was going to pour some gas on and burn, the energy was meeting plastic bottles.

When it did, the section of the bottle touched would combust into flames or melt. Joining the already deformed lumps making up the vast majority of the bottles.

Eyes flickering around, Jake saw the trees, grass, and his dock, the parts not smoldering next to the expensive rubber boat, were fine. It was just the plastic, and now that he was looking, the wrapper on his glass bottle, that was suffering under the energy’s caress.

Jake watched as the energy became more abundant around him.

A quick prick of heat caused Jake to look down and brush at his skin. There was nothing but just unblemished skin.

Frowning slightly, Jake continued to look and rub his skin as he saw another particle of energy brush against his forearm, followed by another quick prick of heat as the energy vanished.

With the pain-wracking aching blood-covered body, it was a minor inconvenience that he now realized he had been pushing away for some time.

More than that, now that he was looking for it, he could feel continuous pricks across his body.

Though the pricks of heat were over quickly, Jake could feel the energy when it was inside of him. Although it gradually diffused throughout his body from the initially concentrated spheres, he knew it was still there.

He could feel it settling into his muscles while more circulated around his body, apparently at random.

It did, however, over time, make noticing the spheres absorbed into him harder to spot.

With the number of spheres in the air ever-rising, Jake quickly began to feel like he was in a hot tub with the energy continually brushing against him. It was unavoidable with how abundant it was becoming.

As more energy entered his body, he felt…more complete.

And he knew, on a base level, that for the first time in his life, he was whole. The part he never knew to search for was finally there.

“Is this, Qi? The heavenly energy suffusing all life?” Whispered Jake in a half-daze as he waved his hand through the spheres surrounding him.

Jake knew a bit about Qi and cultivation. He had a girlfriend who was into reading novels about it. She even showed him what she said were ancient cultivation techniques passed down within her family.

She would meditate and practice the moves every day. On occasion, Jake would join her. Not that the practice would last very long at those times, she was always very…enthusiastic when he joined.

Despite his limited knowledge of cultivation, Jake decided it was Qi. He based this off the not so vague hint of the god-like voice calling them cultivators. Cultivators used Qi. It seemed the correct conclusion to draw. Also, he said Qi, sooo.

Jake knew that with cultivation, every level one achieved the next was exponentially harder to attain. It was a combination of gathering and refining Qi, along with understanding some Law of the world. Like, ‘rock hard. Qi hard. Qi hard as rock.’

Really, it seemed to matter more whether one believed it was true and was able to apply said belief through force of will on the world, then some objective truth. Or at least that was how Jake interpreted the books he read.

What matters is that chaotic, excessive amounts of Qi, running rampant in the body, generally destroyed said body.

How much the body could take depended primarily on the cultivation level. But at the beginning stages, it wasn't a whole lot.

Jake was pretty sure that he did not rank on even the lowest rung of said ladder.

Which begged the question. How much Qi could he absorb before it was dangerous?

Jake was not sure how long he’d been sitting against his wall. But the Qi never stopped or slowed as it entered his body, only increased.

At first, it was nothing.

Just spots of warmth on his skin like a breeze followed by warmth spreading through his body. The thing was, the warm breeze became a hot tub and then kept going.

It was quickly becoming…uncomfortable.

The feeling that if he kept ignoring the Qi entering him, it would end badly steadily grew.

Point of fact, Qi can do anything if writers are to believed. And now was not the time to use logic and say, "that's impossible." Or "how could writers get something right that they never experienced and was based on old writings that may or may not be true?"

More than any other in Jake’s life, today was a time to believe that something exists greater than the eye can perceive.

Like, say, a being who could rip the world apart.

So Jake chose to believe. To believe that everything was actually happening. That it was not a dream like the voice in the back of his mind was shouting it must be.

To believe that the energy swirling around him was Qi. A substance that can do anything if controlled correctly and with a great enough will behind it. A substance that may just be the foundation of the universe.

And most of all, that if he did not get the Qi already inside, and the Qi pressing to enter his body, under control, he will die.

Well, the level of Qi around him could suddenly drop, but he never believed in fairy tales before, so why start now.

The prick with the overly loud voice had so much scorn and disgust loaded into his speech—along with nearly killing Jake—that it did not lead Jake to believe he wanted anyone to survive this…trial.

So, Jake needed to get the Qi inside of himself under control. To do that, he needed to know what he knew. And possibly something he might try will save him.

Pipe dream as it was, it was all he had.

First off, Jake knew not everyone could use Qi—or at least people have different talents controlling and cultivating Qi. The marginal differences between people's meridians and dantian, the internal pathways Qi travel through, and the core that holds a core of Qi respectively. Was the major factor between talent. depending on if someone has a larder dantian or more or better meridians. And discrimination based on one’s talent was the norm, at least in the novels Jake read.

Although, most deficiencies with the semi-transient Qi veins and their blockages could be fixed with the proper spiritual herbs. But Jake had no plants infused with Qi for a thousand years. Kind of hard to have when Qi appeared hours ago.

When people cultivate, they try to only use a single type to the exclusion of all others. What that type is could be anything, such as blood, sword, earth, fire, poison, hunger, or even starlight; it does not matter. One just had to gather their type of Qi and pull it into their bodies.

But that was later. At the beginning of every path was the collection of pure Qi in the body and circulation of Qi through the meridians to remove the body's impurities. The hardest part of the beginning levels had more to do with sensing, refining, then pulling the Qi into oneself to increase one’s core and purify the body.

Jake had no problem sensing Qi. For whatever reason, it was impossible to miss now. He could close his eyes and just feel Qi circulating around him.

As for refining, he got the feeling this Qi was as close to perfect as he was to ever find.

And the last was a nonissue. Jake could not stop the Qi from entering his body. Literally, he was trying to push Qi out of him with zero results.

Closing his eyes, Jake let out a long breath, trying to relax with his hands loosely lying in his lap. It was hard. He felt a prickling, almost burning all over his body. Like he had a bad sunburn.

Inhaling, Jake tried to forget he was running out of time. He knew it, could feel it. And that fact was not helping his mind clear.

Pushing the thoughts from his head, Jake tried to clear his mind. He looked inwards, trying to feel his body and everything that made it up. And he did.

Or the Qi inside of him, at least. It was obvious.

The power suffused him. Made him feel more. Better than he ever felt before.

Qi, as far as Jake assumed, was vital energy, life-force, or perhaps potential. With it, anything was possible. Jake thought with forced conviction.

Qi always, if appropriately used, made the body stronger. Strengthened muscles, bones, and organs. Helped with healing. And made one immortal if one went far enough down the path.

That was what Jake needed. Not the immortality, although it could be nice, but the healing and strengthening. Focusing on the energy crashing around his body, he steeled his will and tried to instill order.

To force the Qi to heal his body. Infuse into his muscles, skin, organs, and bones. At the same time, he imagined his body covered in a layer of saran wrap, keeping out the flood of Qi.

It worked. For a moment, Qi stopped entering his body. The Qi already inside of him slowed and diminished slightly as his aches and pains lessened.

Exhalation soared inside of Jake, with hope bubbled up underneath it.

Jake’s mind snapped.

All concentration lost. It felt like a taught branch being held bent by a friend suddenly snapped back, hitting him in the face, leaving Jake to reel.

The Qi he held back flooded into him again, and his internal Qi became even more chaotic than it was. To the point, it felt like a blender was placed inside of his body.

Jake even coughed up blood from the backlash of Qi.

Screaming in rage, Jake smashed the boards to his sides with his fists in frustrated despair, “Aaah, mother fucker!”

At that moment, Jake felt the Qi inside of him move, rushing down his arms, adding strength to his blow.

The pain inside of him lessened with the crushing blow.

Glancing down at the boards of his shattered deck, a fierce smile stretched Jake’s lips.

Rocketing to his feet then leaping from his deck, Jake was in a dead sprint within three steps. Then he pushed himself harder, running faster than he ever had before because his life did indeed depend on it.