Shang Haoran was a dutiful man of the government who played a minor role in the running of the coastal city of Xiamen. To him had been given the role of clerk with the Port Authority, assisting managing the trafficking of commercial ships coming from nearby Taiwan. It was, all in all, a well-paying job that he took pride in ensuring went smoothly.

He had also been blessed with a beautiful wife and a both beautiful and precocious young daughter. At six years of age, little Xiu's energy had driven both her parents to distraction but never anger.

Father and daughter stood today at the airport, waiting on her mother to return from an unfortunate trip to visit her own parents. Her mother had passed suddenly and father was not taking it well. She had seen to her mother's final requirements before cajoling her father into moving to Xiamen to be closer to his granddaughter.

As the two stood waiting, plane in a holding pattern above, a presence overcame Haoran and Xiu, forcing the little girl to collapse and the father to kneel, holding himself over his daughter. Long moments passed as the earth shuddered from nearby impacts before it finally let up.

Haoran stayed down for a moment, comforting his crying daughter before slowly standing. Picking up the little girl as he did so he had just begun to look around before something reverberated through his being.

Rejoice mortals, for this Lei Zhaohui came to your world to conquer your Heavenly realm for his own. In finding none, I will take on the trouble of cultivating your world's soul until the Heavenly realm is accessible. By the Rite of Ragnarok, should one of your own stand in my way when your Heaven realm matures, I will stand aside defeated in my challenge. Should none be there, your Heaven will bow to me.

You may address my august presence at any time, and I will answer to the strength of your world's soul.

Haoran understood the words, but not the reasoning behind them. Shortly thereafter, alarms began going off.

~~~

Xiu was inconsolable, not understanding why her mother did not come back on the plane. Why her father had to talk to many people and not taking her to lunch with mother as promised. Why dinner ended up being late with mother still not there, as father finally broke down crying and apologizing to her.

Haoran was furious, a rage that felt so black he almost felt lost in it. His wife's plane had crashed and the only reason he knew what little he did was having been in the airport when her plane had nose dived from the sky. Whatever this Zhaohui monster was, it needed to die. The only thing that pulled him back from the edges of his rage and grief was the fact that his daughter needed him, for if he was gone she would have no one.

~~~

Haoran bowed his head before the picture of his wife. There would be no body to bury, the destruction of the plane too great to recover any bodies, much less survivors.

The only consolation the Party had been able to offer was one week to get his affairs and himself back together. Even then he was urged to cut it short if possible, because seaborne cargo and passengers were going to start taking an even larger importance now that planes were driving fear into the hearts of everyone.

His contacts locally had told him every recovered blackbox had shown navigation shattering and going offline. Physical measurements of the equipment showed the pilots pushing the planes down.

"May you and the world's soul rot for all eternity for what you did to my wife." He addressed the presence that pervaded everything now.

Your world's soul has not even lit its dantian. It remains as mortal as you and your people.

He knew what a dantian was supposed to be, had studied literature and history in college. But even if he knew more, he would not touch anything to do with the creature that had stolen his wife from him.

"Father, where's Mother?" Xiu's voice reached him and Haoran swallowed back his anger. He would be strong for his little girl. She needed her happy Father to guard her against the world.

~~~

It was only a few weeks later that Haoran's world changed once more. He had barely been able to keep his rage and grief in check to make it through each day at work, the only peace when he was at home ensuring Xiu was as happy as she could be. The nights of their both crying was lessening, but leaving an empty hole in both their lives.

"Haoran, did you see the idiot this morning?" was asked of him, a co-worker looking into his little office. "Someone was parkouring off the buildings and cars!"

"Then I hope someone managed to get his citizen ID and report him. I imagine the hit to his social credit will cause him to quit."

"No, no. He was going nearly ten meters up one of the buildings then jumping between moving cars! Though, he apparently mistimed a jump because he ended up getting plowed into. No need to worry about his social credit when he's in the hospital. Or possibly dead."

It was the first instance of someone doing a superhuman feat, but would not be the last.

~~~

Even the introduction of a massive penalty to their social credit for 'inappropriate use of superhuman prowess' only slowed the tide of madness that seemed to befall random people in Xiamen.

People that insisted the lore that was the dantian was wrong, there needed not be a golden core or compressing of spiritual energy from the world into one's self. The world had no spiritual energy, you only needed to find that feathery touch in yourself and draw on it to gain power spoken of.

The stories did not match perfectly with the modern examples, but why would they? Thousands of years of stories would shift a telling and there was no guarantee that the stories held but a tiny kernel of truth anyways.

Already conscriptions were being called for those whose social credit fell too far due to their own outbursts to redeem themselves in any other way. Perhaps a few years serving would calm them down, was the general thought.

"Father, Father! Mother's here!" Xiu's voice rose from her room and Haoran's heart both leapt and froze. What madness now?

Inside the little girl's room sat a ghostly form of his wife in the chair she read from, hugging her daughter who was sobbing back into her lap.

"My love!" she called, the ghostly woman somehow pulling her daughter up to her feet and she beckoned him to join the two.

She was solid enough to barely touch, but did not speak as his wife did. He pulled Xiu away to her cries and frowns from the ghost, but Xiu knew her father did not mean harm.

Further questions revealed the apparition knew many things of his daughter, some of him, and very few things of the woman who was his wife. Before long Haoran understood what he was speaking to. A six-year old's view of her mother caught up in the insanity that was this world now. An illusion plucked from her mind and given form by the power she had somehow harnessed. Perhaps she was a true fragment of his wife, but not a hope he would expect.

"My little girl, what you are doing is likely to hurt you and her." He waved to the apparition, not wanting to name it. "Let her go for now."

"It only hurt for a moment in my prayer, Father."

Xiu eventually agreed to only call upon the shade at home and to not speak of it in school. There would be too many problems for what appeared to be a ghost woman.

Haoran pushed down the thread that offered him power, an outlet to his rage he felt against the alien. A release of his hidden hope, to complete the illusion of his wife and bring her back to both husband and daughter.

~~~

A month more went by, having to deal with the secret of his daughter creating an image of her mother at home. Of every few days denying what was obviously a devilish offer of power inside of him, calling him to fill in the blanks that were in the ghost's mannerisms and memories.

He was repeatedly lauded by Xiu's teachers for helping his daughter through the worst of times as she calmed in school, almost returning to the happy girl she had been previously.

The laurels heaped on him counteracted the swears he was getting from those he worked with, as his rage, anger, and sorrow threatened to overwhelm him and boil out onto his coworkers, until one day as his daughter spoke to the ghost again.

The thread rose once more, offering him the ability to complete the image in front of him. His will was weakening, but he pushed it down once more, only for something to snap in place and he could feel his emotions swirl through him. Hate to the left of his heart and Hope to the right, compressing into a ball that overflowed with his emotion and energy. It left him feeling drained, until the unwanted presence of Zhaohui focused once on him, unbidden.

You are the first of your kind to take the true path, denying your soul's offer to attain a dantian of your own.

~~~

The little ball of energetic emotion spilled itself easily with nothing to catch. It's actions vaguely resembled the stories, but was still wrong. And how could he trust the alien's words either way. Did gaining a dantian mean he denied his own soul for something he truly could have had? For the energy that flowed from him now was not enough to fill the apparition his daughter could call.

Doing so made the apparition flicker with new emotion, but also spilled the hate in himself into his daughter and he could not stand to see that emotion bloom on his little Xiu coupled with a complete non-understanding of where that feeling came from.

If this was all he had, he would have to master himself and it so he didn't hurt his daughter.

~~~

One meridian was enough to let him hold the energy that his emotions created in his dantian, but not separate the individual emotions out. The second did let him do so, and at that point he was happy because he could then provide additional emotion into the apparition Xiu could call upon without harming Xiu herself.

Xiu had improved her own ability by leaps and bounds, multiple times increasing the ability of the ghost to where he was beginning to believe his daughter had managed to call her back. It just took Xiu long enough to call all of her back, for the ghost could now speak of things she had shared it only him.

And the ability to impart emotion worked wonders at his job, smoothing tempers and bringing others around to the correct way of thinking much easier than hours of arguments.

He could not let go of the hate that drove him, but found placating it with hope becoming easier.

~~~

B̵̡̛͙̥̫̣̫̍̽̒̔ͤͣ̐̈ŗ̮̙̬͓̞̹̺̊͐ͦͥͭ̓̓ḛ̷̘̟͔̑͌̎a̧̝̬̫͚ͩ̈͘͞t̷̖͉̗͍̬̝̲̟̘ͣ̾͛͋͆ͭ̿̌h̢̧̉̒̂́̈̇͏͚͓̜̞̪̪ȅ̶̝̰͔̠̗̤̫̉ͥ̿ͨ̂

Xiu choked and it was all he could do to not choke himself, but Zhaohui's command only demanded of him what he'd already done. The vision of his wife vanished in his daughter's distress and he could only pray for she could not hear his screams.

[Breathe]

Energy flowed around him, not just from him. But more importantly, his daughter breathed.

He would hold her through the night, not sure what he could do if the alien did that again. Hate that he might have begun to let go cycled once more, driving him.

~~~

"By order of the Party of China, all government officials are to follow the steps outlined, unless you have already created a dantian. Failure to do so within the next three days will be grounds for termination from your job, regardless of position."

The outlined steps were obviously stripped from a US document, whoever the Firen woman was, for it had that certain cadence of translation that was someone quickly doing something instead of doing it well.

The described steps and results matched fairly well with the idea of a dantian, better than his own did or what Xiu's ability was. It was deeper into the document itself that fear found root in his heart, for the description of what happened to several of those who failed to create a dantian of themselves could do to themselves with their untempered power. And Xiu had multiple times increased her ability.

~~~

"Xiu, send your mother's spirit away for a moment. I need you to do something." Haoran picked up his daughter, holding her tightly for a moment.

The ghost of his wife smiled for a moment before vanishing into nothing.

Haoran quietly explained to Xiu that the way she was calling her mother's spirit was hurting her. "It will take us a little while to get you back to calling upon her once more, but it will be safer."

Haoran feared his little girl had made too many strides forward in her ability, what the American girl called breakthroughs. And so with a pained heart, he gave Xiu directions to create a dantian that was not what Zhaohui had called the true path. As the little ball of energy formed, sealing off whatever hole had been created in her, Haoran held back tears. Hope did not die, but the hate that drove his cycling grew to include himself.

~~~

He had sent himself past the third meridian and was quietly working with Xiu for her first attempt when the land heaved.

Earthquakes as the very earth split apart, fire rising and quenching the sea around Xiamen. Their entire world thrown into chaos as what once was a prosperous port city became landlocked and shattered. Haoran had survived and found Xiu safe within a few hours, but the city itself became hysterical.

Marshall law was easily declared by the 73rd​ Group Army to restore order, but Haoran spent several days talking his way up the chain of command so he could know how best to help. He was assisted in that very few in the chain of command were those of a self dantian and even fewer, if any, understood the path Haoran had.

For the Party and China, the 73rd​ would cross the now dry Taiwan Strait to secure a new route. The fact that the route now had nearly sixty extra miles than it should was little issue, save the necessary fuel for the tanks.

Haoran would stand next to the general during the Taiwanese surrender, speaking to those who held strife against China in their hearts. There were a few who had already cleansed a meridian or two of self and they were marked out when they proved resistant to Haoran's pleas for peace with China.

~~~

You have a gift best used to serve the Party in greater locations.

Your daughter will be taken care of, provided with the best of care.

Come, accept your elevation in the eyes of the Party.

Haoran did not know if it was fear of someone growing as powerful as the alien, or solely the stories that told of men who had no equal that they wished to use him with Xiu held hostage to his good behavior.

He objected through the man sent to bring him to Shanghai and fled. The land that was the Taiwan Straight was already being referred to as the Shimmerlands, for one could easily get lost among the rocks and spires and move in directions that did not show on maps. There were already those from Taiwan who had chosen to not obey China's edicts, and he would find himself among them and use them.

The rains would only make it easier for Xiu to draw air while he researched. No story of ancient China or others could explain why the meridians were in odd locations, but the Firen girl was quite helpful in posting every nattering thought and finding to make use of. Berift of government support as he was now, he could not afford to fall behind.

He would breach Heaven to reclaim his wife, the mother of his little Xiu.