Central Galaxy
Golden Yaoung floated in the endless void between galaxies, his divine essence flickering like a dying star. Four other god-level cultivators surrounded him, their combined auras pressing against his fractured soul.
"Give up, Yaoung. Your soul is already broken," declared Tianwei, the one who had once called him brother. "This meaningless struggle only hastens your end."
Yaoung's eyes blazed with the fury of a collapsing sun. "Meaningless? You speak of meaning after what you've done?" His voice carried the weight of eons. "We were sworn brothers. We ascended together from the mortal realm. And you, all of you chose to betray me for the favor of the Celestial Court."
The ancient cultivator felt the cracks in his soul pulse with each heartbeat. Even gods were not immune to the hierarchies of power that governed the universe. Those who ruled from the supreme cultivation regions at the galaxy's center had long arms and longer memories.
Betrayed at birth by fate, betrayed at death by family, he thought, the irony bitter as poison on his tongue. Perhaps this is justice after all.
But as his divine consciousness began to fray, one desire burned brighter than his pain—home. That small blue world at the galaxy's edge where he had been born a slave and forged himself into a god. Where he had loved and lost everything that mattered. If he was to die, let it be there, not in this cold emptiness surrounded by those who had sold their honor.
"I will not die here," Yaoung whispered, his god core pulsing with desperate resolve.
He activated Soul Steps, the forbidden technique that utilized soul power instead of qi. His soul screamed as he tore through space itself, leaving his former brothers far behind. Each step fractured him further, divine essence bleeding into the void like golden tears.
The image of that blue world filled his mind—the forests where he had first learned to cultivate, the mountains where he had met Lian Yu, the woman whose death had driven him to godhood and beyond. As these memories surfaced, his control wavered.
The final fracture came not from technique or battle, but from the weight of remembrance. His soul shattered like crystal, ten thousand fragments of divine essence scattering across the cosmos. His god core, inseparable from his soul, exploded in a burst of golden light.
The fragments rained down upon an unsuspecting world below—not his destination, but close enough to taste the irony. Even in death, Golden Yaoung would not find the peace of home.
Earth-Japan
Tim stepped out into the mountain air, the familiar weight of his troubles lifting slightly as he breathed in the crisp evening. At thirty, he'd left everything behind—his marriage, his life in America, even his savings account that his ex-wife had cleaned out during their brutal divorce. Now he taught English at a small college in this Japanese mountain town, bound by a two-year contract that felt more like salvation than obligation.
The convenience store run had become his evening ritual. As he walked down the winding path, the ocean spread out far below, catching the last golden rays of sunlight. The view never got old—that endless expanse of deep blue water, the way the light danced across its surface like scattered diamonds. For the first time in months, Tim felt something approaching peace.
"Beautiful," he murmured, pausing to take in the sunset. He'd given up smoking last week as part of his "new life, new habits" campaign, though he still found himself reaching for cigarettes during stressful moments.
He made his way into the little shop, the bell chiming softly as he entered.
"Oh, hey Tim," Mr. Kato called from behind the counter, his weathered face creasing into a familiar smile.
"Evening, Mr. Kato. How's business today?"
"Slow, always slow. But I have my number one customer who keeps me in business with all that beer," the old man said with a knowing look.
Tim felt a slight flush of embarrassment. His drinking had increased since the divorce, though he told himself it was just a way to unwind after long days of teaching. "Just one six-pack tonight," he said, grabbing his usual brand along with some rice crackers. "Trying to cut back."
"Good for you," Mr. Kato said approvingly as Tim paid. "See you tomorrow?"
"Probably," Tim agreed with a rueful smile.
Outside, something was wrong with the sky. Instead of the deepening twilight he expected, the darkness was giving way to an unnatural brightness. Tim paused, his plastic bag hanging forgotten in his hand as he squinted upward. The cold mountain air filled his lungs, but the familiar sensation that usually grounded him now carried an edge of unease.
The sky continued to brighten as if dawn was breaking in reverse. He turned to check if the moon was unusually bright, and his blood froze.
Streaks of light cut across the heavens—not the gentle arcs of a meteor shower, but aggressive slashes of fire heading directly toward the town. Toward him.
"What the hell?" Tim breathed, then louder: "Shit!"
He turned and ran, his beer cans clanking in the plastic bag as his feet pounded against the pavement. The divorce had taken everything from him, but it had also freed him from obligations, from people depending on him. He wasn't ready to die just when he'd started to figure out how to live again.
Behind him, the whistling grew louder, more intense. He risked a glance over his shoulder and saw one meteor fragment separating from the rest, its trajectory locked onto his position like some cosmic guided missile. There was nowhere to run that would matter—the thing was moving too fast, too precisely.
Tim stopped running. His hands shook as he set down the plastic bag and cracked open a beer. If this was how it ended, at least he'd face it on his own terms. He took a long pull, tasting the bitter malt on his tongue as he looked up at the approaching light.
"Well," he said to the empty street, to the convenience store, to Mr. Kato probably watching through the window, to his ex-wife back in America who would never know what happened to him, "here's to new beginnings."
The impact drove him into darkness, but not before a single thought flashed through his mind: I hope whoever finds my body doesn't think I was just another drunk teacher who couldn't handle his problems.
Then there was nothing.
Tim's Soul Realm
When awareness returned, Tim existed as something else entirely. His body was gone, replaced by a pulsing orb of white light that felt more essentially him than flesh ever had. He was warm, luminous, stripped of everything external yet somehow more complete than he'd ever been in life.
Then came the pain.
The meteor fragment had buried itself deep within his light-form, and it was transforming him. His essence expanded rapidly as the cosmic energy merged with his soul, carrying with it alien sensations—memories that weren't his own, emotions from a being that had lived for millennia, and above all, a desperate hunger to reach something unimaginably distant.
Tim tried to scream but had no mouth, no vocal cords, nothing but pure consciousness floating in an ocean of agony. The merger was violent, like swallowing liquid fire that wanted to escape through every part of his being at once. When the absorption finally completed, when the foreign soul-fragment had fully integrated with his own essence, the real torment began.
His soul started to tear in half.
The division was excruciating—like every fiber of his existence was being split down an invisible seam. One half remained tethered to Earth, anchored by thirty years of human memories, regrets, small joys, and the familiar weight of his mundane existence. The other half, infected with something vast and ancient, stretched toward a pull he couldn't comprehend but couldn't resist.
Avenge me, whispered a voice that resonated through his very essence. They betrayed everything we built together. Everything we sacrificed for.
The thought wasn't his own. It came from the meteor fragment—from the shattered remains of Golden Yaoung's soul, carrying with it the weight of cosmic betrayal and rage that had burned for eons. That dying consciousness pushed Tim's severed soul-half away from Earth, across impossible distances that should have taken lifetimes to traverse.
Through the cosmic void he traveled, past dying stars and nebulae that sang with their own forms of life. Below him—or was it ahead of him in this place where direction had no meaning?—a planet came into focus. It teemed with billions of souls, their spiritual light creating a complex web of life and consciousness that pulsed like a living thing.
But there were gaps in that web. Dark spaces where light should have been but wasn't. Empty vessels waiting to be filled.
The ancient will that had once been Golden Yaoung guided Tim toward one such absence—a recently extinguished soul that had left behind something precious. A body with potential. A chance for a new kind of existence.
Tim felt himself being pulled inexorably toward that emptiness, toward something that wasn't quite alive but wasn't quite dead either. His consciousness, split between two worlds now, began to settle into unfamiliar flesh.
Everything went dark again.
But this time, the darkness felt like the moment before birth rather than the moment after death.
.
Cultivation World
Lia was part of the Flowing Water Sect, a rising star in the cultivation world who had reached the first stage of Foundation Establishment at only nineteen. Now she was fighting for her life on what should have been a routine mission—investigating ancient ruins not far from the sect. The task was overkill for a Foundation Establishment cultivator who could split boulders with a single punch.
That's when she spotted it: a shimmering slit in the fabric of space itself, barely visible against the weathered stone of the ruins.
She took a deep breath, her heart racing with possibility. "A spatial rift," she whispered, purple eyes widening as she approached the anomaly. She remembered the sect elders teaching that rifts were cuts in space and time, usually created by Nascent Soul level cultivators or higher to forge pocket realms. There were no reported rifts in this region—this had to be an ancient one, reopening after countless years dormant.
The treasures within could accelerate her advancement by decades, and she desperately needed that power. Too many people were counting on her strength. Too much was at stake to let this opportunity pass.
When she stepped through the rift, she wasn't transported to some glittering treasury filled with spirit stones and ancient artifacts. Purple lightning crackled across a twisted sky, illuminating a wasteland littered with cultivator bones and the broken silhouette of a fortress in the distance. The metallic scent of old blood hung thick in the air, so concentrated she could taste copper on her tongue.
That's when she heard it—a sound like grinding stone mixed with whispered death.
Robed figures materialized from the shadows behind her, moving with unnatural silence that made her skin crawl. Their attack came without warning or negotiation. Lia raised her hand instinctively, channeling qi to deflect the strike, but the dark energy passed through her defenses like they were made of mist.
Soul attacks. They were targeting her very essence, not her physical form. As a newly advanced Foundation Establishment cultivator, she had no techniques to counter such specialized assaults. Dark streaks of malevolent energy tore through her soul repeatedly, each strike sending waves of agony through her consciousness. While her meridians and flesh remained intact, her soul began to fracture like cracked glass under enormous pressure.
She stumbled bavkward. "I can't die here," she gasped, qi flickering weakly around her trembling hands. "I tried so hard... I was meant to..."
But she was outmatched, overwhelmed by enemies who had clearly specialized in soul warfare for centuries. Her techniques, powerful against physical opponents, were useless against attacks that bypassed the body entirely.
She turned to flee, drawing on every ounce of her Foundation Establishment speed, but a final soul-piercing blow struck from behind like an invisible spear through her heart. Her spiritual essence shattered completely, fragments of her consciousness scattering like broken crystal.
Lia's body collapsed lifeless onto the ancient stones as her attackers dispersed like smoke, already hunting for their next prey among the ruins.
The Transition
In that moment between death and oblivion, when Lia's soul scattered to the winds, something else arrived. Tim's displaced consciousness—torn from another world entirely by forces beyond comprehension—found itself drawn to the empty vessel like a magnet. His soul poured into the abandoned body, filling the void left by Lia's shattered soul.
The merger was violent and fundamentally wrong. Tim's awareness crashed into flesh that wasn't his, neural pathways that fired in completely alien patterns. Cold seeped through every fiber of his being as conflicting signals warred in his mind, his Earth-born consciousness struggling to interface with cultivation-enhanced biology.
His eyes snapped open to see the nightmare landscape around him. He tried to breathe, but his throat burned like fire. Every instinct felt scrambled—his brain sending familiar commands to limbs that responded in unfamiliar ways. Fighting through the disorientation, he finally managed to force air into lungs that felt too small, too delicate.
"Huuuuuuh." The massive breath echoed strangely, the voice emerging higher and softer than anything he'd ever produced.
Adrenaline from fear, shock, and the trauma of inhabiting a body that had just died flooded his system. He attempted to sit up, but the signals felt completely wrong. In jerky, uncoordinated motions, the body twitched as he struggled upright. Looking down, Tim saw delicate, pale fingers—definitely not his own work-roughened hands.
His breathing quickened as he reached up to touch his face. Smooth skin where his beard should be. High cheekbones. A distinctly feminine jawline that sent panic shooting through his consciousness.
"Where... where am I?" The voice that emerged was soft and musical, completely alien to his ears.
She stood shakily, surveying her surroundings with growing horror. The landscape was a massive battlefield strewn with rubble, twisted spires of rock, and structures covered in glowing runic carvings that pulsed with residual qi. The silky robes she wore were stained with dirt, and the spatial rift behind her crackled ominously in the purple-tinged twilight.
Barely able to control her new body's movements, she stumbled away from the tear in space, each step feeling like learning to walk again. Her center of gravity was completely different, her proportions alien, and she kept stumbling as she tried to adjust to the unfamiliar form.
"Please don't tell me I just got isekai'd into a woman's body," he muttered to whatever cosmic forces had orchestrated this nightmare. The distinct lack of familiar weight between his thighs made panic surge fresh through his consciousness. "Please just let this be some kind of weird dream."
After what felt like hours of struggling with basic coordination, she found a small cave carved into a hillside—shelter from the nightmare realm and its constant electrical storms.
Collapsing inside the rocky alcove, she tried to process what had happened. Somehow, impossibly, she had been reincarnated into another person's body. But how? And why? Was his original body dead back on Earth, or was this some kind of spiritual projection that defied everything he understood about reality?
She closed her eyes and tried to access the body's original memories. Fragments came flooding back in disjointed flashes: training with sword forms at dawn, the weight of cultivation manuals filled with complex techniques, the pride in her master's eyes when she broke through to Foundation Establishment, brushing long hair before a mirror. But there was nothing about the robed attackers or this cursed realm—those final moments seemed locked away behind walls of trauma.
The constant lightning outside periodically illuminated her new form. She wore light red robes in what her fragmented memories identified as sect colors, and even in her disoriented state, she couldn't help but notice the dramatic differences from her old body. This form was smaller, more delicate, with curves and proportions that felt completely foreign.
"Focus," she muttered to herself, then paused at hearing the unfamiliar voice again. "Being distracted won't help anyone survive this place."
The memory fragments revealed she had been part of something called the Flowing Water Sect, but the details remained frustratingly vague. It would take time for the memories to fully integrate, if they ever did. Meanwhile, a strange ache wracked her entire being, like a headache that had spread to every inch of her body. Her consciousness was slowly adapting to its new vessel, stretching and molding to fit spiritual pathways that had been designed for someone else entirely.
Exhausted by the ordeal and overwhelmed by the magnitude of her situation, she finally allowed her eyes to close. Hidden in the small cave while purple lightning painted the wasteland beyond, she fell into an uneasy sleep—the first rest of her new existence, in a body that wasn't hers, in a world that defied everything she thought she knew about reality.
Earth
Tim woke to the steady beeping of medical equipment beside him. His eyes opened slowly to unfamiliar white ceiling tiles and the antiseptic smell of a hospital room. He quickly looked down at his hands—they were his own again, familiar and reassuringly masculine.
"Oh, Mr. Jones, you're awake," a nurse said, entering the room with a gentle smile. "You collapsed suddenly outside a convenience store. A passerby called an ambulance. How are you feeling?"
"I feel... okay," Tim mumbled, his voice hoarse as he tried to piece together what had happened. The memories felt fragmented, dreamlike—meteors, another world, a woman's body. It couldn't have been real.
The nurse examined him with practiced efficiency, checking his pupils with a small flashlight. "Your vital signs are normal now. We found alcohol in your system when you were brought in, we believe you may have had too much to drink and collapsed from exhaustion."
He felt weak but otherwise fine. The explanation made sense—he had been drinking more lately, and the stress of starting over in Japan had been wearing on him. As soon as the nurse left the room, curiosity and relief compelled him to check that everything was still... intact.
He pulled back the hospital gown and looked down. "Thank god," he muttered, genuinely relieved after what had felt like the most vivid nightmare of his life.
"Mr. Jones, I forgot my—" The nurse stopped mid-sentence as she walked back in.
They stared at each other for three frozen seconds. Tim with his gown pulled up, the middle-aged nurse clutching her forgotten clipboard like a shield, both caught in mutual mortification.
"I was just... making sure nothing was injured in the fall," Tim said weakly.
"Right," the nurse replied, her professional composure slipping slightly. "Well, everything appears to be... functioning normally." She grabbed her clipboard and retreated quickly, muttering something about needing stronger coffee.
The rest of the day passed under medical observation as Tim tried to convince himself the whole experience had been an elaborate stress-induced hallucination. The doctors found nothing concerning, and he was discharged that evening with instructions to reduce his alcohol intake and get more rest.
Walking home through the quiet mountain town, Tim reflected on how vivid the dream had been. He could still remember the feeling of that other body, the weight of unfamiliar curves, the terror of waking up in an alien landscape. But dreams often felt real while you were experiencing them.
That's when he noticed something strange.
His vision seemed sharper somehow, as if he could perceive details that had been invisible before. He blinked hard, thinking it might be residual effects from whatever had happened, but the enhanced clarity remained.
Then, without warning, his perception split.
Suddenly he was seeing two places at once—the familiar mountain path home, and simultaneously a dark cave lit by intermittent flashes of purple lightning. Two sets of sensory input crashed into his consciousness like competing television channels broadcasting at maximum volume.
Tim dropped to one knee, retching violently as vertigo overwhelmed his nervous system. The dual awareness was too much—his brain couldn't process being in two places at once.
"Focus," he gasped, squeezing his eyes shut. "One at a time."
He willed himself to perceive only through his Earth body. Gradually, the vision of the cave faded, leaving him alone on the mountain path. Shaking, he managed to stumble the rest of the way home and collapse onto his couch.
But when he relaxed his concentration, the dual perception returned immediately.
This time, he cautiously explored the phenomenon. By focusing his attention, he could shift between perspectives—his familiar apartment in Japan, or that cold cave where a young woman in sect robes sat huddled against the stone walls.
"This is impossible," he whispered, but the evidence was undeniable. Somehow, impossibly, his consciousness existed in two bodies simultaneously.
The woman—Lia, his fragmented memories supplied—was him. Or rather, part of him. His soul had been literally split in half, with one portion remaining on Earth while the other had been flung across cosmic distances to inhabit the body of a dead cultivator.
A hysterical laugh escaped his throat. His divorce, his career troubles, his mundane worries about fitting into Japanese society—none of it mattered anymore. He was living a fantasy novel, split between two worlds, trying to survive in a reality that defied everything he thought he knew about existence.
"Okay," he said aloud, forcing himself to think practically. "What's the priority here?"
His Earth body was safe, if confused. But Lia was trapped in what appeared to be some kind of hostile pocket dimension, possibly injured, definitely lost. From the novels he'd read, he knew enough about cultivation worlds to understand that they were typically far more dangerous than Earth.
If Lia died, would he die too? He had no idea how this soul-splitting worked, but he couldn't risk finding out the hard way.
"I need to get her back to safety," he decided, closing his eyes and shifting his full attention to the cultivation world.
The cave materialized around him with startling clarity. Cold stone pressed against Lia's legs, the distant rumble of thunder echoed from outside, and the soft fabric of her sect robes felt alien against her skin. But beneath the strangeness, he could sense something else—memories that weren't his own, knowledge of qi cultivation, techniques for manipulating spiritual energy.
Lia had been a prodigy, reaching Foundation Establishment at only nineteen years old. Her fragmented memories suggested this was an extraordinary achievement, something that perhaps one in a hundred thousand might accomplish in their lifetime.
Now her body was his responsibility. Her life was in his hands.
Time to figure out how to survive in two worlds at once.
Cultivation world
Lia opened her eyes in the dim cave, immediately alert. She was still alive, still hidden from whatever forces had killed the original owner of this body.
"First step: get out of here without dying," she whispered, testing her voice. The sound was strange to Tim's consciousness—foreign yet increasingly familiar, like hearing a recording of yourself speaking a language you didn't know you could speak.
Her stomach growled insistently. Right. Food and water were immediate priorities, assuming she could find any in this wasteland.
Carefully, she crept to the edge of the cave and peered out into the battlefield beyond. The ruins stretched endlessly under that eerie twilight sky, broken spires and shattered walls creating a maze of shadows and potential hiding spots. No sign of immediate danger, but something had killed the original Lia here, and Tim had no intention of discovering what that was.
She hesitated, trying to access fragmented memories. Did she remember where the sect was? Pieces floated up through the mental fog—a mountain range nearby only an hour of travel. But first, she needed to escape these ruins without being detected.
Lia took a deep breath and stepped out from her small shelter. This body moved differently than anything Tim had ever experienced—the way her hips naturally swayed, the subtle shift in balance, the way each step seemed to flow into the next with unconscious grace. Yet underneath the strangeness, she could feel the power of cultivation flowing through her like liquid fire, strengthening every muscle and bone beyond human limits.
The dichotomy was disorienting. The body moved like it belonged to her, every gesture fluid and natural, but Tim's consciousness kept registering that something fundamental was wrong.
"Focus on survival first, identity crisis later," she muttered under her breath, pushing the psychological concerns aside.
The ruins weren't completely abandoned. Ancient carvings pulsed with residual energy along broken walls, and the air itself carried a metallic taste—like old blood mixed with ozone from countless lightning strikes. Lia's inherited memories supplied context: this was an ancient battlefield from some forgotten war between sects, a place where powerful cultivators had died and left their mark on reality itself.
The spatial rift must have been recently formed, she realized. Otherwise, treasure hunters would have stripped this place clean centuries ago. The original Lia's greed had been her downfall—instead of reporting the discovery to her sect, she'd entered alone, hoping to claim whatever treasures lay within for herself.
"Learn from her mistakes," Tim thought grimly. He decided to take a circuitous route, going deeper into the ruins before circling back to avoid whatever had killed her.
Moving cautiously and avoiding open spaces, Lia made her way through the devastation. She still wore the distinctive red sash of the Flowing Water Sect, which might make her a target if the wrong people spotted her.
The further she ventured, the more evidence of ancient battle she encountered. Swords jutted from the ground at odd angles, pieces of armor lay scattered but never in complete sets, and the occasional skeleton served as grim reminders of this place's violent history.
"If this place wasn't fully looted after all these years, something must have been preventing people from taking everything," Lia murmured, scanning for potential threats.
Her stomach growled again, more insistently this time. Priorities. She needed supplies—food, water, possibly weapons—but touching random artifacts in a place like this could be extremely dangerous.
Almost without thinking, she rubbed one of the rings on her finger. Suddenly, a space opened in her mind—like having a mental window into another dimension. The sensation was extraordinary: she could perceive a pocket of folded space containing roughly five cubic meters of storage area.
"A spatial ring," she breathed, excitement cutting through her caution. These storage devices were incredibly rare and expensive, utilizing space-folding techniques that defied conventional physics. The ring created a pocket dimension accessible only through spiritual consciousness, where time moved differently—food stayed fresh indefinitely, and stored items existed in temporal stasis.
Inside, she found a treasure trove of supplies: spare clothing, medicinal herbs, three healing pills that could mend most mortal wounds, preserved meats and dried fruits that looked fresh despite likely being stored for months, plus a small jug of water. There was also a leather pouch containing coins and spirit stones—the crystallized qi that served as both currency and cultivation fuel in this world.
The ring responded to her thoughts, allowing her to visualize its contents and summon items directly into her hand. She could sense the precise location of everything inside, like having a perfect mental inventory.
"This changes everything," she said with relief. As long as whatever had killed the original Lia didn't track her down, she could make it back to the sect.
Now aware of what to look for, she began systematically checking corpses for additional spatial rings. After several hours of careful searching, she found two more on skeletal remains that had apparently been overlooked by previous scavengers. Most bodies had been stripped bare, but the rings—probably invisible to those without spiritual sense—had been missed.
She slipped them onto her fingers and investigated their contents. One contained spare robes, cultivation tools, a well-crafted sword, and an ornate staff. The second held a couple books written in an unfamiliar script that her inherited memories couldn't immediately identify.
After nearly a some hours of cautious movement through the ruins, she finally saw the rift ahead. The exit lay just beyond a series of broken pillars that had once supported some grand structure.
Lia crept forward, keeping low and moving from shadow to shadow. No sign of the green-robed attackers—perhaps they had already departed with whatever they'd come for.
Then she heard screams echoing from nearby.
Green-robed figures were fleeing from away from the rift entrance in obvious panic, their formation broken and their movements desperate.
A new figure stepped into view at the rift's edge, and Lia's blood ran cold. Tall and imposing in silver-blue armor that gleamed with protective formations, his mere presence made the air itself seem to vibrate with power. Lightning crackled along the length of his spear, and behind him stood dozens of other armored cultivators in the distinctive colors of the Flowing Water Sect.
The sect's enforcement squad had arrived, and they were clearly not in a merciful mood.
One of the fleeing green-robed figures made a desperate lunge toward the rift, hoping to slip by and escape. The armored leader barely moved—just a casual flick of his spear—and a bolt of lightning reduced the man to ash before he could take another step.
"Annihilate them," the leader commanded, his voice carrying the absolute authority of someone accustomed to instant obedience. "Leave none alive. These corpse-robbers will learn the price of trespassing in Flowing Water territory."
Lia pressed herself against a pillar, heart hammering as she watched the systematic slaughter unfold. If she moved now, in the chaos of battle, they might mistake her for one of the enemy. But if she waited, the armored leader would eventually spot her, and her sect colors should provide protection.
She waited until most of the enforcement squad had charged deeper into the ruins, pursuing the last scattered survivors. Only then did she step out from cover, hands raised to show she posed no threat.
The armored leader's gaze snapped to her immediately, his eyes narrowing as he took in her appearance.
"Disciple Lia," he said, his voice like grinding stone. "You are alive?."
Lia met his gaze steadily, drawing on the original owner's memories of proper sect protocols. "I was fortunate enough to survive the initial attack, Senior. I've been hiding and waiting for rescue."
He studied her for a long moment, his spiritual sense no doubt probing for deception. Finally, he nodded curtly. "The spatial fracture is becoming increasingly unstable. We'll be sealing it permanently once we finish eliminating these scavengers. Return to the sect immediately and report to Elder Cho for debriefing."
Lia bowed respectfully. "Yes, Senior. Thank you for the rescue."
She didn't need further encouragement. Moving at the swift pace that Foundation Establishment cultivation allowed, she made her way to the rift and stepped through.
The transition was jarring—one moment she was in the purple twilight of the pocket dimension, the next she stood on familiar grassy hills under a normal blue sky. The sun felt warm on her face, and the air smelled of wildflowers rather than ozone and old blood.
Safe. At least for now.
"Home," she said softly, then began running toward the distant mountain peaks where the Flowing Water Sect made its home. At her enhanced speed, she could cover the distance in about an hour. If she pushed hard, she'd reach the sect grounds before nightfall.
As she ran, Lia couldn't help but notice how different this body felt in motion—lighter, more agile, with a natural grace that made even rapid movement feel effortless. It was going to take some getting used to, but for the first time since this nightmare began, she felt like she might actually survive.