The brittle pages crackled as Theon carefully turned them, each movement sending tiny fragments of ancient paper drifting downward. The manual's once-vivid ink had faded to a ghostly brown, entire sections lost where time had eaten through the parchment like slow fire.
The cultivation methods of the first plane were universally simple—slowly circulating Lu through the body's meridians, allowing the energy to seep into the flesh over time. A passive process, one of gradual adaptation.
But this technique was different.
"Drive the Lu as needles through flesh," the text commanded, the characters dug deep into the paper as if carved rather than written. "Let each circulation be a thousand punctures until the meridians learn not to resist."
Theon's fingertips tingled as he read. The method was terrifying in its simplicity: force Lu through the meridians in razor-thin strands at maximum speed. Not to flow around blockages, but to pierce straight through them. The promised benefits came with equally sharp warnings - a single mistimed breath could turn one's meridians into channels of molten agony.
Progress came in stages, though the details blurred where the pages had decayed. Initial mastery brought control over Lu's flow within the body. Intermediate stages wove the energy into muscle and bone. The final breakthrough birthed the soul sea, though the description here grew vague where moisture had blurred the ink into Rorschach stains.
Where the first plane's instructions had been brutally precise, the second plane's teachings survived only in fragments. Theon had to piece together meaning from half-sentences and the occasional intact paragraph.
Theon turned the page carefully, only for a corner to flake off in his grip. What remained spoke of spirals—coiling Lu along the meridian walls, compressing it, forcing it to carve deeper channels. The effect was clear: more Lu, denser, stronger. But the instructions grew fragmented, sentences trailing into nothing.
"Nodes… form at… nine possible… but the first must be…"
Though what drew Theon's attention was what accompanied the now fragmented text, a diagram that occupied nearly an entire yellowed page - an exquisite line drawing of the human form, its artistry belying the crude instructions elsewhere. Three points glowed with particular intensity:
At the crown of the skull, a complex knot of lines formed a lotus-like pattern labeled "The Mind's Lighthouse" in delicate script. Down the spine ran a chain of interconnected circles resembling vertebrae made of starlight, named "The Celestial Ladder." Over the heart pulsed a mandala of intersecting triangles called "The Crucible."
Fainter markings suggested approximately twelve other nodal points, but these remained unlabeled, their purposes either deliberately omitted or lost to time. This total of fifteen possible node locations exceeded the human limit of nine, so Theon could only understand the unlabelled ones to be suggestions compared to the named points which appeared to be essential.
Having exhausted every comprehensible part of the manual, Theon set it aside and closed his eyes. He adopted the prescribed breathing pattern—long inhales, like a bow being drawn, followed by two sharp exhalations, like arrows loosed. Gradually, he felt the Lu stir within him, circulating through his body. His awareness began at the cerebral cortex, then willed itself downward, tracing the pathways toward his brain stem and spine.
'What the…?'
A jolt of confusion seized him as his perception deepened. For the first time, he truly saw his meridians—and what lay before him defied all his estimations.
The manual had described smooth, orderly channels, a symmetrical latticework guiding the flow of Lu.
But his meridians were nothing like that.
They were twisted, a chaotic tangle of light and shadow, like a spiderweb spun by a madman. Some sections blazed with unnatural brilliance, almost violently so, while others lay fractured, dim, as though scarred by some forgotten trauma, the flow of Lu choked to a trickle.
'What is this…?'
The irregularities weren't just superficial—they ran deep. It was as if his meridians had been rewired, reshaped, by forces beyond his understanding. Something had tampered with his body at the most fundamental level.
Meridians were supposed to mirror one another, branching cleanly from the neck before dividing left and right in perfect symmetry down the spine.
But his were… wrong.
Instead of two, Theon's seemed to separate into 4 different paths in his spine, two to the right and two to the left.
For his right side, towards the middle of his spine, his meridians deviated with an extra path and connected to his shoulder, forming an outline around his right rib. The other diverged from the same point and went backwards, stopping at his shoulder plate.
Meanwhile on the left, one diverged downwards from the collar, stopping in the middle of his ribs. The other diverged from slightly above where the right side diverged, in the middle of his spine, but unlike the right side, the left side diverged downwards and reconnected at the pelvis.
Worse still, these extra meridians were crude, their edges ragged, as though carved by a reckless hand. The Lu within them churned violently, out of sync with the rest of his Lu—and it carried the unmistakable crackle of lightning.
And that wasn't all. The deeper he looked, the more he found.
His core, his legs—everywhere his awareness reached, more of these jagged pathways revealed themselves. Each bore the same rough-hewn scars, each thrummed with that same unstable, storm-born energy.
Now he was certain.
Theon had long realised that his meridians were related to electricity; after all, there could be no other explanation. The way they thrummed with chaotic, crackling Lu, how they could contain such wild energy without burning out… it all pointed to one thing.
Diving deep into the mainframe, he scoured the database, analyzing every recorded meridian type until he narrowed it down to three distinct varieties:
First of all, there were the [Energetic Dynamo Pathways]. "Living generators," the texts called them—meridians that produced and amplified voltage in explosive bursts. Practitioners could unleash devastating strikes faster than thought, their Lu regenerating like a storm fed by its own winds. But…. Dynamos Pathways were orderly, their oscillations rhythmic as a heartbeat. His energy had no rhythm—only the erratic stutter of a failing grid.
Secondly there were the [Tesla Conduit Channels]. These meridians threaded Lu with flawless control, directing currents like a sculptor's chisel. Masters could deliver a paralyzing touch or restart a stopped heart—all with the same effortless focus.
Theon's Lu stabbed outward in jagged arcs, unpredictable as a live wire in a flood. Control? His meridians seemed to grate against themselves in protest, as if merely thinking them to be Conduit Channels was an insult.
Thirdly, there were the [Voltaic Reservoir Meridians]. Unlike the others, these meridians specialized in storage. Scattered along their lengths were dense nodes—like hidden batteries—stockpiling electrical energy for critical moments. They were stable by design—their nodes distributed weight evenly. But Theon's? Clotted. Overloaded. A single misstep could turn his reserves into a chain reaction.
But his search wasn't fruitless.
Theon wasn't searching for meridians like his own because he expected to find an exact match. Given the thousands of possible meridians, layered with the possibility of mutation it was foolhardy to think he could accurately estimate which meridians were his.
No, his true goal was simpler: to uncover the potential of special meridians—especially ones capable of containing such volatile Lightning Lu. And in that, he had succeeded.
The problem? He had no way to test his theories. His meridians were unstable, unpredictable. Worse, he wasn't even sure he could wield them safely in their current state. Sure he had previously, but using his Lu and circulating it to cultivate were entirely different matters. If Theon wanted to develop and increase his chances of survival, he would have to cultivate, but he had no way of knowing if that was even safe to do.
The foundations of meridians were balance and stability. The very fundamental idea that everything was mirrored, in sync, was what made cultivation so straightforward. Yet his pathways were asymmetrical, his Lu unevenly distributed. The consequences of such imbalance were severe, and Theon had no way of knowing if this was natural… or if his body could ever be restored
With no other options, a reckless idea sparked in Theon's mind, a desperate, dangerous gamble. He needed an electrical hotspot—somewhere the ambient Lu was a living storm, powerful enough to brutalize his meridians into alignment.
The most convenient was a place called Voltaic Blaze Canyon—a hundred-kilometer-long chasm where Fire Lu and Lightning Lu clashed violently, birthing a mutated energy known as Voltaic Blaze Lu.
'I was looking for pure lightning… but this might be even better.' Theon's mind raced. 'Fire could amplify the electricity, mutate it into something stronger. If normal Lightning Lu isn't enough, this might be my only chance.'
Of course, merging fire and lightning, two of the most volatile Lus in existance, was dangerous. Unstable. Possibly catastrophic. Some may even say stupid.
But he had no choice.
Theon was certain his deformed meridians were the result of Formless Lightning Lu—an especially rare, chaotic sub-Lu variant of Lightning Lu typically found only in the very peak of the Second Plane. It wasn't natural; it was born from disorder, from environments where energy ran wild. And worse, it had a will of its own, refusing to follow set paths or structures.
It was what he had encountered when he touched the fuse box.
Now, he needed to do it again—but this time he himself would be ripping apart his meridians.
'But if my meridians have already adapted to that level of lightning, I'll need something stronger. And this time, I have to stay awake. I have to control it.'
It was a gamble. A desperate one.
But possible.
He needed chaos to match his chaos.
After looting the bunker—stuffing everything of value into his spatial ring—Theon emerged into the open air. Two weeks had passed since his encounter with the three sentinels. Two weeks of isolation, of research, of preparation.
Now, there was no turning back.
With one last glance at the bunker—a place that might never shelter him again—Theon sprinted toward the distant canyon, where fire and lightning awaited.