The night air was cold as Yui surged upward, her Qi manifesting as a translucent, shimmering hand that cradled Riku and Tim. Beside them, Master Kurokawa used his Qi to effortlessly tow the massive weight of the unconscious Takeshi and Himari through the sky.
"Yui who are you really?!" Riku yelled, her voice barely audible over the gale. She looked at Yui, then at Master Kurokawa. They had been hiding some serious level cultivation, she thought.
"Things are getting way too weird," Riku mumbled, her voice trembling. She forced her gaze away from the dizzying drop below and focused on Tim. His breathing was shallow and his skin lacked color, but he seemed stabilized in Yui's arms.
They descended onto the dojo grounds, touching gently in the courtyard. Without a word, Yui strode into the back house section, her footsteps echoing on the polished wood. She laid Tim onto a low couch as gently as possible.
Riku stood by the door, her breath hitching. She didn't use a flying sword, Riku realized, her mind racing. To soar through the sky on pure Qi... she must be at least Core Formation. And Master Kurokawa...
"Yui, what is going on?" Riku's voice was a jagged whisper.
"I will explain soon," Yui said, her eyes fixed on Tim's pale face. "But only when everyone is awake. For now, we have to treat Tim and this... this mountain of a man."
Master Kurokawa had laid Takeshi on the floor nearby. The floorboards groaned under the weight of his large frame. Master Kurokawa stood over him, his expression one of profound, crystalline astonishment.
"Heavens," Master Kurokawa whispered, his voice transmitting his awe. "This man... he managed to stitch his soul to his body".
He extended a hand, and a pulse of pure Qi rippled through the room. "This world was meant to be our quiet hideaway—a place far from the great sects. But this man is the reason for the Tribulation Lightning. I have never even heard of soul-stitching as a possibility."
Master Kurokawa leaned closer, his fingers hovering over Takeshi's sternum. "The stitching has forced the soul to become part of the material realm, while his physical body has been partially dragged into the soul realm. They are locked together in a feedback loop. It is a miracle—an impossibility. Truly, it's his enormous and tempered soul that gave him the strength to resist the Heavenly Tribulation. He just needs rest; his constitution will mend itself over time."
"Master Kurokawa, have you ever seen anything like this?" Yui called out, her voice tight. She was probing the wounds on Tim's chest. "How did this oaf manage to get Void Qi burns?"
Master Kurokawa moved to the couch, his brow furrowing as he looked at the blackened, jagged marks marring Tim's skin. The burns didn't look like fire; they looked like charred tears, flickering with a dark Qi. He frowned deeply, his eyes darting to Riku.
"What happened, Riku?"
Riku's composure finally broke. Tears began to track through the dust on her cheeks. "I... I was going to be hit. That monster, it was right there. And Tim... he just stepped. He didn't run. He didn't jump. He was just there at my side instantly."
Master Kurokawa froze, his hand stopping inches from Tim's chest. He looked up at Yui, a rare flash of genuine shock crossing his weathered face.
"He stepped?" Master Kurokawa asked, his voice low. "Riku, are you certain?"
"He disappeared and reappeared," she stammered.
"He actually managed to Void Step," Master Kurokawa whispered, looking back at the unconscious Tim. "And he did it as a mere Qi Refining disciple. The Void Qi should have torn him to shreds!"
Master Kurokawa leaned over Tim, his face a mask of ancient, focused intensity. He took a deep breath and placed a steady, glowing hand onto Tim's chest.
"Hold fast, fatty," Master Kurokawa whispered.
He began to cycle his Qi through Tim's fragile body with the precision of a master surgeon. It was a dangerous gamble; his energy was so vast that a single slip would shatter Tim's meridians like glass. Riku watched in awe as black, oily smoke began to seep from Tim's pores, drawn out by the magnetic pull of Master Kurokawa's Qi.
The smoke didn't dissipate. Instead, it coalesced in the air beside the couch, swirling and churning until it formed a perfectly smooth, pitch-black sphere. The sphere seemed to distort the space around it; then, Master Kurokawa let go of it with his Qi and it dropped straight through the fabric of space back to the Void, the air cracking as the surrounding space rushed in to fill the hole that had been left.
As the last of the blackness left Tim's body, the wounds on his chest underwent a grisly transformation. The flickering, ethereal "tears" in his flesh vanished, replaced by raw, bleeding gashes and angry red burns—injuries that were mortal, but finally natural.
"It is done," Master Kurokawa said, his voice raspy. He looked down at Tim, whose color was slowly returning, though he remained deep in a healing sleep.
"Is he... is he okay?" Riku asked, looking pensively at Tim's side.
"I have removed the bulk of the Void Qi," Master Kurokawa replied, his eyes dark with gravity. "The wounds are now just flesh and bone. But," he paused, pointing to the faint grey lines still tracing under the skin of Tim's arms, "I cannot reach the contaminants within his actual meridians. Meridians are built for ones own qi. If I tried to flush them out, I would destroy his path of cultivation forever."
He turned to Yui, who was watching him with a knowing, somber expression.
"It will be up to him to remove the remaining contamination. He must refine his own Qi to push the Void out from the inside. If he has the will to survive a Void Step, he must find the will to cleanse his own meridians."
Yui stood up, her movements fluid and graceful, breaking the heavy silence that followed Master Kurokawa's display of power. "I will get some tea while we wait," she said softly. "We all need to chill out."
Soon, the four of them—Master Kurokawa, Yui, Riku, and a shaken Himari—sat in a circle around the low table in the center of the room. The steam from the jasmine tea curled into the air, but the warmth did little to ease the tension.
Himari, rubbing her neck where the monster's grip had left dark bruises, looked over at the massive form of the stranger on the floor. "So..." she rasped, her voice still thin. "Who exactly is the muscle-bound hunk? And where did he come from?"
Master Kurokawa took a slow sip of his tea, his eyes never leaving the giant. "A mystery," he murmured. "But I am sure it is similar to what happened to the rest of you."
"He saved my ass," Himari added, looking down at the floorboards, her bravado slipping for a moment as she remembered the feeling of the air being choked out of her. "I thought I was dead until that frail man in a wheelchair launched himself at the demonic cultivator." Everything went quiet again as they sat there waiting.
A sudden, sharp intake of breath shattered the quiet.
Takeshi's eyes snapped open. He lunged into consciousness, his chest heaving as if he had been underwater. He sat up abruptly, the floorboards groaning under the sudden shift of his immense weight.
For a long moment, he didn't look at the people around him. He stared down at his hands—thick, strong, and pulsing with a vitality he hadn't felt in decades. He clenched his fists, then opened them. He moved his legs, dragging his heels across the wood.
"It's not a dream," he whispered, his voice rich and heavy. "It's... it's not a dream."
During his unconscious state, his mind had played a cruel trick on him, dragging him back to the cold, sterile reality of his wheelchair. He had dreamed that the lightning, the monster, and the strength were all just a hallucination of a cripple.
But as the feeling of the wooden floor pressed against his calves and the strength in his back held him upright, the truth hit him. The tears came first, hot and fast, followed by a long, broken wail that echoed through the dojo. It was the sound of a man who had been a prisoner in his own body finally free.
The group watched in stunned silence. Riku felt a lump in her throat; she had expected a warrior's roar, not the raw, vulnerable sob of a man reborn.
Takeshi finally wiped his eyes with the back of a hand. He looked up, his gaze sweeping over the four strangers sitting by the tea table. He looked confused and overwhelmed, but there was a strange, golden blue light deep within his pupils—a remnant of the soul-stitching Master Kurokawa had identified.
"Hi," he managed, his voice trembling as he tried to steady his breathing. "My name is Takeshi. Where... where am I? And who are all of you?"
Before Master Kurokawa could speak, Himari leaned forward, her usual bubbly confidence and sharp wit completely vanishing. A soft, unmistakable pink hue dusted her cheeks as she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.
"Hi, Takeshi... I am Himari," she said softly, her voice uncharacteristically shy. She looked up at him through her lashes, biting her lip slightly. "I just... I wanted to thank you. For saving my life. That monster had me by the throat, and I really thought I was dead until you stepped in. You were... you were amazing."
Beside her, Riku's mouth literally dropped open. She stared at Himari in pure, unadulterated shock. She had known Himari for a long time—Himari was the girl who was always the life of the party, radiating a cheerful, almost aggressive level of self-assurance that nothing could shake. Seeing her friend—the girl who usually faced every situation with a bubbly grin and a witty comeback—acting so quiet and genuinely flustered was a sight Riku never thought she'd see. Riku's eyes darted between Himari's blushing face and the giant on the floor, her mind reeling at the total 180 in her friend's personality.
Takeshi, for his part, froze. He looked at Himari—her wide, grateful eyes and the soft way she spoke his name. Back in his old life, he had spent decades as the man in the wheelchair, the one people looked through or looked down upon with pity. He had never experienced much with girls, and certainly none as cute as the one currently staring at him as if he were a legendary hero.
A deep, burning heat climbed up Takeshi's neck, flooding his face until he turned a shade of crimson. He looked down at his massive hands, suddenly feeling incredibly flustered.
"I... uh..." he stammered, his voice a deep rumble that seemed to vibrate the floor. "You're welcome, Himari. I just... I couldn't just watch. I'm just glad you're okay."
He quickly looked away, his heart hammering against his ribs. The strength in his new body felt like a burden for a second as he struggled to sit still under her admiring gaze.
Master Kurokawa set his teacup down with a deliberate clack, pulling the attention back to the gravity of the situation. He looked at Takeshi not as a threat, but as a scholar looks at a miracle.
"You are in the Soaring Phoenix Fist Dojo, Takeshi," Master Kurokawa said, his voice carrying a weight that settled the giant's nerves and snapped Himari out of her trance.