The air in the Soaring Phoenix Fist Dojo was thick with the scent of jasmine tea and the faint, lingering ozone of the planetary Qi that was still settling into the wood. Takeshi sat cross-legged on the polished floor, his massive frame making the boards groan under his weight whenever he shifted himself. Across from him, Master Kurokawa sat in a state of serene stillness, his eyes closed as if he were merely a statue carved from weathered stone. Between them lay a single, mundane red apple. Around them lay half filled buckets of apples and splattering's of apple sauce.
"Pick up the apple, Takeshi. Remember your movements are controlled by your soul now too." Master Kurokawa commanded softly.
Takeshi took a deep breath, his chest expanding his eyes narrowed staring at his nemesis. To a normal man, the task was trivial; to Takeshi, whose new muscles hummed with foundation Establishment level power it was an exercise of restraint. He reached out, his hand thick and corded with bronze-like muscle hovering over the fruit. With a look of intense concentration that made a vein throb in his temple, he pinched the apple between two fingers.
He lifted it an inch. Then two. The skin of the fruit dimpled slightly under his grip, but it remained intact. Takeshi let out a shaky exhale, a wide, triumphant grin splitting his face.
"Yes! See? It didn't explode this time," Takeshi said, in triumph. He looked at the Master hopefully. "Can I go back home now? Master, please. We've been at this for three days. I haven't seen my parents since... since the park".
"I cannot let you leave until I am certain you won't kill someone by a simple accident of affection," Kurokawa snapped back, his eyes snapping open with a flash of stern intensity. "Your leap in power has been too dramatic, even for a miracle. You are a Giant walking among glass figurines. Now, throw the apple and catch it. If you can do that, I will allow you to depart."
Takeshi let out a long, dramatic whine. "But the others left yesterday! Riku, Tim and Himari..." He trailed off, his face turning a shade of red that rivalled the apple as he remembered how cute she looked.
"No excuses, young man," Kurokawa replied.
Takeshi sighed, focusing every scrap of his Will, the same Will that had stitched his soul to his flesh. He tossed the apple upward, intending for a gentle arc.
CRACK-BOOM.
It became a red-and-white blur, accelerated by the slightest flick of his wrist. The fruit punched through the paper ceiling and the tiled roof like a cannonball, leaving a jagged, circular hole that let in a shaft of afternoon sunlight.
Takeshi froze, his hand still extended. He looked at the hole, then back at the Master, his expression sheepish. "Hehe... sorry. I'll fix that. I'll get some wood and... uh... sorry," he stammered.
It took another half-day of practice before Master Kurokawa finally deemed Takeshi safe for society with caveats. The journey home felt surreal. For twenty years, the world had been something Takeshi viewed through a window or from the low vantage point of a wheelchair. Now, he walked marvelling at each step feeling the wind against his body.
When he finally reached the familiar gate of his parents' house, he stopped. He took a moment to pull down the bottom of the hoodie Yui had run out to buy for him. She bought the largest she could find though it still struggled to contain the broadness of his shoulders. He reached out and pressed the doorbell.
The door opened slowly. His mother stood there, her eyes tired and rimmed with red, her hands trembling as she wiped them on an apron. She looked up, and up, and up, her gaze traveling from the stranger's chest to his chiselled jawline.
"Yes? Can I... can I help you?" she asked, her voice small and weary. She didn't recognize him. To her, her son was a frail, atrophied boy who had disappeared 3 days ago during the strange event. They searched the park and could find nothing but his wheelchair.
"Mom," Takeshi said, the word vibrating with a deep, melodic warmth. "It's me."
His father appeared behind her, his face hardening as he looked at the massive man on his doorstep. "Who are you? What do you want?"
Takeshi stepped into the light, pulling back his hood. He looked directly into his father's eyes—the same eyes that had pushed his wheelchair up a steep hill with complete trust only days before.
"Dad, it's Takeshi," he whispered. "I'm not broken anymore".
His mother gasped, her hand flying to her mouth. She looked at the golden-bronze sheen of his skin and the blue fire lingering in his pupils—a remnant of the soul-stitching. "How? How is this possible? Takeshi was... he was..."
"How did you become this?" his father demanded, his voice cracking with a mixture of hope and terror.
Takeshi stepped across the threshold, his movements fluid and powerful, a living contradiction to the twenty years of paralysis they had endured together. He took their hands in his, his grip as light as handling an apple, exactly as Master Kurokawa had taught him.
"You won't believe me," Takeshi said with a soft, resonant laugh. He led them to the living room, where his empty wheelchair still sat in the corner like a discarded husk. "The meteor strike months ago... it... it split my soul. Half my soul was guided to another world. In that world I learned how to stitch my soul to my flesh. His parents sat in stunned silence, their minds unable to grasp the spiritual physics or the reality of "cultivation". They didn't understand but they understood the way he moved. They understood the way he looked at them—not with the dull exhaustion of a prisoner, but with the vibrant love of a man reborn.
Finally, his mother didn't wait for him to finish. She lunged forward, wrapping her arms around his massive waist and burying her face in his chest. His father followed, his hands gripping Takeshi's corded forearms as if to convince himself they were real.
"It doesn't matter," his mother sobbed into his shirt. "You're home. You're finally home."
Takeshi closed his eyes, his large hands resting gently on their backs, finally feeling the weight of his own life as a blessing rather than a burden.
Cultivation World
Zulu sat in the centre of a mile-wide scar in the ice, his eyes closed as he focused on the internal war still raging within his marrow. The remnants of the Heavenly Tribulation didn't just sit in his veins; they writhed like liquid gold, seeking any weakness to exploit. He was half-charred, his skin a roadmap of angry red and black Lichtenberg figures, but beneath the ruin, his muscles were pulsing with a new, metallic density. He was on the precipice of shattering the first stage of body refining, grinding leftover sparks of the divine electricity into his foundation.
Slowly, his bloodshot eyes flickered open. He looked up, and his heart sank.
Towering fifty meters into the frozen sky was the scorched, motionless monument of Elder VolCartin. The ancient giant stood like a statue of blackened obsidian, his arms still spread wide in a final gesture of defiance . Zulu remembered the final bolt—a jagged pillar of white-hot judgment that had turned the atmosphere into a vacuum and dwarfed every strike that had come before it . It had slammed into the Elder's shoulders and Zulu had seen the golden armour of the giant's skin finally crack, the light burning through him to the very core.
For three days, Zulu hadn't been able to move, his nerves still fried. The silence of the wasteland was absolute, broken only by the whistling wind.
"Thank you, Elder," Zulu whispered, his voice a deep, raspy from exertion. "You told me the way of the Body Cultivator was to forge yourself or die. You took my death so I could have this life. I won't waste it" .
Zulu forced himself to stand, and as he turned to begin the long trek back across the ice, a sharp, crystalline crack echoed through the crater.
He froze.
The fifty-meter husk of Elder VolCartin began to spiderweb with glowing red fissures. Then, with a sound of a mountain collapsing, the charred exterior didn't just fall; it disintegrated into fine, black ash.
But as the dust settled, Zulu didn't see a corpse.
Standing in the center of the debris was a man barely six feet tall. He looked completely normal although stark naked, yet his mere presence hit Zulu like a physical blow. The air around the man warped and buckled, the very fabric of the spatial realm groaning as it struggled to contain the sheer density of his existence. It was as if a star had been compressed into the size of a human.
The man turned, his eyes—once golden—now swirling with tribulation like lighting.
The Elder smiled, a slow, predatory grin that carried the satisfaction of a thousand years of waiting.
"The sparks were enough, I see," the Elder's voice didn't travel through the air; it vibrated directly inside Zulu's soul. "Welcome to the path, kid."
Before Zulu could even gasp, the pressure vanished. There was no flash of light, no sound of flight—just a sudden, violent expansion of air as the Elder disappeared. He had ascended, breaking the shackles of the mortal coil to become a Demigod, leaving behind nothing but a stunned disciple.