Before there were humans...
There was silence.
No names.
No tongues.
No words carved in stone.
Just the pulse of the land.
The echo of stars.
The quiet breath of a world forming.
The continent of Zhaeren, in the heart of Galaxy 12, was alive, but asleep.
It had no gods.
No kings.
Only potential.
For eons, it slumbered beneath a heavy stillness — mountains unmoving, oceans untroubled, and skies painted in soft hues of creation. The universe had breathed life into it, but it had not yet learned to breathe back.
But then...
In the third epoch of planetary silence, something ancient stirred beneath the crust.
A rhythm. A hum. A vein.
It was not a vein of ore or molten stone.
But a Breath Vein — a current of pure Qi flowing beneath the bones of the earth, as if the world itself had a circulatory system. It pulsed like a sleeping heart, hidden beneath layers of rock and time.
And something… heard it.
In the southern jungles, a massive beast stalked through ancient undergrowth. It had no name, no spoken language — only instinct. Towering over trees, its fur matted with years of damp, it was a beast that had never been hunted. A ruler of canopy and shadow.
It sniffed the air and halted.
The air was… warm. But not from heat.
From power.
Its tusks vibrated faintly.
It stomped the ground, and something beneath responded — a low, almost imperceptible thrum. A ripple. A whisper.
Qi.
Elsewhere — in the west — the tides pulled unnaturally, the moon's light distorted in the reflection of a deep sea trench. There, in the cold void of the ocean floor, a serpent curled around the wreckage of forgotten stone. Its eyes — long blind — suddenly opened.
And it saw currents of energy flowing through the water. Colors it had never known. Sensations it had never imagined.
Qi.
In the far east, a gorilla of living stone sat unmoving atop a peak for decades. It was not hibernating, nor sleeping. It was listening.
And one day, the wind changed.
From silence… came rhythm. From stillness… vibration.
The mountain hummed, and the gorilla moved.
It struck the ground with its fists — and the stone did not shatter. Instead, it resonated. It sang.
Qi.
They were not the only ones.
Demons born from nightmares slithered from cracks in reality. Spirit-possessed creatures emerged from natural formations. The world, once still, became aware of itself.
From instinct, they moved to curiosity.
From curiosity, to hunger.
From hunger… to cultivation.
They began absorbing Qi as they breathed. Their bodies changed. Some grew larger. Others shrank but became denser. Bones turned to crystal. Skin turned to metal. Some lost their physical form entirely and became clouds of sentient mist.
Their minds sharpened. Primitive thought turned to logic.
They crafted laws of survival.
"To move Qi is to dominate."
"To shape Qi is to rule."
"To refine Qi is to transcend."
Without language, they passed this knowledge. Not with words, but through blood, battle, and will.
In time, the first beast clans rose in the South.
Their strength was primal, raw, bound to nature. Qi reinforced muscle and bone, and the land fed their growth.
In the East, constructs were born — stone beasts who carved scripts into mountains with claw and tooth, shaping Qi with symbols they barely understood.
The West birthed the fluidic serpents, who viewed Qi as waves and learned to move with it rather than control it.
In the North, demons came to reign. Born of darkness and thought, they refined Qi through emotion — hatred, desire, wrath. They twisted their forms, transcended flesh, and shaped night itself into armor and weapon.
For millennia, these four dominions existed in balance.
Until balance became greed.
No war started with words.
Only with a single roar.
A border was crossed. A vein was stolen. A river turned red.
And so the Era of Blood Qi began.
For thousands of years, entire species fought — not for survival, but for supremacy. Entire ecosystems were weaponized. Mountains shattered under the clash of titanic Qi-imbued limbs. Forests burned with black flame. Oceans boiled, turning rain into poison.
Spirit beasts fused with their domains — becoming walking storms, living volcanoes, creatures made of gravity and sorrow.
The very laws of nature bent in response.
The Breath Veins themselves, once pure, became corrupted. Some pulsed with madness. Others with chaos. A few simply... died.
The world fractured.
The empires fell into endless war.
And far above…
In a throne hovering beyond time, in a dimension where the stars flowed like rivers...
A being watched.
His body was formless, a silhouette of galaxies.
Eyes like collapsing stars.
A voice like gravity itself.
He had watched the world 12 form.
He had watched it grow.
He had given it Qi, but never guidance.
Now, finally, he stood.
"Millions of years," he whispered, voice echoing in the vacuum. "Still, they only scratch the surface."
He walked through space, hands behind his back.
Looking down at the ruined, glorious mess of Zhaeren.
"No scripture. No gods. No humans. Only survival."
He paused above the northern peak, where a demon king impaled a thunder beast with a blade made from its own horn.
"They believe they are the first cultivators."
He chuckled, voice low and thunderous.
"They were merely the… beta test."
He raised his hand.
Somewhere deep below the ground — beneath bone, beneath time — a new Breath Vein pulsed once.
A special one.
Pure. Untouched. Sleeping. Waiting.
It began to warm.
"Now… let's begin again."
His eyes glowed.
"Let's see what a human does… when he finds the First Vein."