Pain lingered long after consciousness fully returned.
Xu Yan lay on his back amid the ruins, staring at the unfamiliar sky while his body recalibrated to its new state. Every muscle felt tight, overworked, as though he had been stretched and compressed too many times in too short a span. His meridians throbbed faintly, not with sharp agony but with a dull, constant reminder that something inside him had been forcibly rearranged.
Qi Condensation.
The words surfaced naturally, accompanied by instinctive understanding.
He had entered the first step of cultivation—but not in the way the memories of this body suggested others did. There was no gentle circulation, no careful drawing in of spiritual energy from the environment. What flowed through him now was heavier, rougher, carrying the subtle abrasiveness of torn space.
Xu Yan pushed himself upright slowly.
The moment he moved, the sensation returned—that strange awareness of distance. It was as if invisible lines stretched outward from him, mapping the shape of the world in abstract impressions. Solid objects felt heavier, more resistant. Open space felt pliable, faintly yielding.
He frowned and extended a hand.
The air rippled faintly around his fingers.
Xu Yan's breath caught.
He hadn't activated anything. Hadn't intended to.
You are leaking, the dragon's voice rumbled within him.
Contain yourself.
Xu Yan lowered his hand immediately, heart racing. "That was me?"
It was us, the dragon corrected.
You are not yet separate.
That statement settled uncomfortably in his chest.
Xu Yan rose to his feet, ignoring the lingering soreness in his knee, and scanned the ruins. The void-tainted beasts from earlier were gone, their presence fading like a bad memory—but he knew better now than to assume safety.
This world was not forgiving.
He needed shelter. Food. Information.
And he needed to understand exactly what he could—and could not—do.
Xu Yan moved cautiously through the ruins, every step deliberate. As he walked, fragments of the body's former memories surfaced more clearly: this had once been a minor outpost on the edge of a cultivation territory, abandoned decades ago after something had gone wrong. A spatial instability. A forbidden experiment. The details were hazy, but the fear lingered strongly.
That explained the beasts.
And the ruins.
And why space felt… thin here.
Xu Yan slowed, eyes narrowing.
Thin.
He focused on the sensation again, reaching inward—not forcing, not demanding, but listening.
The dragon stirred.
Careful, it warned.
You stand on a wound.
Xu Yan swallowed. "What kind of wound?"
The kind that bleeds space.
Before he could ask more, the ground ahead shimmered violently.
The air folded inward with a sharp, tearing sound.
Xu Yan barely had time to react.
A distortion opened abruptly a few steps in front of him—jagged, unstable, like a hole punched through reality. From within it, a violent suction erupted, dragging loose stones and debris inward.
Xu Yan stumbled backward, heart hammering as the pull intensified.
"Dragon!" he shouted instinctively.
Do not fight it, the dragon snapped.
Step.
Xu Yan hesitated only a fraction of a second.
Then he stepped forward.
The world lurched.
Xu Yan felt the now-familiar tearing sensation as space twisted around him—not violently this time, but roughly, as if he were forcing his way through a narrow gap that resisted his passage. His stomach churned. His vision blurred.
Then—
he was somewhere else.
Xu Yan staggered, catching himself against a stone wall as the suction vanished behind him. He spun around, breath ragged.
The distortion was gone.
The ruins here looked similar—but the angle of the sun was different. The air felt denser. More stable.
Xu Yan stared, realization dawning slowly.
"I… moved."
Not ran.
Not jumped.
He had stepped through space.
A laugh bubbled up in his chest, half hysterical, half exhilarated.
Then pain slammed into him.
Xu Yan cried out as his legs buckled, dropping him hard to the ground. Every meridian flared as though scraped raw, his vision flashing white as nausea surged.
Blood welled up in his throat.
He coughed violently, crimson splattering against the stone.
That, the dragon said flatly,
is the cost.
Xu Yan lay there trembling, chest heaving as the pain slowly ebbed into a manageable throb.
"So I can travel through space," he rasped. "But it nearly kills me."
Correct.
Xu Yan let out a shaky breath. "Figures."
He forced himself upright again, leaning heavily against the wall. The exhilaration faded quickly, replaced by sober understanding.
This wasn't teleportation.
It was trespassing.
And space did not like being trespassed upon.
Xu Yan rested until the shaking subsided, then continued moving carefully, avoiding areas where the air felt thin or distorted. The dragon's presence guided him subtly now, nudging his awareness away from unstable zones.
Hours passed.
Eventually, the ruins thinned, giving way to sparse forest. Trees with pale bark and faintly glowing leaves towered overhead, their branches whispering softly despite the lack of wind.
Xu Yan paused at the forest's edge, suddenly keenly aware of how exposed he was.
Night was approaching.
And he was still weak.
He moved into the forest cautiously, selecting a shallow depression between thick roots where he could hide. After clearing loose debris, he sat cross-legged and hesitated.
Cultivation.
He had done it once—forced, violent.
Could he do it again… deliberately?
Xu Yan closed his eyes.
The world shifted inward.
He sensed the dragon immediately, coiled within his dantian, vast and heavy.
"I need to stabilize," Xu Yan said quietly. "If I keep moving like this, I'll die."
The dragon regarded him with something that might have been approval—or amusement.
Then learn restraint, it said.
Devouring everything at once only leads to collapse.
Xu Yan focused on his breathing, slow and steady. Instead of drawing in energy aggressively, he allowed the ambient spiritual energy to brush against him—letting the dragon filter it.
The sensation was… strange.
The dragon did not absorb energy directly from the environment.
It absorbed space.
Tiny fractures. Micro-instabilities. Imperfections in the fabric of reality itself.
What reached Xu Yan was the refined residue—still harsh, but manageable.
His dantian warmed gradually.
Qi began to circulate.
Not smoothly. Not elegantly.
But it moved.
Sweat beaded on his brow as he maintained focus, carefully preventing the flow from accelerating beyond what his meridians could handle.
Minutes passed.
Then an hour.
Xu Yan's breathing steadied. The pain receded further, replaced by deep exhaustion.
When he finally opened his eyes, the forest was dark.
Stars glittered above, sharper and closer than any he remembered.
Xu Yan felt… different.
Still weak.
But grounded.
A soft chime echoed in his mind.
[Qi Condensation — Early Stage Stabilized]
Xu Yan exhaled slowly.
He had survived his first day.
That was when the forest went quiet.
Too quiet.
Xu Yan's spine tingled.
From deeper within the trees, something moved—slow, deliberate, heavy enough to make the ground tremble faintly.
Not a beast.
Not mindless.
Something aware.
The dragon stirred, its presence sharpening.
We are not alone, it said.
And this one is not drawn by weakness.
Xu Yan rose silently to his feet, eyes fixed on the darkness between the trees as a pair of pale lights opened within it.
Watching him.
Evaluating.
The night pressed in.
And whatever had found him…
had no intention of letting him pass unnoticed.