The obsidian core glowed with a captive fire in the low light of Asuta's closet. Its sheen was the color of deep forest shadow and old blood, holding within it a geological scream from the planet's molten heart. This was the catalyst—the mineral memory of primordial Yang he needed to force the Vermilion Blood Purification Pill into being.
The other components were arrayed like surgical instruments: the lethally concentrated capsaicin extract in a sealed vial, the powdered iron and hawthorn, the base paste of purified clay and spring water. The air hummed with potential and the faint, electric smell of ozone from his previous work.
He began at midnight, the house silent around him. Ruri was asleep. The world was unaware.
First, he prepared the crucible. Not the cobalt one, but a smaller, thicker vessel of unglazed stoneware Li Chen had included—better for containing extreme, dry heat. He placed the obsidian core within it and, using a butane torch, applied a pinpoint flame to its greenest facet. This wasn't to melt it; it was to agitate it, to wake the sleeping memory of fire. He closed his eyes, his spiritual sense merging with the minute vibrations of the crystal lattice. He listened for the song of the volcano.
It was a faint, deep thrum, a bass note of creation. He matched his breathing to it, stoking it with his intent, pouring into the stone the concept of purification, of scouring heat. For an hour, he stood there, a conduit between will and mineral. Slowly, imperceptibly, the obsidian's surface began to sweat—tiny, perfect beads of a clear, viscous fluid exuded from its pores. Obsidian's Tears. The distilled essence of its fiery birth, carrying the signature of extreme pressure and heat.
He collected only three drops with a capillary pipette, each one precious, shimmering with a faint inner light. The core itself dimmed, its fiery sheen gone, now just a piece of beautiful, inert rock.
Next, the amalgamation. In the cobalt crucible, he mixed the base paste with the iron and hawthorn powder. He added the capsaicin extract—a single drop that made the air sting and his eyes water. Finally, with reverence, he added the three drops of Obsidian's Tears.
The reaction was not explosive, but profound. The grey paste in the crucible seethed, bubbling and churning as if alive. Its color shifted through spectrum of rust, to copper, and finally stabilized into a deep, luminous vermilion, the exact color of oxygenated blood under a bright sun. It pulsed once, a wave of dry, scorching heat that pushed against Asuta's face, then settled into a gentle, radiant warmth. The pill was complete. It looked like a perfect marble of solidified sunset.
He didn't hesitate. He lifted the still-warm pill and swallowed it.
It tasted of fire and metal.
The effect was not a wave; it was an invasion.
A conflagration ignited in his stomach and raced through his bloodstream. It felt like he had swallowed a star. Every capillary, every vein, every artery became a conduit for liquid sunlight. He gasped, clawing at his shirt, his skin flushing a furious, blotchy red. He could feel his blood boiling, not with heat, but with a purifying fury. Impurities—the chemical residue of a modern diet, environmental toxins, the sluggishness of a sedentary life—were being incinerated at a cellular level.
He fell into the first stance of the Sutra, Furnace Heart Circulation, a brutal series of isometric muscle locks and controlled hyperventilation designed to crank his circulatory system into overdrive. His heart hammered against his ribs like a prisoner trying to break stone. Sweat poured from him, but this sweat was different—it was tinged with a rusty brown color and carried a sharp, acrid smell. The dross of his biology was being expelled.
The pain was exquisite, a systemic cleansing that left no cell untouched. He saw flashes behind his eyelids: the red of his own blood cells magnified, the black specks of impurities being chased and consumed by golden fire. Time lost meaning. He was a universe of pain and purging light.
When the storm finally passed, he was on his knees on the floor of his closet, panting, drenched in foul-smelling sweat. The vermilion glow had faded from his skin, leaving it pale but with a new, almost translucent quality. He could see the delicate blue tracery of veins at his wrists more clearly. His heartbeat, when it settled, was a deep, powerful drumbeat he could feel in his teeth. His blood felt light, charged, eager.
Layer 4. Blood Meridian Network, Purified. The river was clean. The foundation was another step closer to unshakable.
He spent an hour in the shower, scrubbing the residue away, watching the brown-tinged water swirl down the drain. The body in the mirror was a stranger's—lean, defined, moving with a fluid, unconscious grace that spoke of optimized systems. He looked like a top-tier decathlete in peak condition. The softness of the teenager was gone, carved away by the Sutra's relentless chisel.
But the cost of progress was vigilance. The Seekers knew he was active. The Foundation was watching from a distance. His peaceful window was closing.
---
Two days later, the second message from the Foundation arrived. Not a list. A request. The encrypted text was brief: "Analysis verified. Item #047-B stabilized per instructions. Request consult: Item #112-A. Private viewing. Tonight. Coordinates attached. Discretion mandatory. – Li"
It was a test, but also an acknowledgment. They had used his knowledge and it had worked. Now they wanted more, and they were offering a glimpse into their inner sanctum in return. The coordinates led to a nondescript office building in the city's financial district, likely a front for a subterranean vault.
Asuta contemplated the risk. Going into their territory was dangerous. But intelligence was a weapon, and he was starved for data on what they had truly gathered. He needed to know what pieces were already on the board.
He told Ruri he was studying with a group for a late project—another lie that tasted of ash—and took the train downtown.
The building was a glass and steel tower, mostly dark at 9 PM. A security guard at the front desk, who had clearly been prepped, nodded him toward a private elevator without a word. The elevator had no buttons. It descended for a long time, humming softly, the digital display showing sub-levels that didn't exist on any public schematic.
The doors opened onto a stark, white corridor that felt more like a surgical wing than an archive. The air was filtered, cool, and carried a faint hum of suppressed energy. Mr. Li waited, dressed in a lab coat over his suit, his expression unreadable.
"This way," he said, turning without greeting. "You have ten minutes."
They passed through a series of secure doors—biometric, keypad, finally a thick vault door that sighed open. The room beyond was a high-ceilinged chamber lined with alcoves, each illuminated by soft, neutral light. It was a gallery of the anomalous.
Asuta's spiritual sense, heightened by his recent breakthrough, flared to life. The room was a cacophony of faded whispers, trapped energies, and dormant curses. He saw a spearhead that hummed with a thirst for dragon's blood, a mirror that reflected a room that wasn't there, a clock whose hands moved backwards in the presence of sorrow.
Mr. Li led him to a central pedestal. Under a dome of reinforced glass lay Item #112-A.
It was a scale. A single, palm-sized scale, iridescent like an oil slick on dark water. It shimmered with greens, purples, and deep blacks. It was not from any fish or reptile known to modern science. Asuta knew it instantly. It was a Dragon Scale. Not from a true, world-spanning Heavenly Dragon, but from a lesser, terrestrial water dragon—a being of nascent intelligence and significant power that should have been extinct before human history began.
And it was fresh. The spiritual resonance clinging to it wasn't centuries old. It was decades, at most. The energy signature was weak, fragmented, but unmistakably alive in its origin.
His blood ran cold.
"Where," he asked, his voice dangerously quiet, "did you acquire this?"
"A dredging operation in the South China Sea, 1987," Mr. Li replied, watching his face closely. "Pulled from a deep oceanic trench. Carbon dating is inconclusive. Material composition is unknown. It absorbs 99.9% of light. It emits a unique neutrino pattern. Your analysis?"
Asuta stared at the scale, the truth dawning with horrifying clarity. He had been operating on a flawed assumption. He thought the catalyst for Earth's doom was the arrival of the wounded Immortal from the Xi Kingdom in 2024.
But what if the Immortal wasn't coming to a virgin world?
What if he was coming home?
The myths of dragons, of ancient gods, of lost civilizations… they weren't just stories. They were fragmented memories of a time when Earth was a minor, backwater cultivation world, long before its Qi faded into dormancy. The deep trenches, the unexplored caverns, the poles… they weren't just empty. They were tombs. And tombs could be reopened.
This scale was proof. A dragon had been alive, somewhere on or near Earth, within the last fifty years. If a dragon could survive the Great Qi Dormancy, what else had?
The wounded Immortal wouldn't be discovering a new primitive planet. He would be stumbling upon a forgotten colony, a slumbering outpost of the Xiolong Empire itself. And his arrival wouldn't just awaken Qi. It would awaken every sleeping horror that had been left behind, every dormant guardian, every half-dead monster that had been waiting millennia for the energy to return.
The apocalypse wasn't just coming from the stars.
It was buried in their own soil, under their own seas, waiting to be resurrected.
"Your analysis?" Mr. Li repeated, a note of urgency in his voice.
Asuta looked up, and the ancient dread in his eyes made the professional Mr. Li take a half-step back. "You have it backwards," Asuta said, his voice hollow. "You think this is a curiosity. A puzzle. It's not. It's a tombstone. And a warning."
He pointed a finger at the shimmering scale. "That is from a living creature. A dragon. A minor one, but a dragon nonetheless. It did not die a million years ago. It died within the lifetime of my grandfather. This world… is not what you think it is. The things you are collecting are not artifacts. They are leftovers. And the diners may yet return for the scraps."
Mr. Li's face paled. "You're suggesting…"
"I'm not suggesting anything," Asuta cut him off, the full weight of his revised doom crashing down upon him. His timeline, his preparations—they were all based on a foundational error. The threat wasn't just external. It was endemic. "I am telling you that your Foundation is not cataloging the aftermath of a storm. You are poking a bear that is not dead, but hibernating. And you are doing it in the dark, with flashlights."
He turned from the pedestal, the sight of the scale now sickening. "My consultation is this: seal this vault. Stop your active acquisition. You are not archaeologists. You are grave robbers in a crypt that still has a heartbeat. And you are drawing attention to yourselves, and to all of us."
He walked toward the door, his mind reeling, recalculating everything.
"Asuta!" Mr. Li called after him, the first time he'd used his name. "What do we do?"
Asuta paused at the vault door, not looking back. "You pray the sleepers do not wake. And you hope that when the real storm comes from the stars, you are not still standing in this graveyard, holding their stolen things."
He left, the elevator carrying him back up to the mundane world. The night city lights sprawled before him, beautiful, ignorant, and fragile.
He had achieved Layer 4. He was stronger, faster, purer than any human had a right to be.
And for the first time since he'd awakened in that classroom, he felt it wasn't going to be nearly enough.