The first thing Shen Wei noticed was how loud everything had become.
Not louder. That would imply the volume changed. No, it was like he'd been listening to the world through a wall his entire life, and someone had just torn it down. The clicking of the beast tide, the screaming of cultivators, the crack of qi-infused techniques splitting the air. All of it hit him in a wave of raw sound, so detailed it made his teeth hurt.
His second thought was less poetic.
I have no idea what I'm doing.
The spiritual energy inside him moved like a living thing. Not flowing through meridians the way cultivation manuals described. He didn't have meridians. He never had. Instead, the energy moved through everything. His bones, his blood, the space between his cells. Like someone had poured water into a sponge and the sponge didn't know it was supposed to have channels.
Forty-six minutes. The countdown ticked in the corner of his vision, faint gold numbers he couldn't dismiss no matter how hard he blinked.
The beast tide churned across the dried riverbed below. From up here on the cliff shelf, Shen Wei could see the shape of it now. Thousands of creatures. Low-tier Riftworms mostly, segmented things the length of a man's arm, with jaws that could cut through leather armor like wet cloth. They moved in spirals, a pattern that looked random from ground level but from above had an obvious center. Something was directing them.
That didn't matter yet. What mattered was the four figures huddled behind a boulder formation about two hundred meters to his left.
Miao Fen. And three others.
They'd made it to the cliff base but not far enough. A cluster of Riftworms had split from the main swarm and was circling their position. Maybe sixty of them. The worms weren't attacking yet. They were tightening the ring. Patient. Methodical.
Shen Wei's body moved before his brain finished thinking. He half-slid, half-fell down the rocky slope, gravel scraping his palms raw. His body was still human. Still baseline. The spiritual energy inside him hadn't changed that yet, and he didn't know how to make it.
He landed hard on the riverbed, his ankle rolling on a loose stone. Pain shot up his leg. Normal pain. The kind that meant something was wrong and his body couldn't fix it the way a cultivator's would.
The worms noticed him.
The nearest one raised its front segment, its jaw plates clicking open and shut in rapid succession. A threat display. Or maybe a signal. Either way, the entire cluster shifted its attention.
Sixty Riftworms. Zero combat training. An ankle that might be sprained. And a body full of energy he had no clue how to use.
"Great start," he muttered.
He pulled the survival knife from his belt. Standard issue, dull from use, blade about as long as his forearm. Against a single Riftworm, maybe. Against sixty, he might as well be waving a chopstick.
The first worm lunged.
It moved fast. Faster than his eyes could track, which meant his body had no chance of dodging. He threw himself sideways on instinct and felt the wind of it pass his ear. The worm hit the rock behind him and immediately coiled for another strike.
Then something happened.
The energy inside him surged. Not controlled. Not directed. It just reacted, the way a hand jerks from a hot stove. A pulse of raw force burst outward from his body in every direction.
The worm in front of him didn't explode. It just stopped. Hung in the air for a fraction of a second, then dropped like its strings had been cut. Dead. No visible wound.
The notification appeared:
[Law of Weakness: BROKEN]
[Passive effect active: Those born without Grade shall not cultivate.]
[Inversion: Those born without Grade are unbound by cultivation limits.]
[Warning: Effect parameters undefined. Host output may vary.]
"May vary." Shen Wei stared at the dead worm. "That's reassuring."
The other Riftworms didn't seem reassured either. They paused, their clicking falling out of sync for the first time. Whatever they sensed from him, it made them hesitate.
It didn't last long.
The swarm surged forward. All of them. At once.
Shen Wei raised his hands because he didn't know what else to do. The energy inside him pulsed again, but weaker this time. It caught the first wave, maybe ten worms, and scattered them like leaves. The rest kept coming.
A jaw clamped onto his left forearm. He felt the teeth pierce the skin, felt the muscle compress. He stabbed downward with the knife, driving it through the worm's midsection. It released and thrashed on the ground.
Another latched onto his calf. He kicked it off, barely, and felt hot blood start to run down his leg.
This is what dying feels like, he thought. Not dramatic. Just small wounds adding up.
Then a bolt of blue light cut through the air and vaporized three worms in a clean line.
Miao Fen stood at the edge of the boulder formation, her hands shaking, a basic qi-gathering talisman crumbling to ash between her fingers. Grade Two output. Barely enough to kill a Riftworm, but she'd compressed it into a focused beam.
"Get behind us!" she yelled.
Behind them was another girl and two boys Shen Wei didn't know by name. All low-Grade. All terrified. All standing their ground.
He almost laughed. The sacrifice decoys were trying to save him.
He didn't go behind them. He went forward.
Not because he had a plan. Because the energy inside him was building again, and this time it felt different. Not a pulse. More like a vibration. Like every atom in his body was humming at a frequency that was pulling the spiritual energy of the environment toward him.
A new notification:
[Anomaly detected: Host is absorbing ambient spiritual energy without meridian filtration.]
[Rate: 340% above standard Grade One baseline.]
[Warning: Unfiltered absorption may cause cellular damage.]
[Warning: Unfiltered absorption may cause local spiritual energy depletion.]
[Warning: The Heavenly Dao is observing.]
Three warnings in a row. None of them were stop signals. Just the system telling him the consequences, like a sign that says "wet floor" while the building is on fire.
He let it build.
The energy gathered in his palms. No technique. No form. Just raw, compressed spiritual energy shaped by nothing except his intent, which at this exact moment was extremely simple.
Kill these things.
He slammed both palms onto the ground.
The shockwave ripped outward in a ring. The ground cracked in a web pattern, dust and gravel blasting upward. Every Riftworm within thirty meters was thrown into the air. Most didn't come back down intact.
When the dust settled, the riverbed was quiet. Worm fragments littered the cracked stone. The air smelled like ozone and copper.
Shen Wei stayed on his knees, breathing hard. His palms were bleeding. His forearm wound was worse than he'd thought. His vision blurred, then cleared, then blurred again.
[Energy reserves: 7%]
[Cellular damage: Moderate. Micro-fractures detected in both hands.]
[Recommendation: Rest. Absorb. Recover.]
Rest. He had forty-one minutes before something called a Warden showed up, a beast tide still raging in the central zone, and four people behind him who were staring at him like he'd grown a second head.
Miao Fen reached him first. Her face was white, her hands still trembling from the talisman discharge.
"How did you do that?" she asked. Her voice cracked on the last word. "You're Grade Zero. You've always been Grade Zero. I saw your assessment records. You have no spiritual root. No meridians. Nothing."
Shen Wei looked at his bleeding palms. Good question.
"Something changed," he said. It was the truth. Just not the useful kind.
"Something changed? You just killed sixty Riftworms. Grade Five cultivators struggle with that."
"Then I guess we should move before something harder shows up."
He stood. His legs didn't want to cooperate, but they held. The other three had come out from behind the boulders now. Two boys and a girl. All staring. Nobody speaking.
One of the boys finally said, "The main force went toward the central rift. We heard fighting, then it went quiet."
Quiet. After a beast tide. That was never good.
Shen Wei looked toward the center of the Wastes. The sky above it had changed color. Where it had been the dull grey of twilight, it was now a deep, bruised purple. Not cloud cover. Something else. Like the sky itself had been wounded.
His system flickered a new message:
[Spatial instability detected: Central Rift Zone.]
[Estimated severity: Class 4 Reality Fracture.]
[Advisory: Avoid area.]
[Note: 22 human life signatures detected within fracture zone. Declining.]
Declining. That word sat in his stomach like a stone.
Twenty-two cultivators. The main force. Kang was with them.
"We need to go toward the central rift," Shen Wei said.
Miao Fen looked at him like he'd lost his mind. "The system advisory literally said avoid."
He blinked. "You can see that?"
"No. You said it out loud."
Had he? He didn't remember speaking. The line between thought and voice was getting blurry. That was probably bad.
"There are people in there," he said. "Twenty-two of them."
"And how many beasts?"
He didn't have a number. He didn't need one. The purple sky and the declining life signatures said enough.
"You don't have to come," he said. Not harshly. Just honestly. "Get to higher ground. The cliff fissure I came through is sealed now, but there are caves along the northeast face. Small enough that the big things can't follow. Wait there. If nobody comes for you by morning, head south. Shen City is three days on foot."
Miao Fen looked at the other three. Then back at him. Then at the bruised sky over the central rift.
"You just killed sixty beasts and you can barely stand. Your hands are bleeding. Your leg is bleeding. You said you have forty-something minutes before... whatever a Warden is. And you want to go toward the thing that's killing Grade Fives."
"Yes."
She closed her eyes. Took one breath. Opened them.
"Then we'll go to the caves."
He nodded. No judgment. She was being smart. He was being something else.
"Shen Wei," she said as he turned away.
He stopped.
"If you make it back, I want to know