Kaya was steaming hot. Literally. Dorian knew something was off the moment he saw trails of smoke rising from the tent flaps. He went in, frowning, to the sight of his sister red as a roast crab. Qi leaked out of her like she was a piping kettle.

“Er…” He made to check her vitals, then froze. The closer he got the more volatile her aura felt, like even the slightest touch might set off a chain reaction. She groaned, still mired in deep sleep.

This was the issue with experimental pills. By their natures they led to hard-to-predict results—like this one. He scratched at the back of his neck, flitting through possibilities. Was this qi deviation? No. Too… calm. No blood splattered the walls, no skin flaked off. Likely she was just filled to the tippy-top with qi, more qi than even Dorian had bargained for when he fed her the pill.

Thinking back, the notes that this pill’s inventor had left were vague and probably very inaccurate. He’d warned her of the risks when he’d fed it to her. He was pretty sure it should come to no life-threatening harm—then again, subliming two years of a person’s life and converting it to sheer energy was as radical an experiment as this realm ever saw. He took a scan of her body, seeking foreign qi sources, the influence of the Profound beasts. Nothing. He looked too for the stress fractures her body had gathered, the marks of the injuries she’d sustained. Nothing. Breathing a sigh, he closed his eyes. That much, at least, was done. She’d been healed, treated; all that was left was to survive the treatment.

Her body seemed to be trying to assimilate it. In her sleep, unconscious, she’d advanced a great deal. He stepped in closer, trying to get a better gauge, and frowned. Origin Level seven? How many years off her life had it cost? And she hadn’t even absorbed most of the qi, too; that dispersed to the skies. If she was full-on cycling, just how high could she go?

There were tradeoffs to every shortcut. Sure, Kaya had jumped more cultivation in a night than she’d done in six months, but she’d also done the equivalent of voluntarily ingesting a permanent poison. Frowning, he gently pressed a hand to her wrist and felt for her aura—he could feel something slightly off-color about it, now, even as it roared to new heights. Something a little sickly. There was no lengthening that life besides pursuing the natural course of cultivation and the extra longevity it’d grant. Still he could tell something was off, an indescribable quality to it which set it slightly off-kilter. She was weaker than she should be at this stage—only slightly so, but it was true nonetheless; her future cultivation would likely be a little slower too. In taking the pill she’d traded a little potential for immediate power: that was the devil’s bargain. And it fascinated him.

There were three time horizons in which he considered this discovery. The first was the short-term. If he went all-in on lifespan-stealing pills, he’d get a huge boost of power fast. In the mid-long term, though—say the next hundred years—that decision would come to haunt him.

Then again, perhaps it’d be like jumpstarting a firework. What about in the time horizon after that? Once he reached the higher atmosphere, claimed the heights of power for this realm, he’d find other workarounds for the sacrificed lifespan. He nodded, a grin surfacing on his lips. He was Dorian, for crying out loud! If he set his mind to it, and with a powerbase in (hopefully) the Profound Realm to back him up, he had a solid shot at pulling it off.

The only thing was that it’d also mean giving up some of the full long-term potential of his bloodline. A bloodline he’d nearly died to acquire. A bloodline that was by far his most valuable asset—and that he was sure, Profound Realm or not, would be very hard to replace.

For the next half-hour or so he paced around the tent, occasionally administering light doses of healing elixir to Kaya as she turned over herself, and thought. He drew up timelines in his mind. He made lists of advantages and disadvantages. He debated, played demon’s advocate, hemmed and hawed, stewed in his thoughts in the dark.

He let out an annoyed growl. No. There was no satisfactory conclusion to be had. He was at an impasse. It wasn’t just loss aversion which kept him from immolating his bloodline for quick qi. He was the last person who needed reminding that this was a speedrun and that speed was everything.

“Bah.” Scowling, he settled down into a lotus position and began to cycle. He’d let it simmer in the back of his mind for now—deal with it later, in a few hours, when his mind wasn’t so frazzled. While he vacillated, he burned up crucial time in which he could be cycling in this once-in-a-generation qi environment. He’d break through first, he decided. Plans came after.

So for the rest of the night he stayed by Kaya’s side and drew in the energies of the universe. It was, as always, transcendent. He felt almost drugged each time he cycled, but that wasn’t quite right; that implied tampering with the mind and its faculties. Instead he felt opened up to the universe, at one with it. Considerations of flesh and of bodies melted away, leaving only I and the World. At times when he sank into deep enough meditative trances, the differences between the two vanished also.

Time lost meaning. Qi flowed through him in an unbroken stream; there was a lyrical quality to the ordeal. He hummed in tune with the world, a song rising in pitch and ferocity, gushing to a violent end—

[Level-up!]

[Origin] lv. 10]

He let excess qi waft out of his mouth as he rose up from the trance of cycling. It felt like kicking up from the bottom of a deep pool, arching for the surface; when he broke out he sucked in two deep gulps of air, his hair matted to the sides of his head. It was done. Origin Realm, complete.

At this point, most cultivators would need extensive preparation to assault the Vigor stage. Some prepped for months and still met bottlenecks when they tried to break through. The Vigor stage was more than a quantitative increase: it was a reshaping of the body, building a robust physical foundation on which to place the Profound pools. With his bloodline, though, he shouldn’t have any setbacks. All there was to do was to assault the barrier.

Even from a cursory scan of his competition earlier, he could tell he was late to the party. Most of the scions of the major clans had already made deep inroads into the Vigor Realm. Nearly all possessed fierce bloodlines to boot, not to mention all sorts of protective treasures Rust Tribe had never seen before. Among the weakest tribes like Rust, he might be a standout talent as he was; but to snatch a tournament slot he’d need more power—and fast.Against a fighter with a good bloodline, he had no assurances against even mid-stage Vigor cultivators right now.

He stood, shaking his limbs loose, and glanced at Kaya’s prone form. Still asleep, and snoring loudly too. Good. It seemed the worst was over for her. She’d recover in time. Swinging into a wide back stretch, he exited the tent.

Outside, the night still swamped everything. The only sound came from the geyser of spirit liquid, its defiant roar a constant beat against the blackness of the sky. Even from here, a hundred-odd feet out, he felt its spray caressing his cheeks. As he looked at it he lost himself in thought. The question of the life-stealing pill surfaced in his mind again like a knot which refused to untangle.

At last, he sighed. He couldn’t go through with it. At least, not fully. In the longest time horizon, diluting a God’s bloodline would only drag him down. It was important not to become drunk on short-termism. Most men were far too prone to it, and he was no mere man. He’d not fall prey to such mundane mistakes.

Still, though, perhaps he didn’t need to go all-in. What if he only traded a small chunk of lifespan away? If his estimations were right—big if, to be sure—Kaya had only sacrificed at most a decade of her life. By now he’d come to the very tip of the Origin Realm. If he wanted to compete—nay, assure success—he’d need to cross the threshold, and it wasn’t happening tonight.

Not without a little extra help.

He squinted at the moons’ paths across the skies. How many hours did he have? Five, a little more? After that the first trials would start, and he’d start a step behind too. Unless…

His gaze dropped slowly to settle on Hu’s tent. Tomorrow they’d be running an Alchemy shop out of it, hopefully to great profit, but there was still some time between then and now. Enough time to cook up one more pill. And with it, one more advancement.

***

Rust Tribe was among the weakest of the tribes present, but it was not the smallest. That distinction went to a tribe known only as the Dregs. Its members were a cobbled-together collection of those thrown out by bigger clans—misfits and the outcasts come together. They wore torn-up cloth clothes and boots made of old hides. Some wore no shoes at all, letting the calluses on their feet do the work. Half of them had their front teeth missing; nearly all were missing some body part or another. They numbered not even fifty, and by all rights they shouldn’t have even been here.

When the summons came to all the tribes of the Western Desert, however, one man insisted they come. His name was Pearl; it was his Dreg-name, assigned to him after he’d been stripped of his birth name by the clan that’d kicked him out. He led the Dregs. And now, as the night wore on, he was deep in discussion with his loyal underlings.

They sat around a small fire in a small tent, their small, dirt-streaked young faces flushed by firelight. Pearl sat at the forefront, smiling broadly. Unlike the rest of them, his face wasn’t marked in the slightest by wrinkles or dirt. His skin was smooth—too-smooth, inhumanly so. His eyes seemed to shimmer like crystals, and if you looked into them you got an impression of unending depth. But the strangest thing about him was the mark on his head forehead: a golden infinity which glowed with its own eerie light.

Were someone of a high enough tier present, they would’ve been astounded at the sight of him. For while the rest of the dregs were squarely in the lower echelons of the Origin Realm, this boy had cleared well over the boundary of Vigor. It was a feat that should’ve been impossible given his meager resources. It was a feat that might even invite suspicion. How was it done? How was it done? Theft of precious materials? Banned tactics? A deal with a demon, even?

In this case they’d be right on all counts.

“Well?” he said, his voice clear as a bell. “Is the scouting done?”

A wave of nods flowed around the campfire. “Yes, my liege!” Squeaked a girl. She couldn’t be more than fifteen and she looked at Pearl with complete devotion.

“Good!” He steepled his fingers and leaned forward, eyes glistening. “Then tell me about the other competitors. Tell me who I’m up against.”