Azure Profound Continent

  The mortal farmer's name was Zhang Wei. He was forty-three years old, unmarried, and he had never believed the stories about celestial beings.

  Until he woke up in a metal chamber surrounded by figures in bizarre silver suits with bulbous helmets.

  "GREETINGS HUMAN," one of the figures announced in a deliberately distorted voice. "WE COME IN PEACE. MOSTLY."

  Zhang Wei screamed.

  The examination table beneath him rotated slowly, mechanical arms extending from the walls. Strange lights pulsed in patterns that hurt his eyes. One of the silver figures approached holding an implement that looked disturbingly like a large spoon.

  "WE MUST CONDUCT SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH," the figure continued. "PLEASE REMAIN CALM. THE PROBING WILL COMMENCE SHORTLY."

  "WAIT WAIT WAIT," Zhang Wei shrieked. "Please, honored immortals, I'm just a simple farmer."

  "WE ARE NOT IMMORTALS. WE ARE VISITORS FROM MARS! GREETINGS PROUFOUNDLING!"

  The probing implement turned out to be an actual spoon, used to deliver increasingly absurd "scientific tests." They made Zhang Wei taste seventeen different varieties of grass "for research purposes." They measured his nose from fourteen different angles. They asked him increasingly philosophical questions about his opinions on ducks.

  Three hours later, the metal chamber's floor opened and Zhang Wei found himself falling through empty air before landing, cushioned by invisible force, in a wheat field.

  A wheat field that was, far as he could tell, very far away from his home.

  He lay there for a long time, staring at the stars, trying to process what had just occurred.

  After they returned to base, they found Mike back there, waiting for them.

  "That was terrible," Mike said. He hadn't joined them on the UFO. "You know that was terrible, right?"

  "It was hilarious," Arthur countered. "You should have seen his face when Leo brought out the philosophical duck questions."

  "You traumatized an innocent mortal."

  "We gave him the experience of a lifetime. He'll dine out on that story forever. 'I was abducted by celestial beings and interrogated about waterfowl.' His grandchildren will tell that tale."

  Kevin had remained aboard the UFO but refused to participate in the "experiments." He sat in the corner, clearly uncomfortable but unwilling to directly confront Arthur about it.

  Leo knew, somewhere in the back of his mind, that what they'd done was wrong. Zhang Wei was a person with a life, with legitimate terror at being kidnapped by incomprehensible beings. They'd used their power to amuse themselves at his expense, treating him as entertainment rather than a human being.

  But Arthur's voice echoed in his head: "It's only a game, just chill. See? There's a log off button."

  And in the end, Leo was to exhausted to care.

  His life since transmigration had been an endless sequence of self-inflicted torture. The Divine Sense Press. The centrifuge. Third Person Perspective training. He pushed himself constantly, demanded more and more from his body and mind, accepted suffering as the price of advancement.

  He needed to blow off steam.

  ---

  It was another one of Leo's breaks in the game world of Azure Profound Continent when, to his surprise, Kevin approached and asked to practice Common. Apparently he had been learning it for months.

  "What happened to making money to afford your own Eclipse?" Leo asked.

  "That plan has been delayed. The three of us have been talking, and we've realized there are a lot more bottlenecks coming up in your cultivation. We don't want to hold you back."

  "Bottlenecks? I thought with the NFL we basically have a clear path to Nascent Soul. It shouldn't be too hard, right?"

  Kevin shook his head. "If you think about it, there are quite a few issues that will crop up. The most immediate one is that after you advance to Foundation Establishment, the divine press won't be useful enough for you to cultivate with. Even though we've swapped out the storage rings with peak Gold Core weapons, it will just barely be enough for you to reach 10k Si."

  "Sure, once you lifebond your NFL gear we'll be able to steal some Nascent Soul tier weapons, but that still leaves a full six months to a year without divine press training. We can't let you fall behind and have people think you're a busted draft pick."

  He paused, then continued. "In addition, Earth technology really only goes up to Deity Transformation. Advancing past Nascent Soul means we would need honest fights. We can't just rely on realm suppression anymore. We need to start thinking of ways to get past that barrier."

  "And Void Refining? Earth doesn't have any cultivators at that level. At those stages the otherworldly demon summoning formation would be a huge hindrance, restricting our cultivation."

  Leo reassured him. "It's okay, Kevin. I'm sure by then we'll be smarter and stronger. We'll figure stuff out. Maybe make some Great Atomic Qi Bombs."

  Kevin pressed on, holding up another finger. "And there's so much more. The vast majority of people on earth don't bother improving spiritual roots and just stick with Inferior Gold Cores. If they do decide to repeatedly reform their gold core until they reach superior grade, that takes a long time. Many years."

  "If we found spiritual medicine to improve your spiritual roots, you would save a lot of time when grinding for your Superior Gold Core."

  He held up another finger. "Then there's the gulf of divine sense needed. As each level grows, our respawn time triples. In the future realms you might not even have time to play in Azure Profound Continent. You'd spend all your time waiting for the cooldown."

  Kevin's voice grew more animated. "On Earth basically every single ancient heaven-and-earth treasure has been consumed, who says it's the same here in Azure Profound Continent? Maybe we can find something for your divine sense, saving decades of cultivation."

  He met Leo's eyes directly. "We can't let you keep carrying us forever. We need to pull our own weight. There is so much we can do to help you. And the stronger you get, the easier it will be for us to drink some soup and advance too."

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  "You eat the meat, we drink the broth, and we all become immortals."

  ---

  Pond Gazing Sect

  Liu Heng fell in love with Sister Zhou Yanmei on a Tuesday.

  Zhou Yanmei had been helping the kitchen staff prepare lunch because she had noticed the head cook's arthritis flared.

  Liu Heng watched her carry steaming platters to the dining hall, her Foundation Establishment cultivation making the heavy loads trivial, her smile bringing joy to the disciples of the Pond Gazing Sect.

  He worked up the courage to speak to her three weeks later. She laughed at his fumbling introduction, the way spring rain laughs at the flowers it nourishes. By the end of the conversation, she had agreed to walk with him by the lake that evening.

  That was two weeks ago.

  Now Liu Heng knew the shape of her laugh when she found something genuinely funny versus politely amusing. He knew that she preferred jasmine tea but would drink whatever was offered because refusing felt rude.

  He knew that she hummed folk songs while she walked, old melodies from a village in the southern provinces where her family still lived. He knew the exact pressure of her hand in his when they sat together on the stone bench overlooking the eastern shore.

  He knew he was unworthy of her.

  The thought gnawed at him in the quiet hours before dawn, when meditation should have brought peace but instead brought clarity.

  Zhou Yanmei possessed heavenly spiritual roots, the rarest configuration, the mark of someone with unbounding immortal potential. The elders spoke of her as the future of the sect. Core Formation by thirty. Nascent Soul by fifty. The whole Pond Gazing Sect's hopes rested on her.

  She would revitalize the sect, leading their return to the central continent.

  Liu Heng possessed water and earth spiritual roots. Dual-attribute. It was always his pride, but now it felt like it was holding him back.

  He used to brag about being a Gold Core seed, a Dual-Attribute like him would easily reach Gold Core by sixty. But now that seemed inadequate. Nascent Soul was a dream for men like him, requiring over a century of grueling cultivation that would leave him old and depleted while Zhou Yanmei still looked as young as she did today.

  She would outlive him by centuries. She would watch him grow frail and slow while she remained young and vital. And long before that she would realize what gnawed at Liu Heng's heart: that she had wasted her youth on someone who could never stand beside her as an equal.

  "You're doing it again."

  Zhou Yanmei's voice pulled him from his thoughts. They sat on their usual bench, the moon hanging low over the black water of the lake. She had brought sweet rice cakes from the kitchen, and the remnants of their picnic lay scattered between them.

  "Doing what?"

  "That face." She reached up and pressed her finger to the furrow between his brows.

  "The one where you're calculating something unpleasant."

  "I'm just..."

  "You are." Her hand moved to cup his cheek. Her palm was warm despite the evening chill.

  "Tell me."

  He should have lied. He should have invented some worry about his upcoming assessment or his lagging technique practice. But Zhou Yanmei's eyes caught the moonlight, and her touch made him feel like something precious, and he found himself unable deceive her.

  "I'm not good enough for you."

  She sighed. She had heard this many times the past two weeks. "Liu Heng..."

  "Your spiritual roots are heavenly. Mine are barely adequate. In fifty years, you'll be forming your Nascent Soul, and I'll be..." He swallowed. "I'll be a middle age man struggling to stabilize my Core."

  "Cultivation isn't everything."

  "It's everything." He pulled away from her touch because he couldn't bear the kindness of it.

  "I can imagine the elders are already whispering. They think you're wasting yourself on me. And they're right. You could have anyone. Someone from one of the great sects. Someone with roots to match yours. Someone who could..."

  "I don't want someone else."

  "You should."

  The words hung between them. The lake lapped at the shore with a sound like breathing.

  Zhou Yanmei was quiet for a long moment. When she spoke, her voice was careful. Measured.

  "What if there was a way to change it?"

  "Change what?"

  "Your spiritual roots."

  Liu Heng laughed. A brittle, humorless sound. "Spiritual roots are determined at birth. Everyone knows that."

  "If everything was determined by birth, there would be no immortal path." She stood, brushing rice cake crumbs from her robes. "Come with me."

  She led him along the eastern shore, past the training pavilions, past the dormitories, towards the lake where disciples rarely ventured anymore. The air smelled of deep water and something else, something mineral and ancient.

  "Yanmei, where are we going?"

  "There's something I need to show you." Her voice had changed. Become distant, dreamy. "Something that can help."

  The sect's namesake lake, once vibrant with life, now lay black and perfectly still. No lotus flowers grew along this shore. No insects chirped in the underbrush. The silence pressed against Liu Heng's ears like a physical weight.

  Zhou Yanmei walked to the water's edge. She stood there for a moment, moonlight catching her profile, and then she waded in.

  "Yanmei..."

  "Wait there."

  The water rose around her ankles. Her knees. Her waist. She kept walking, kept moving forward, entering the blackness as though answering a summons.

  Liu Heng's heart hammered against his ribs. "Yanmei, please..."

  She disappeared beneath the surface.

  He lunged forward, ready to dive after her, but some instinct held him at the shore.

  The water was wrong. Even standing beside it, he could feel the wrongness, the way it seemed to drink the moonlight, the way his reflection didn't quite align with his movements, the way the cold radiating from its surface felt less like temperature and more like hunger.

  Seconds passed. A minute.

  Zhou Yanmei emerged.

  She rose from the black water like something from a dream, her robes streaming, her hair plastered to her shoulders. Her hands were cupped before her chest, cradling something.

  She walked toward him, and he saw what she carried.

  His stomach turned to ice.

  It was a heart.

  It pulsed.

  The rhythm was slow and patient, the heartbeat of something that had been waiting for a very long time. The surface gleamed with a crystalline sheen, blue-white in the moonlight, and where the severed arteries wept, the fluid that emerged was something that caught the light and scattered it into fragments of color.

  "What..." His voice cracked. "What is that?"

  "An opportunity." Zhou Yanmei's voice was soft. Reverent. "I found it a few months ago, at the bottom of the lake. I've been waiting for the right moment to show you."

  "That's a heart. That's a human heart."

  "It was." She stepped closer. The pulsing organ glistened in her palms.

  "Now it's something more. She was powerful, Liu Heng. More powerful than anyone in this sect. More powerful than almost anyone who has ever lived. When she died, her love became... this."

  The crystalline fluid dripped between her fingers. Where it struck the ground, the soil darkened and drank it in.

  "It can improve spiritual roots." Zhou Yanmei's eyes were bright. Eager. "I've seen it. Three times now. Disciples who consumed it showed dramatic advancement. Their cultivation barriers crumbled. Their spiritual pathways widened. For hours, they possessed power beyond anything they could achieve naturally."

  "Three disciples?" Liu Heng's mind raced. He thought of the bodies found over the past month. The peaceful expressions. The opened chests. "Yanmei, the deaths of the three disciples... this caused them?"

  "The heart returns." She cut him off, her voice taking on a strange, layered quality. "It searches, and when it doesn't find what it seeks, it returns. The disciples who died, they were merely... incompatible. But you..."

  She pressed closer. The heart pulsed inches from his chest.

  "You could be different. You love me the way she loved him. I can feel it. The heart can feel it. That kind of love. Pure, desperate, willing to do anything, that's what the heart is looking for."

  "Yanmei, you're not making sense. Who is 'she'? What are you talking about?"

  "Consume the heart." The words came out layered, two voices speaking in almost-perfect unison. Zhou Yanmei's and something older, vaster, infinitely sadder.

  "Let it search you. If you're the one it's looking for, you'll gain power beyond imagining. You'll be able to stand beside me forever. That's what you wanted, yes?"

  The ache in his chest, the inferiority, the longing, the desperate need to be worthy, surged forward. She was right. He wanted that. He wanted it more than anything.

  He looked at the heart. The muscle glistened. The arteries trailed like something hungry. The crystalline fluid wept from its surface in a slow, steady drip.

  He thought about raising that organ to his lips. About biting into tissue that should have rotted centuries ago. About swallowing something that had been cut from a corpse and somehow still lived.

  His stomach heaved.

  "I need..." He stepped back. "I need to think about this."

  Zhou Yanmei's face flickered. For a single instant, her expression contorted into something raw, something that belonged to no twenty-three-year-old disciple. Then her smile returned, gentle and patient.

  "Of course." She cradled the heart against her chest, stroking its surface with her thumb. "But don't wait too long, my love. The emptiness only grows. And the heart..."

  The organ pulsed faster in her hands, eager, hungry.

  "...the heart wants to help."