Jin Shu climbed back into the crevice. It was incredibly dark, but with his cultivation, he could see fairly well. The ceiling was just tall enough for him to stand at first, but soon he had to crouch, and eventually, he was forced to nearly crawl.
“Can you tell how much farther?” he asked Nano.
“Two minutes.” Nano responded imdiately.
After one minute, Jin Shu was on his hands and knees, crawling over the jagged rocks. Thirty seconds later, he was on his stomach, squeezing through the narrow passage. He could see a faint light just ahead. He wasn’t claustrophobic, but having an entire mountain pressing down on him still didn’t feel great.
Finally, he crawled out from a small hole into a wide, open chamber. It was at least twenty ters around and thirty ters tall. High above, moonlight filtered in through a jagged opening, a reminder he’d spent the last of the daylight in that tight crevice.
Glancing around, he imdiately noticed several stone pedestals along the walls with various items upon them. So looked familiar, while others he couldn’t recognize.
He stepped closer to one of the items, recognizing it instantly and stunned to see it here in this world.
It was a white porcelain throne. In other words—a toilet…
“What the hell is a toilet doing here?”
“There seems to be a collection of items from Earth.”
He continued looking around. The chamber was large, with every wall lined with pedestals holding items. In the very center, directly below the hole in the ceiling, was a huge nest made of boulders and tree limbs. Nano confird that was where the other Winged Tiger and the bullets were located.
He decided to save that for last.
Most of the pedestals held useless items from Earth, such as random books in tatters or appliances like a microwave and a toaster.
Finally, he found a special pedestal at the very back of the chamber. Made of what looked like pure gold and covered in carvings of mystical creatures, it glowed with a soft light.
On it lay a slightly tattered scroll, and it seed to belong to this world rather than Earth—unless Earth had cultivation techniques. The label read:
[Body Inscribing Art - One-of-a-kind Cultivation Technique]
He reached out to grab the scroll—
“Warning!” Nano’s voice blared, filling his mind with a loud ringing.
“Ah! Stop that!” Jin Shu shouted as the ringing stabbed his mind like a needle.
“Apologies, but that scroll seems to be surrounded by an energy field invisible to the naked eye.”
“Thanks for the warning, but next ti, words alone will suffice.”
“Understood.”
Jin Shu grabbed a stone and tossed it toward the scroll.
Zap!
The stone was instantly vaporized.
His face paled. “Thanks for the warning, Nano. If it weren’t for you, I’d have lost my hand just now.”
“You’re welco.”
“Any ideas on how to get that scroll?”
“Certainly! Give us a ‘Nano’ second…” Nano responded cheerfully. “That was a joke,” it added with a hint of sadness after a slight pause.
“Oh, haha. It was funny.” Jin Shu gave a fake laugh.
“Try examining the pedestal. There may be a switch of so kind.”
Following Nano’s advice, he inspected the pedestal and soon found an intricate carving of a dragon that didn’t match the rest. It was so detailed that it almost seed ready to leap out.
He pressed against the carving, and it recessed.
“The energy field has dissipated.”
With Nano’s prompt, he reached for the scroll again. As he took hold of it, the scroll felt warm, seemingly infused with a special power.
Carefully, he unrolled it, only to find…nothing. “Wait, there’s nothing on it?”
“It may require an external energy source.”
“I could try Qi,” Jin Shu said as he channeled his Qi into his hands. The parchnt absorbed it quickly, and letters soon began to appear.
‘The Body Inscribing Art is my greatest accomplishnt. By combining runes with the body, they can unleash a power greater than those used on weapons. It is my belief that runes were ant for the body since their inception, but over the long annals of history, that use was lost to ti.’
“So, this cultivation technique uses runes on the body. I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
“It does say ‘one-of-a-kind’.”
“Hah, you’re right.”
As more of his Qi flowed into the scroll, additional words gradually appeared. By the ti he had depleted half of his Qi reserves, the words finally stopped. Below the introduction was a blood red warning, the letters seed as if they could start bleeding at any mont.
‘If you cannot tolerate extre pain, do not even dream of cultivating this technique!’
Under that was what looked like a diary entry and the detailed instructions for the technique.
‘When I was young there existed a tribe—I've forgotten their na after all these years. But, I rember they used a special ink to cover their bodies with tattoos that they believed would grant them powers. That tribe has long since been driven to extinction by powerful enemies. However before their final monts I had the opportunity to witness an extraordinary feat perford by one of the tribesn.
They were a young man no older than sixteen and had at most reached the Qi Realm. However, their opponents were two n at the Spirit Realm. That young man died fighting those n, yet, unbelievably, so too did the two n. Killed by the young man.
The scene was unimaginable, the young man at the Qi Realm was no match for the two older n. That was until his tattoos ca to life, and when I say they ca to life I don't an that taphorically, I an it quite literally. His tattoos were of a dragon and a tiger fight over a mountain. Just as the young man was on his dying breath his tattoos leapt from his skin, catching the two n unaware and unguarded. The young man took both his attackers with him into the afterlife.
I was curious, how did the young man's tattoos co to life? So, I checked his body, and I found that he had two tattoos. One of the dragon, tiger and mountain, and the other was a rune I had never seen before. Later, I ca to learn that the rune was a life-giving rune.
It was that rune drawn onto his body that gave the inspiration to create this technique. Now, I pass this technique onto those that co after . All I ask is that you rember the young man, though I don't know his na, nor the na of his tribe, I still can vividly rember his tattoos. So, to begin the cultivation of this technique you must replicate this tattoo.’
An extrely detailed drawing of an azure scaled dragon and massive tiger battling on top of a mountain with flowing clouds and a bright sun, was depicted below that diary-like entry.
“Hmm, that sounds like quite the special technique. But, for now I should see what else I can find before worrying anymore about this.”
After a final sweep of the chamber turned up nothing useful, he refocused on his main objective: the nest.
He scaled the side of the four-ter-tall nest and crested the top, expecting to see a baby Winged Tiger. Instead, he found a silver egg resting atop a massive pile of bullets of various calibers.
Climbing into the nest, he grabbed one of the bullets. “Can you absorb this or sothing?” he asked Nano.
“No. Now that we’re closer, we can tell that all of the others are already destroyed. Their reserve energy has been absorbed by that egg. That was the source of what we sensed.”
“So these are just regular bullets now?”
“Correct.” There was a faint note of genuine sadness in Nano's voice.
Jin Shu didn’t know how to cheer up a collection of nanobots, so he tried to distract it with another question. “Do you have any idea how all of these items ended up here?”
“Assuming this world is in a separate universe from our original one, we hypothesize it was either a power native to this world—or a wormhole.”
“Wormhole?”
“Yes. In our universe, wormholes are theorized to connect to other universes.”
“Hmm… So, are these bullets from a ti after I died?”
“Based on your mories, you were killed, then reborn in this world. Sixteen years later, your past-life mories reawakened. So if ti is linear across universes, approximately sixteen years should have passed on Earth.”
“Oh… I hadn’t thought of that.” Jin Shu felt a flush of embarrassnt creep over his face. To cover it, he rummaged through the bullet pile, collecting a handful of 9mm rounds and loading them into his pistol magazine, just in case.
“We have a suggestion.”
“Hm?”
“There is a mory from your childhood, likely hazy now. Your family once dealt with a sect called the Beastmaster Sect. One of their disciples told you how to bind a spirit beast.”
“Oh, I do rember that, but… what does that have to do with anything?”
“The egg.”
“Egg? Isn’t it a Winged Tiger egg? They’re Wild Beasts, not Spirit Beasts.” Jin Shu looked back at the egg in the center of the nest. Until now, he’d ignored it, too focused on the bullets. But on closer inspection, it looked extraordinary—pure silver, almost like a sculpture rather than an egg.
“It may be a Winged Tiger egg, but it’s cultivating using energy similar to ours.”
“But only Spirit Beasts can cultivate…”
As Jin Shu stared at the silver egg, a thought struck him, a thrill mixing with hesitation. “If this egg really is cultivating… then maybe I could bind it before it hatches.”
“Correct,” Nano replied, its tone sharper with anticipation. “But the process will drain a substantial amount of your Qi… and if you fail, it may not survive.”
Jin Shu’s heart pounded as he reached out, his hand hovering over the tallic surface. He could feel the pulse of energy beneath the shell, fierce and untad.
“Let’s take the risk,” he whispered, determination hardening his voice. The idea of forging a bond with a creature of such rare power—maybe even transforming it into a Spirit Beast—was a chance he couldn’t resist.
And so, with a deep breath, he began to channel his Qi into the egg.
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