When Jin awoke, he was in complete darkness. A hurricane of wind roared in his ears and all his senses screamed at him that he was falling, fast.

  “!!!"

  There wasn’t even time to form a thought. He flailed his arms in panic, clawing blindly for something to grab, something to slow him down.

  There was nothing.

  He screamed in terror and did not even hear it. The wind swallowed everything.

  Tears streamed from his wind whipped eyes, but even as he blinked them away, he couldn’t see anything. The darkness was so thick he couldn’t even make out his own fingers.

  And yet, the blare of alarms in his head was not letting up. His senses were adamant that he was falling, falling fast, and that he was about to die.

  There’s something tied to me! That’s what’s pulling me down!

  Still blind, he felt around and found something like a rope twisted around his chest. Immediately, he sunk his fingers under it, trying to pry it off.

  His muscles bulged as he poured all the strength he could muster into his hands. For a moment, it felt like his wrists would snap from the strain. Sweat broke out on his face, was instantly dried by the wind, and broke out again.

  It was like trying to lift up a mountain. His fingers already throbbed with pain, but there was no effect. The shackle was bound tightly around him and he couldn’t as much as make it budge.

  I need more!, Jin thought and reached for his qi.

  “strike!—walk-prressure…—“

  He recited the words of the cultivation mantra in his mind. Something stirred in his dantian, but it was too little. Not enough to run even a single circuit.

  The roar of the wind was overwhelming. His own thoughts came to him as if from far away. The only exception was the loud “DANGER!” reminding him with every second that he was plummeting to his death.

  Something cracked. A fresh jolt of pain shot through one his fingers.

  His eyes flashed open. Panic and pain flickered across them, each one vying for dominance, but what eventually replaced them was a look of defiance.

  The alarms in his head rose up a level as he began to slowly relax his fingers. They were so stiff, he could hardly uncurl them. His heart raced.

  He gritted his teeth and took a slow, deep breath through his nose.

  It felt like the slowest breath of his life. Like he would suffocate before he even finished drawing it in. The wind thundered around him. The alarm in his mind reached fever pitch. His entire body screamed at him to do something.

  Jin began to exhale through his nose.

  The lack of air was killing him. His muscles protested, begged, and twisted themselves into knots. The darkness around him swayed.

  He kept exhaling.

  It was simply impossible that his chest could hold so much air. His lungs felt like someone was wringing them out like old towels. A little more, and they’d collapse in on themselves.

  The last wisp of air escaped through his nose.

  Jin remained still.

  He did not take another breath.

  Slowly, the fingers of his hands uncurled.

  He identified the injured finger—the ring finger of his left hand. He couldn’t tell if it was sprained or broken. But he could still use it.

  Jin Sou began to inhale.

  The air entered his lungs and spread throughout his body. His muscles ached, as if stabbed by needles, but they were his own again. His heart thumped strongly in his chest.

  “Walk.”

  It wasn’t the first syllable of the miner’s mantra, but it was the one he felt he understood best. It rang clearly in his mind—louder than the roar of the wind around him or the scream of panic within.

  His dantian stirred.

  A single dot of light flickered inside. It shone for a brief moment, then fizzled out.

  Jin curled his fingers on the object binding his chest. Pain flared in his ring finger as he closed his grip, then again as his muscles tensed and he began to pull.

  “Strike!”

  His muscles bulged. A fresh surge of pain shot through his finger as his arms trembled from exertion.

  Spiritual energies flickered in his dantian again. More of them lit up this time. They danced together, bumping into each other and shooting off randomly. But it was still too little.

  His eyes red with lashing wind, Jin continued to stare into the darkness.

  His lips moved rapidly as he recited the miner’s mantra. Though he never stopped pulling, in his concentration, the surroundings started to disappear. At some point, he no longer heard the wind, felt his aching muscles, or the sensation of falling.

  Even the darkness began to fade.

  Before his eyes appeared the ancient manuscript from which they had been taught in the camps. The symbols, at first faint, grew clearer and more vivid.

  He recognised “Walk.” and “Strike!” — the two symbols were especially arresting. But even the ones he hadn’t yet grasped reacted slightly as he mumbled their corresponding syllables.

  “Pressure.”

  His dantian lit up. A myriad lights flickered into existence. Unlike before, they didn’t dance—they held steady, nearly motionless.

  Jin Sou felt them.

  If at first they were like sparks, now they were embers—waiting for that final breath of air to become fire.

  The next syllable was one he didn’t understand. But that was fine. All they needed was a nudge.

  Jin Sou began to mumble the next syllable of the miner’s mantra —

  — when the world turned upside down.

  The change was so sudden it left him reeling. His concentration snapped. The mantra vanished from his mind. Even the thought of freeing himself from the shackle disappeared.

  He was soaring.

  The howling hurricane had quieted, and he was rising in smooth leaps, like a leaf lifted by a gust of wind.

  His sight was still shrouded in blinding darkness, but all his other senses confirmed the impossible.

  Somehow, he had made it through. At the very least, he was no longer plummeting to his death.

  Jin felt around the shackle on his chest, once more trying to figure what it was. He no longer thought of prying it off, quite the opposite — what had once been an anchor dragging him down to his demise was now a precious lifeline.

  A jolt of pain shot through his abdomen, cutting through the mix of relief and confusion he was experiencing. The spiritual energies he mobilised in his dantian were becoming unstable.

  Jin closed his eyes and started reciting his cultivation mantra again. Though he still had no idea what was happening, he had to focus on the most immediate problem.

  “Walk. Strike! Pressu—“

  The world turned upside down again.

  And then, it turned again.

  And again.

  The sense of weightlessness was becoming unbearable. It seemed like every other second the directions of the world changed; one moment he would fall upward, only to shoot sideways and then soar downward—all in a smooth, uninterrupted motion, as if the positions of earth and sky were shifting around him.

  The spiritual energies in his dantian could no longer be contained. Some rampaged and shot out, invading random meridian channels in his body, while others flickered haphazardly and disappeared, withdrawing beyond his reach.

  A heavy, cold sensation radiated from his gut. It mixed with the queasiness already building in him.

  For a moment, he was neither falling nor rising, simply floating in darkness, completely unbound from the pull of earth and sky. And then he was moving again—but this time, the wind was on his face.

  Moreover, the steady up and down bob of his motion was so familiar, that it finally made him realise what was happening.

  Someone’s carrying me!

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  His mind was still sluggish from shock, but having realised this much, not even the ever-present darkness could stop him from piecing the rest together.

  He felt around the unshakable hold on his chest, and now, knowing what to expect, it wasn’t difficult to identify it for what it was.

  An arm. Someone was carrying him, hugging him tightly against their chest like an overgrown child.

  And as to who that person could be…

  The Immortal…

  A shiver ran down his spine.

  In a single flash, the memories came rushing back.

  He remembered the moment the tunnel exploded in a cloud of dust: the figure in white robes standing beneath the ventilation shaft, while everyone kowtowed and cried out, “We greet the Immortal!”

  At that instant, he hadn’t known if what he was seeing was real, or another one of the nightmares he’d been having in the weeks since discovering the treasure. The two were so similar.

  But then, instead of summoning that dreadful ocean that had swallowed Lil’ Lu back then — which was how his dreams always developed —the Immortal had slowly walked up to him.

  In the dimly lit shaft, her tall figure, draped in pristinely white robes and made hazy by the billowing rock dust, loomed over him like a ghost.

  By the time he’d remembered to kneel like everyone else, she was already standing before him.

  Instead of punishing him for the transgression, she had studied him in that strange, intense way that reminded him of the blue-robed Immortal.

  It was only when he tried to speak that she attacked.

  Jin brought his hand to his neck and winced, feeling painful welts along his throat. Swallowing was difficult.

  A stupid thought, If only I hadn’t opened my mouth, flashed in his mind, but he decisively snuffed it.

  Momentarily, his eyes widened in surprise. There was a small spot of light ahead of them, and in the overwhelming darkness surrounding him, it shone bright like the sun.

  Moreover, the Immortal did not avoid it but was moving swiftly in its direction.

  Jin held his breath. Though he had no idea what it could be, he couldn’t help but tense in anticipation. Given how hopeless his situation was, almost anything would be an improvement—and anything that broke the darkness of the mine was instinctively precious to miners.

  As if answering his prayers, the path they were taking led right next to it. In a moment, the distant spot of light on the ground grew rapidly larger as they approached.

  Jin Sou had barely a moment to look down at it before it whizzed by and disappeared behind them. He would’ve missed it if he had blinked.

  What he saw was something that most likely no other living miner had witnessed.

  The disc of light wasn’t a disc at all but a small hole, barely wide enough for two people to fit side by side. It didn’t produce any light of its own. What had seemed like a glow from a distance was merely the light leaking out from the scene below.

  Looking through the hole—which he now realised must have been the other side of a ventilation vent—Jin saw a tunnel. It was filled with miners, their backs bent as they swung their heavy hammers. They were dark like shadows. The light, though sparse, seemed bright in the overwhelming darkness, and came from the spiritual crystals they were excavating.

  An instant later, they were gone. None of the miners realised that an Immortal had just rushed past them.

  For a while, Jin was stupefied, though he wasn’t exactly sure why.

  It was no secret that the Immortals used the ventilation shafts to move through the mine. It also stood to reason that they would be looking down from above—this, in fact, was true regardless of where one found themselves.

  And yet, in that brief instant when he saw the miners himself, from the same point of view as the Immortals, something changed.

  All miners respected the mine. Though they might not admit it, there wasn’t a single one among them who didn’t feel at least a prick of dread when the elevator gates shut behind them and they began their long descent into its depths. This was true of both the young and the old.

  One could stay fearless in the Pit, where there was sunlight, fresh air, and you could even spot a bird if lucky. It didn’t matter that the barracks they lived in were repurposed old shafts, carved out by previous generations.

  But when you descended into the active mine—the living mine—you were not just contending with the fact that the all the air was pumped in, that the only light came from luminous crystals, or with the claustrophobic weight of tons of rock hanging above you, entombing you from all sides.

  It was the chaotic energies that pervaded every inch of it.

  Every moment you spent underground, you needed to circulate your qi. If you stopped for even a moment, the mine’s energies would seize the opportunity, slipping inside and corrupting you from within. The miners were well accustomed to it, and the time they spent down there was a constant struggle — the pressure of the mine’s energies pressing against their own. It was like facing a massive entity trying to squish you like a bug.

  In the camps, they had been taught to prepare for this. It had been explained to them that the energies they would face were caused by the mine’s bounty itself. The spiritual crystals were so potent and so abundant that they leaked small amounts of energy into the environment, making it unstable and dangerous.

  All of this might have been true. But those who actually lived with the mine knew something else. The chaotic energies weren’t as chaotic as they seemed.

  There were ebbs and flows to the mine, with harder and easier shifts. And yet, even with these fluctuations, some things remained the same.

  Regardless of where you were in the mine — breaking open new tunnels or clearing out old ones — the aura pressing on you felt the same throughout.

  It was difficult not to sometimes think of the mine as its own being. Immobile and passive, yes, and far too vast to ever perceive or target asingle miner. But it was not too vast not to notice that someone had been carving it up piece by piece.

  And it fought back.

  Every day, pioneer teams opened new shafts, crashers like Jin Sou broke apart large boulders, and newbies sifted through the rubble for precious spiritual crystals. It might have seemed like they were carving out the mine like a fresh carcass, stripping off its skin and harvesting the tastiest bits — but the mine, similarly, took something from them.

  No one could maintain their focus working for hours on end underground. Everyone slipped up sometimes. And when that happened, the chaotic energies invaded, going for any small cuts or weakness they could find. A single slip up — or even a hundred — didn’t do much. But as miners spent hours, then years, in the depths, the chances added up to thousands.

  Time was what it stole most of all. Miners — especially the more experienced ones — looked many years older and suffered from sicknesses that should only afflict people twice their age.

  Still, weakness wasn’t an excuse to stop working, and the weaker they got, the more the more work they put in. What their bodies couldn’t cover with muscle, they pushed through with qi.

  You could tell the older miners by their bent backs, the unsteady totter of old men, and bulging muscles that grew like tumours on sick flesh — all animated by a strong, obstinate qi that could have only been forged in the mine.

  The younger miners both dreaded and respected them. They were the ones sent to break open new shafts — as black teams — doing the work that required the greatest strength and subjected them to the harshest onslaught of chaotic energies, which poured from new tunnels like blood from a fresh wound.

  Still, the young miners knew — deep down, on their way back to the surface — that even if they didn’t feel it, the mine had taken a bite of them, a levy for what they had taken from it.

  Over the years, there were some miners who never lost concentration, who kept their qi circulating without fail.

  None of them had lived to see their twenty-seventh summer.

  To see the mine from the perspective of an Immortal — who did not fear its chaotic energies or darkness but leaped and soared in its tunnels — was not just jarring. It struck at something very deep and private in Jin’s heart.

  “strike.—pressure.—“

  He habitually repeated the mantra in his head, but it made little difference. The words resonated with nothing. Nor did he fear the chaotic energies; while ferried by the Immortal, they didn’t encroach on him at all.

  Without warning, the direction of the world shifted again, and for a single moment, Jin experienced that partly nauseating and partly exhilarating feeling of soaring weightlessly through the air.

  Then, as the Immortal reached the other side of some unseen obstacle, she landed with a soft thud and resumed her trot without the slightest stagger or misstep.

  The air is getting hotter, Jin noted, as the wind blowing into his face grew heated and summer-like. Wherever she’s taking me, it’s deep in the lower parts of the mine.

  The deeper one descended into the mine, the hotter it got — a result of the increased density of spiritual crystals. Judging by the temperature, which now reminded Jin of standing beside a working furnace, they had descended quite far indeed.

  We must be way below any active shafts. There’s no way miners could break open tunnels at this depth.

  Though he couldn’t feel the pressure of chaotic energies trying to invade his qi sea — the Immortal’s aura still protected him — the heat alone told him enough. As long as the temperature rose in proportion to the wild energies — and Jin knew it did — he suspected that anyone below his current level wouldn’t last long here, let alone be able to work.

  The tunnel we’re traveling through must be naturally formed.

  It wasn’t particularly surprising. Though it sometimes felt like it, the mine the workers excavated wasn’t entirely composed of solid rock. Occasionally, they broke through into a tunnel or cavern, but it was rarely a cause for celebration. Most of those grottos were filled with accumulated miasma or lurking fiends, and it often came down to luck whether an Immortal would reach them in time.

  What Jin knew, but wouldn’t say to himself, was something else. Given the depth they were at, even if — by some miraculous stroke of luck — he managed to escape from the Immortal, there was no feasible way he could make it back topside.

  Even if he could withstand the chaotic energies — and that in itself was no certain matter — he would still need to navigate the labyrinthine tunnels while, at the same time, avoiding pockets of miasma and fiends that were sure to lurk there.

  It was, for all intents and purposes, completely impossible. And even if he somehow managed the impossible, where could he hide? The Immortal would simply return and pluck him out as easily as she had the first time.

  The only way he could return topside was if the Immortal took him there herself. He knew, however, that she had not gone to all this effort to bring him to such a secluded place just to turn around and take him back.

  All this, he considered in a strangely clear state of mind. Though he was by no means calm, neither was he gripped by panic — his thoughts flowed smoothly and unerringly, almost detached, as if the fate he was contemplating involved some perfect stranger, who was neither kin nor foe, and not his very person.

  These are probably the last moments of my life, he thought. She’s going to kill me as soon as we reach her destination.

  The strangeness of his state of mind didn’t escape him. Objectively, he should’ve been despairing — cursing, raging, struggling — or perhaps going mad with fear. But as he inspected himself, even his heartbeat was measured and steady.

  I might not be able to change my fate, but at least I’ll pass with my heart still and unafraid. A lowly miner shall die like a Sage, he thought, with bitter humour.

  He recited the words of the cultivation mantra — out of habit rather than because there was any point to it — but the qi in his dantian remained inert and unresponsive.

  It seems that in the face of death, even the sacred words of the Immortals lose their power. The thought brought a morbid smile to his lips.

  At least I got to experience something no other miner ever did, Jin thought. And to still be drawing breath is a wonder in itself. When she started strangling me in the shaft, I was certain that was the end. To wake up again—

  He stopped as his thoughts whirled.

  Now that he thought about it — why didn’t she kill him back then?

  If all she wanted was to eliminate the only witness who knew the treasure he unearthed that day had two crystals, she could’ve done it on the spot.

  She didn’t. And now she was expending so much effort to bring him to a secluded part of the mine, away from prying eyes. Away from… other Immortals.

  I have something she needs, Jin realised.

  Perhaps, it should have occurred to him sooner. But the thought that a Revered One might want something from a mortal — and be unable to simply take it — was so alien, so counterintuitive, that it had simply escaped him.

  Even now, he could barely believe it. But he had no other choice.

  Strike! Pressure. Walk.

  His breathing changed. His heart pounded in his chest as a surge of fresh blood invigorated his limbs.

  Within his dantian, the spiritual energies buzzed excitedly. A single wisp of qi slipped out, entering the main meridian channel in his stomach. From there it flowed into the major meridian in his right hand, and then looped back to the dantian, completing a full circuit. An instant later, the process repeated, only this time, the volume of qi doubled. And then, it doubled again.

  Jin’s aura surged. As it grew stronger, it pushed against a foreign pressure — not the chaotic energies of the mine, but the Immortal’s aura. Although it had shielded him from the corrupting energies suffusing the mine, it wasn’t entirely neutral. It bore on him, influencing him in subtle ways.

  But now, with his qi flowing again, that pressure became clearer — and less oppressive. His circulating qi shook it off like a dog contemptuously marking over another’s scent.

  Jin was only partially aware of this. His thoughts were ablaze. Now that he saw a sliver of hope, he could not let it go. His mind roared as he staked everything on finding a way out.

  Everything would depend on it. And before the Immortal reached her destination, he needed a plan — and a path to survival.