Jin Shu climbed bato 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, aually, he was forced to nearly crawl.

  “ you tell how much farther?” he asked Nano.

  “Two minutes.” Nano responded immediately.

  After one minute, Jin Shu was on his hands and knees, crawling over the jagged rocks. Thirty seds ter, he was on his stomach, squeezing through the narrow passage. He could see a faint light just ahead. He wasn’t custrophobic, but having aire 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 meters around and thirty meters tall. High above, moonlight filtered in through a jagged opening, a reminder he’d spent the st of the daylight in that tight crevice.

  Gng around, he immediately noticed several stoals along the walls with various items upon them. Some looked familiar, while others he couldn’t reize.

  He stepped closer to one of the items, reizing it instantly and stuo see it here in this world.

  It was a white por throne. In other words—a toilet…

  “What the hell is a toilet doing here?”

  “There seems to be a colle of items from Earth.”

  He tinued looking around. The chamber was rge, with every wall lined with pedestals holding items. In the very ter, directly below the hole in the ceiling, was a huge made of boulders and tree limbs. Nano firmed that was where the other Wiiger and the bullets were located.

  He decided to save that for st.

  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 y a slightly tattered scroll, and it seemed to belong to this world rather thah—unless Earth had cultivation teiques. The bel read:

  [Body Inscribing Art - One-of-a-kind Cultivation Teique]

  He reached out to grab the scroll—

  “Warning!” Nano’s voice bred, filling his mind with a ling.

  “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 ime, words alone will suffice.”

  “Uood.”

  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 wele.”

  “Any ideas on how to get that scroll?”

  “Certainly! Give us a ‘Nano’ sed…” 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 ugh.

  “Try examining the pedestal. There may be a switch of some kind.”

  Following Nano’s advice, he ied the pedestal and soon found an intricate carving of a dragon that didn’t match the rest. It was so detailed that it almost seemed 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 aernal energy source.”

  “I could try Qi,” Jin Shu said as he eled his Qi into his hands. The part absorbed it quickly, aers soon began to appear.

  ‘The Body Inscribing Art is my greatest aplishment. By bining runes with the body, they unleash a preater than those used on ons. It is my belief that runes were meant for the body siheir iion, but over the long annals of history, that use was lost to time.’

  “So, this cultivation teique 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 wradually appeared. By the time he had depleted half of his Qi reserves, the words finally stopped. Below the introdu was a blood red warning, the letters seemed as if they could start bleeding at any moment.

  ‘If you ot tolerate extreme pain, do not even dream of cultivating this teique!’

  Uhat was what looked like a diary entry and the detailed instrus for the teique.

  ‘When I was young there existed a tribe—I've fotten their er all these years. But, I remember 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 extin by powerful enemies. However before their final moments I had the opportunity to witness araordinary feat performed by one of the tribesmen.

  They were a young man no older than sixteen and had at most reached the Qi Realm. However, their oppos were two men at the Spirit Realm. That young man died fighting those me, unbelievably, so too did the two men. Killed by the young man.

  The se was unimagihe young man at the Qi Realm was no match for the two older men. That was until his tattoos came to life, and when I say they came to life I don't mean that metaphorically, I mean 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, catg the two men 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 e 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 came to learn that the rune was a life-giving rune.

  It was that rune drawn onto his body that gave me the inspiration to create this teique. Now, I pass this teique onto those that e after me. All I ask is that you remember the young man, though I don't know his name, nor the name of his tribe, I still vividly remember his tattoos. So, to begin the cultivation of this teique you must replicate this tattoo.’

  Aremely 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 teique. But, for now I should see what else I find before w anymore about this.”

  After a final sweep of the chamber turned up nothing useful, he refocused on his main objective: the .

  He scaled the side of the four-meter-tall and crested the top, expeg to see a baby Wiiger. Instead, he found a silver egg resting atop a massive pile of bullets of various calibers.

  Climbing into the , he grabbed one of the bullets. “ you absorb this or something?” he asked Nano.

  “No. Now that we’re closer, we 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 regur 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 colle 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 inal one, we hypothesize it was either a power native to this world—or a wormhole.”

  “Wormhole?”

  “Yes. In our universe, wormholes are theorized to ect to other universes.”

  “Hmm… So, are these bullets from a time after I died?”

  “Based on your memories, you were killed, then reborn in this world. Sixteen years ter, your past-life memories reawakened. So if time is linear across universes, approximately sixteen years should have passed oh.”

  “Oh… I hadn’t thought of that.” Jin Shu felt a flush of embarrassment creep over his face. To cover it, he rummaged through the bullet pile, colleg a handful of 9mm rounds and loading them into his pistol magazine, just in case.

  “We have a suggestion.”

  “Hm?”

  “There is a memory 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 remember that, but… what does that have to do with anything?”

  “The egg.”

  “Egg? Isn’t it a Wiiger egg? They’re Wild Beasts, not Spirit Beasts.” Jin Shu looked back at the egg in the ter of the . Until now, he’d ig, too focused on the bullets. But on closer iion, it looked extraordinary—pure silver, almost like a sculpture rather than an egg.

  “It may be a Wiiger egg, but it’s cultivating using energy simir to ours.”

  “But only Spirit Beasts 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 h over the metallic surface. He could feel the pulse of energy beh the shell, fierd untamed.

  “Let’s take the risk,” he whispered, determination hardening his voice. The idea of f a bond with a creature of such rare power—maybe even transf it into a Spirit Beast—was a ce he couldn’t resist.

  And so, with a deep breath, he began to el his Qi into the egg.