Stellar Tribulation

Neo-Xi'an swallowed them whole.

Li Wei sprinted after Kara through streets choked with smog and desperation. Above, holographic dragons coiled around skyscrapers, their pixelated jaws snapping at drones shaped like skeletal cranes. The air tasted metallic, thick with nanobots policing the city's oxygen—Elysium's leash on the breath of its citizens.

"Move!" Kara barked, shoving him into an alley as a patrol drone whirred overhead. Its spotlight carved through the gloom, scanning retinal patterns. Li Wei pressed against damp concrete, his borrowed uniform reeking of antiseptic and decay.

"Why do they hunt us?" he hissed.

"Because you're a glitch in their system," Kara said, her mechanical eye darting to the rooftops. "Elysium hates surprises."

The drone passed. She tugged him into a throng of bodies flooding the main thoroughfare. Li Wei recoiled. The crowd was a grotesque tapestry of flesh and machine: beggars with exposed spinal implants, children hawking glowing data chips from trays grafted to their ribs, and towering Augments whose limbs hummed with plasma blades.

A billboard loomed, projecting Director Veyra's serene face. "Ascension Protocol begins today," her hologram crooned. "Surrender your fragile bodies. Become eternal."

"She's lying," Kara muttered. "The Ascended aren't uploaded—they're lobotomized. Souls shredded into fuel for her machines."

Li Wei's nanobots seethed under his skin, attacking another surge of qi. He stumbled, vision blurring. Kara caught his arm, her human hand startlingly warm against his clammy skin.

"Stay awake, Cultivator. We're almost to the Undercity."

The Bridge of Whispers

The Undercity lay beneath a gargantuan bridge, its arches strung with makeshift shelters and flickering neon. The air here stank of rust and rotting seaweed. Kara led him to a corroded stairwell, its steps groaning underfoot.

Halfway down, Li Wei froze.

Beneath the bridge's shadow, a marketplace thrived. Stalls sold jagged relics—ceremonial swords crusted with nano-rust, talismans flickering with dying qi, and glass tanks where luminous jellyfish pulsed to the rhythm of trapped human screams.

"Soul batteries," Kara said grimly. "Elysium's leftovers. They drain cultivator spirits to power their tech."

A vendor leered at Li Wei, holding up a dagger carved from a cultivator's femur. "Fresh stock, brother! Slice your enemies with real immortal essence!"

"Don't engage," Kara warned, but it was too late.

Li Wei's qi flared, a golden spark in the gloom. The dagger in the vendor's hand screamed, its trapped spirit writhing free in a burst of light. The market erupted into chaos as stalls overloaded, energy cores bursting like fireworks.

"Run!" Kara dragged him into a sewer tunnel as enforcers descended—not drones, but Ascended, their silver bodies fluid and eerily graceful.

The Ascended

The lead enforcer moved like water, her face a smooth mask devoid of eyes or mouth. "Director Veyra requests your presence, Anomaly LW-8892."

Li Wei reached for a sword he didn't have. His qi surged, raw and untamed, and the tunnel's lights exploded. The Ascended hesitated, their systems glitching.

"They're vulnerable to your energy!" Kara shouted, firing her plasma pistol. A blast tore through an enforcer's chest, revealing writhing nanobots beneath. "But don't let them touch you!"

Li Wei focused, channeling qi into his palm. A feeble golden flame sputtered to life—weak, but enough. He slammed it into an Ascended's chest. The creature shrieked, its nanobots dissolving into ash.

But the victory cost him. His veins burned as his own nanobots retaliated, devouring the qi. Blood trickled from his nose.

"This way!" Kara kicked open a rusted door, revealing a cluttered workshop lit by bioluminescent fungi. An androgynous android with four arms and a faceplate etched with lotus petals looked up from dissecting a cybernetic heart.

"Kara. You brought a storm."

"Need a tune-up, Jax," Kara said, barricading the door. "And a suppression serum. He's got Elysium's nanites."

Jax tilted their head, lenses zooming on Li Wei. "Fascinating. Qi readings match pre-Collapse archives. You're a relic, aren't you?"

"He's a person," Kara snapped.

"Same thing these days." Jax injected Li Wei's neck with a serum that smelled of burnt jasmine. The nanobots stilled, but cold spread through his limbs.

"Temporary fix," Jax said. "His cells reject the tech. To survive, he must either purge the nanites completely…"

"Or?" Li Wei rasped.

"Merge them with your cultivation. Let the qi evolve."

The Offer

Kara stiffened. "That's suicide. Even Elysium's lab rats couldn't hybridize energy systems."

"But he's not a lab rat," Jax said. "He's the real thing. The key to breaking Veyra's stranglehold."

Li Wei stared at his trembling hands. Merge with this world's poison? The dao he'd followed for millennia demanded purity, discipline. Not this… heresy.

A roar shook the walls. The Ascended were breaking through.

"Choose, Cultivator," Jax said, tossing him a dagger made of blackened qi-steel. "Die as you were, or live as something new."

Li Wei gripped the blade. His golden core's ghost flickered, a phantom limb he couldn't flex. Beyond the door, the enforcers chanted in unison: "Compliance is peace. Resistance is eradication."

He met Kara's gaze. "You said Elysium fears surprises?"

She grinned, wild and reckless. "Let's give them a nightmare."

The Fusion

Li Wei stabbed the dagger into his chest.

Pain blinded him. The nanobots surged toward the wound, swarm-intent on repair—but he channeled his last wisp of qi into the blade. Golden light erupted, fusing with the silver swarm. His veins lit up like supernovae.

For a heartbeat, he hung between annihilation and apotheosis.

Then the world shifted.

He saw the nanobots—not as invaders, but as a constellation of stars. He felt his qi, not as a fading ember, but as a gravitational force bending them into orbit.

When he opened his eyes, the dagger was gone. His hands shimmered, skin threaded with glowing circuitry.

The door exploded.

Li Wei moved.

His fist struck the lead Ascended, qi and nanobots merging into a crackling wave of gold and silver. The enforcer disintegrated. The others faltered, systems glitching at the anomaly.

"What… am I?" Li Wei whispered.

"Trouble," Kara said, grabbing his arm. "Now run!"

They fled deeper into the Undercity, Elysium's enforcers in pursuit. Behind them, the first notes of revolution echoed as market rebels seized the chaos to torch Elysium banners.

But high above, in the Lotus Spire, Director Veyra smiled.

"Excellent," she murmured, watching Li Wei's biometrics flare on her screens. "The better the hunt, the sweeter the kill."