A man in a comfortable-looking cardigan and blue jeans sat at the front of a classroom. His hair was neat and tidy, parted to one side with a fade on the sides. His facial hair was well-manicured, a goatee framing his mouth.
As David typed away at his computer, finalizing Monday's lesson plan, he heard the familiar creak of the door and the squeak of sneakers against the tile. A group of rowdy boys tumbled in, their backpacks slung carelessly over one shoulder.
"Hello, Mr. Hatter!" Sam Martinez called out, his voice carrying that unmistakable Friday afternoon energy. Behind him, Jake and Marcus were already eyeing the clock on the wall—2:47 PM. Three minutes until class started and forty-five minutes until the weekend.
David leaned back in his chair, suppressing a smile. After five years of teaching seventh grade, he could read his students like open books. These three were his unofficial class clowns, the ones who kept him on his toes, but also the ones who reminded him why he loved this job.
"Gentlemen," he said, closing his laptop with deliberate slowness. "Before you get too comfortable..." His eyes landed on Sam, who was already trying to blend into the background. "Sam, please tell me you remembered the essay on the Revolutionary War."
Sam's face went through a range of emotions: hope, panic, then desperate calculation. He looked down at his worn-out sneakers as if they might offer salvation.
"Well, you see, Mr. H..." Sam started, glancing nervously at his accomplices, who had suddenly found the floor tiles fascinating. "It's not exactly done done, but I was definitely going to finish it this weekend! Like, first thing tomorrow morning!"
David shook his head, but his expression was more amused than annoyed. "Sam, we both know 'first thing tomorrow morning' means 'panic-write it on the bus on Monday morning,' don't we?"
Sam rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. "I won't need an extension this time! I'll get it done, I swear!"
David laughed, and in that moment another group of students filed in.
"Alright, alright, I'll trust that you'll get it to me." He smiled at the three of them. "Take your seats and get your textbooks out."
The beginning of the lesson proceeded the same as every other day. David loved the concept of popcorn reading. By giving every student an opportunity to read aloud to the group, it really encouraged each one to process what they were reading.
It was Sam's turn to read when he suddenly got a nosebleed mid-sentence.
"Sam! You're bleeding!" Another student, Sherry Leafton, shouted at him.
David knew that the two students were crushing on each other, but they were both oblivious to the other's feelings. It was David's own reality TV show - every night at dinner, he gave little updates to Juliya about their progress.
Suppressing a smile about how he was going to give them a nudge, David grabbed a tissue box and handed it to Sherry.
"The air's a little dry now that it's winter, so he should be okay."
Sherry grabbed the tissue box and rushed to Sam. "I know that, Mr. Hatter! But we should still take him to the nurse just in case."
David smiled at the sight of Sherry wiping blood from Sam's face while scolding him to pinch his nose. This was all going according to David's plan to get them closer. All the while, Sam's cheeks were turning as red as the blood on his upper lip.
A moment later, Sam was sitting there with the scratchy brown paper towel that the school provided stuffed up one of his nostrils. He strongly opposed Sherry about going to the nurse, but due to this fiasco, he did end up getting out of reading - much to his pleasure.
The class was starting to get rowdy. It was ten minutes until the final bell, and you could hear a chorus of zipping as students prepped to leave as early as possible. David would scold them Monday through Thursday to keep their supplies on their desks, but on Fridays he was also packing his bag early.
With the lesson over, the students were beginning to form groups and chat, but that was interrupted by another commotion from Sherry.
"SAM! Your nose is bleeding again!"
David looked toward the disturbance and saw Sam with one nostril filled with paper towel and the other gushing blood.
Before he could spring into action, another shout came from the other side of the room.
"Mr. H! My ear is bleeding!"
And then another shout.
And another.
Eventually the classroom turned into a symphony of screams, and even David began to feel off. His mind began to strain as the walls closed in on him.
The feeling of claustrophobia would've been completely overwhelming if it wasn't for the students around him screaming for his help.
He fell to one knee, straining to stay awake, and saw blood on the ground. He raised his hand to touch his face and realized quickly that this blood was coming from his own nose - smearing the blood all over.
He looked up just in time to see Sherry cradling Sam's head as blood began to pour from his tear ducts. Sherry was crying as well, blood streaming from her ears as she wailed in pain.
'Get up', David commanded himself. 'They need you. GET UP.'
David braced himself against his desk, his vision swimming as waves of agony crashed through his skull. Every breath felt like inhaling molten glass, but the sight of his students, his kids, suffering pushed him past his breaking point.
Using every ounce of focus he had left, he forced himself to stand. The pain of what was happening in his mind was completely overwhelming, like having his brain scraped with a rusted knife, but he pushed through it.
His left leg had completely given out, feeling like someone was tearing the muscle apart and shoving a white-hot iron rod into his calf. But Sam was convulsing in Sherry's arms, and Jake was on the floor clutching his head, and Marcus-
'Move, damn it! They're just kids!'
David took a stumbling step forward, then another. His hands shook violently as he reached toward Sam and Sherry, but his body betrayed him. The world tilted sideways, colors bleeding together like watercolors in the rain.
"I'm... I'm coming," he gasped, though he wasn't sure if any sound came out. "Hold on... just hold on..."
But even as he fought with everything he had, even as his teacher's instincts screamed at him to protect them, to save them, to do something, he could feel himself failing. His body was shutting down, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.
The last thing he saw before darkness claimed him was Sherry's terrified eyes, still holding Sam as they both collapsed together.
---
David awoke gasping for air. Cold water was streaming down his face, and he instinctively raised his hand to shield himself.
"I'm up! I'm up!"
The water finally stopped, and David took a moment to wipe his face. His movements were sluggish now that the adrenaline from waking up to a deluge of cold water had passed.
His whole body ached as he slowly sat up. His muscles groaning and his head pounding.
Finally venturing to open his eyes, he took in his surroundings.
He was sitting on the ground where he had fallen, surrounded by the bodies of beasts.
Gruesome wounds covered the bodies of the beasts further away, but the one closest to him was decapitated with one clean slice. The cut was so precise it looked almost surgical, as if his sword had passed through butter rather than the tough hide of these dog... beasts.
David stared at the severed head, trying to process what he was seeing. Previously, in a Portal Realm, cutting through a beast like this would've been nearly impossible. Well, not impossible, but he would've had to utilize gravity, leverage, positioning, everything. Every single factor would have had to go his way for him to be able to do this.
And he had just done it with a hole in his middle dantian and no prep time.
The implications sent a chill down his spine. If this was what he could accomplish while injured and exhausted, what would he be capable of at full strength? The system had given him more than just perfect meridians. It had fundamentally changed what he was.
The sudden increase in power left him desperate for answers. Almost without thinking, he reached out to the system with a question.
'Do you have something like a status window?'
He needed hard numbers, some way to understand exactly how much he had changed. The difference between his old self and whatever he was becoming felt too vast to comprehend.
System Message: "There is currently no way to see what you refer to as a Status Window for yourself. However, this functionality is present for all interactions with students you have personally taught.
To activate please say 'View Status' while looking at your student."
David let out a weary sigh. 'Of course,' he thought with bitter resignation. 'Every tool I get is meant for helping others, never myself. I'm already fixed, so why would the system care about my progress?'
The irony wasn't lost on him. He had the power to transform the world, but couldn't even see his own growth. He was still wrestling with his frustration when a sharp sound cut through his thoughts. A pair of hands clapping together entered his vision, snapping him back to reality.
"Hello! Earth to David!"
He blinked and looked up to see Sarah standing over him. In stark contrast to the gory surroundings, she just had some dirt and dust on her face. Her expression was a mix of concern and impatience.
"I let you sleep for twenty minutes, but I think that's enough."
David's ears were still ringing slightly, and in a half-awake daze, he slowly pushed himself to his feet. His body protested every movement, the exhaustion hitting him like a wave.
'That's right,' he thought to himself, pieces of his consciousness slowly reassembling. 'I was asleep. I haven't had that dream in a few months, but I guess it's back.'
The memory of his students' faces, of Sherry's terrified eyes, lingered like a bitter taste in his mouth. A somber expression crossed his face, but to anyone looking, his grief would be indistinguishable from simple exhaustion.
Sarah stepped closer when he stood up, her voice dropping to a whisper.
"You may want to go check on wifey. She's been like that since the end of the fight."
Sarah gestured behind her with her thumb over her shoulder. David followed her gesture and saw Juliya sitting in the lotus position, perfectly still among the corpses. Activating his Qi sense, he could see the faint ripple of energy around her, like heat waves rising from summer pavement.
David's heart started to race. The fact that the Qi was surrounding her instead of passing right through her meant that she was interacting with it!
From what he remembered from his system reward, it would take years of meditation just to feel Qi, let alone circulate it. Juliya was completely destroying those expectations. Her performance right now was akin to the heirs and heiresses of large sects mentioned in the information he learned from the system.
He quickly moved to her side.
On the way, he passed by the injured and the guards, who were all doing their best to rest after the brief but intense battle.
When he reached Juliya, he stopped just before touching the pool of Qi she was meditating within. Carefully, he began to focus his senses.
What he saw was strange. It was similar to the violent Qi outside, which was an electric, violent blue color. However, there were pockets of tranquility slowly emanating from Juliya's body, creating islands of calm in the chaotic energy.
But the strangest thing was at the edges of this pool. Rather than maintaining the vibrant blue, the Qi there had shifted to a dark purple, almost black. The color was eerily similar to the reversed Qi that had been poisoning Juliya during her overdose back on the street.
David studied the phenomenon more closely, his analytical mind trying to piece together what he was seeing. The dark Qi wasn't just different in color, it seemed to be moving in the wrong direction entirely. Where normal Qi flowed in predictable patterns, this energy appeared to be flowing backward, defying every principle he understood about cultivation.
'It's like she's somehow reversing the violent Qi,' he thought, watching the dark streams curl away from her body. 'But that should be impossible.'
He wracked his brain, trying to remember if anything in the cultivation literature had mentioned this phenomenon. Surely someone, somewhere, had documented Qi behaving in such a contradictory manner.
'Maybe she's not reversing the Qi, but the bodies of the beasts did?'
A moment later, a system announcement sounded in his mind.
System Message: "The information you are trying to secure is outside the bounds of the information provided to you previously. Please complete your checkpoint quests to gain more applicable information."
David sighed inwardly, wishing he could make quicker progress, but then he realized that Juliya was successfully cultivating!
He quickly commanded his status window to open.
System Message: "Current checkpoints are as follows:
1. Fix 10 defective cultivation techniques (In Progress 1/10)
Checkpoint 1 reward: Based on performance
2. Open a Sect to widen your reach (In Progress)
Checkpoint 2 reward: Employee functionality unlocked"
David's eyes widened. Juliya's cultivation had been fixed!
He looked at Juliya once again and focused on her breathing technique, noticing that she was using his own Heaven and Earth technique.
'This was way easier than I expected,' he thought sarcastically. All he had to do was forcefully cultivate his own technique in someone's body, completely reset their meridians, and have them practice the technique while in a pool of violent Qi that also had pockets of reversed flowing Qi.
He turned his head to the side and saw the dead Dalmatian beast body on the ground next to his wife.
'And also they have to do it next to the corpse of a corrupted beast. Maybe that's part of it too?'
Before he could spiral further into these thoughts, another message popped up in his vision.
System Message: "You have successfully passed on knowledge to a new disciple. Would you like to see their status?"
David blinked. He had quietly sat down beside Juliya so he wouldn't look strange just standing there, but now he had to mind his facial expressions. So many things were happening that he would seem crazy if it all showed on his face.
He commanded the status window to open, and another screen overlapped the first, showing a new message.
System Message: "Status Window
Name: Juliya Hatter
Cultivation Technique: Heaven and Earth Technique
Cultivation Level: Body Tempering 3rd Level
Technique Mastery: 43%"
David scanned the status quickly and absorbed the information.
'So she's already at the 3rd level. Out of 9 total, that's not bad.'
The body tempering stage internal levels involved quantifying how close a cultivator was to reaching the Qi Sensing stage. The further they are in the levels the more their body can interact with Qi and the more they've toned their bodies.
Continuing to read, he saw the technique mastery percentage.
'That's actually pretty good,' he thought, nodding like a sage teacher as if the technique knowledge hadn't been directly downloaded into his brain.
Then he had a sudden realization.
He quickly reached into his pocket and pulled out his Teacher's Pen. This was exactly what it was meant for!
He moved closer to Juliya and slowly touched her wrist with his fingers. Once he made contact, he could see the flow of Qi throughout her body. What he saw was mostly correct according to his technique, but with small and medium deviations.
Exactly what the status window had indicated.
With all of this information swirling in his mind, he went to work with the Teacher's Pen. Learning from his previous mistakes with Sarah, he made only small changes, not wanting to tempt fate again.
He felt like a house inspector marking problems with blue tape, except instead of waiting for builders to fix the issues, the Qi flowed immediately down the corrected paths.
Looking at the status window, he saw the technique mastery slowly climb, though not permanently.
"Technique Mastery: 43% (+37% Temporary)"
'It looks like my assistance doesn't permanently effect her cultivation mastery, but it will help her improve faster.'
A moment later, a large ball of the roiling Qi was absorbed into her body with a deep inhale.
Whatever that large ball was, it seemed to be the glue holding the pool of Qi together. Immediately after she absorbed it, the remaining Qi dissipated into the air, returning to its natural state.
David was stunned. He knew that violent Qi was borderline impossible to neutralize. Arrays could stop or displace it, but not return it to normal.
With just twenty minutes of cultivation, Juliya had successfully cleared a section of violent Qi the size of a kiddy pool.
In that moment, Juliya opened her eyes and looked around her.
Seeing David next to her, her expression softened and she smiled.
"Hey there, big guy. You look like you got hit by a truck." She reached up to gently touch a cut on his forehead. "Are you okay?"
After saying that, she wrapped her arms around David in a tight embrace.
David hugged back - his mind still racing with all the new information he had gained in such a short amount of time.