The Dragon Advances

by Byakugan789

When the Kree Monoliths being destroyed opened the rift to Xibalba in Agents of Shield season 4, the explosion went a BIT further than anyone understood. Connecting multiple realities, the shockwave shuffled people and events in unexpected ways and the lost must find a way home...

1. In Communist China, Adventure choses you

Authors Note: I've been reading a lot of MCU stories recently and ideas of how to do it... not better necessarily, but differently at least, keep popping into the back of my mind and distracting me from my numerous other stories. SO... I thought I'd bite the bullet and start writing this one. See if it can purge the ideas so I can get back to other works... or perhaps become something in its own right. For those of you willing to sit down and read this through, allow me to offer my preemptive thanks. I would deeply appreciate comments from nitpicks to criticism to praise, but avoid flames if you don't mind, simply insulting an author because you didn't like something does nothing except bleed your own stress. If you must rage against anything I post henceforth, please provide at least a paragraph on why it was out of character, a plot-hole or an accidental tangent into soap boxing rather than intentional philosophy from the current presenter.

Boring stuff out of the way; ON WITH THE STORY!

~! #$%^&*()_+~! #$%^&*()_+~! #$%^&*()_+

November 31st 1986

The hardest part about falling through an unstable rip between time, space and half a dozen realities should be the feeling of being simultaneously trapped without air or the ability to move while being drawn back and forth through a spiked wheel press built for tenderizing meat. For others, perhaps it would be watching helpless as others slide through the same hole, screaming as they're bent, twisted, crushed and silly stringed in the process of moving from different realities TO further different ones still, their screaming souls drawing out a symphony of terror and pain that could probably star in Lucifer's hell or Lovecraft's spheres.

It's not.

The hardest part comes after, when you are stuck lying on a rock in the middle of nowhere for three hours afterwards. Why? Because that's when you get over the shock and what you just experienced hits you; if you can't suppress it. Despite being somewhere in the middle of really tall snow capped mountains the cold doesn't dull the pain any; after all, its not really my body that's been under assault. Eventually, I am able to do something more than just lay there shaking like a leaf and wheezing in pain; and rolled over.

The good thing is that other than a giant bruise from my landing on my back and maybe some unknowable internal radiation damage from travel I'm really not physically hurt. I have no open wounds, I'm not bleeding out externally or internally, and through the pain I can form coherent thoughts... Mostly of the curses. My body examined, my nerves calming (somewhat) I distract myself and begin to take in more of my surroundings.

If the rock weren't obvious enough, I'm not in Singapore anymore. All around are mountains around me are of the distinctly natural sort. Peaks that would extend into the clouds, if there were any. My fall brought me into a temperate valley somewhere between them. There doesn't appear to be any valley leading out of this hole, it's just one rock face flowing into another, so until I learn to fly or get some really good furs and climbing gear, there's no getting out of here.

Wonderful.

Checking the more immediate area around me reveals it's not just me that came through. The Starbucks table and half of my chair are off to either side of the rock, my computer is on the grass just beyond folded open and lying on its edges like a ^ mark. The power cord and mouse are missing, possibly in other dimensions, possibly still plugged into the wall socket back where I was spending my surprise permanent vacation.

That's the good news.

The bad news is that the tear in reality is closing before my eyes and my son, Nick isn't anywhere in visual range. If I'm lucky, that means he's walked off in search of help. Given I was unlucky enough to get sucked into the devils ass crack however, even chances he's either in another different dimension or still in Singapore.

If he's not here, I hope he's still in Singapore; there at least he's got my account info in his phone, citizens papers and a place set up to live.

Fuck...

Rolling over onto my knees, I check the ground around me, but I've no real training as a tracker. I've no idea what I'm looking for beyond what we learned in the Boy-Scouts and that was forever ago. Seriously, how the fuck are you supposed to tell the difference in grass that's been stepped on and shit something's rolled through?

After chasing down several "leads" I'm left with little more than some extra luggage. Nicks backpack, my 15 year old Navy duffel, an airline neck-pillow, a potted plant, half of a barista (poor guy), a rack full of coffee and no indication of Nick. For better OR worse.

Fighting down a new layer of panic attacks, I began calling out his name, using drill sergeants pitch and mountain echo's to be sure I could be heard all over the valley. In between calls I gathered everything into a pile and began organizing and repacking it. Stuck in a foreign planet or reality? Take stock of your resources and plan for shelter. I had no SEER training, just camping and merit badges, but for the moment, that will have to be enough.

Step one? Find water. Water meant not dying of dehydration. Water meant animals. Animals, in a foreign mountain with no idea which plants and berries are edible, meant food. After I found water, the next step would be shelter.

Scanning the valley again, closer this time, reveals the tree line. There are few enough trees to begin with, but there ARE trees among the grass and crags of this valley. Turning slowly I manage to find what looks like it might be a waterfall, an odd enough sight in mountains this sharp, and below it... are those buildings?

Well fuck me, how did I miss those before?

Shaking my head, I call out again. "Nicodemus!" When even a minute later there's no answer, I gather up what I can and begin moving towards the cliff face where I saw civilization.

It takes me two hours of trekking through the tall grass and random slopes before I can make out my target clearly. If my eyes don't deceive me, I'm looking at an Asian medieval city of sorts. Given the remote local, likely Tibetan Monastery, but I could be wrong. Maybe they're Uyghurs? I stumble on, slowly becoming more sure of foot despite my growing exhaustion. I have to reach the temple before nightfall. Silly me, but I didn't pack a thermal sleeping back for this surprise dimensional incursion into the Himalayas and sleeping outside is almost as dangerous as the dehydration I'll start suffering some time tomorrow.

There is a problem with my plan however,.. in the mountains, the sun sets before it reaches the horizon. I'm beginning to despair, and staving it off by searching my travel-bag for the blankets when a stone appears out of nowhere an smacks me on the side of the face. It's smooth and flat, at least where it hits me, but I can feel the skin break anyway as my vision explodes into stars and tinnitus shrieks its siren call in my ears. My falling to the ground should have allowed me to dodge the next rock which was already in the air, but whoever had thrown it had apparently accounted for that and the projectile hit me in the shoulder, spilling the contents of the bag everywhere.

Shaking my head and raising my arm to ward off further blows at least to my head, I look around, scrambling to get up. Sure enough, my assailant is in view... though... unless those blow screwed up my vision more than I thought, he's got one hell of an arm. Easily 100 feet away is a bald kid in a mustard yellow robe. His features are strongly Chinese, but the sort of dark that comes from a natural complexion rather than tanning. That should just about confirm it, but... I don't know, there's just something off about him compared to the Tibetans as they're always depicted.

Then I see his mouth moving, and a second later hear the words, and my questions are answered.

He's speaking Mandarin.

I know maybe 200 words in Mandarin. Out of thousands. And given the importance of tonal variation, probably really badly. I'd been counting on Singapore's maintaining English as an official language to give me time to adjust, but nooooooo... Fucking portal... And I'm deflecting...

"Need. Help. Please? Am lost I." I sound out.

The man gave me a disgusted look and both of his fists erupted into a golden brilliance, lit from within, as though a flashlight were placed against the skin, only much brighter. The power flowed up his arms and pooled in his throat and then he spoke again.

"Follow me, fool." the robed... mage? Monk? Sage? told me, English in a perfect Bostonian accent overlaying his Chinese words, making a strange echo of sorts. "I do not know how you got past me, but the Elders will know how to deal with you."

With that, he turned, his robe loosening enough for me to catch a glimpse of a tattoo on his bare chest. That of a certain dragon. The glowing fists and the tattoo connected in my mind and I knew where I was.

I was in K'un-Lun, fifth of the seven Chinese heavens, and the man who had assaulted me was the Iron Fist.

I'm in a Marvel universe. But which one?

Fuuuck... I think. But then I think about it further and realize something. With all of the power available for the taking... Perhaps my son isn't truly lost to me. I will not give up hope. Not just yet.

~! #$%^&*()_+~! #$%^&*()_+~! #$%^&*()_+

December 1st 1986

The "elders" as I learned around midnight, were Yu Ti the Jade Serpent, Lei Kung the Thunderer and Priya the Red Crane. These were the three immortal leaders of the Order of the Crane Mother, trainers of the Iron Fist and responsible for the protection of K'un-Lun. None of them speak English, and all four of them are offended by my attempts to speak Chinese, so the Iron Fist continues that chi-trick with his throat and acts as translator for us. I explain to them my trip through the portal, the rock where I landed, and beseech them for possible sightings of my son, Nick. They speak amongst each other for a while before the Iron Fist returns his attention to me.

"The Crane Mother," he gestures to Priya, "bids that I do my duty and slay you, protecting K'un-Lun from your trespass. But the August Personage in Jade" He gestures to Yu-Ti, "councils compassion. You did not come here of your own will and mean us no harm. Unless you have more words to speak to us, this leaves your fate to the Honorable Thunderer, who deems you nearly unfit for training."

I take in a deep breath and consider. Before heading for Singapore I'd worked at the Pilgrims Point power station. The Singapore government had been willing to... overlook a number of things for me as a member of their own Nuclear facility under construction. To that purpose, I had spent the last several weeks frantically studying up on my Chinese and still had the Chinese to English Dictionary with me even after the dimensional transfer. I was far from stupid and honestly, I didn't fancy my chances with the Thunderer. But I could perhaps do something equally valuable to protecting the immortal city and gain myself some much needed power in the process.

"I am a scholar and builder." I told him. "If the honorable elders would allow it, I would serve K'un-Lun in such a capacity."

The Iron fist repeated my words to the trio and Yu-Ti laughed. The crane mother then said something that the Iron Fist translated as "A scholar who cannot speak is a fish in the sky." I got about half of it that time.

I pull the dictionary out of my backpack and flip through it a few times. Once I'm sure of what I want to say, I speak. "I am Fast learner. Offer chance, honored elder. This humble I, prove worth."

Priya marched up to me and snatched the book from my hands, flipping through it and speaking rapidly. Yu-Ti then took the book from her and began studying it himself. The five of us sat there for some time as Yu Ti studied the book. Until eventually, he spoke. His words were halting, the pronunciation is strange, but it was clearly English.

"This one is curious," The Jade Pinnacle asked "what he would build for us?"

"With tools and time? Anything." I tell him. "I think a better question, is what do you need?"

"From this one?" Yu-Ti asks, looking amused "'K'un-Lun needs nothing. Even so, To remain in tranquility and safety each resident of heaven must serve until they either rejoin the Wheel Of Reincarnation or cross the Bridge Of Destiny into Nirvana."

I nod slowly. "What would my duties be? Had I nothing to offer?" I ask. "And how do most people get here?" I had an idea from the comic, but they never went into detail. What does it mean to be a city of Heaven? They fight for the order of of precedent in heaven, but what does that mean? And the TV show offered even less. Though... there was something wrong about the Crane Mother, Priya. Something I couldn't put my finger on.

The man hummed "I suppose you would want to know why you are here." He said after considering a moment. "There are three types or residents in K'un-Lun. First and oldest are the seekers, we who follow the Dao, seeking enlightenment. The seekers built K'un-Lun in the Age of Heroes when Dragons roamed the land and it was common knowledge that men could rise to immortality through sheer merit. Over the ages, those who seek the true path have continued to find us here, entering when the stars are right. Next there are the dead. K'un-Lun was forged within this valley because it was here many thousand years ago the first Buddha found the dead queuing for passage beyond. They now reside with their families since past in the civilian quarter until such a time as they seek Nirvana, rejoin the wheel of reincarnation or suffer dissolution having lost all who remember them. Finally, there are the natives. Children of the seekers, the dead and in some special cases, both."

He pauses again, taking a sip of tea brought to him in that moment by a servant. "You are an anomaly. You do not study any Dao, nor are you dead."

"Yet." Spoke Priya, looking up from where she was studying my pocket dictionary with a glare.

Yu-Ti inclined his head "not yet." He agreed. "Certainly you were not born here, Even the S'ahra Sharn know how to speak properly. Instead, you penetrated the heavens through unknown means during a time when the path was thought closed."

His eyes flick to the man still standing behind me. "It is, honorable Dragon." The Iron Fist spoke in his double voice. "I checked it after first discovering him."

I grimace. "I told you, I fe..."

"Yes, you fell through a tear in the dao" Priya interrupted "and seek only your son. Likely another green eyed devil with mane of blood."

I sat there, blinking at her for several long moments, trying to imagine what brought on this hostility. It's one thing for a translator to tell you some lady wants you dead, but another to hear the venomous words from her own lips. Then I remembered old Chinese legends, or at least tropes about them, say green eyes as a sign of evil or demonic possession. A lot of older European tales did too, that was where you got the green eyed jealousy jokes, but seriously...

"His hair is copper, actually" I reply, "I blame his mothers mane of gold." She glances up at me sharply, shocked at something, but hides it quickly enough I would have missed it had we not been glaring at each other. Thinking on it, she's probably not used to backtalk. Now more than ever, I want to avoid the order of the Crane Mother, as otherwise she's likely to try and punish me before killing me. The Yu-Ti's explanation did illuminate why she's so eager to kill me though. City of heaven, meet faithless foreigners. By dying, I would go from something threatening her home and those she was invested in with uncertainty to something well within the expected range of experience. A perfectly female rational.

I still think she's a bitch.

Granted, she's also a powerful bitch who I should be wary of further aggravating. Even ignoring I'm in a place with super-powered martial arts monks that is reportedly removed from reality, literally the only thing keeping her political clout from obliterating me like a Clinton whistle-blower is Yu-Ti's disapproval. And given the pair of them just learned English in a fucking hour she's probably smart enough to make it look like I did it to myself.

Yu'Ti seemed amused by our spat and continued. "As for your duties," he continues, "as an outsider you would be expected to train under Lei Kung or Priya as a protector of the city. Later you would be allowed to take up other hobbies to support the city. Running water, farming, carpentry and masonry, black-smithing and pottery. Being a scholar, scrivener, brewer, alchemist, artist, musician or dancer would require you to prove yourself worthy of a divine peach and joining the noble immortals as a permanent resident of K'un-Lun."

My heart... sank. "By running water, you mean..?"

"Carrying water up the mountain from the falls." This time it was Lei Kung who spoke, his voice deeper than you'd normally expect from an Asian man. Looking over at him, I saw my book was now in his hands. Good fucking god, how intelligent are these people? Or is it just a languages thing? In the comics, at least two of the three here were a million years old and K'un Lun had a magical translation effect, but here at least that was a special Iron Fist trick and the others were learning it from my god damned book. "The city has wells to feed it, but this is good training."

Oooof course it is... savages. I carefully kept my reaction off my face, but by Yu'Ti's indulgent smile and twinkling eyes I suspect I failed spectacularly. "And the dead?"

"The same," the old man admitted "except their participation is the primary use of their time until they engage in their next life."

Nothing ventured nothing gained. "What if I were to build you a means of transporting water easily across the city and into peoples homes, even their rooms on demand with enough work?"

Yu-Ti looked intrigued, but Lei Kung scowled. "Avoiding honest labor is why you are fat, outsider. It will take many months to correct, and..."

"Let him speak, Thunderer." The 'Jade serpent' counseled placatingly. "Tell me, traveler, what would this take?"

"Time, mostly. A lot of wood and rope for the transport system. Ideally access to the smiths and potters if you want it piped into peoples homes. I'd offer hot and cold running water, but I don't think there's enough fuel or metal for me to build proper water heaters."

The two of them looked at each other and chuckled as though at a good joke while Priya actually looked... kindly, at me?

"You might be surprised," The Thunderer told me "what can be found in Heaven."

~! #$%^&*()_+~! #$%^&*()_+~! #$%^&*()_+

We continued to talk late into the night, but In the end, my words merely amused the leader of K'un-Lun and its order of protectors and I received little.

But little is still better than nothing.

The Crane Mother does not get to kill me for being a Green Eyed Devil with Hair of Blood. I do not have to attend the daily beatings ancient martial artists such as The Thunderer imagine to be classes. But I also do not get access to the library at the Hall of Venerable Ancestors and will be required to participate in the daily running of water from the temple cities various wells and waterfalls.

Imagine... A fabled City of Heaven... not having running water. It's a crime.

They do have a pretty impressive sewer system though, for a medieval city. Running beneath all of the toilets is a series of tunnels tall enough for a child to stand in that uses the flow of the falls above to wash their sewage down the mountain and past S'ahra-Sharn, the city of outcasts formed from those who would rather rule in hell than serve in heaven. I had missed the place because it was accessed by following the river through a hole in the rock wall of the pocket dimension to a pueblo style cave city. While I vaguely recognized it from reading Iron Fist decades ago, I mostly know this because I was threatened with being sent there by the oh so benevolent masters should I fail.

Fail at what? Why delivering on my foolish promise of revolutionizing the cities water supply. Should I succeed, I'll be allowed progressively more access to the cities resources and facilities and eventually prove my worth as a scholar in the Hall of Venerable Ancestors. Otherwise, I'll be condemned to what I remember from the comic being described as "and evil Mirror of K'un-lun ". Fun, right? And the S'ahra Sharn are only K'un-Lun's closest enemies. From outside are The Hand, formed from five travelers such as myself who had been granted immediate access to the Hall of Ancestral Knowledge as I was asking. They had first tried and failed to gain immortality from the Divine Peach Tree at the city's heart. Then they had tried to use forbidden techniques from the library to cultivate their way to immortality quickly. When They were stopped, they assaulted Shao-Lao, temporarily killing him and taking his bones to become corrupted immortals. After this, they were finally banished, considered too dangerous even to leave in the under-city of S'ahra Sharn.

Thankfully at least, the H'ylthri plant monsters don't exist in this marvel continuity. Or at the very least, they don't plague K'un-Lun's slopes. That's the domain of the undead farmers, and battles between the Order of the Crane Mother and S'ahra Sharn. Those who die in those battles return at the Gate of Heaven, a Japanese style archway the city is built around, making the valley and endless war reminiscent of MMO's.

My first four days are spent collecting my spilled luggage, settling in and learning about the water system as it stands now. I am provided a small single room domicile of piled stone, no toilet and a woven reed mat as a bed which I replace with my blanket, a few towels, my fluffy bathrobe and the airline neck pillow. Practically royal furnishings compared to my neighbors. The city also provides each new resident a set of saffron colored burlap robes, which I wear as camouflage over my own surviving garments. Two bowls of rice for food are provided daily by the city, and I am required to provide my own water. Each of the districts have their own set of water runners. The Red Crane's Pagoda where the order lives and trains is tended by a dozen or so disciples. They get their water from the bottom of the cliff on which the city sits, gathering it from the waterfall and not the cities sewage outflow, thankfully. The trip is about half a mile each way and disciples are expected to carry 20 or 30 buckets each day as a means of building stamina. The Noblemen's palaces have servants who take care of them, usually from a cliff right beside the nearest of several waterfalls and the civilian quarter have their own communal wells.

My fifth day, I go down one of the wells at night, carrying a goat tallow candle to check out the water supply. To my eternal gratitude, it's not connected to the sewers, but rather a large grotto. Said grotto is filled with bioluminescent fish and fungus that, rather than polluting the water and turning it brackish, seem to instead purify the water, gravitating to my dripping dirt and sweat, absorbing it as food. The water is slightly sweet indicating a strong content of either iron or phosphorus. Judging by the glowing creatures, I'm guessing phosphorus, but hell, this is K'un-lun, maybe it's iron and the glow is their chi.

Taking several of the fish with me, I share a few of them with the locals the next morning in exchange for two long coils of rope and some woodworking assistance. The first well is finished reworking a week and a half later. A hand crank spins two spoked axles. Mounted on those axles were a pair of knotted ropes which caught on the spokes, keeping the rope from slipping. Between the knots at even intervals were tied buckets with the rope affixed to either side. As the buckets reached the apex of the well and went over the axles, they would dump their water into a tray which opened into a slide. This slide emptied into a large basin. Civilians could then either fill their buckets from the spout, or the basin. This quickly proved popular as it allowed the morning water run go from a never ending issue you had to get up early for, to a quick experience of about an hour.

I didn't charge for use of my contraption, as that would take too long and piss off the undead residents of the temple city, but I did take all of the fish that ended up in my buckets. Those fish, apart from upping my meals to three every day and increasing their quality, were traded for more and more expert help in converting more of the wells around the city to the same system. The work quickly proliferated beyond my control as my hirelings caught onto the fish racket I was running and the good will of the other locals.

The experience also forc... allowed me to rapidly develop my Mandarin vocabulary and enunciation. As it turns out, Mandarin is something of a bitch to learn even with a handy dandy dictionary as tone, nasal clarity and various modifiers have a LOT to do with being properly understood. There is literally a 200 word long poem of saying nothing but "shi" in different intonations. It talks about a lunatic noble and his encounter with a lion.

Learning the subtleties of Mandarin were not entirely a trial however, as it did allow me to learn a great deal about china as it evolved over the centuries and where it was now. MOST of the dead move on just about as soon as they learn about the wheel of reincarnation, but there are a few in every generation that that stay and some have been here as far back as the evolution of the Chinese from homo-sapiens-erectus mating with the Denisovans in Mongolia and ballooning out from there. That dude, Ja-uruk, looks the part and says his family has their own tower here that stretches from that period all the way through china's 100 or more dynasties to Shanghai about the time the British took over.

The whole family tree is there with no more than a 1 generation gap every now and then. Or, at least that's what Lao-er, his great-X granddaughter from 10th century CE told me over a fried fish. She's got some amazing stories and is pretty consistent on the names and details.

It's in this manner that I learn the latest crop of dead are from the china's 1980's by the British calendar. By Chinese date, the year is 6820, a number made suspect by every dynasty since the flood resetting the date to year 0. By K'un Lun's calendar the year is 472 of the 327th era. Each era being 1000 years long. The remaining dead were mostly Taoists, with a good mix of Buddhists for substance and just a few Christians and Muslims for flavor. The only atheists are from Lao-er and Ja-uruk's family from the time before K'un-lun's founding. The freshly dead were from the tail end of China's "great leap forward" on all sides of the political divide, from genocidal communist to dissident from the killing fields to normie Chang townsman to city slicking businessman and student. Mutants were a thing, but either none entered K'un-Lun or they keep quiet about it after getting here. There had also been a number of super-groups making small messes of things ever since world war two where Captain America and the Red Skull kicked off a fad. Some of the older residents thought that this was nothing new however, as there had always been the rare super-powered anarchist fighting the medically or religiously empowered emperor's cousin in china for as far back as any of the solid-ghosts I've talked to so far remembered.

The good thing, I suppose, was that it helped me figure out just where I was. Marvel 199999 or thereabouts, the Movies Universe. This, I determined because one of the more helpful ghosts was a member of the Masters of the Mystic Arts based out of Kamir-Taj 500 years ago. Their Ancient One was Tilda Swinton, a detail I found to be highly telling as the MCU was the one and only continuity to gender bait the Ancient One. My personal head-cannon is that this is the very next universe over, Earth 200,000 because of the presence of Mutants, particularly the X-men. I don't yet know if X-men First Class is a thing here, but one of the ghosts remembers being killed by Charles Xavier in Korea and another by Sabertooth and Wolverine as a pair in Vietnam. As the X-men still aren't included in the MCU it can't be strictly vanilla.

It's as I'm listening to a story from Gna-kalhara about how the Mu empire, now sunk beneath the south china sea, had been working on a lunar colony when the great flood which ended the last Ice age hit that I was called back to face the council. Fa-Lin, The Cranes Daughter came to fetch me by literally grabbing the straps of my backpack and leaping onto a nearby roof from ground level. The roof was three stories up. Fa-lin for reference is not actually one of Priya's daughters, but rather one of her direct disciples. She's a chi-powered martial artist straight out of a Xianxia novel and the only reason she'll never be Iron fist in Danny Rand and Orsen Randell's place is that she's undead and the Iron Fist has to be a living weapon. Apparently, Shao-lao eats spirits as though they were lemon drops in Dumbledore's pocket, no matter how far along their cultivation is.

Good dragon?

~! #$%^&*()_+~! #$%^&*()_+~! #$%^&*()_+

March 7th 1987

As I'm sat down before the council, I'm introduced to another leader of this merry city, Li Hua, the White Tiger. While the Yu'Ti, the Jade Serpent, The August Personage in Jade, rules over the city as a whole and directly oversees the noble (immortal) cultivators, Priya the Crane Mother leads the inner defense and Lei Kung the Thunderer sees to the outer defense, Li Hua The White Tiger apparently oversees all of the fiddly bits, such as the wheel of reincarnation and civilian housing, development and industry for both the living and the dead.

In the comics, she's also a Russian/Korean half breed who's smoking hot, clad in strips of red leather and wielding battle fans. Seeing her here and having her introduced to me, not as the champion of Tiger Island the third city of heaven "The Tiger's beautiful Daughter" but as White Tiger herself, helps me put a finger on what's been bothering me about Priya and her daughters for the last three months. Priya, the Crane mother, is supposed to be the ruler of another city, K'un-zi; and Davos, son of Lei Kung, would have been her immortal weapon the Red Crane after the man failed to take the position as Iron Fist from Danny Rand. That sparked another memory about watching season 2 of Marvel's Iron Fist TV series.

A fact which distracted me from the question Li Hua was asking me.

"I'm sorry," I told her in Mandarin, "could you please repeat that?"

The woman, dressed in a tight red silk cheongsam and definitively Korean rather than Russian, smirks at me and runs a finger down her curves. "I was asking," she tells me in English, "what facilities you imagine you'll need for the next phase of your project. I feel I can offer you a fair amount of leeway given your industriousness and the faith you've cultivated in your fellow citizens."

"Ah, thank you." I replied, thinking furiously. "I suppose the next step would be piping, so I'll need the cooperation of the blacksmiths and Potters." I pause, thinking, "and a more complete map of the city than I've drawn so far, but I can take care of that." I'm not a city planner or civil engineer, so this will be something of a novel experience. Not new, per say, as the plants I'd worked on before had piping that stretched across miles of facility, but definitely different.

Yu-Ti hums and adds in Chinese. "I am allowing you limited access to the hall of ancestors as well. Only the first floor. You have learned to speak properly, now you must learn to read."

The other two, Crane and Thunderer look at him shocked, but he silences them with a gesture. Li Hua smiles however, revealing the secret. "I look forward to hot baths daily. Also, if the Yu-Ti is willing to allow you access to the library, I would suggest looking into wax paper and oil cloth in place of pottery and metal for piping."

I offer her a confused look. "Why wax paper? Oil cloth could be sewn tight enough, in theory, I suppose, but paper? It'd never hold up to the strain..."

"Amazing things can be done with the smallest amount of chi," she explains, "The first floor should be enough for that, I think."

My eyes widen and I struggle to keep expressions of glee and greed off of my face. "I thank you for your trust, honorable elders." I tell them, bowing deeply.

Priya snorts and Lei Kung shakes his head. "You will not learn such things for a decade, at least." he tells me dismissively. "We expect you to keep working while you study. Li Hua, if I may, send him to the blacksmiths anyway. The boy needs the exercise."

Standing straighter, I adjust my backpack and it's precious cargo. "I will take that under advisement, honorable Thunderer." I tell him, graciously, all the while planning to ignore the suggestion. Perhaps when I can have Chi aiding my recovery rather than a 42 year olds back, knees and poor rations. I've already entirely lost my first world fat over the last 3 months of small... relatively healthy meals.

Receiving a wave of dismissal, I turn and leave through the doors of the temple rather than the balcony I arrived on. Li Hua follows me outside, before summoning an assistant as if by magic and leaping away across the roofs of the immortal city.

"The lady bids me take you to the smithy." The young man with white hair and Japanese features tells me.

I frown. The potters would be more useful, but if I'm going to make clay pipes I suppose I need an extruder. Metal pipes are difficult to make without acetylene and rollers, but clay pipes you only need a funnel with a suspended plug. You COULD roll out the clay or hammer the copper flat and then weld either of them together with medieval tools, but the seams will be shit; prone to cracks, rust, separation and ill fitting sizes if done by any less than a skilled professional. In either case, it'll take a lot more time to do. The real trick will be fitting together watertight pumps and valves.

To my, perhaps rude, surprise, explaining what I wanted too the smiths wasn't difficult. The older ones already knew of the Chinese Rope and Chain pumps and there were already a few world war 1 era Japanese trying to drag their fellows into the modern era, so I wasn't even half through my drawing before they knew just what I was looking for and spinning off their own ideas, such as the screw, rotary and hydraulic pumps. Honestly, I think they were more eager than I was to do this project as it equated to a mandate from heaven to ignore their elders and get something done.

For my part, I ended up helping them load a blast furnace and start pulling copper tubing. I run coke through a wheel mill to crush it and feed it into the bellows to get the metal hot enough to be dragged through an extruder, something I hadn't thought possible with metal. To my knowledge that was only done for wire, and everything else was hammered or rolled.

The things you learn.

At the end of the day, I left the furnace with about a hundred feet of copper piping piled up for shaping. Li Hua's servant popped up almost immediately to remind us that this was going to the nobles houses and so to do our best work.

"I'll also need to build large copper tubs to place on the roofs of each mansion." I remind him.

He scowls at me. "Why? Copper is expensive, you are only allowed this much because it is for the nobility."

I grit my teeth, but speak calmly. "Unless there is some chi magic involved I am not privy to, the water will need to be held on site in a location higher than where the nobles want it to flow to. Not doing so will require more copper. Further, one of the tubs, for there will be two, also needs to be insulated with a thatch that does not burn, so it can be heated with a minimum of fuel." Fiberglass I expect, is going to be rather more difficult to come by, and forget foams. "Li Hua was very eager to have heated water in her house without needing to wait for servants." I explain pleasantly, subtly reminding him that the White Tiger thinks him inadequate.

I think he got the message, as his nose and ears flush red. "I also have been given liberty to use the first floor of the Hall of Ancestral Knowledge." I tell him. His eyes bulge, and he looks like he's about to strike me, but then his head jerks up and he gets an expression as if he's listening to something.

Grimacing, he nods. "Follow me then" he hisses. I do and he sets a brutal pace, which for him is probably a fast walk, the bastard.

Li Hau actually meets us there, smiling for her servant who just about melts into a puddle at the gesture. "Let's get you registered then." She says, guiding me into the enormous stone and red wood building. "The first level is scrolls and manuscripts we've allowed to be translated. They're arranged by those who return them, so organizing the shelves is a constant job for aspiring scholars. The second floor is original manuscripts penned across the ages. Scholars wishing to study there are required to translate on their own and keep the copies in house. The third floor is the hall of memories. where new books are transcribed by experienced cultivators from the imprint left behind by those who have passed on to reincarnation. The fourth floor is the Seat of the Dao, where cultivators record their paths for students of K'un Lun to study. The fifth and final floor is the labyrinth of shades where cultivators who cross the bridge of destiny imprint their secrets into Jade pillars that test the students seeking to prove worthy of such sage tutelage."

She stops at a desk and an attendant librarian rushes up to her. "Get this student a pass for the first floor" she orders him and he runs off to do as ordered.

"So, how do I get access to the higher floors?" I ask, seriously.

She laughs brightly, as though I've said something funny. When I look at her impassively, she quirks an eyebrow and laughs again. "Originally we allowed anyone with the required understanding to do so, but after the Hand, we've restricted it to a series of loyalty tests. Normally for a mortal cultivator such as yourself, you would first need to find us, submit to the Iron Fist, and then surrender both your cultivation and your life to K'un-Lun."

I frowned sourly "So I would have to die?" Or become a slave?

"No," She chuckles quietly, "you would have to forswear your life beyond K'un-Lun is all, vowing to live here until the end of your days." She looks me up and down. "You have no life to go back to, and are offering your expertise, so I have judged this enough."

"Isn't it the hand's mission to return here?" I ask. "They certainly feel no loyalty to the outside world from what I've read." Well, seen, as it was a TV show, but that would probably get me killed before I could explain. Heh heh heh... yeah, don't wanna do that, thanks.

She nods, her expression deadly serious. "Return here and rule." She states, voice deadly calm. "They originally came to us seeking a way to save their children's lives, but when they died anyway the five perverted our teachings and tried to raise them from the dead. The dead cannot leave K'un-Lun, even when the way is open and The Hand did not yet seek to rule. Now they are banished they seek a way to defeat the Iron Fist and our immortal cultivators that they might continue their dark work."

I frowned. "I thought they were banished for attacking Shao-Lao?" I asked confused.

She shakes her head. "A single grain of rice can tip the scales of destiny, but many forget the pile of other grains that weighted those scales to begin with. The story of the Hand is complex and involves many tragedies and more crimes. Many more, after they left. Much of S'ahra-Sharn is made of Hand lackeys who refused to rejoin the wheel. One cannot be forced onto it and the dead remembered do not fade."

Which makes that big community of combatants effectively immortal here. Great. That probably means a lot of the Order of the Crane Mother are former Chaste. Apparently 'our battle is eternal' wasn't just Stick spouting cultist bullshit, it's very literally forever. Well, concrete, well explained afterlives have been great recruiting pitches for millennia, and this one's pretty Valhalla. The Einherjar were hardly an unpopular option, though the lack of good food and parties would probably be something of a turnoff...

It is personally, at least.

"Over the last thousand years, the Hand have returned several times" Li Hua explains softly, accepting the pass from the returned librarian and handing it to me. "And with time, their goals have changed. Only Gao and Murakami have ever offered to repent, and on separate occasions each. Bakuto refuses to believe he has done wrong, Sowande delights in his malice and Alexandra is too proud and bitter to ever bow as she must. Sowande and Murakami now only wish to become more powerful for the sake of power. Bakuto wants to rise to the top so that he can share our teachings with the world. Gao is a whipped dog and Alexandria... Alexandria would now rule the mortal world from K'un-Lun as her capital; or see both worlds burnt to ash around her."

I nod, thinking that over for a few minutes. She seems to sense my next question though, and so stays, watching me, amused. "So, how do I get to the other floors?"

"To reach the second floor you must prove yourself as a scholar on the first floor." She replies, evenly. "That involves a certain level of decorum and service to the librarians along with proof of intellect. Any inappropriate behavior to your seniors or K'un-lun will hold you further back. To enter the third floor, you must be a cultivator, trained in our way and offer your memories to the hall for study and cataloging. To stay there, you must transcribe the skills stored there for the first or second levels. Since you did not come to us as a cultivator, that will involve apprenticing yourself to one of the four orders of K'un-lun until your masters deem your skill sufficient."

"I could not learn on my own from the first and second floors?"

She looks at me, laughter dancing in her eyes. "Perhaps, but how much time do you have? Cultivation is called a way of life, and not without reason." Shaking her raven black hair, she continues, her implication clear. "The fourth floor is for advanced students at core formation stage. You could journey there before that time, but you would not understand any of what is written. The fifth level is for those seeking to become immortals and join the nobility of K'un-Lun. Centuries often go by before one is worthy to walk the jade pillars and the combat experience gained during that time necessary to survive the shades trials."

"Even for a healing saint?" I ask.

She laughs again. "So full of surprises! Yes, combat even for an immortal healer. But enough questions, you have studying to do, young one."

Bowing to her, we part ways.

As I reach the stacks though, I look back at where she left. The more I learn, both about K'un-Lun and the Hand, the more I feel the parallels between us. I very much doubt K'un-Lun would approve of my plans for the knowledge in their library and if Nicodemus shows up at the Gates of Heaven... God help them all, I will succeed where the Hand failed.

For now though... I need a path into S'ahra Sharn. If my son is here, then either the elders haven't been looking for him, have been hiding him from me in the city, or he's at S'ahra Sharn with the undead Hand. The first should have been solved by my rapidly developing network of friends, so that's out. I don't want to believe the second, because it makes little sense outside of a cheesy Saturday morning cartoon plot so that leaves either the last... or his being in another reality. If he's in S'ahra Sharn, then I need to be strong enough to fight or sneak my way into the undercity and snoop around. Simply asking them, seems... deadly. Maybe the right path IS Disney princess-ing it up and just believing in the good in others, but that's not something I feel comfortable with. If he's not in this reality, then I need to leave K'un-Lun and gather the power to re-open that rift, return past their defense and reach or pass through it.

Pretty much... all of that is going to piss off K'un-Lun. I'm pretty sure. Maybe I can frame it as joining the Chaste? Defeating the Hand on the outside would stop their numbers from growing back here, while the Chaste can continue to do so. The failure of their mission would get some of them to rejoin the wheel rather than suffer in hell, and that could cause a cascade...

I'll burn that bridge when I cross it. For now... Let's get studying...

~! #$%^&*()_+~! #$%^&*()_+~! #$%^&*()_+

March 15th 1987, 8 days later.

"You're doing it wrong, little brother." Tomoi's voice broke my rhythm as I pumped the bellows, fed coal sand into the stream and breathed steadily.

Shaking myself, I focused on him. "Hmm? Rhythm or powder?" I asked, absently.

"No," he replied, shaking his head. "You're trying the breathing exercise for inner awakening, yes? You're doing it wrong. There's a reason you're not supposed to try active meditation until relaxed meditation is instinctual."

I hummed, continuing the physical aspect of my efforts. Over the last week, I'd been spending every extra moment in the library, about 8 hours a day, not including breaks to collect and cook my fish or the nine hours of work at the forge every day. Between the activities I was only getting five hours of sleep, which given all of my activity is not enough. The goal is to have Meditation replace most of my sleep time if at all possible. The books suggested so, but translation was going slowly and I knew I didn't have the full picture.

"Perhaps you could give me a better perspective then... senior?" I almost forgot to add that last part. I'm still not sure about all of the honorifics, and Tomoi is Japanese, not Chinese, despite our shared language and setting.

He huffs. "I would have done this earlier, but I've been waiting for you to be punished." He shakes his head. "You're trying to feel the world around you and shut out internal thought to draw in chi, but that's an advanced technique. In order to get there, you first have to work from within." He pauses a moment to quench the tube we're working on. Setting down his tools, he looks straight at me and begins explaining.

"To achieve first stage enlightenment, you have to connect your soul to your body. Martial artists do this by taking their beatings, meditating on the Dao and focusing their considerable wills on overcoming physical limitations. Sages take a more sedate route, abandoning outside attachments, fasting and dehydrating themselves so that in the end there is only themselves so as to use austerity as their focus. In either case, the basic concept is that the body feeds the mind, the mind shapes the soul, the soul reflects upon the body, reinforcing, feeding and purifying it." He slammed his fist into his chest before making a Buddhist gesture in front of a serene face and then finally lighting up with a faint haze of red flames which reflected off a metallic sheen on his exposed skin. Fire and Metal chi, if I'm remembering the diagrams right.

He looked me up and down. "For you, I would suggest focusing on your exhaustion and loss. Your son is missing, are in unfamiliar surroundings, have been doing a lot and have lost much weight recently. A lot of people fail for years, decades even, because they think that in becoming more aware of their bodies while meditating, not less, they're doing something wrong. But enlightenment in this case is realizing the opposite is true. You must become one with yourself before you seek to become one with the world."

That... made sense in hindsight. Nodding I ask. "Any other wisdom for me, sensei?"

He grimaces. "Do not butcher my language. Abusing these continentals tongue is acceptable, mine is not." Then he pulls out a slate from behind the forge. "I do have some suggestions though."

I stopped pumping the bellows and took it from him, clearing off the Anvil and laying the board down to examine it closer. "You want to build a bathhouse?"

"Yes." He replies simply. "As you almost understood earlier, there is 'something involving chi you do not understand going on'. Disciple Mao tried to explain to you that copper is hard to find, but there is a particular reason why. We do not mine it here, the mine in the pocket dimension ran out millennia ago and we do not trade with the outside world anymore. The copper we do acquire must be recycled from art and weapons or drawn out of the stone by cultivators skilled in the elements of stone and metal over long periods of time. The Order of the Sleeping Tiger has increased their efforts and even brought in masters from other areas to sit in the mines, but they will not be able to gather enough to add plumbing to the the entire noble district, never mind the transient or martial districts."

They could probably get what they need from aluminum, or Iron in the reservoir beneath us, but explaining that without examples could be... difficult. "But you DO think we'll have enough for a rather large bathhouse." I finished, looking at his designs.

He nodded. "Two of them at least" He agreed, "I'd say more, but I should not push my luck. One well appointed house for the noble district, built to our designs by the finest craftsmen in K'un-Lun, and another larger bathhouse built mostly of wood on the style of Onsen in the middle of the civilian district."

I hummed. "None for Priya's Orders of Crane Mother and Lei Kung's Dark Mountain Sect?"

"The inner and outer defenses pride themselves on their austerity" he countered shaking his head. "They also prefer the name 'Chaste', not Dark Mountain, or Black Turtle. You could ask, but I think they'll take it as an insult. Individual disciples will visit the civilian bathhouse and the Elders the Cultivators bathhouse, but in secret, likely as not. The Thunderer prefers to bathe and cultivate in the lake beneath the second set of falls. He says it's bracing, I just think he's a masochist."

The pair of us settled into an easy comradery as we continued to talk and draw until the shift was over three hours later. I redid his piping network and after he explained the use of chi to heat, chill, clean and foul(mineralize) the water, we went about redesigning the system of baths, pools and tanks as well. Some of our more ingenious designs required too much piping to actually work, but we ended up settling on something both the smith and I liked enough to present to Li Hua.

The Tiger's Daughter was disappointed, a point she made clear with her cold and menacing aura, but she understood the reason for the change, and quickly warmed to the idea of bathing in a more social setting. After talking with the leader of civilian operations, we ended up redesigning it again so that there were three smaller, but identical partitions to the bathing houses. Male, Female and Co-ed. There was also discussion about how I intended to pump the water TO the bathhouses in the first place, and I quickly pulled out my maps of the city and how we could use the waterfall and a bit of lumber to create slides that would funnel the water to each location easily. Then the conversation moved onto towels, soaps and medicinal baths, something normally done in private residences using a cultivators own resources.

I struggled to keep mental notes during THAT conversation. There was really just too much to absorb. Sacred herbs, spirit and demon beasts, auspicious times, complex alchemical principles; Tiger's Beautiful Daughter got so deep into it, even Tomoi quickly became lost and just nodded along like a bobble-head, occasionally speaking up when he recognized this or that principle. The Elder caught on though, and it became less of a discussion and more of a lesson after the first hour, during which we were... encouraged to keep notes. Li Hua frowned when mine were in English, but after a quick perusal to ensure I was at least transcribing her words properly, she let it go.

I left with enough research done to account for easily a week at the library, but little context for it all and a desperate wish to have my computer powered up and running once again.

Soon, my precious... soon.

~! #$%^&*()_+~! #$%^&*()_+

April 18th, 1987

Following Tomoi's advice had been harder than I'd expected, but when I had come too after my enlightenment it was to find several of my neighbors laying trays of food before me, as offerings to my genius and prayers for my luck to rub off on them. I stopped one of them, a girl named Visha, and asked why.

"Cultivation, as a method of purifying the soul, is one of the few ways to ensure a good life upon reincarnation" she told me blushing. "For those who have committed sins against the world or lived poorly, even a poor human existence isn't guaranteed. But a cultivator cleanses themselves multiple times as they gather power, which goes double for us as residents of Heaven where soul and body are literally one in the same. As a living cultivator, taking the first step of enlightenment as quickly as the dead can only be the favor of the Dao, and so emulating you will increase our own chances. For this we offer gratitude."

I thanked her for the food and let everybody pass by. There was quite a lot here, and I wasn't sure I could eat it all before it spoiled. I was feeling fantastic though. Energy flowed through my body, radiating from indefinable point in my chest. It wasn't my heart, but it was… nearby? And the power pulsed softly with every breath, rising as I breathed in, and falling as I breathed out. Small spikes hit with every beat of my heart and as my mind explored the sensations a rising wave seemed to follow my thoughts. At the same time however, the energy seemed to be draining into my stomach and lower abdomen, probably my intestines, substituting power for the lack of food.

Aaaaaand that seemed as good a place to start as any.

Digging in, I took note of how the energy drain seemed to spike as the first mouthful hit my stomach, but moments later the tide of power coming from my chest began to increase. The drain climbed faster than the return for a while, but as I packed more and more away, the balance rapidly changed, my soul outputting more than my gut was pulling from me to aid digestion and allowing me to pack away far more than I had any right to eat without getting bloated. From there the chi overflowed my torso and rushed out through my blood, seeming to light up the pathways in my minds eye. Raising my arm, I tracked the feeling, but couldn't see any visible difference.

I felt like a god, but visually I wasn't even generating as much chi as the rather lackluster MCU version of Iron Fist. It was disappointing, but perhaps to be expected. Also good for keeping me from getting a swollen head.

Stretching and groaning after a good meal, I felt the soreness in my limbs fading as chi faded into them, vanishing just like it had in my stomach before I started eating.

Thinking about it, all of this made sense. Chi was alternately described as spiritual power, physical power and life force. When you have it, or perhaps simply when you have learned how to feel it, it would naturally follow and enhance your biological processes. It explained all sorts of things like the claims of subsisting for months or years purely on the power of the universe, or the Iron Body techniques that allow advanced martial artists to punch through stone without breaking their skin or bones. Unnatural long life and even immortality.

But would I need to learn how to use it deliberately first? Or would simply having my 'enlightenment' suffice? Briefly I try to move the energy around, but other than increasing the wellspring of chi as my focus ratchets up, nothing seems to happen. Mind forms the soul, Souls reinforces the body. Right. Ok. In most of the manga I know, chi is 90 or so percent physical reinforcement. I'll probably need another enlightenment moment to get to the controlling things part. Think, think...

Tomoi. Or maybe Li Hua. I can't really get a read on Yu-Ti and between the Thunderer and Priya I'm almost certain to get conscripted. Something I'd rather avoid.

Getting up, I use the wet towel method of washing myself and leave my apartment for the work site. We're in the end stages of putting the first bathhouse together and I need to test the sluice and pumps under actual working conditions. It's all disturbingly exciting, given what I used to work on.

Immediately though, I come across a problem. My steps push me half again as far as they used to and I crash into the wall outside my door. There's tittering down the hall, but nobody comes out or makes comments about it. Ah, the double edged sword of Asian Politeness. On one hand, it's much less embarrassing to have people collectively ignore your gaffs, but it's also rather... unhelpful.

Gritting my teeth, I push myself back to a standing position and move again. Chi sinks into my muscles, vanishing as it supports my movements, even as my faster heart rate and breathing causes the source to spike and crest higher. I'm adaptable though, and by the end of the hallway, I've gotten a handle on how to walk normally again. It makes me feel oddly light, as though I'm walking in a pool only without the lateral resistance water provides. Buoyant. Forcing a deliberate laxness gets me out of the building, and I grin.

Time to test myself.

Crouching down, I spring forward into a sprint. Luckily, I don't immediately fall flat on my face and plow the ground with my nose. It's a close thing though, and I stumble several times before settling into a deer-like loping trot. I've seen this sort of thing in pro runners, but it's never been easy for me. Well, it is now. Fuck, doing it is just making me feel MORE jacked, spiking my chi higher. Chi begins to fade into my lungs as I push on, soothing the burning winded feeling running normally slays me with and I watch fascinated as the flows in my body shift to accommodate. Breathing, heart rate, food and thought provide power; digestion, ragged breath, strenuous movement and heightened thought drain power. I almost want to get injured to see how that would affect things in my new awareness now.

That thought gives me pause. What. The. Fuck. Why the hell did I just think that? Does the power affect my mind? Or is it simply the comic geekiness of Having Power that's making me think stupid ass shit? No matter what power I have now, or gain in the future, damage is to be avoided whenever something more important isn't on the line. And there are few things more important than your health. Family for example.

Stumbling to a stop, I rest with my hands on my knees and look around. I've become rather familiar with the layout of the immortal city, over the last several months, and I'm not far from the site of the civilian bathhouse project. It's going to be finished before the Cultivators bathhouse only because slapping lumber together is easier than artistically forming stone and tile. The piping system is just about done for both, it just needs stress testing, as I remembered earlier. We've had a productive month.

Straightening up again, I move to a more sedate jogging pace. The drain on my energy is much less this way, and by the time I reach the construction site, I'm feeling better than I have since... pretty much the moment I got here. Better than I have for the entire year before that too, not to put too fine a point on it. Coming home to find your daughters murdered and your son next to be drowned in the bath does that do you.

Forcing away dark thoughts, I stop by Tomoi.

"You've awoken." He says without preamble.

I snort. "Obviously, unless I'm really good at sleepwalking." I tell him with a grin.

He scowls at me. "Don't be thick, gaijin. Your chi is awakened. You achieved your first enlightenment faster than I expected."

"My neighbors said about the same," I acknowledged. "Maybe it's early, but I'm having trouble making it move how I want it. Willing to offer me any pointers?"

"Meditate more." He replied flatly. "Chi is like a muscle. It starts out as weak and uncoordinated as a baby. The amount you have and your control over it will grow with time and effort. The more important question now is which Dao you intend to follow?"

"Your Martial, or spiritual path." He explained when I looked at him questioningly. "There is only one true Dao, but a thousand ways to arrive there. Lesser truths which guide our path as we come to understand the truth of the universe. One part of that is your method of cultivation. I can only give you the vaguest advice about the paths from North and South America, Europe or Africa, but there are a few manuscripts for each in the second floor."

"I haven't gotten to the second floor yet." I tell him with a grimace. He nods. After a moment, I push. "What can you tell me?"

"Europeans, at least the southern sort, confuse cultivation with worship of the lightforce. But rather than using either properly, they dedicate themselves to an ideal and meditate constantly on it. From what the few European cultivators to reach K'un-Lun have written, they tend to build large cathedrals for their art. You may even know more than I do. You're from there, aren't you?"

I shake my head. "I worked there briefly in the Navy, but I lived in America." From the sound of it though, he's saying saints and their miracles are real. Though, how they could be superheroes and the church still decayed into secularism, I've no idea.

He grunts. "The African's are beast cultivators. Their land is full of demon beasts, and most of their methods involve rather detailed uses of the skin, meat and bones of demon beasts as the base for their growth and techniques. The Americans do similar, but with human sacrifice instead. The last one to reach the Immortal City said that his people sacrificed a thousand beating hearts each year to infuse chi into their crops, ensuring a bountiful harvest."

Aztechs and Mayans. Bloody wonderful.

"The most developed methods however come from Asia. My people, as I said, focus on our spirits. Meditation, adventures, fights and study hone our souls like metal in a forge. I could teach you personally if you were interested. Of the three great traditions we have the highest energy generation rate."

I clap my hand onto his shoulder and shook him slightly. "I think I'd like that. But if you could tell me about the others?"

He nods, smiling. "Continue to come by the forge when this project is done, and I'll start your training. We don't really have much to do normally." Turning away, he shouts orders to several people, before returning to me. "The Chinese way is more focused on the body than the spirit. Using medicines, they focus on purifying their bodies and entering altered states of mind. This allows them a deeper link between their soul and body. In this state, they are able to sense the pathways through which chi flows, and focus on storing power for later use. These pathways are called meridians and the storage areas, Dan-Tien. There are three Dan-Tien," He touches his brow, heart and stomach. "Upper middle and Lower. Most of them form their power center just below their stomach, as it allows them the most balanced approach to using their power. Storing their power in the heart makes for powerful warriors, while storing it in the brain makes for powerful sages, though neither are much good at the others arts."

"And the last group are the Buddhists of Nepal, right?" I ask, thinking of the temples that are so popular in any movie or book about them.

Tomoi however gives me a look of consternation. "No. Well, some of them, every now and then. No, the third path is the Mahabharata Hindu. Their Brahmanda is... difficult to describe. I've lived with some of them for half of a century and I still don't understand them, but they're powerful. Mechanically, where the Chinese separate their power into three dantien of which they take one, the Hindu path separate their power into seven chakra based on major nerve branches and create power centers in all of them. They don't use Chinese Meridians, preferring instead to concentrate on the flow of power between chakras, each of them blocked by certain emotional states and empowered by others. You're not considered a proper cultivator in their tradition until you've opened up all seven and can channel the power of the world through you from crown to tailbone without blockages."

This was something I sort of knew about. It was all over the hippie community and had thoroughly infected the 60's and any pop-culture that referenced the era. Given what I'd been learning lately, there was probably a lot that was wrong about what I knew, but the part about the nerve branches was interesting.

"Has anyone ever tried to use all multiple traditions in tandem?" I asked.

He snorted. "Some have, yes. They're legends in K'un-Lun, either for their rapid rise and journey across the Bridge of Destiny, or for destroying their souls such that even the Gate of Heaven doesn't bring them back to us. Its generally considered the path of the foolish or the desperate. Asians may seem like hidebound and silly traditionalists to your people, but there's usually a good reason for it."

I looked at him sidelong. "Who are you, and what have you done with my friend? You know, the one who pushes his seniors to baldness trying to modernize K'un-Lun? Who was desperately happy when I managed to get the elders to consider it for the sake of hot baths?"

He smirks at me. "I'm one of the fools. I've found the Chinese Meridians and elements to be useful to the Shinto spiritual path, but I'm not big on the idea of power centers. If you're studying in the library though, most of the material you'll find are based on the Chinese tradition. It's strong and stable, but I'm rather biased to the legendary Nippon spirit."

I chuckle. "You would be. As I understand it, Korea, northern China, southern China and Japan have hated each other for a thousand years."

"Thousands," he corrected. "But enough chatter. There's not much I can teach you here."

"To work?" I ask him.

"To work," he agreed, and the pair of us got to it. There were a few problems with me applying too much force, and damaging things, but thankfully, there weren't a lot of things I needed to use my strength for, my mind being more important.

~! #$%^&*()_+~! #$%^&*()_+~! #$%^&*()_+

April 24th 1987

The Civilian bathhouse was finished three days later to great fanfare, and the Nobles Bathhouse open in a week. They were operational a day earlier than the civilian opening, but the decorative finish and luxuries needed time to be perfected and installed.

I however, was no longer involved. The piping had been completed and demonstrated to work to the Orders and that was enough. Li Hua herself set the chi runes on the heated water tanks, from the steam room to the mineralized hot-springs. She also gave me a crucial lesson about chi use there.

"Fire element chi is not the process of life energy becoming flame, but rather chi imitating the properties of fire." She explained as a glowing gold orange finger traced ink and chi onto the surface of the copper drum. "This in particular is why the mystic elements are so much more useful than their natural counterparts. There is of course the nature of fire that heats and warms, but your chi also carries with it the meaning of fire. Is it destruction? Purification? Protection? Passion? Your body burning off a disease? The satisfaction of a good meal or drink? Lust? The glow afterwards? The more you learn about heat, the further it informs your Dao of Fire and the more you can do with it."

"Then, if I wanted to conceal myself" I asked, hesitantly, deciding against my better judgement to trust her "I should meditate on the meaning of shadows and darkness?"

She hummed for a moment. "You could, but shadows are deeply linked to Yin. You could achieve the same thing by meditating on light, which is favored closely by Yang and use it to form illusions so that people see something else." She looked over at me, catching my eyes despite my not looking directly at her moments before. "Why do you feel the need to hide here?"

I grimace, caught out. But then, I expected this when broaching the question. "As I told the others, I want to find my son. If he followed me through the tear in reality, then it's possible he's found his way to the valley's other city. As I understand it, one does not simply walk into S'ahra Sharn."

She nods, pensive. "Why not simply ask the Thunderer to train you?" She wonders aloud. "The Dark Lord of the North is always looking for mortal born recruits to join the chaste."

I snort. "Because I am a scholar, not a warrior. And an old one at that. Training to become a martial artist of any real caliber takes a decade at least. And even that would not guarantee I could get in and out alive unless I found myself to be an undiscovered genius. Besides which, If my son is there, I'm not going to leave him there for a decade just so I can train up, these past months have been bad enough. Going there without training may be possible, sure, but getting back out would be straight up impossible in that case, unless I join the organization your friends use as a threat for the uncooperative."

She smiles pityingly at me. "The Yu-Ti is a man of great compassion. If you asked, he may storm the gates himself and retrieve your son."

"IF Nicodemus is there." I counter. "IF no one has risen within the undercity who can challenge him. IF K'un-Lun is willing to risk stomping into such an ant hill. IF... if I'm willing to pay whatever price Yu-Ti decides on for this favor." I counter. "He'd have to be a saint to do it for free."

This made the White Tiger laugh, but she would not explain what it was she found so funny before the inspection was over.

And so, I took Tomoi and Li Hua's advice.

I mediated.

And as I did, I slowly learned more about my chi. Long hours were spent studying it's flows and trying to pinpoint just where in my chest the wellspring of power was coming from. Replacing sleep with meditation ate up a prodigious amount of power, as it turned out, but after five days I figured out how to move my chi deliberately through my body. It was a slow process, and only increased my strength fractionally, but this was just the beginning... and there was so much more to come.

~! #$%^&*()_+~! #$%^&*()_+~! #$%^&*()_+

May 4th 1987

I have hit the jackpot.

Besides my son, one of the biggest things I've been missing since arriving in K'un-Lun has been my computer. I managed to retrieve the laptop from the hill where it had spilled when I met Iron Fist practically the next day, but alas and alack, the charge ran out quickly without anything to plug the poor device into.

Now I had a solution!

Chi.

Asian myths are full of objects enchanted to do completely and utterly ridiculous things because of Chi. Swords that expanded to the size of a surfboard and allowed their users to fly on them. Books that burnt their pages to banish ghosts. Hair ribbons that would wrap around their maiden's injuries and heal them. A painters brush that could erase mountains. Coins that could become a second moon in the sky and affect the tides simply so that the hero could have a light by which to continue battling the tyrant.

What I was doing was nowhere near that impressive or sophisticated. Even so, after figuring out how to move my chi as I wanted it, I started making attempts to move it outside my body. The faint ember of faerie fire I generated had been unable to do anything of use, save exhaust me utterly. But trying it on the battery of my laptop caused enough of a surge to turn on the fan in my laptop and set it shrieking!

Abused by it's sudden start after months of silence, I cradled the device as though it were a precious child.

I did not cry.

But still... I am back!

The first thing I did after making certain I had a full charge, was pull up the Rosetta Stone Translation Software I'd installed on my computer in preparation for moving to Singapore. Connecting my phone to my computer and allowing it to power up from the cord I tested the program by having it scan some of my own writing from the last several months. It took the computer a few moments to recognize what it was seeing, but shortly, pixelated lines started drawing themselves over the image fed into it, reading brush strokes and comparing them to it's database of characters.

Then it was done.

On my screen was the full text I had painted alongside an English translation and Pinyin pronunciation format. I've apparently got a number of grammatical errors I need to work on, but that's OK, I'm the boorish foreigner after all. Glancing longingly at the list of games loaded onto my hard drive, I consider just wasting the day away and playing them again, but resist. Games can wait until I've confirmed Nick isn't in S'ahra Sharn. Checking the charge, at 97%, I close the computer and replace it in my backpack before heading to the library. I spend the rest of the day scanning books into text files on my laptop and labeling them by author name and date. It's not quite as good as arranging them by subject, but it's more than they have already.

By the end of the day I'd scanned, labeled and re-shelved nearly two hundred books.

Just ten or twenty thousand left to go.

Now, my English reading speed is significantly higher than my Mandarin, but even so, I'm well aware that I'm simply not going to have time to go through the entire first floor in the time I plan to stay here. By talking to the people around heaven, I'd found out that the portal to earth had closed about 2 years ago, so the next one would be some time in autumn of 2000 or 2001. That meant I'd need to either increase my reading and comprehension speed (a lot) or find a way to filter through all of the dross.

Fortunately there is a way.

Plagiarism is enough of a problem in academia that there's good money in inventing some truly clever algorithms to track that shit down, even when it's paragraphs or lines rearranged to form a new paper. Scientific journals are not only not an exception to this, they take it to a whole new level. The entire community is paranoid out of their gourds that someone will steal their ideas that "publish or die" is something of a mantra and paywalls are thick as flies on a carcass, but even so plagiarism abounds and those walls are under funded. So... even I, a simple tech at a nuclear plant, am familiar with the use of spotting programs.

Programs to which I begin feeding the new books.

Now, one may ask "yeah, but how is that even useful here?" and that might be a valid question. After all, the program doesn't have a database for old Chinese documents! Easy. Make the database self referential so that it forms its own meta. All of the repeating passages are highlighted and linked for easy reference, making research across multiple books a breeze and cutting out the need to read things over and over again.

Looking at the timer, the program claims it's going to take another four hours to get through what I've fed it already, so I settle down to get some sleep. Or deep meditation as it were. It works almost as well as sleep and I still need to empower my laptop. I don't know exactly how long the charge will last, but I do know running the processors hot takes a lot of extra power. And so... I meditate on my chi, allowing it to flow out of me and into my computer as I generate it.

~! #$%^&*()_+~! #$%^&*()_+~! #$%^&*()_+

May 29th 1987

Over the next several weeks, I continue to scan more and more books into text files in my library. The repeating passages, and how often they repeat is proving to be useful as is the surrounding context. I've already tripled my recovery speed and have begun to feel the power outside my body. The recovery speed of my chi also has the knock-on-effect of making physical exercise not merely tolerable, but downright fun. It's a situation I can't help but wonder at. Is it becoming fun because it no longer sucks so much to push my body beyond reason? Or is the chi literally altering my mood so that exercising is fun? From recently recovered memories of Marvels Agent Carter TV show, Chi has a profound effect on chemistry, and endorphins released by exercise to stop you from hating yourself are definitely chemistry. Further, chi is your soul acting upon your body, and by cultivating you easily fall into a loop of reaching ever higher.

That this could be mystically fucking with me is a scary thought.

There's not much to be done about it though. Tomoi tells me that, once I reach second stage enlightenment, becoming one with the world, I can begin to mess with elements, a core feature to my plans to sneak into S'ahra Sharn. I'm so close I can almost taste it... and because of that I cannot give up. No matter how much the idea scares me.

There are pretty good fringe benefits at least. Exercising means that my muscles, breathing and circulatory systems are gaining strength, and in doing so, require less of my chi to support the silly things I now want to do with it. Like improving my coordination through gymnastics and pushing myself past the point I'd normally collapse and start vomiting up my organs as I curse whatever stupidity made me think exercise was a good idea. Because my body is improving, it also feeds more energy to my brain before chi even gets involved, increasing the speed and clarity of my thoughts and memories. I'm already smart, but I wouldn't be surprised if this bumped me up 10 IQ points.

This increased understanding and physique, is the source of my increased chi regeneration and reduced chi consumption. That higher level of chi in my body and greater understanding parleys into better control over the energy itself.

Better still, learning better how to move my chi around my body (beyond powering up my laptop) means I can start taking advantage of the effects and techniques moving chi around ones body offers. This is the basis for most wushu in your typical cheesy kung fu movie. The iron fist (not the title, but the technique where you punch through wooden posts and stones) involves little more than pushing your chi into the body part you wish to strike with, reinforcing it so that it can withstand the forces involved in punching stone without worrying about shattering your bones and pulping the flesh in between. That allows you to push your muscles harder and faster even without chi boosting your muscles and nerves, and further still with it. Iron body is the same, as it's the aforementioned effect allowing you to take those enhanced blows.

What the Iron Fist does instinctively is a step above that, sending large amounts of chi into your blows and allowing it to ripple outward enhancing the meaning of the punch so that the force is multiplied multiple times over and spreads well beyond what physics says it should. Classic cartoon punching. Iron cloth is the same concept channeled through iron body training such that it infuses your clothing, or forms a superman aura around you making the idea of your skin and clothing's protection like a thing unto iron, instead of simple flesh and fiber. This doesn't stop it from flowing and flapping in the breeze as you move faster than humanly possible either as it's more conceptual than physics oriented.

Honestly I'm still getting my head around the physics bending portions of this. For a quick short hand though, I've begun training in the same league as street fighter and Tekken.

Finally, during this stage, there is Qinggong or light body technique. This is how martial artists jump ridiculous heights, stay in the air from kicking and hitting their opponents and sail around like kites rather than falling like sensible physics obeying martial artists. The whys hows and wherefores are still confusing me, but it's something to do with focusing on the light and bubbly feeling the first enlightenment gives you and then training to do the Kung Fu wall jumps normally. I wish I could describe it more eloquently, but as I'm still avoiding the orders of Crane Mother and Chaste, I'm not actually being trained in the martial arts themselves which would come with all of the moves and associated philosophies.

~! #$%^&*()_+~! #$%^&*()_+~! #$%^&*()_+

June 6th 1987

Tomoi grunts at me in irritation as I walk into his shop grinning broadly. "You're not a genius." He tells me gruffly.

"But I am faster than most." I counter. He snorts as I begin helping with the bellows. Then he snickers as I pull in a bit of fire chi and hiss at the stinging sensation of it.

"Achieving second enlightenment is baby steps." He says as he pulls out the bar of metal he's working on and starts hammering it again. He's making a hinge, I think. "Now you need to start thinking about your path. Chi elements are chi behaving as..."

"though it were that element, not actually becoming the element itself. To achieve it one must meditate in an area where the element is present naturally and align your internal energies in step with the gained understanding." I recite. "Li Hua told me."

He snorts. "Did she also tell you where the best places to meditate would be?"

I open my mouth, and then close it. Tomoi smirks, but refusing to let him win I push forward anyway. "She told me that my goal of sneaking into S'ahra Sharn would be better accomplished through understanding light than darkness, as I was male and also not feminine."

"I might have to argue with her then," Tomoi replies, a grin of his own twitching across his face "you whine enough for two women." I gave him the middle finger and he laughed. "She is correct. You were whining about how you think chi is influencing your mind earlier. If you alter your balance of Yin and Yang it really will influence your mind. I would recommend meditating on a mountain top. The bright airy surroundings are good for Yang and meditating in the light of the dawn and noonday suns will help you understand light most easily. The cold and water of the snow should provide enough Yin to keep you largely balanced and the emptiness of the peak should shut out the world enough for you to focus only on your task. Night will switch the chi balance though, so be careful of that."

I nod slowly, "Why is that exactly? In the west, light and dark are more associated with the nature of a people rather than gender."

"It's because of your ancestors messing around with the light force and dark force dimensions as opposed to proper understanding of chi." He replied, trading his hammer for a pair of needle-nosed-pliers and a rod he pulled out of a oil well. "Rather than getting an understanding of the soul, they jumped ahead to thinking of things in terms of cosmic forces. They're similar enough to cause confusion in lesser minds, but fundamentally different when you get down the the heart of it."

He fired the metal again, and began twisting the tines of metal coming off the plate into hooks. "Yang chi is weightless, it comes from the soles if you feet and travels up your back, reaching for heaven. It makes you stand straight even under enormous strain and unburdens even the most troubled mind. It is light, fire, stone and steel. Seeking and revealing, Yang will push you to reach higher even as it judges you harshly and refuses to bend. Strength and deep thought flow from the balance of Yang chi in your body, whether you sense it or not."

He inserts the oiled rod into the curled bits of metal and begins hammering them into an even shape. "Yin chi by contrast is heavy, coming from all places and no place, weighing you down and flowing across your face and chest in its path from heaven to earth. It will bow your head even as it helps you hide or yield to greater forces around you. Yin is darkness, water, wind and life. Protective and enveloping it will conceal anything from children and valuables, to monsters and poison. Yin will devour you if you are not careful, but it also makes you accepting and cooperative. Adaptability and selectiveness flow from the balance of Yin chi with or without training."

Putting the hinge and it's bolt back in the fore for a moment, he pulls them back out and uses a second set of pliers to remove the bolt. Plunging the hinge into the water, he then puts it back in the forge to heat up. Tempering. "Yin and Yang are opposite forces, but they are not in fact opposing. They are synergistic, harmonic, and everybody has a strong measure of both. Usually somewhere around 60/40. Having your balance go too far to one side or being the opposite of normal leads to all sorts of oddities. Weak men, monsters, tyrants, boy love and sissies. Harridans, ice queens, devouring mothers, tomboys and lesbians."

That's... pretty big. Bringing this to the west with hard proof could potentially rewrite the entire DSM5. "If you change your balance, could you correct these issues?" I ask, carefully.

"In some cases." He replied, unconcerned. "Some require a change of the blood else they return later, but not most. The issue generally is that some of these states are sought out for a specific Dao." He puts the hinge back in the water and holds it there, sizzling and steaming. "They are limiting paths in my opinion, but they do have their own immortals."

That made sense I suppose, but I would probably shoot for more 70/30. No offense, but Asian men are fairly effeminate by the western view of such things. I'll have to figure out where I am right now first.

As it was nearing night however, I simply took note of his advice and revelations and continued to aid him until he closed up his corner of the forge. I was planning how to rearrange my schedule to take advantage of this and not cut back on my in house research when Tomoi reached out to me.

"Do you have the evening free?" he asked, his manner too casual.

"I have some planning to do, but I have a moment free," I offered, confused "what do you need?"

Looking around the forge for a moment, he pulled me outside and then explained. "Brother Kuo runs a distillery. Plums, honey, kumquat, lotus root, rice. He hides cashes of drink all over town, trading small jugs of wine or liquor for favors. But... there is a rumor that he hides a special stock for the nobles that is made from the divine peach and infused with chi. If you help me find it, not only can we get drunk, it will greatly speed up our cultivation."

A grin slowly spreads across my face. "You're asking me because I intend to study stealth." Tomoi nods and I grin wider. Normally I'd ask for something in return, but the mans' been dead helpful already and simply finding this hidden stash will get me closer to my goal of finding my son. I can afford not to be a douche. "I'll do what I can." I tell him. "Though it may take some time, if I find it at all."

He grins at me. "Come then, let's get some of your ghost fish and I'll introduce you when I hand him these hinges. I hear the plum wine in the bell tower has gotten quite potent and enlightenment is sufficient cause for celebration."

I didn't learn much more that night, but the way my head throbbed in the morning, it must have been wild.