The dojo was silent.
Lantern light flickered across old cedar beams, throwing long shadows over the scarred floorboards. In that silence sat Master Yan, cross-legged, his back straight as a spear. His hair had turned mostly silver, but his body was still a wall of tempered muscle, hardened by fifty years of martial practice.
They called him a genius, the greatest martial artist of his generation, a man who had reached the peak of Ki. His name carried weight across kingdoms. Yet tonight, he felt the truth pressing against his chest.
His hand tightened over his sternum.
A skipped beat.
Then another.
A wave of pain crawled up his arm, across his ribs. His breath caught. He forced it steady, but the rhythm of his heart faltered again.
So it has come to this.
Ki coursed faintly through his meridians, but the warmth he had relied on his entire life now felt like poison. He had always known this day would arrive—the flaw of Ki was merciless. It strengthened the young, carried them through battles, but in the end it always ate away at the body. Martial masters died at seventy, if not sooner. He was only fifty… but fate had chosen to shorten his span even further.
His chest tightened. His vision blurred. His pulse rattled like a drum with a broken skin.
Is this the end?
He had clawed his way to the peak of martial arts. He had become the man others worshiped. Yet all his skill, all his discipline, could not stop the weakness that lurked in his heart since birth.
A bitter laugh tried to rise but turned into a cough. He closed his eyes.
And in the dark behind them, a memory surfaced—of another world.
A small apartment. A glowing screen. The endless nights he had spent reading about immortals, cultivators, heroes who defied heaven itself. On Earth, those stories had been dreams, fantasies to dull the ache of his failing body. Here, in this world, he had become a martial legend, yet even legends still died.
"I don't want to die…" The words left his lips in a hoarse whisper.
He hadn't prayed in decades, but in that moment he wished, with every trembling piece of his soul, that the stories had been true. That there was a way to seize life, to stretch it beyond this frail body. That immortality was not a dream.
The pain sharpened—white-hot, like a spear driven through his chest. His heart clenched. He knew this was the final moment.
If this is death… then let me gamble once more.
His breath slowed. By instinct, he fell back on meditation—counting, holding, releasing.
One. Two. Three—inhale.
Four. Five. Six—hold.
Seven. Eight. Nine—exhale.
But something shifted. For the first time, he did not move Ki through his body. Instead, he listened. To the faint, fragile pulse. To the emptiness between beats. To the space inside him that was not filled by Ki.
And there, at the edge of death, he saw it.
A thread. Invisible. Vast. Gentle where Ki was harsh. Endless where Ki was finite.
This… this isn't Ki.
His eyes widened even as darkness pressed against him. His heart skipped another beat—yet in that silence, the thread surged forward. It wrapped around the broken rhythm, carrying it, steadying it.
A spark flared behind his heart. Warm. Alive.
The pain faltered. His pulse steadied. His breath deepened as if he had inhaled the very sky.
Something moved through him—a current that nourished instead of corroded, healed instead of consumed. The frailty in his veins eased. The cracks in his bones whispered with relief.
Tears welled in his eyes as a broken laugh escaped his throat. "It's real…!"
In that instant, he had done what no one in this world ever dreamed possible. He had touched the true spiritual energy hidden beneath the heavens. He had created the first method to draw it forth.
A name formed unbidden in his mind, born from desperation and triumph alike:
The Unfading Pulse Sutra.
The lantern flame flickered as if bowing to the revelation. Rain outside stilled for a heartbeat, then pattered again, gentler than before.
Master Yan pressed his palm to his chest. The failing heart still beat, but now a second rhythm echoed faintly behind it—a steady, eternal pulse.
He had been nine beats from death. Instead, he had found the beginning of immortality.